Did You Know Gaming Challenges Ocarina of Time’s Metacritic Crown

Since Metacritic launched in 2001, few video game scores have achieved the cultural permanence of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s near-perfect 99. The 1998 Nintendo 64 classic occupies the top position on Metacritic’s all-time rankings, a place it has held for more than two decades with seemingly immovable authority. Yet a recent investigation by YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming challenges whether that score reflects what it purports to measure. The channel has raised pointed questions about the methodology behind Ocarina of Time’s championship status, suggesting that the game’s legendary ranking may be based more on historical accident than on legitimate critical superiority.

The investigation doesn’t attack Ocarina of Time’s place in gaming history or dispute its critical reception upon release. Instead, Did You Know Gaming questioned whether Metacritic had applied its own aggregation methodology consistently when handling a game released before the service existed. According to the channel’s video: “The calculation for Ocarina’s meta-score is deeply flawed. We’re not attributing any of this to malice. We get that hunting down every back issue of every magazine for every game was a tall order back then. Mistakes were made. But hey, we all make mistakes. That said, none of that changes the fact that Ocarina’s championship belt simply isn’t legitimate. And by extension, some of its Guinness records aren’t either.”

The Challenge of Aggregating Pre-Metacritic Reviews

Ocarina of Time presents a singular puzzle for any retrospective review aggregator. Released in 1998, the game predates Metacritic by three years. When Metacritic eventually compiled scores for the title, it undertook the challenging task of excavating contemporary press coverage from an era before online aggregation existed. The site identified 22 reviews to factor into the calculation, drawing from a diverse mix: the early internet outlet IGN, the Canadian television program Electric Playground, and Famitsu magazine in Japan, which contributed one of its notoriously rare perfect scores. Did You Know Gaming’s investigation, however, discovered that Metacritic’s collection was incomplete in specific and problematic ways that violated its own stated methodology.

Missing Reviews from Approved Sources

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The EGM and GamePro Inclusion

Did You Know Gaming’s primary finding centered on which reviews Metacritic chose to include or exclude from its aggregation. The channel discovered that Metacritic incorporated perfect scores from both EGM and GamePro, which raised the average. Simultaneously, however, Metacritic omitted scores from publications that normally appear in its comprehensive aggregations: Game Informer and Nintendo Power, the official Nintendo in-house publication. This selective sourcing represents a departure from Metacritic’s methodology of including all available scores from approved sources. Over the past quarter-century since Ocarina of Time’s launch, it remains unclear whether Metacritic simply failed to locate these back issues or made an editorial decision about which sources to prioritize.

The Nintendo Power Discrepancy

Nintendo Power’s omission carries particular significance due to its numerical divergence from perfection. The official Nintendo publication awarded Ocarina of Time a 95—a meaningful gap that would substantially affect the aggregate average. That single missing score, when multiplied across Metacritic’s calculation methodology, materially influences the final number. When applied to the proper aggregation process, the exclusion of a 95 alongside other methodological issues creates a systematic upward bias. Did You Know Gaming also uncovered similar gaps in early blog coverage and alternative critical voices, suggesting the omissions weren’t random isolated instances but rather part of a broader pattern that systematically elevated the game’s score.

Questionable Source Material in the Calculation

Beyond missing reviews, Did You Know Gaming identified a second category of problem: the types of source material Metacritic chose to include. The aggregator incorporated reviews that merely described Ocarina of Time as “perfect” without assigning a formal numerical score—ambiguous material requiring subjective interpretation to convert to the 0-100 scale. More significantly, Metacritic included retrospective analyses published years or decades after Ocarina of Time’s 1998 release. These weren’t contemporary critical assessments formed when the game arrived but rather historical reevaluations filtered through decades of reverence and cultural canonization. By mixing post-launch retrospectives with immediate critical reactions, Metacritic conflated two fundamentally different types of critical judgment, biasing the score toward higher values.

The Recalculation and Ranking Consequences

When Did You Know Gaming recompiled Ocarina of Time’s score using Metacritic’s own stated standards—omitting questionable retrospectives, including excluded publications, and removing non-numerical descriptors—the resulting average was 97.6. Following Metacritic’s standard rounding protocol, 97.6 rounds to 98, not 99. That single-point shift carries consequences far greater than the arithmetic suggests. A score of 98 would remove Ocarina of Time from its isolated position atop the rankings. Instead, it would tie with three other acclaimed titles: Grand Theft Auto IV at 98, Super Mario Galaxy 2 at 98, and Soulcalibur at 98. The game would descend from undisputed first place to a shared tier, fundamentally reframing its legendary status as the “highest-rated game of all time.” Recognition based on this ranking, including Guinness World Records, would require reevaluation.

A Consistency Question: The Soulcalibur Comparison

Did You Know Gaming’s methodology wasn’t applied exclusively to Ocarina of Time. The channel fact-checked Soulcalibur, another pre-Metacritic release that also appeared in Metacritic’s all-time rankings. Soulcalibur faced similar issues: missing reviews from approved publications and the inclusion of retrospective materials published well after launch. Yet when Did You Know Gaming recalculated Soulcalibur’s score using identical corrective standards, it arrived at the same final number. This divergence proves significant. It suggests the problem isn’t universal to how Metacritic handles pre-Metacritic games but rather specific to Ocarina of Time’s treatment, raising the possibility that the game received unusual handling rather than consistent methodology application.

Aggregation, Methodology, and Historical Truth

The investigation exposes a fundamental tension in gaming criticism: whether a single numerical aggregate can meaningfully represent critical consensus for games released before the aggregator existed. Metacritic excels at comparing contemporary reviews under consistent criteria, enabling valid assessments among games reviewed in similar contexts. When retrospectively applying those standards to games from different eras—each with distinct critical ecosystems, publication practices, archival methods, and reviewer availability—scores may reflect historical incompleteness as much as artistic merit. Ocarina of Time unquestionably ranks among gaming’s most influential works, a title that fundamentally transformed 3D game design. Yet its Metacritic ranking may owe as much to which reviews Metacritic managed to locate during the early 2000s as to the actual critical reception in 1998.

For individual players seeking critical context or game recommendations, exploring individual critics whose sensibilities align with personal preferences remains valuable regardless of numerical rankings. For industry observers and analysts tracking broader critical trends, Did You Know Gaming’s investigation serves a useful reminder about aggregation methodology: these scores represent snapshots of available data rather than objective historical truths. Apparent numerical precision—a score down to the single decimal point—can mask historical contingency and methodological limitations. Methodology matters as much as the final number, and understanding how a score was calculated proves essential before treating it as definitive authority on critical consensus.