It was scary there for a second when Super Mario Galaxy seized the upper hand in the battle for the greatest videogame of all time–at least in the category of reviews.

A few more reviews came in to upset the new champ–possibly on purpose if the reviewer was a big enough Zelda fan–and now Ocarina sits back atop all games as the greatest accomplishment.

Does this break the 9-year streak at number 1? I don’t think it should count considering Super Mario Galaxy was still in the process of being reviewed. It would be unfair to let a streak be broken by a game that only held it for a few days.

And yes, I may be biased until I actually play Super Mario Galaxy, but I got to stand up for my man Link.

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A cryptic new Zelda site has shot up on the Web [via Kotaku]. While Nintendo has made no announcement, and it would seem they are more concentrated on other legacy games like Smash Bros., some people are still speculating.

It seems like a joke, but why would someone start up a site like this? A new Zelda community?

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Super Mario Galaxy is receiving incredible reviews across the Web.  Famitsu already rated it as one of the top games of the ever, but is it?

According to Joystiq, it just passed up The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time with the highest ratings ever from Game Rankings.

I know the Wii is absolutely dominant right now, and Mario is the mascot of the platform.  Still, it’s hard to comprehend that the Mario storyline could outdo one as intricate as Ocarina of Time to take the top game title.

Is this a testament to how good Super Mario Galaxy is or how difficult it is to compare games based upon their review numbers through the years?

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I don’t think I have ever scrolled down to the bottom of a videogame review to see how many out of ten it was awarded and based my decision on what game to by on that number. In fact, I think the only reason numbers are present in reviews these days is so fanboys can know which comment boards to flame.

Back in the day, I used to use scores as a basis for comparison–How good is the new Zelda in comparison to last gen’s version? How good is GoldenEye in comparison to Perfect Dark? How good is Halo 3 in comparison to Solitaire? You know, that sort of stuff.

The HDR Knowledge column on GameSetWatch about game ratings and reviews. The column tries to find the meaning behind review numbers in the world today.

While that may be nothing more than conspiracy, there is incongruency in the text of the review itself. Is a game that is not for everyone a bad game? Not every person enjoys action games like Halo, yet the series (deservedly in some regards) receives superb reviews. Why then does a game like Dodonpachi or Ibara receive disappointing reviews for the same reason? Does a small audience for a game mean the game itself is bad? This cannot be the case, as some “diamonds in the rough” such as Treasure’s Sin and Punishment, and Sega’s Panzer Dragoon Saga received fantastic reviews in their time, largely attributing their lack of success to either lack of exposure, or poor marketing.

Some good games do still go under the radar even after receiving very high reviews of scoring. Psychonauts comes to mind.

Scores are not terrible, but they are inherently flawed. Something is seriously wrong with attributing a numerical score to a subjective activity as reviewing, especially when, past graphical and aural prowess, the gaming rating criteria are in many ways, unexplainable. Not many can explain why Halo, a game series with uninteresting and often terrible single player level design is still so incredibly fun, nor can anyone explain why Super Robot Wars, a series that has largely remained unchanged for 15 years, is still so addicting in each installment.

I am a supporter of a world without numbers on reviews. Many top gaming outlets have tried at one time to do away with them, and I applaud the ones that have succeeded. Even if one reviewer absolutely hates a game, their comments and description may sound appealing to a reader who is a fan of the genre. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

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Robot Chicken did a parody of the Legend of Zelda. It’s touching really.

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I neglected to mention awhile back that the Metroid Retrospective had been concluded over at GameTrailers.com with the Part 5 video. This one sets the timeline. If you watched the Zelda videos, then you know finding a timeline for a game series can sometimes be a hard thing to do. This one is a little less debatable, but they seem to have just as large a task in creating the timeline with what little you can piece from each game.

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In the process of checking out Gametrailers.com’s Metroid retrospective that Joystiq highlighted recently, I discovered that they had also done a Legend of Zelda retrospective checking out the legacy and influence of the series. This feature may be even better than the recent Metroid one.

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