Video summary

Metacritic Got Ocarina of Time's Score Wrong

Main summary

Key takeaways

News and Commentary

Overview

The video argues that Ocarina of Time’s celebrated “99/100” Metacritic score—along with related Guinness/record claims—is not fully legitimate. It claims Metacritic’s review aggregation for pre-2001 games involved incomplete sourcing, selective inclusion, and counting errors, which artificially inflated the final metascore.

Key claims: “Why the score is wrong”

Metacritic methodology (as described)

  • Metacritic was created in 2001, so it allegedly lacked straightforward access to many older print reviews around Ocarina’s original release.
  • The video describes Metacritic as:
    • Curating reviews from a whitelist of “respected critics/outlets,” rather than averaging everything.
    • Converting all review scores into a 100-point scale.
    • Applying outlet weighting (Metacritic claims this changes results only slightly—about 1–2 points).

Cherry-picking / selective review inclusion

The video claims Metacritic included too few magazine reviews from the original era:

  • Only three magazines were allegedly included, and all gave 100.
  • Other magazines said to have rated lower—such as:
    • Game Informer (98)
    • Nintendo Power (95) —are alleged to have been excluded, partly because Metacritic couldn’t feasibly track down and verify every old publication.

It also alleges Metacritic applies exceptions inconsistently:

  • It includes Famitsu for Ocarina because Famitsu gave its first ever perfect score.
  • The video argues this “breaks” Metacritic’s usual consistency claims about not selectively choosing within a publication’s review history.

Counting mistakes and questionable “perfect” entries

The video claims some “perfect” entries are unreliable:

  • At least one included 100 is said to be not a properly scored contemporary review, with examples including:
    • Retrospectives written after the game released.
    • Cases where a publication recommended the game but didn’t assign a score, yet Metacritic allegedly counted it as 100.

It also cites a specific discrepancy involving Netjak (95):

  • Netjak (95) is allegedly whitelisted and used for other games,
  • but supposedly not counted for Ocarina.

The video’s recalculation (“doing the math”)

To test whether Ocarina should still hold the #1 record, the creators:

  • Used only Metacritic-approved outlets (the whitelist),
  • Counted only contemporary reviews within one year of launch,
  • Avoided retrospectives,
  • Used a raw average, since Metacritic’s weighting is undisclosed (the video notes the current metascore equals the raw average, suggesting weighting is minimal).

Result: Ocarina’s “true” score is estimated at 97.65, which rounds to 98 (instead of 99).

What replaces Ocarina as #1

With similar adjustments, the video concludes a four-way tie at 98 among:

  • Ocarina of Time
  • SoulCalibur
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2
  • Grand Theft Auto IV

A key takeaway is that older games’ metascores may be less reliable for absolute ranking, because early reviews are harder to archive and compare consistently.

Broader conclusion: why metascores shouldn’t be overvalued

The video argues aggregates are best used only for quick signals:

  • Metascores are useful mainly for quick indication (saving consumers time/money),
  • not for “precision crown battles.”

It also highlights apples-to-oranges problems:

  • Different games draw from different sets of critics, and a “98” in 1999 may not be equivalent to a “98” in 2010.

Attempts to get comment

The creators state they:

  • Reached out to Metacritic and Mark Doyle for comment,
  • but did not hear back before publication.

Presenters or contributors

  • Mark Doyle (co-founder of Metacritic; quoted)
  • Famitsu magazine (referenced as a contributor/source of scores)
  • The video’s creators/hosts (narrator/team behind the analysis; no individual names provided in the subtitles)
  • Surfshark (sponsor; not a contributor to the analysis)

Original video