The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Awesome


 * Seeing Adult Link for the first time. He's all grown up and ready to kick some ass.
 * Hitting Like Likes with any sort of magical arrows. These are the things of nightmares but there is something immensely satisfying about seeing them burn to death. (Or freeze, or explode in holy light...)
 * Ocarina of Time emptied truck loads of respect for Princess Zelda upon all who played it. Especially after
 * The first time using the Golden Gauntlets. To see Link not only lift an obelisk a hundred times his size, but send it FLYING into the air behind him, is, well... you know.
 * Even Navi gets a crowning moment at the start of the final boss fight.
 * Saria's moment of awesome was when she became the sage of the forest. Also, this hints that she had gotten into the chamber in the back part of the temple as well, meaning that she fought through the temple all by herself. A little, unarmed Kokiri girl and her pink fairy. Awesome.
 * The temples exhibit Chaos Architecture, so she probably just walked right up before the evil took control.
 * It's implied that by becoming a sage, you have to die...still a Crowning Moment for bravery, though.
 * Sure, pretty much every time Link takes on Ganon/dorf is a Crowning Moment of Awesome, but in Ocarina, the final battle is truly epic:
 * Let's face it: Ganon was a lame last boss on the NES, but when he appeared in 3D at the end of Ocarina of Time, he finally represented the kind of Monstrosity Miyamoto imagined.
 * What also makes that fight intro particularly awesome is two simple things - first, Ganon is the only boss in the game with no subtitle, because he doesn't need one. This is Ganon, you don't need a description of him, the simple knowledge that this is Ganon tells you A) this is the final battle, and B) it is going to be awesome. Then as Ganon starts flailing his arms, he knocks the Master Sword out of Link's grasp and beyond the ring of fire around them, and you realize not only are you about to fight Ganon again, but you're expected to do it without the Master Sword. And then you do, proving Link really is a true hero--he doesn't need the Master Sword to kick Ganon's ass, he's picked up enough tricks and items to do it himself.
 * Also, for the player, capturing Poes on horseback is a big feat, especially if it's
 * Similarly, getting the Biggest Quiver. You need to fire off arrows on horseback at various targets. With each shot, you can get either 0, 30, 60, or 100 points. You have 20 arrows. You need a score of 1500. That's the equivalent of fifteen bulls-eyes, and unless your first ten shots are perfect, there is zero margin for error.
 * Getting Epona. You've just wasted Ingo in two straight horse races, and he agrees to give you Epona... but locks you into the ranch. What do you do?  And then later on in Gerudo Valley you're confronted with a broken bridge.
 * Or even better than jumping over one of the wall fences, jump over the fence that Ingo just closed AND over him to boot and, if lucky enough, get treated to the Badass horseman pose as the ultimate "screw you" to Ingo.
 * Playing the Song of Storms at the windmill for the first time (chronologically). The usually happy guy is mad at a later timeline becouse a kid played that song and messed up the windmill badly and drained the well which had sealed an evil spirit.
 * The cutscene after Link gets the Master Sword, showing Ganondorf praising Link for letting him into the Sacred Realm. The scene itself isn't much (just Ganandorf standing in a white area), but what makes it awesome is the ensuing Fridge Horror: You failed. All that adventuring and hardship you faced to defeat the bosses of the three dungeons to acquire the three spiritual stones were for naught. Ganondorf won. He got the Triforce (kinda). And you might make it through the next seven years unscathed, but no one else will. Now it's time for payback.
 * The horrifying part isn't failing. The horrifying part is that Ganondorf could not have gotten into the Sacred Realm if you and Zelda had just kept out of it. Granted, he would still have assassinated the Hylian King, but he probably wouldn't have had the power he needed to cause quite the Bad Future he did. A true case of Nice Job Breaking It Hero if there ever was one.
 * Simply ascending Ganondorf's Tower at the end of the game is one of the best parts of the game, both music wise and character wise. The music in and of itself is incredible, but it establishes Ganondorf as musically talented giving you a sense that he is a dastardly villain with refined tastes, plus being able to play the organ as well as he does is a sign of his kingly status and education that he attained despite his upbringing in a hell hole. And beyond that it speaks volumes of just how evil Ganondorf is, just listen to the song itself, it starts out soft and slightly ominous to give the listener the impression that they are witnessing the rise of a small but growing evil symbolizing how Ganondorf didn't start out on the top of the world, and then as Link ascends farther up the tower the music becomes more and more menacing until it reaches the point where the listener can only help but feel that they are in the presence of an ultimate, dastardly, perverse, and all-consuming evil that you MUST RUN AWAY FROM or else face complete and utter destruction. That ascent up the tower symbolizes to both Link and the player what kind of evil Ganondorf is and what they are up against, the best music for the best villain in gaming.
 * And Link keeps climbing anyway. To be fair, Zelda's up there.
 * The "starts soft and grows louder and more sinister" is less that Ganon's playing is changing, and more that the music is just getting louder to Link as he's climbing closer to its source. Still awesome, though.
 * Darunia, the wacky, Hot Blooded leader of the Gorons running off to fistfight a fire dragon to try to buy you a little time to save his people. He knows that he doesn't have the megaton hammer, and thus, is pretty much incapable of winning, yet he hoists up his gigantic rocky balls and runs in anyway. That, friends, is a man you should be honored to call your sworn brother.
 * Awesome Moment for the game itself: It got into the Guinness Book of Records as the best-reviewed game of all time.
 * A sort of retroactive meta-moment thanks to the official Zelda timeline: The games set after Ocarina of Time fall into one of three timelines, "Child", "Adult", and "Demise". All four Zelda games made prior to OoT are in the Demise timeline, which follows from Link failing to defeat Ganon and dying in Ocarina of Time. All Zelda games made after OoT, except for prequels and the Oracle games, are set in either the Child or Adult timeline, both of which follow from the ending of Ocarina of Time. This means that when you beat Ocarina of Time, you are changing Hyrulean history so Link wins.