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Legend of Zelda Celebrates 20 Years
The Legend of Zelda is one of the most beloved gaming franchises Nintendo has created. It is also celebrating two decades of life this week. 1up has a great feature on the anniversary, exploring the different games in the series with a list of 'stuff to love'. From the article: "Twenty years ago this week -- February 21, 1986 -- thousands of Japanese gamers played The Legend of Zelda for the first time, and their perspective on gaming was forever changed. Here was a huge world, a massive quest, an open-ended odyssey that demanded exploration. When we Americans first placed that golden cartridge in our Nintendo Entertainment Systems a few months later, we learned what our friends overseas had already discovered: Zelda was addictive. It was adventurous. It was ambitious. It was amazing." Four Colour Rebellion also has commentary on this auspicious occasion, with a Happy Birthday look back and some fond remembrances.
It seems like only yesterday I got my 8 bit nintendo. One of the friends of the family who worked at Circuit City said, "You should stick to Super Mario Brothers. Zelda is just TOO hard!"
I was sooo intimidated when I opened that golden cartridge on my birthday.
But, I beat it in under two weeks after school. Dumb blonde was lying...
And thus began my addiction...
*sniff* memories....
-"Let's play money making game" engrish- turrets" minigame
-Farming the graveyeard ghosts for money
-Checking the white/master sword caves after every dungeon to see if I was "ready"
-Dying like a million times to those fly-things in Death Mountain
-Fucking red clouds...
-GRUMBLE GRUMBLE
-The "slash-the-old-man-and-dodge-his-fireball-defense
-Being really confused by the dodongo/digdogger name switch in level 5
I remember there was a Nintendo or Nintendo Power phone number you were supposed to call when you won if you were one of the first. (I wasn't, but I tried anyway.)
I consoled myself by attacking the "second quest" anyway.
I am still amazing at zelda.
a few days ago, i bought a DS, a few games, and Zelda, the minish cap for GBA.
Ive played the DS games only a few hours, where as im playing the minish cap non stop.
Around when 3D gaming was taking off, there was the N64. Admittedly, the console wasn't that great, but there was a lot of hype behind it and there were a few great titles (mostly overshadowed by the sheer volume of crap). I was foolish in those days and didn't realize that Squaresoft had left me for Sony, but even by the time I found out, I didn't care; Final Fantasy games were going to be released for the PC in the future, and I decided to take my ill-gotten cash (I was too young to work, so it was all bounty from the holidays) and purchase a shiny new N64. The driving force behind my purchasing decision? Ocarina of Time.
Okay, so I did spend several good hours playing Mario Kart 64 and Star Fox 64, but the vast majority of the time I spent just playing Zelda 64. It's one of the few games I've ever owned that I've played all the way though, and I did it several times. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game so much since Final Fantasy III/VI back in the day.
Was it worth it to buy a console just so I could play one game? Absolutely. Will I do it again? Twilight Princess is approaching release, and I've been tempted to drop the cash just to buy a Gamecube. I've never been interested in owning one before, but all it takes is one killer app.
It's all about context. Nobody is claiming that Zelda was the first game that featured open-ended exploration, but it was pretty new to the Japanese at the time, and Zelda was one of the first titles to bring such gameplay to the masses (which probably owes as much to the simple pick-up-and-play fun factor of the game as much as it does the fact that it was released on a console instead of a computer).
They already did that at Nintendo. I don't think you can honestly say you've tried "Advance Wars: Dual Strike", "Wario Ware, Inc.: Mega Microgame$", "Animal Crossing: Wild World", or even "Nintendogs" and didn't think they were any fun.
I had totally forgotten that I liked video games until I got a DS for my birthday. About the worst I can say about Nintendo lately is that they really like using colons in their game titles.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Try the Ultima series for longevity. That started somewhere around 1977 with Akkalabeth but the single player games ended with Ultima 9: Ascension in 1998 I believe it was. These games defined their genre and excelled in it for over two decades. You won't see much action though, and forget playing the first incarnations on any console. These are PC-type computer games (starting on Apple II, going to IBM PC and others along the way). I still have a 486 around here to play Ultima VII, the best of the series IMHO.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
It is mostly nostalgia. Most genres have evolved conventions that make the games a LOT more fun. Compare e.g. Metroid and Super Metroid. SM does things M could have done just as well (e.g. a map, restarting from savepoints instead of the begining of the level at 30 health, diagonal aiming, ducking, including the ability to hit zoomers without using the morph ball) but didn't and that's just one example. Not to mention that increased computing power means increased options for gameplay. Bullet hell shmups weren't possible on the old systems.
Modern games don't let the player get stuck without killing him unless they are buggy. Modern games don't force you to start with Wily1/Sigma1 again no matter how far you got before you powered down. Modern games don't reuse rooms as much as Zelda 1 did (except maybe for Halo), they don't force you to start again from a far off place each time you die (Zelda 2 anyone?), they don't require the manual to explain every room you come across and what those pixels are supposed to be, they don't require you to find things that are never even alluded to, they rarely expect you to figure out a boss's pattern by trying and dying, they don't have enemies with collision boxes twice as large as their appearance that can kill you with a simple touch, they don't have enemies that are programmed to try and throw you into a pit with your damage recoil, they never expect you to play through the game twice in one sitting to see the ending (Ghosts and Goblins anyone?), etc, etc.
Nostalgia is blinding. While some of those old titles hold up today, others are just a pain to play and serve as little more than a reminder how far we've come.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Are Kirby: Rainbow Run, or Advance Wars: Dual Strike or Trauma Center all about the graphics? How about lumines?
Lumines®, published by Bandai, is all about graphics. If it weren't, we'd have more people just downloading open-source Lumines clones or other puzzle games in the spirit of Columns and playing them on a PC or GBA.
Once every couple of years, I pull my NES out of the closet and load up The Legend of Zelda. Yes, I get all nostalgic when I hear the intro music, and when I walk into that first cave to get my little wooden sword which Link is so proud to hold above his head. But after playing halfway through the first quest (or using the name ZELDA to skip directly to the second) the nostalgia wears off and I realize... the game is still actually fun. Lots of fun. Decades of playing has made the exploration part not quite so exciting... but navigating the dungeons, beating the bosses, collecting the items... Fantastic. This is truly a game that stands the test of time.
The enemies of Democracy are