Amazingly, Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Is Nintendo's Only UK Christmas Number 1 Since 1984

So many FIFAs and CODs. The UK appearently doesn't like good games

Ghostbusters by Activision on the C64 was the best, but NEVER got past that damn Marshmallowman to complete it

I actually got this as a Christmas present that year and remember being totally compelled to play and to save the princess. Which is the reason I hold this game in so high regards because no other game has given me that feeling since.

Yeah... Christmas is apparently the season of shooting in the UK.

I don't think it's weird, Nintendo doesn't seem to aim at pushing a big yearly release out around that time, just spread what they have over the year, and it's mostly with long lasting appeal, or sales so rare and kind of small that people just get their games when they can, not put them on their Christmas wish list. That's what I make of it at least.

Yeah, if you can count Ocarina of Time as a real Zelda game lol. They broke with series tradition so hard to the point that it’s not even recognisable as Zelda any more. Like, what is a Z-targeting? Why do the Zoras look like sexy pale fish freaks and not big green river monsters? Why is most of the game map big expensive fields with nothing to do?

This is a real Zora! This is a real Zelda!

#NoToPolygons #TooExperimental #NotARealZelda #OcarinaOfTryHard

@Bunkerneath I only ever got to the Marshmallow Man once and that was by accident because I just left the game playing. I did better at the game not playing it than by playing it! 😅

@Friendly It's both a football and an assault rifle pun. I dig it.

That list is depressing to be blunt. Thank God I like what I like lol!

I miss the PS1 Tomb Raider games and The Last Revelation was my favourite in the franchise. It's fantastic that I can play the past 15 years of Tomb Raider games on my Series X but prior to Legend (2006) the newest hardware they're available on is the 60GB PS3 (the 599 US Dollars model with backwards compatibility). Even then, there's the issue of disc rot:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/02/retro_this_is_why_we_should_probably_be_glad_nintendo_stuck_with_carts_for_the_n64

Outrun was dire on the 8 bit computers but Operation Wolf and Chase HQ were awesome on the CPC464…….both also had great cover art by the late Bob Wakelin.
The popularity of Call Of Duty has never faltered, I’m amazed we haven’t had a Switch version.

Was curious to see what else was in the chart that week given exclusives weren't that common as #1:
2. FIFA '99
3. Tomb Raider 3
4. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
5. Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil
6. V Rally
7. Toca Touring Car Championship
8. Brian Lara Cricket
9. Abe's Exoddus
10. Crash Bandicoot

FIFA99 was actually top the week before and the week after and would've likely taken top spot if it has been on another platform - Sports games sold well on Mega Drive, but it was gone by that point and Dreamcast not released yet - EA ignored Dreamcast anyway.

Not exactly a great month for games, but still quite an achievement for Zelda as an exclusive, especially given the PS install base likely much bigger than N64 at that point.

@mariomaster96 I think there's a large majority of more casual players who look at gaming as just another hobby to dabble in, much the same way most people treat going to the cinema or reading a book.

Those are the kind of people who wouldn't ever read a site like this and instead buy stuff they recognise, so CoD, Assassins Creed, FIFA etc, with the occasional forays into GTA, Halo, Pokémon etc.

I think of it like how I go to the cinema - I go and see almost all of Marvel's stuff and things in that general ballpark, which are quite safe things that I know I'll enjoy. Every now and again go and see something a bit more out there but that will always take second place behind things that are a known quantity.

You can bemoan that all you want but at the end of the day my free time and disposable income is pretty limited. If I know I generally like Marvel films or Steve knows he likes CoD and there's no push to look for something else, we'll just keep going for that known quantity. Judging by the performance of Spiderman vs every other film in cinemas currently, I don't think that's an unusual approach.

@Maxz That zora is just a little overweight with some dental issues - stop being so judgemental!

@Maxz While it is true that I think that OoT is a bit too much overrated, I wouldnt go as far as to call it not a real Zelda game; Its a 3D Zelda game, and a good one nonetheless. Things like Z Targeting were neccesary when translating it to 3D, and, honestly, the Zoras are so much better as sentient NPCs than mindless monsters.

If you call Ocarina of Time not a real Zelda game, you also call Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and Breath of the Wild not a real Zelda game.

Criminal that sensible world of soccer never made it to number 1

Would never have expected "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" to be the number 1 for Christmas of the year 2000.

FIFA, Call of Duty, FIFA, Call of Duty, FIFA, FIFA... UGH

It's a bit embarrassing but unfortunately the UK has a very casual approach to video games in general. You don't meet many 30+ year old adults who still play video games, this is starting to change slowly but what it means is that teenagers and young adults will go crazy for FIFA and COD.

It's a shame that Call of Duty and FIFA are so popular, at least I can be proud that I never played any of those

Poor Mario never having a Christmas number 1.....funnily enough, I always associate Super Mario games with good Christmas!

That list is dreadful for the most part!

@Wewalia He was making a joke.

@HamatoYoshi The C64 Turbo Outrun remix of Magical Sound Shower is an absolutely epic banger though! Seven minutes long and just gets better and better the longer it goes on. Plus it has voice samples!

@Meteoroid Ooft. You're not wrong but I'm surprised you got away with that one tbh 😂

Putting the Mega Drive and SMS/GG versions of Sonic 2 into the same pot is a bit of a stretch. Still a pretty good chance the MD game alone was on top at Christmas (the 8-bit versions were released in the summer I think?) He should re-run the numbers with that in mind

AGREED: Sonic 2 is still the best in the series
ALSO: That's an awful lot of Call of Doody

@BTB20 @Wewalia @SuperCharr

Yes, sorry, I should clarify: I was making a joke.

“Breath of the Wild is not a real Zelda game because it breaks with certain series staples” has become such commonly trotted-out line among contrarians that it’s a bit of a cliché at this point.

I’m trying to imagine how they would have would have coped to with Ocarina of Time introducing \gasp/ polygons to the franchise for the first time.

We’ll see how time judges things, but I fully expect “BotW isn’t a real Zelda game because \waves hands/ no drawn-out dungeons” to age about as well as “Wind Waker isn’t a real Zelda game because \waves hands/ cel-shading”.

@MajorTom It's especially odd as the show, while still very popular at the time, was starting its decline in ratings a bit from its peak the year before.

I wonder if there wasn't really much else coming out at that point with the PS1 winding down, the PS2 only just getting going and others not really making a mark in the UK marketplace

@Maxz Man, I'll be honest. I think Breath of the Wild is a decent game overall, but I hate that it's the most critically acclaimed Zelda since Ocarina of Time. I love Zelda for the ability progression, the dungeons, the music, the art styles, and even the narrative for a couple of them. As far as I'm concerned, BotW is several steps down in every one of those categories from Skyward Sword. I'm glad that one's finally gotten some more appreciation with the HD remaster, but I'm worried I'll never get another new game like OoT/TP/SS because of how insanely popular BotW is.

@Anachronism Thanks for being honest. Often people can come at this issue all guns blazing which makes it hard to really understand why people feel the way they do, because people are too busy telling each other they’re wrong for feeling the way they do.

Personally, the elements of the Zelda series that I find the most engrossing as the sense of exploration, the atmosphere, and the world itself. So Breath really ticked all those boxes with a giant swoosh. The series has always been labelled as part of the ‘adventure’ genre, and Breath felt like it had got closer to the meaning of that word than any other game is the series. So yeah, I really loved it.

It will be interesting to see where the series goes after the ‘Breath’ arc is finished, however. I doubt we’ll be getting sprawling open worlds on the BotW scale forever, simply because it isn’t sustainable. Breath took… God knows how many years to make, and even the sequel has spent a decent amount of time in the oven despite (presumably) reusing a lot of the same assets.

Wherever it goes though, I just want to be surprised and delighted. In their own way, both BotW and WW both took unexpected turns that not everyone was hoping for; but the result is two landmark games that not only have a very special place in their own series, but in the entire canon of video games.

Here’s to more surprises!

You'd think they'd remake Ocarina of Time for Switch in HD and give it a free-camera view function via the right control stick (like BotW).

@Anachronism It does feel like the future of Zelda is porting WWHD + TPHD, adding MM to NSO Expansion Pack, remaking the 2D Zeldas and only having BotW style for new mainline games.

Zeldas are exclusive to Nintendo systems and in the 80s and up to mid 90s, the UK was microcomputer land (ZX Spectrums, BBC Micros, Acorn Archimedes, C64, Amiga, Atari STs, etc) and Sega Land in the console space, then it turned into Playstation land by the time the PS1 and Saturn rolled around. You need an install base to sell games, and Nintendo simply never dominated there. The same could be said about much of Europe in fact.

I would have said they must have dominated Christmas 2006 with Wii Sports but that was bundled with the system everywhere except in Japan so I guess that makes sense it wouldn't top the software charts.

@Maxz okay. Im so sorry if I sounded mad. I just have an argument like this with my friends all the time. My apologies.

Uk and their terrible taste in games, at least the wonderful ocarina is the one

wow, there's a lot of snobbery towards game like FIFA and Call of Duty. let people buy and play what they like in my opinion.

I'm pretty sure this kind of list isn't exactly unique to the UK. If you look at the US charts it's probably all CoD, NHL and Madden. Give us Brits a break for our taste in games folks!

@Maxz You just nailed what I love about BoTW. The environmental storytelling, the sidequests and the sense of exploration and adventure are what I like the most in Zelda, while slogging through another forest/fire/water themed dungeon just to move the game along was something that I felt was getting tired. Obviously some sacrifices had to be made to get the open world concept to work but so many of the things people complain about are things I love the game for doing.

OutRun back in 1987. Those US Gold home computer ports were almost all bad, so some disappointed purchasers there, no doubt, shows the power of hype. The C64 version was I think the best, its fairly playable and saved the routes at as different loaded versions on the casette, so no multi-load. Plus it came with a cassette tape of the original arcade music which I listened to a lot at the time.

@RudyC3 That's right about the 8-bit Mirco computers here, games were also mostly sold on cassette tapes, so pocket money prices compared to the NES.

Depressing amount of FIFA and Call of Duty here. Very surprised Wii Sports isn't there, considering the mad rush in 2006. It's counted as separate from the console when talking about other sales numbers.

I wonder if this is related to Nintendo being more employee-friendly these days. A Christmas release must be a nightmare for the dev team, as they probably need to crunch development to finish the game by the time. If it's another month, seems a lot easier to manage.

Is Christmas no 1# a thing for computer games?

I get it in terms of the most selling/wanted game under the tree but its hardly Top of the Pops (when that also mattered)

@Rosalinho Now that I 100% fall on the opposite side of. I often get tired of games just picking a theme and basing a whole area around it, but I feel like Zelda usually does such a good job of making each one unique that it's hard to compare "insert element here" areas between two games. With BotW on the other hand, even places on the opposite side of the world from each other often didn't feel very distinct. Climbing the nth green/white/brown hill to see the nth movable/breakable/killable thing that I could deal with to get the nth chest with a generic item that I didn't need felt like the real slog. Aside from a handful of major set pieces, every asset and idea gets reused so much that I'd prefer it if they'd cut the map down to a fifth of the size just to cut out most of the repetition. I don't even remember more than a couple sidequests despite finishing all of them because most of them had no unique story or challenges and the characters giving them mostly just looked like someone hit the random button on an NPC builder. Same problem with the enemies, the buildings, and even the geography. They just wore every asset as thin as possible with a content for content's sake mindset to the point that very little of it actually ends up feeling memorable, which is really the problem I've run into with open world games in general.

It might have been a joke, but I just started playing Ocarina of Time for the first time and the "overworld" (really just a hub room) is the single most annoying overworld I've ever encountered. It makes me actively avoid traveling between places and exploring, which is kind of the opposite of what I want to feel in a Zelda game (usually I go wherever I can as soon as I can, and take note of intetesting places, here I'm just like "eh, I'll come back later when I have all the tools")

Without the novelty of being the first 3D Zelda with a generous helping of nostalgia, I really don't see the hype.

@Meteoroid Not quite sure I understand this. Are you saying that Americans like shooting games more than other countries?

Or is this an attempt at a joke based on the stereotype that every American owns guns?

@Gamer_Zeus

But everybody played 8-bit computer games in the UK way back in the 80's, didn't they? One could assume that at least some of this audience has remained active as gamers. (That's exactly my own case, actually, I don't live in the UK, though).

Didn't expect seeing Atari ST games on that list! Great computer, but US Gold Out Run wasn't that good..
Interesting how different the market-share was within Europe. In Sweden Nintendo was dominating until the arrival of the Playstation, yet the N64 sold pretty well too.

@Bydlak yeah but unlike in the US and other countries, it hasn't stuck as much in the UK.

I have more friends in their 30s who do not own any consoles at all than friends who do.

I'm sorry to see what kind of games most people play today

@Manah
It was the best game of its time. If you had played it in 1998, you could have been blown away like the most. It was far beyond any competition as far as 3d games go.

Back in the day the first Tomb Raider game was well received. If I were to play it now after all modern masterpieces, of course I would be dissapointed. It was nowhere near OOT even then. Still, I wouldn't say that I don't get the hype of Tomb Raider because of all this obviousness.

The first generation of 3d games feels dated today, there's no way around it. However, the following generation with ps2, gc etc. still has many games that stand the test of time. From PS3 forward there hasn't been that much meaningful progress.GTAV was a ps3 game originally and it still gets re- releases with minor improvements. The original ps3 version looks better than most ps4 games, arguably.

Then again and after all this, I personally still think OOT, Majora's Mask and Super Mario 64 are the only games that are still great today from their era.

@Anachronism I can go halfway on some of your issues with the game. It could have had a greater variety of enemies, and knowing that by exploring an interesting nook or cranny you're going to get either a shrine, a Korok seed or a rare item can sometimes be a drag. I also wouldn't be opposed to optional traditional dungeons as long as they weren't excessively linear and you could find fun alternative ways of doing them as with some shrines. For me, the exploration itself was its own reward and that aspect of the game came into its own during the many times in the past couple of years we were stuck indoors. Knowing that if I wanted to go somewhere I could find a way to do it instead of being halted by some tiny rock or knee-high barrier was refreshing.

On the idea that the overworld is quantity over quality and asset reuse is a problem I'd have to disagree. Firstly, many areas do have unique environmental features that are found nowhere else. More to the point though, the fact that the world feels very cohesive is a plus and not a negative for me. It makes Hyrule feel like a real place, instead of an obstacle course or giant puzzle box. Super Mario Bros., the game which made me fall in love with video games, actually has all the same characteristics in terms of being based on simple mechanics and assets combined in interesting ways which encourage exploration and experimentation while making the game world feel consistent and unified.

We all like what we like and I'm not disowning classic Zeldas, I love them. I think part of the problem is that Ocarina of Time got so much right the first time, within the confines of the available technology, that so many other Zeldas have tried to be "Ocarina but better" which has sometimes worked and sometimes not. BoTW "fixed" Zelda for me.

@Cia If you add nothing else to that "still great" list then add Star Fox 64. However I disagree with the idea that any generation of games are inherently dated and not worth playing. People often talk about how you need nostalgia to enjoy certain games or eras of gaming, which is untrue; nostalgia can actually be a pain in the neck if you replay a game and it isn't as great as you remember. However, if you genuinely want to "get" a classic, you do have to play it mindful of the context in which it came out as opposed to if it were a brand new game. I actually did that with Tomb Raider a few years back and enjoyed it, because I put my mind in 1996-7 mode. Of course, it helps that I was alive then. It's probably harder if you weren't. But many people enjoy movies, music or fashion from decades when they weren't born, and games can be the same.

Some people can't do that and aren't interested in doing so, which is fine, but to me playing older games which I've never played before is like looking out into distant space and seeing the universe still being formed. It's fascinating and rewarding if you're interested in how video games got to where they are today.

This is especially impressive given the rather low install base of N64 in the UK as it was mostly seen as a kiddie console. If it weren't for GoldenEye none of my friends would have owned an N64 and most, if not all of us bought Zelda OoT.

Not that surprising overall.

Football is life here to the point any stranger will often talk about it to spark up conversation in the street so FIFA was always going to have an advantage in this region.

Doesn't help that Nintendo did a truly awful job for years treating the UK like an afterthought.
Sega and later Sony both took advantage of this to become Britain's dominant console providers.

The Master System and MegaDrive were the dominant consoles here due to Nintendo neglecting this region for so long, and the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 both quickly became the top consoles of their times too.

With all those factors against them it's impressive Ocarina managed to make it to the top of the pile here even once.

@Maxz I guess I'm just easy to please but I really like all the Zelda games for the most part. I see the validity in both arguments around BOTW and in a perfect world my ideal Zelda is a mashup of old and new. I want the size and scope of BOTW but with the focus of traditional Zelda with major dungeons and more traditional music. Who knows what we will actually get considering it's Nintendo. At any rate people should just like and appreciate the ones they like and let everyone else do the same. 😊

@Rosalinho It's funny, a lot of your arguments are ones I've used to explain my love for other games. I'll often say one of the main reasons Mario Sunshine is my favorite in the series is because the areas feel connected and lived in rather than the usual eclectic bunch of floating sandboxes or obstacle courses. And I love the Xenoblade games for so thoroughly encouraging and rewarding exploration. If I could have an ideal open world Zelda, it would be something like Xenoblade X's map, where you can more or less go anywhere on the map at the start, but there are layers of it that only really open up as you progress through the game. If Monolith is helping out with the sequel like they did on BotW, I really hope they gave them even more influence on the map design. I appreciate the freedom of large open areas, but if nothing about your character or the world really change as you progress through the game, then it just starts feeling like an endless pile of checklists to me.

@Rosalinho
I think I agree with you after all.