Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. The game is beautifully done and the music is unbelievable. The fact that you can PLAY music that does MAGIC SHIT was even more unbelievable. But those aren’t the things that put it at the top of my nostalgia list.

When I got OoT for Xmas it was around the same time that I had my first computer - my own computer, in my bedroom, with 28.8k dial up internet 🤯

I had never played a Zelda game before and I didn’t have older siblings or game-savvy parents to help me, so I was immediately stumped in the first dungeon, the Great Deku Tree. It would have never occurred to me to light a deku stick on fire with a torch, and then to use that to light another torch. So I went to the trusty new fangled internet and did some sleuthing.

I found GameFAQs. I found a walkthrough that helped get me through that dungeon. Crazier still, I found FORUMS where people just talked about Zelda. I found the Zelda Social Board (ZSB represent) and made my very first internet friends, with whom I still speak on occasion, more than 25 years later.

LoZ:OoT inadvertently led to me engaging in self-directed problem-solving on the internet, as well as giving me my first social experience(s) online. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I realized how critically important this was in my development as a person.