So I got the Gamecube a while back right? Well one glance at the Nintendo logo and the music from the original Zelda started running through my head non-stop. After about a week of greeting friends and coworkers with my rendition of Doooo – doo – doo – du – du – dooo"… I say to myself, "Self, you're obviously remembering fondly the days of yesteryear, so why not use this fine opportunity with which the horribly evil New England winter has presented you and relive them by playing The Legend of Zelda all over again?"

"Hey, self!" says I. "That's a pretty good idea. You're a freaking genius!"

And then I got to thinking. I haven't owned a Nintendo product since I sold my NES for beer money in college. So I missed out on a lot of great games for the SNES and N64, particularly the Zelda sequels, which I hear were excellent, but never played. Why not play all of them now? There's even a new one coming out in June. This could be the year of Zelda! All Zelda, all the time baby.

So here it is. The quest: I'm going to play all of the Zeldas (except game boy Zeldas) in order, starting with the very first, my one true love, The Legend of Zelda, and ending with the new Legend of Zelda coming in June.

Prepare yourself.

Day one
Legend of Zelda
Gamecube

Am I the only one who gets chills when that opening screen comes up with the waterfall and the Zelda theme starts playing? The music! It's the theme that's been running through my head for weeks! At last I hear it in all of its 8-bit glory! Man. I have some fond memories of this game. Ah, the nights we spent together"…

Day One.Five
Legend of Zelda
Gamecube

Halfway through Zelda. Damn those two midi songs get old. Just two songs huh? And what's with the graphics? I thought Link was green, not pea soup. Maybe I need to adjust my TV. Anyway. It's been exactly as I remembered so far. Except I don't remember a damn thing, so I downloaded a map off the internet. Sweet. I never got all the heart containers before. I feel like a god. Like a 1985 god with feathered hair, a sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of Angelflights. Just like David Lee Roth "… Panama – ah – oh – oh – uh – oh!. Reach down "… between my legs ... and grab the silver boomerang "…

P.S. I hate wizrobes.

Day Two
Legend of Zelda
Gamecube

Okay, gotta finish level 6. Stupid pancake things keep eating my shields. The flaming balls of death coming out of those statues suck too. Why can't you kill the statues? Magic statues? You can move boulders, but you can't topple statues? Where's that company of marines with the armored crane? I try beating the statue with my shoe but it keeps spitting flaming balls of death at me and I die. Bad idea then.

I hate level 6.

Day Two.Five
Legend of Zelda
Gamecube

Level 9. Where's the stupid red ring? Redring redring redring! I give up.

Day 3
Legend of Zelda
Gamecube

I remember when this used to take me fours hours tops. I'd play through the game three times in a day. Wow. How simple life can be when you're ten. When did sex and booze start taking up so much of my time? Do you know how hard it is to kill a wizrobe when you're drunk? Don't they have an "adult" difficulty setting for these games? Hard, Medium, Easy, Drunk. That's how the world should be.

Okay, I've forgotten how to beat Gannon. Back to the internet "… "slash blindly" "… okay. Now I feel stupid.

Hooray I saved the princess. Play through the "B" side? No thanks. One down a few more to go. At this rate I'll be done with this quest by March and I'll have all spring to sit back on my heels and laugh at how little work I have left to do! I think I'll start now. Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Ow my heels hurt.

The Legend of Zelda: Completed

Day Four
Link to the Past
ZSNES

I'm going to try playing Zelda 2 any minute now. Just thought I'd fire up LttP to see if I remembered anything useful. Oh yeah. Right. Throwing pots. Heh. Oh and you get to name your character. Cool. They even call you by your real name "… um "… but aren't you Link? This is confusing.

Day Four.Six
Link to the Past
ZSNES

This one is even more addicting than the first. I can't stop playing!

Rescued Zelda after about five minutes in. Okay, but isn't that supposed to happen at the end of the game? Now I'm more confused. She says she "knew I was getting close." Heh. That's what the GF said.

Love Link's new dying animation. Of course getting killed by a mouse is a bit emasculating. Good time to stop.

Day Four.Nine
The Legend of Zelda 2: Link's Adventure
Game Cube

Yep. Sucks about as much as I remembered. Hey, there's a lady in Rauru who kinda looks like a whore. Says she'll restore my life if I "come inside." Wow. Nintendo really let the kids off the leash for this one didn't they?

Ten minutes in and I'm done. I just can't continue playing this crap. Sorry. If I remember correctly, that's how I felt about it the first time I played it twenty years ago, too. If I feel like playing a poorly designed Castlevania clone set in the Zelda universe between now and the time the next Zelda comes out, maybe I'll plug this one back in. Of course there's some broken glass and rusty nails out on the back porch that I could chew on instead, so maybe I won't get around to Zelda 2. We'll play it by ear.

Day Five
Link to the Past
ZSNES

Got past those mousey things. Tough little f**kers. I like how the people in the village run away from me screaming. Is it because I'm a little kid running around in a green suit with a bloody sword and a string of mouse scalps hung around my neck like some midget Green Beret? Perhaps.

Modern RPG and action games have kind of ruined me on the straight forward, always-the-good-guy gameplay environments from the eighties and nineties. I wish that just once I could make Link say "F**k you, buddy. It's not my fault your pansy-ass kid took to flute playing and ran off into the woods to play with animals. Jeebus Crispy, what the hell did you do to him anyway? Now give me what I want or I'll slice your throat open! I'm trying to save the planet here. You get that? Save the planet. I've killed mice, for f**k's sake, I could do you in a heartbeat!"

Day Five.Five
Link to the Past
ZSNES

Killed the first big level boss. Or bosses to be more precise. Bunch of knight-type things bouncing around trying to squish me. What's up with the bouncy bad guys in this game? I'm going to need more bourbon if I'm going to make it through this one. And a map. Thank god for the Internet and people with far more free time than I.

"… to be continued "…