Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of... Dammit all.

I was browsing GameFAQs a while back because, well, why not, and I noticed that they had a cool feature going: Best. Game. Ever. It's over now, but this was a massive single-elimination tournament of 128 video games, sorted by era, whose results were voted on by users. I was late jumping on this train, and the thing has already ended. Here's a shot of what the regional finals, quarters, and semis looked like:

GameFAQs.com

A few thoughts about this: isn't it telling that the only game companies represented here -- with the exception of Resident Evil 4 and MGS4 -- are Nintendo and Square? And that the Final Four™ ended up being all Zelda and Final Fantasy? It speaks volumes to the quality that Nintendo and Square demand of their signature franchises. Both Zelda and Final Fantasy have had a few duds -- Zelda 2: Adventures of Link, and Final Fantasy IIj, most notably -- but these are by most counts the most beloved franchises among all games. I think FFX might have advanced a little too far, though. Not that it's not great, but to me it's in the second tier of Final Fantasy games.

Anyway, they don't show it there, but Ocarina of Time won the "Best. Game. Ever." title. Hard to argue with that. Seeing this made me remember how great it really was, and made me want to play it. So, wouldn't you know, I did. I was really sick this week and had nothing better to do, either. Might as well keep myself busy if I'm just going to be sitting on the couch.

I was trucking along, and considering myself somewhat of a crafty Zelda veteran, I decided to exploit a well-known glitch in OoT and reward myself with an extra bottle. To do this, though, requires "overwriting" another item from the inventory with the bottle. (For an absurd example not of my doing, see below...)

Uh, might want to hang on to the Bow, dude.

What to replace? I wondered... then it hit me! Bombchus, the pointless little mouse bombs that run up walls and blow shit up -- cool idea, but completely useless in the game. It worked great. Even though I never needed the extra bottle, it was cool to have.

Until I got to Ganon's Castle at the very end of the game and saw a switch only Bombchus could reach. And I opened a chest that contained Bombchus, but my bottle remained in the inventory.

So about 40 minutes from the end of a game I've already beaten, I'm SOL for using a cheat I completely didn't need. So frustrating. Oh well. Time to start a new file, I guess, and do it all over.