Zelda: Ocarina of Time at 20 – melancholy masterpiece changed games forever

It had everything: swordfights with lizards, magical tennis, shrieking mummies, a whole world to explore - plus a rousing score you could play along to. This joyful/scary chapter in Nintendo's Legend of Zelda has inspired designers ever since

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's opening sequence is, for me, the most evocative of all video games. First you hear the galloping of a horse, joined by soft minor-key piano and melancholy, soaring ocarina notes as a young man in a green tunic rides under the setting moon. The camera pans over a blocky, low-resolution, yet spartanly beautiful landscape as the sun rises. It prepares you for a game that could be as melancholy as it was exciting, as emotionally affecting as it was technologically innovative. Released in Europe on this day in 1998, Ocarina of Time was one of the first true 3D adventures, a capsule world on a game cartridge, and it remains one of the very best.