Too Long; Didn't Play: The Legend of Zelda (NES Classic)

Time Linked To The Past: Two hours or so

Sponsored By: The NES Classic

Welcome, TL;DP Fans! As longtime readers may well recall, I like to do a theme for the month of December. Usually it’s alliterative, or some kind of gregorian pun. This December will be no exception. I’ve decided to go back to gaming’s roots and play some important games that I missed when they first came out. I hope you enjoyed De-Seminal-Ber!

In this final week I discover a new love of an old series and play The Legend of Zelda.

Going it Alone Review

So I hear Nintendo is good at this whole Video Game thing.

Legendary Review

I didn’t have the patience for the open world when I was a kid. Video games were something that doled out quick dopamine hits by the quarter. I didn’t need to remember anything about where I’ve been, except that it now consists of smoking craters and wreckage. My first foray into the open-world genre was Grand Theft Auto 2, which allowed for plenty of smoking craters and wreckage but also allowed me to do it as much as I wanted, wherever I wanted.

It was kind of like moving out on my own for the first time. Yep, it’s pizza night. Because every night is pizza night! And I can get any topping I want!

I came to love the open-world genre, but I still couldn’t get into Zelda games. My wife tried to hook me on A Link to the Past, but to no avail. It was at once too open and not open enough, with a very particular order for tackling the open-world elements but not enough reward for exploring. I could see why people liked it, but it wasn’t my kind of open world.

Later I played Breath of the Wild, and it was darn close to being a perfect game. Naturally, I assumed that the natural iteration that all long-running series went through had brought Zelda to the point where I could like it. It wouldn’t be the first time (cough Metal Gear Solid 5 cough).

In seemingly unrelated news, I got an NES Classic through my company’s wellness program. (ten thousand jumping jacks and that baby was all mine!) One of the games on it was the original The Legend of Zelda. This being De-seminal-ber, I thought: “Wouldn’t it be entertaining to read about me bouncing off of the original Zelda?” After all, it took 31 years for Nintendo to make a Zelda game that I thought was interesting enough to try, and I already knew I didn’t like A Link to the Past. The original game can only be worse, right?

Oh, my, no.

The first thing that struck me about The Legend of Zelda is how little explanation it gives you for anything. You’re dropped into the world with a shield and no weapon, and you have to figure out what to do and why to do it. The closest you get to exposition is the little old man who gives you your first sword, and he only does that if you think to find him.

From there it was all exploration and combat. Everywhere I looked there was something going on, whether it was jumping bug things or sea monsters throwing rocks. Sometimes I found side quests where I had to deliver things to characters with no names that I hadn’t met yet. I even found the source of Shoptroll’s tag!

How did this come out in 1986?

Will I Keep Tri(force)ing?

I think I can safely say my eyes are opened to The Legend of Zelda now. I knew it was an important series, but I never understood, entirely, why. It was, after all, just Nintendo’s core “do a thing three times to win” mechanic put into a nested loop. But the original Legend of Zelda was groundbreaking, and it has aged incredibly well.

Never for one moment did I think that I’d be swept up in the original The Legend of Zelda, but I want to go back to it. I want to play more. I want to see where everything is, and what happens when I find out.

Yes, I’ll keep playing. I may never finish it, but I want to try. That’s not something that happens in a lot of open world games for me. Only the great ones.

Is it the Dark Souls of Zelda games?

Let’s go through the list: You begin with no weapon, and if you make the wrong decisions you might not get one. It’s possible to kill most of the things in the game with the starter sword, if you’re good enough. The game gives you virtually no direction on where to go or what to do; you have to want to figure it out. Finally, you carry health powerups in a bottle that you may or may not find early on.

So no, The Legend of Zelda isn’t the Dark Souls of its genre. Dark Souls is The Legend of Zelda for modern sensibilities.

Comments

Your conclusion is a statement I've made many times when discussing Souls. Both games elicit the same trepidation of the unknown share the thrill of discovery. Both create opportunities for speculation and wild playground rumors. Both are really tough to figure out without a community of like-minded gamers sharing secrets.

Nintendo Power magazine used to publish a poll in each issue of the readers' top 25(?) favorite NES games.

If I recall correctly, the Legend of Zelda was #1 on that poll for something like 2 years running.

Breath of the Wild was my 2017 favorite game of the year not in small part because it was the first game in decades(!!) that managed to re-capture, at least in some small way, that feeling of exploring the wilderness and unexpectedly stumbling upon a new dungeon to explore.

I played this game so much as a kid that after completing multiple zero-death (both quests!) runs of it, I came back to it as an adult and completed a 3-heart run of it (finishing the game without picking up any heart containers, including the ones that dungeon bosses drop). I have to think that the ability to do that was and is still an intentional design decision by Nintendo; even as recently as Twilight Princess, picking up heart containers dropped by bosses before leaving their dungeon is optional.

It's always interesting to see people go back to the original and respond with one of two potential reactions: absolute dislike or complete infatuation.

I played it for the first time all the way through in middle-school (so circa 1997-98) on my parents' black and white television that was less-than-a-foot-by-less-than-a-foot in screen size. I dunno how I did it, but I did it. Note that wasn't my very first time playing it, but I had only played the first labyrinth or two as a kid and assumed the rest would be difficult for my youthful lack of experience.

So no, The Legend of Zelda isn’t the Dark Souls of its genre. Dark Souls is The Legend of Zelda for modern sensibilities.

Welcome to the party!

Nice review, I like these old school visits. Especially ones like this where you discover a gem that you now love.

I was just struck by this image from zeroKFE's 2017 GOTY post, which if I recall correctly is from the original printed manual for The Legend of Zelda:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/Np6TBFS.jpg)

I mean, that is BOTW in a nutshell, right?

Take: The Legend of Zelda (NES, 1986) is just Breath of the Wild implemented using the technology that was available at the time.

garion333 wrote:
So no, The Legend of Zelda isn’t the Dark Souls of its genre. Dark Souls is The Legend of Zelda for modern sensibilities.

Welcome to the party!

Exactly!

I love this post. Always one of my favorite front-page features. Thanks, for a great year, Mr. Decker.

I highly recommend you give the sequel a try. I went back and played both last year and was even more surprised by the ingenuity of the second game than the first.

If you are really up for a challenge, look up the Zelda randomizers. Been watching a lot of rando races of NES Zelda and LTTP on Twitch, they are most intriguing to watch. New twist on old classics.

Bubs14 wrote:

If you are really up for a challenge, look up the Zelda randomizers. Been watching a lot of rando races of NES Zelda and LTTP on Twitch, they are most intriguing to watch. New twist on old classics.

Funny you should mention that.

Give my podcast for this week a listen.