Time into the original Zelda

[RadarScope1]

Glad to hear you played all the way through, kingmohd. I don't know if I could do it. I completely agree that the game has not aged that well and even the most ardent Nintendo fans, if they are being honest with themselves, would agree. It hasn't aged poorly in the ways many other games age poorly though. The graphics and gameplay are actually really solid - which you would expect from a top-tier Nintendo-developed game. It's just the frustration factor that we're not used to these days. I'm with you - I probably wouldn't be able to beat it without a guide. I've never completed it before.

On a recent ep of Retronauts they cited a Miyamoto interview where he said he intentionally made many of the puzzles obtuse in order to get people talking about the game and creating word of mouth on the playground. No doubt this also helped sell many Nintendo Power subscriptions, too.

On Adventure of Link: My advice is to at least play it a little bit just to get the flavor of it, and here's why. If you went through all this frustration on the original game just so you could set yourself up to play Link to the Past, then you need to experience Zelda 2 in order to get a full appreciation for the impact Zelda 3 made when it was released. Zelda 2 really divided people (which is why it doesn't get talked about as much as the other games, as you noted). So when Link to the Past came out, and it returned to the top-down view and with the original theme song back in ... all in 16-bit graphics ... Wow. It just blew us away. Playing a little bit of 2 will help you get a perspective on that. And, a lot of people really like Zelda 2 - it's just different.

Oh, and if you thought OoT was heavily influenced by the original game, wait until you dig into Zelda 3. Ocarina of Time = 3D Link to the Past.

[noiseredux]

Glad to hear you played all the way through, kingmohd. I don't know if I could do it. I completely agree that the game has not aged that well and even the most ardent Nintendo fans, if they are being honest with themselves, would agree.

um... do you know where you are?

[gtmtnbiker]

but see back when this game was released, most of us only got one new game once in a blue moon... you spent a lot of time on a game. So something like this with tons to explore and experiment with was rewarding. It wasn't a speed-trial to gun through the game just to hurry up and update your backloggery page.

Ha ha ha. Good comment and I totally agree. We definitely played the limited games we got and mastered them. Then when I was a teenager, I discovered BBSes and protection bypass cartridge (for the Atari 800), I had a boatload of pirated games. I found that I didn't enjoy them as much for the most part with exceptions here and there.

[noiseredux]

agreed gmnt, I got into emulation for a short while, but found that I had tons of games so I couldn't focus on one of them for very long.

[Metalcrack]

My first time through, I'm sure it took me some time to complete. Now, I think the only trouble I'd have would be the last dungeon, and should clock in around 10-12 hours max. I've only beat it 5-6 times, so once I get started, I'm sure the location of Dungeon 2 would come to me, but I remember the rest of them, many of the hidden items, 100 ruppee locations, and even the rings and swords. I even can remember the lost woods pattern, so screw that old bat wanting me to buy directions.

If you don't use a guide, I'd say 20-30 is a good estimate.

This is one of my favorite games of all time, and I can even remember coming home with it in the backseat of my parents car, looking at the shield on the front cover with the heart, key, and lion and feeling giddy inside and excited to play it. I've only experienced that elation once or twice, to that degree, and yearn to feel the "epicness" of an adventure like that again. The only two other games that even came close to the feeling of adventure were King's Quest 5, and The Quest for Camelot. Maybe even Tomb Raider to some degree. As I've gotten older, the magic of games has been replaced with the necessity of a getaway from real life....

Please enjoy it, as from my perspective, it doesn't get better than this.

[Limewater]

Yes, I thought I had to go north 1 screen, then west , then south then west. made sense to me. I didn't know that was supposed to be a maze, I thought it was last screen on the map as how its close to the end(1 screen before the end of the map). I thought it was like some sort of style , that there is no where to go after this point so you get right back where you were, as the other place with same style is on the other end of the map. If they made it in the middle I can at least understand its a maze.

But when you got to a screen that repeated itself over and over you didn't think "Hmm... Maybe this is a maze?"

My friend, its almost impossible to complete the game without the magical sword or the blue ring. It isn't like its a reward if you spent time discovering stuff. I went to dungeon 6 before 5 and it was impossible. I was going to quit the game, until I knew there was a magical sword and a blue ring.

The Zelda games about about exploring and searching for things. If you had been spending you time searching the overworld, I am confident that you would have found them. You said that you found the blue ring shop by yourself. Didn't that feel good?

I'm saying all of this because I ruined a similar game for myself last summer. This past summer, I played through "Golden Axe Warrior" on the Sega Master System. I thought it sucked. But, I was using a FAQ and treating the game like a checklist, doing very little of the exploring I should have done myself because I wanted to finish it quickly. It is actually a well-respected and highly-regarded game. But, by using the FAQ to eliminate a lot of the exploration element, it was just not enjoyable.

I did discover some of the stuff on my own, like the blue ring store, dungeons 1,3,6, and most hidden items in the dungeons, and I think all the maps and compasses . So i had a taste of that too, but once it turned impossible, its FAQ time.

But it was never impossible. Solving puzzles and discovering new things are a lot more rewarding if you do them yourself rather than having the answer handed to you. Then it's a chore.

Rushing through an adventure game is antithetical to their purpose. They're designed for you to take your time and experiment and explore, learning things on your own. If you don't really enjoy that, then you're probably not going to get a lot of enjoyment out of the genre.

[fastbilly1]

I have to pace myself

Rushing through an adventure game is antithetical to their purpose. They're designed for you to take your time and experiment and explore, learning things on your own. If you don't really enjoy that, then you're probably not going to get a lot of enjoyment out of the genre.

That is why I love the genre. It is also why when a new Zelda game comes out I typically disappear from messageboards for a while. I want the experience of finding it myself, I dont want some dick on gamefaqs to steal it from me. There is no shame in looking at a guide if you get stuck, but using a checklist is, like limewater said, kinda the opposite of the point of the game.

[noiseredux]

I want the experience of finding it myself, I dont want some dick on gamefaqs to steal it from me.

this. Otherwise, I can't really see the point of playing the game. Unless, like I said earlier, it's just so you can add a little COMPLETED symbol on backloggery or something.

[fastbilly1]

Even completing the title on Backloggery doesnt ease the feelings of having something taken from you.

Let me put this in another light, mainly since the genre is heavy on my mind since it is my favorite other than ARPGs:
In Lucasarts The Dig there is a part where you must reassemble an alien turtle to move on. It is the single most frustrating thing in the entire SCUMM game world. When I played this game the first time (2006) I spent an entire day playing the game and spent atleast two hours trying to figure it out. So much so that when I was at work (at the time I worked in the bellows of a hotel) I found myself doodling the pieces on a napkin as I waited for my next shift. I tried again for about an hour before giving up and looking online. And when I did find the answer I found out that I put the first piece in upside down so everything was backwards. I had figured it out, but screwedup the first piece. Now I could have figured this out if I had taken a break from the title for a few days. But the fact that it was so heavy on my mind and I "HAD" to finish it I cheated and took away something that was no where near as hard as I thought it was at first.

Ill be honest, I get confused as hell in adventure games, but I try to never use a guide so I can actually beat them. In this world, every title just makes me more clever.

[noiseredux]

I agree with fastbilly totally. Sometimes I'll feel stuck and I'll got to a guide, and when I get the answer, I feel like I WOULD have figured it out if I had just given myself the time to do so. And then I feel like missed out on the fun of figuring it out myself.

It's like reading Moby Dick vs reading the Sparknotes. If you read the Sparknotesk, then you know the story. But if you read the book then you can slam that huge tome down on the table and be like YEAH! I READ THAT SHIT!