Zelda man obsessed with besting Ocarina

Eiji Aonuma has said he won't stop making Zelda games until he's done one that surpasses the renowned Ocarina of Time. He's obsessed. But in a good way.

"I'm happy that a title I worked on some time ago remains highly praised to this day, but that also shows how none of the subsequent games in the series have surpassed it," Aonuma told Nintendo Everything.

"As someone who is still working on the series, I have mixed feelings about that. Because I haven't yet surpassed it, I can't quit. Surprisingly, that simple motivation may be the reason I continue to work on the Zelda series."

Ocarina of Time was the first game Eiji Aonuma worked on in the Zelda series, which he now co-oversees with legendary Nintendo inventor Shigeru Miyamoto.

"Ocarina of Time was the first title I worked on, and I was continuously tackling challenges every day during its development, so I think this is the title I feel I impacted the most," said Aonuma.

"I believe that experience made me what I am now. I always think about what we couldn't do and what didn't work well in the previous game when we start a new title, but there's no game that I would want to actually change as such.

"I have to say though, the first Zelda game that I played and felt potential in was Link to the Past," he added. "I'm actually very interested in what it would be like if we remade that title as a 3D game."

Ocarina of Time is the most highly rated game of all time on both Metacritic and GameRankings. But what did anyone know back then?

You can relive those 1998 glory days by downloading Ocarina of Time from the Wii Virtual Console.

Nintendo, incidentally, has made no secret of new Zelda and Mario games being in development for Wii. When we'll hear anything more than that, though, is unknown.