The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is considered by many gaming critics to be the apex of single-player gaming. Or at least has been considered. Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but the sentiment for Ocarina's supremacy doesn't seem as strong as it was 10 to 12 years ago, when it was near universal among critics, and certainly not thin among average gamers. Contrast that with Citizen Kane, which since the late 50s (it came out in '41 but didn't ascend to its current status until much later), has been the boss universal in the world of film. Kane has survived decades of transition in the film industry, multiple generation shifts, and massive cultural change with its status not only intact, but stronger. There aren't very many film professionals, historians, or critics who disagree with its position atop just about every major critics' poll in the world, year after year after year. Despite what the public at large thinks about it, it's canonized.

When Ocarina came out, a lot of critics made comparisons, and it was often referred to as the Citizen Kane of gaming. But for whatever reasons, it doesn't seem to have held onto that feeling. Sure, most everyone agrees that it's a great, influential game, but there isn't anything approaching the consistency or staying power that you see with something like Kane. I remember hearing Adam Sessler just a while back refer to Uncharted 2 as the greatest single player game of all time. Really? I've heard similar comments from other high profile critics that seem to suggest that Ocarina has pretty much been shot off its perch.

Is this because Ocarina is, in reality, not the Kane of gaming? If it was in 1998, what's changed so quickly? It seems to me that there's something fundamentally different about the way that game criticism works here. Is it more fairweather, more flavor-of-the-month? Or was it just too premature to be firing off comparisons to something as seemingly entrenched in critical lore as Kane? Does the constantly evolving technology make it more likely that older games will be overlooked than, say, a black and white film that is, from a technical perspective, more similar to its newer film counterparts? Or, and I think this is far more the culprit, have the endless retreads and sequels that drive the gaming industry--much more so than in the film industry--stretched the original magic of Ocarina too thin, leading to burnout with the series in general?

That's sad for me to see because, for my money, the N64 Zeldas taken together do represent the pinnacle of gaming thus far in my life. I may be wrong, but my sense of it is that the exceeding reliance upon formula beaten to death ad infinitum is leading to a sort of attrition of appreciation for the pinnacles older games have achieved. One could say so what, who cares, and you might be right, but there's a sort of heritage I see being lost in all this.

There never was a sequel to Citizen Kane, obviously, and it would be considered sacrilege to even suggest it. There have been 13 Zelda games released since Ocarina, and no one bats an eye. Personally, I got worn out on it after Twilight Princess. It was just a souped up Ocarina, exact same game, with a little Link to the Past dark world/light world stuff thrown in. Fun, well made, but enough's enough. I want to keep my memories of Ocarina intact. And I want it to stay on that perch until something other than itself knocks it off.