Carter Sherman recalls fear and wonder in Zelda's Ocarina of Time

Carter Sherman’s fear of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is more than a childhood anecdote. It is a useful entry point into why certain games outlast their release dates, lodging themselves in memory as both entertainment and emotional training grounds.

Sherman’s own path makes the memory matter

Sherman now covers reproductive health and justice at The Guardian, but her reporting has long centered sex, gender, and the personal and political forces around them. Before that, she was a senior reporter at Vice News, where her work focused on reproductive rights, sexual violence, and LGBTQ+ rights, and she has also written for Elle, Ms. magazine, and Los Angeles magazine. Her bio describes her as a journalist covering gender and sexuality across media, in print, behind the camera, and in front of it.

That range helps explain why her recollection of Ocarina of Time lands as more than fandom. Sherman has also built a record of recognition that includes a Scripps Howard Award, a National Press Club Journalism Award, and four Emmy nominations, and she is the author of The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future. In other words, she is someone who has spent years tracing how identity, culture, and power shape one another, which gives her childhood game memory a wider resonance than nostalgia alone.

Why Ocarina of Time still casts a long shadow

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released in 1998, and The Guardian later described it as commonly regarded as one of the finest games ever made. That assessment is not just about technical polish or sales-era prestige. A Guardian review called it a game about “curiosity and the joy of discovery” and called it “the pinnacle of game design,” language that captures why the title still commands attention from players who were not there when it first arrived.

A 20th-anniversary Guardian piece, published on December 11, 2018, framed the game as a “melancholy masterpiece” that changed games forever. Those descriptions help place Sherman’s response in context: fear, wonder, and lasting affection are not side effects of the game’s reputation. They are part of the reason it keeps returning to the cultural conversation, decade after decade.

Fear, wonder, and the emotional memory of childhood games

Sherman’s recollection matters because it shows how early games shape emotional memory. Ocarina of Time was not simply a challenge to be completed; for many players, including Sherman, it was an encounter with uncertainty, atmosphere, and the first real sense that a digital world could feel larger than the player’s confidence. That combination of fear and wonder is exactly what makes childhood play so durable in memory.

The game’s emotional power also helps explain why older titles continue to attract new audiences. People do not return only for graphics or mechanics; they return because the game once taught them how to feel inside a story world. In Ocarina of Time, curiosity is rewarded, danger is legible, and discovery feels personal, which is why the game can still be read as a model for how interactive storytelling builds attachment.

Millennial identity and the rise of nostalgia media

Sherman’s experience fits a broader cultural pattern: millennial identity has been shaped in part by media that arrived during childhood and adolescence, then followed players into adulthood with new layers of meaning. When a generation revisits formative games, it is often revisiting a shared emotional vocabulary, one built from fear, reward, repetition, and mastery. That is especially true for a game like Ocarina of Time, which was released in 1998 and became one of the most cited examples of what games could do as an art form.

This is why nostalgia media continues to draw large audiences without needing to feel simple or sentimental. The appeal is not only that a beloved title is remembered fondly, but that it can be reinterpreted through adult experience. Sherman’s Guardian column about playing The Legend of Zelda 20 years ago and rediscovering life lessons now speaks to that shift: the same game can feel like a childhood obstacle course, a lesson in patience, or a marker of how stories once taught players to expect surprise.

What old games still offer new audiences

Ocarina of Time continues to matter because it gives modern players something that remains scarce in current media: a sense that exploration itself is the point. The Guardian review’s emphasis on curiosity and discovery points to a design philosophy that still feels fresh, especially in a media landscape where so much content arrives optimized for speed and familiarity. Older games often ask for slower attention, and that can make them feel unusually vivid when revisited years later.

Sherman’s memory also shows that these games are not preserved only as artifacts. They remain active because people use them to measure how they have changed. A game that once felt frightening can later feel consoling; a world that once seemed overwhelming can become a source of competence and reflection. That transformation is part of why Ocarina of Time still holds a central place in gaming culture, and why Sherman’s personal reaction connects so naturally to the wider national appetite for nostalgia, identity, and the stories people carry out of childhood.