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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....
Wow, 20 years ago.
:)
c ounts bug. :)
Man, I feel old.
This was one of my favorite games many years ago. Who am I kidding? It still is!
What a BLAST it was. Always something new to find, explore, or otherwise.
I bet I could still remember which trees to burn so I could buy cheap shields; and which ones took your money.
Fun times; I guess I'm getting old. The new games just don't do it for me anymore. Too complicated.
I still somewhat regularly plug in my Intellivision and NES, but that's about where I stop. The newer games are all show, no go. There's just no gameplay compared to, say, Astrosmash. Or Super Mario Bros (1, 2 or 3, take your pick!) Or for sports games, try Super Sprint. Or of course, Intellivision Baseball (one of the best games ever written, anywhere, by anyone -- except for that annoying get-the-run-in-before-the-third-out-and-it-still-
Good stuff; I think the gaming industry today should be locked in a room with these old games to remind them how to make the games FUN!
-"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
Maybe Windwaker wasn't to everyone's taste -- it was mine -- but Zelda has to be up there with the best of the best. What other series has lasted nearly as long, producing a mid-arc title (in Ocarina of Time) that's regarded as one of the best games of all time?
Aside from the various EA sports titles, you don't have anything else with near as much longevity, and Madden and company partly just sell you updated rosters every year.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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.
Zelda was good, one of the best even. But it still doesn't hold a candle to NetHack.
I won't lie, I love the Legend of Zelda. With each new game that comes out, there always seems to be this 2-4 year waiting period, by the end of which I'm ready to explode with anticipation. Will the next game live up to expectations? Will I find it challenging?
the answer, again and again, has been 'Yes'. I have yet to play a Legend of Zelda game I don't like. Sure, there have been some games which I liked less than others, but I'd still rather play any Legend of Zelda game over Generic FPS #284. From that point of view, though, each Zelda game has similar themes, weapons and play styles, yet in the twenty years I've been playing it, it has yet to get old.
Being an '80's child, I feel like I grew up with The Legend of Zelda. As I got older, the games matured too, changing in play style, or gaining new features. While I'm incredibly frustrated at the constant delays of the upcomming Twilight's Princess I will still be lined up the day it comes out, and inevitebly lose a week of productivity as I play through it.
To all other Zelda fans out there, I hope your memories are as fond. Happy Birthday.
When my parents kicked me off the Nintendo to make me play outside (which was frequent) they understood that they weren't ruining my last 20 minutes of gaming. Heck, my mom or dad would often sit co-pilot with the map helping me find where to go, but I wasn't allowd to play unless weather didn't permit me to go outside. I grew up in Minnesota, so we get a lot of extremes.
Ah.. memories.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Can't read it from work, but I hope the article mentions the miserable Phillips CD-i games in there somewhere.
If not, here's a brief history:
Originally, Nintendo worked with Sony to create a CD add-on to its then-successful SNES. Things were going along merrily, but, for some reason, Nintendo cut ties with Sony and changed to working with Phillips- and Sony didn't find out until Nintendo made a public announcement. As part of the agreement for developing a CD attachment for Nintendo, Phillips got to use some of Nintendo's properties for its own ill-fated CD-i game system.
There were three games in all (Wand of Gamelon or something is the only title I can remember.) One had a cartoon opening scene (dubbed "Gay Link", and you'll know why if you ever see the video), another had live-action scenes (I think it was something like Myst), and another had you messily controlling Zelda on her way to save Link (hey, it had to happen sometime.)
In the end, Nintendo did away with the whole CD thing anyway. So, out of this entire thing, we got:
-One (1) ill-fated gaming console by Phillips
-Three (3) horrible Zelda games which should only be referenced to prove that a good series can go bad
-No (0) CD add-on for the SNES
And, as you may have already guessed, Sony didn't stop production after Nintendo cut its ties- the project they were working on? You know it now as the Playstation.
That's right- Nintendo help create the very gaming console that now overshadows them. This was the first of many stupid decisions that lead up to the Gamecube (where they corrected many of the problems.)
As an aside, some of the other stupid decisions were: forcing N64 developers to work on the Virtual Boy (we all know how that faired), the Virtual Boy itself, using cartridges over CDs for the N64 (due to, as I understand it, mainly piracy concerns- you can't copy something if you lack the media), and losing Final Fantasy to Sony.
Years ago we were flying from London to San Francisco on Virgin, Premium Economy class. In that class you got a SNES built-in to the back of the seat in front of you, and I spent a happy while revisting my Blanka-dominated StreetFighter II past.
My then-girlfriend-now-wife however, not a gamer normally though certainly not averse to them, picked up Zelda: A Link To The Past. She said she really enjoyed it, but found it incredibly hard to dodge everything and couldn't get the hang of fighting.
Years go by, and when the Gameboy Advance SP came out I bought her one along with Zelda: Link To The Past. Again, she loved it. But again she complained she just couldn't get the hang of fighting anyone. So I took a look.
Right at the beginning of the game, you get a lamp. Except my wife didn't think this was a lamp, she thought it was a flamethrower. For several years she'd been going up to guards in the game and just flashing that lamp in their faces, expecting them to die, whilst totally ignoring the perfectly good sword she had as well.
It's just stuck in my mind since - imagine you really are a guard in that world. Some madman comes up to you, shouts "ha ha varmint, have at you" and quickly flashes a small torch at you, Then looks puzzled and disappears. Then re-appears and does it again. FOR THREE YEARS.
Well, I think it's funny anyway.
Blowing into an NES cartridge doesn't help it to work. If anything, it makes it worse over time. The source of the problem is the design of the connector inside the NES. Japanese Famicom users didn't have the same problems.
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.
And does anyone remember those freaky comercials that came out for it with the guy popping his head up going "zelda?zelda?" I can't believe after all these years I still remember the damn commercial.Got to give credit to Nintendo.They really saved console gaming after the crash of '83.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
... and I learn that Zelda turns 20. As if I didn't feel old already!
On a related note, I was thinking that someone should make a movie based on the Zelda series, in the same light as LoTR.
And then I watched Doom and thought, "Oh god no. Please don't ruin Zelda by turning it into a movie."
-David
At the time I really wasn't a huge fan of the game, being a little bit on the youngin' side of things, but in retrospect it was so nice to play a Nintendo game that wasn't a direct arcade port. Games like Contra where you were supposed to die a bunch and could put in another quarter to get some more lives, didn't work too well when your NES lacked a coin slot.
As for Zelda, the king and start of a long line or battery backed up save systems, kudos cause they got it right the first time, I could probably go pull my old cartridge and it would still have my save states from a decade ago.
Both, really. The NES had an extra lockout chip that the Famicon didn't. It was designed to keep third party developers from publishing games with out going through Nintendo. The chip on the console had to handshake with a chip on the cartridge before it would run. The extra chip also ment that a NES cartdige has a few more pins. To play a Famicon cartrige in a NES, you had to use an adapter which had a lockout chip in them. In some of the very early NES games (I think Kung Fu had this), inside the grey NES cart was a famicom board with a adapter fed through an adaptor. To play an NES cartidge in a famicon, you'd still need an adaptor, but it was just convert connectors.
#include <signature.h>
At the moment, it's: divorce, n: A change of wife.
Wouldn't "A wife-changing experience" have more zing?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
20 years? Isn't that how long Twilight Princess has been delayed now?
Zelda almost stopped me from getting married. I own a lovely first edition Gold Cart of Ocarina of Time (you know, the one with blood and Muslim chants). In college my now wife (then barely a friend) kidnapped it because my room mate (their good friend) was playing it too much. I thought someone had stole it. Once I found out it was them I was pissed. They had my baby. So...my (now wifes) first real impression of me was that I was some video game luvin' jerk.
:)
Why she married me I will never know
I still have that cart...and she knows not to touch it...
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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).
I beat Zelda 1 without using the sword until the Gannon Level. I prefer 2d Zelda to 3d Zelda
God spoke to me.
The American NES also had extra pins on the cartridge connector to give the cart direct access to the expansion slot on the bottom of the console, which was never used for anything.
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
Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A friend shoulder-looking. Just after racing with the undertaker's ghost. I drop into a tiny room deep under ground surface, a small enclosed cube with no exit in any direction, somewhere at the end of an obscure tomb in the cemetery. Badly hurt, no fairies, no potions, generally screwed up.
"I don't think it can get any worse" - I say.
"Maybe try playing some song, the song of time or something" - says the friend.
So I whip out the ocarina and try playing the song of time, from memory.
And I play the wrong song. Song of storms.
It starts raining.
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