All things The Legend of Zelda

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Alex79
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

Post by Alex79 »

NES emulator on PSP. Not using save states but I have consulted a detailed map a couple of times.
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

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Craig wrote:Once you get past the first few dungeons in Link to the Past I'm kind of surprised you'd have to save scum. You have a fairly generous amount of heart containers and with bottled fairies it's not often you'll see the game over screen. I'm also confused about the limited fast travel comments considering the bird warp will put you pretty near any of the dungeons. The most likely place you'll die is against a boss and even then it'll just take you to the start of the dungeon.

The only really hard parts I find are towards the end of the game where you'll probably be stocked up with fairies and the like anyway. It's honestly the first time I've heard someone complain link to the past is too difficult.
I would say the later dungeons get very tough indeed, and the traps and enemies within them can wittle down even a fully stocked supply of hearts and fairies scarily quickly. It also feels like the dungeons have a distinct lack of internal warp points and unlockable shortcuts, so when you invariably die late into one of them it can be a real slog getting back to where you were, or even remembering how to get back to where you were - and that's after you've spent what seems like an eternity scouring the world map in an effort to restock you hearts, fairies, arrows, bombs etc etc. Furthermore it can be bloody infuriating to hit a brick wall in a dungeon because you don't have the bomb/arrow etc needed to progress and the game stubbornly refuses to give you one.

As for fast travel, I did unlock the bird, but it felt like it was very late in the game before I did so (and hands up, that may be on me). I could not seem to find a way to travel between light and dark worlds at will, which often made working out how to get to various points on the dark world map very frustrating and led to me taking a lot of circuitous routes and dead ends. And the whole mountain area is just a pig, in both light and dark worlds. I just despise having to traverse it, even once I'm relatively familiar with the layout. Those damn falling rocks and weird bastard stone moles! Urgh!

That all combined drained my resolve pretty damn quick, and led to me just abusing save points rather than spending 20-30 minutes of playtime just to get back to where I was when I died.

It can be very easy to overlook this sort of thing when you're very familiar with a game and can breeze through it, but can be a rather nasty smack in the face if you come to it relatively fresh (I just returned to ALTTP having not played it at all in 20+ years). I'm fully aware that I'm unfairly judging the game by modern standards, but to be honest even as a kid with plenty of spare time to burn I would love playing up to the point where the dark world opens up (which I must have done more than once), but after that would just find it all a bit too complex and overwhelming and give up.
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

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I'm stuck for the first time. I'm fighting some sort of circular saw boss in a dungeon (it's the 5th or 6th one I've done so far). The old man said the boss hates a certain kind of noise, but buggered if I can work out how to kill it. I've got the sword, bow, boomerang, lamp, raft, ladder and bombs. Nothing seems to do any damage. I must be missing something...
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

Post by Michiel K »

Been reading through this thread and decided to stick to commenting on the original The Legend of Zelda, keeping the upcoming episode in mind:

My undying love for at least the console Zelda games really started with A Link to the Past, but me and my brother did indeed own and complete The Legend of Zelda for our NES, before we sold off console, games and accessories to get ourselves a SNES.

Up until that time I had played on the Philips Videopac, the Atari 7800, the Acorn Electron, the Commodore C64 and the MSX and had inserted my first coins in an arcade cab or two, but the NES - a second hand one, with 30+ games - was the first gaming machine we owned ourselves and it was the machine that made me get serious and develop some actual video gaming skills... because although I was endlessly fascinated by video games already, at the time I lacked the proper hand eye coordination to be any good at them. And games like Super Mario Bros., Castlevania, the shoddily ported Ghosts'n Goblins, Gradius, Gun.Smoke, Metroid and The Legend of Zelda were my (harsh) teachers.

The last two games on the list were initially the ones that eluded me the most. Not only was the action tough, it was also very tough for me to get anywhere in them. Until a school friend picked up the U.S. Nintendo Power catalogue we got with the whole lot. It contained full maps for these games, pointing out where all the secret passages and entrances were and he helped guide me through the games, pointing me where I needed to go. For at least 25% of those games anyway. That's how Metroid and The Legend of Zelda clicked for me and once I found my footing I consulted the maps less and less and played them to completion.

Isolating The Legend of Zelda, the time I spent with it is as unforgettable as the time I spent with just about any of the games I previously mentioned. It possessed a unique atmosphere and the ability to traverse large parts of the map right from the start was awe inspiring. I imagine it would have instilled a real sense of adventure in many players that sank their teeth in it without a map, way back when, but I had ruined that feeling for myself.

Before long, the continuously repeating overworld theme got on my nerves, thanks to spending long periods roaming around in 8-bit Hyrule and this is also why I was never too thrilled when it would make its return in future Zelda titles (though there is something majestic about its rendition in A Link to the Past, I must admit). Somehow the spooky dungeon theme never got old to me, however. I still associate it with tension, the beeping sound of one final remaining heart and facing the toughest regular enemies in the game.

If you look at The Legend of Zelda now through the lenses of modern game design, its reliance on finding secret entrances by bombing or burning areas on the screen without any visual hints (and how are you supposed to find out the route through the Lost Woods by yourself?!) seems baffling, but it might just have been Miyamoto & co's intention and desire for the game to lead a life outside of the borders of the TV screen via whispers and rumours on school yards everywhere. Or via a school friend reading the game's map for you.
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

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Alex79uk wrote:I'm stuck for the first time. I'm fighting some sort of circular saw boss in a dungeon (it's the 5th or 6th one I've done so far). The old man said the boss hates a certain kind of noise, but buggered if I can work out how to kill it. I've got the sword, bow, boomerang, lamp, raft, ladder and bombs. Nothing seems to do any damage. I must be missing something...
It's been decades, but aren't you supposed to use the flute there?
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

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You are, I hadn't explored the dungeon properly and eventually found it. That dungeon is a pain in the ass to navigate though. I couldn't find my way back from the flute thing to the boss, so I had to deliberately die and then make my way from the entrance because I knew the way from there. Done him now though and looking for the next dungeon.

That's the one concession I'm glad of using the PSP to play it actually, the ability to put the console in sleep mode and come back to it later. Did they expect you to complete the original in one sitting?
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

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The Japanese release was on the disc system, so had save games. The western release used a battery back up, 3 save slots I think.
RandomDent

Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

Post by RandomDent »

The first Zelda game I experienced was Ocarina of Time, and it has a profound impact on me as a child, (‘90s kid here). From there, I’ve only gone as far back as Link to the Past, and even that I didn’t play too much of. So without ever playing it before, and knowing relatively nothing about it, I bought The Legend of Zelda via the virtual arcade for my 3DS, and booted it up.

I was first impressed to hear the iconic Zelda theme playing. I wasn’t so sure I’d hear much of any music at all. But to see that the adventure-defining theme song was playing right out the gate with the first game was neat and impressive. In fact, all of the music in the game is pretty good. I find myself frequently humming the dungeon theme a lot.

Graphically, again, I was impressed. I never owned an NES so I wasn’t exactly sure how it’d look, but it was more than playable. Different colors, sprites, architecture—all good stuff. I enjoyed seeing the varied environments and enemies.

I suppose the big question is—does the game hold up? I’d say so. I quite enjoyed it after the first bumpy hour or so. I don’t mind being tossed in not knowing what to do, (I actually found that quite refreshing). It was when I accidentally bombed a random wall and it opened up, I was struck not with wonder or amazement, which I think I should have been, but a sort of nagging, “…Well how would I have known to do that?” So of course my next thought is, “So I have to bomb every wall in this game to make sure I get everything?”

It’s this aspect of this (and many other) older games I find interesting. You hear a lot of, “Back in my day, we didn’t have internet…I would wander around for weeks not knowing what to do!” I’m not sure how to take that. Games were different then, and made to last you a long time. And not in the, “this one part is hard, it’ll be a while before I master it,” way, but more of a, “I literally have to bomb every wall because I’ve nowhere else to go”. That’s not necessarily true with this specific game, but the sentiment does exist, and I think many who were around at the time hold it as a sort of badge-of-honor. “We had no help then, but we figured it out!”

Now I love older games; games I think many would distinguish as pretty difficult. But they’re hard because they are intended to be, not just because they’re using now-archaic mechanics, or that developers just didn’t know any better. Are Zelda’s more esoteric aspects products of intended difficulty—(you couldn’t put a little crack in the wall to tell me? Really?)—or is this a result of it being, frankly, an old game? I’m not sure. I know that right now, I’ve no interest in such tedious tasks. I’m an adventurer, not a sort of world-contractor tasked with checking the integrity of every in-game wall.

It’s also easier to forgive or overlook this stuff as a kid; though I’m not sure I’d enjoy it so much though as I just had patience for it. It’s much harder as a child to distinguish if a game is fantastic or garbage—I didn’t care, I was just having fun.

I have a buddy who knows The Legend of Zelda very well, so he was able to help prod me along at certain points, particularly with finding a couple of early helpful heart pieces. I didn’t feel bad about him helping me, because I felt like I was emulating that schoolyard gossip you would have gotten at the time. Looking to the internet was not something I wanted to do, but in-person help was acceptable, (again, not sure how I would have figured out a lot of the hidden stuff without it).

Overall, I enjoyed it probably a bit more than I thought I would. With a few extra hearts under your belt, a better sword and boomerang, it’s really a lot of fun wandering about trying to find the next dungeon. It does get pretty punishingly difficult later with those damned warping wizards, but it’s a good (if not a bit frustrating) sort of challenge.

I’m excited to try Zelda II. Now that I have the basics under my belt, how hard could the second one be, right? It’s probably exactly the same! :p
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

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RandomDent wrote:Now I love older games; games I think many would distinguish as pretty difficult. But they’re hard because they are intended to be, not just because they’re using now-archaic mechanics, or that developers just didn’t know any better. Are Zelda’s more esoteric aspects products of intended difficulty—(you couldn’t put a little crack in the wall to tell me? Really?)—or is this a result of it being, frankly, an old game? I’m not sure. I know that right now, I’ve no interest in such tedious tasks. I’m an adventurer, not a sort of world-contractor tasked with checking the integrity of every in-game wall.
I love reading your experiences with this game, coming into it fresh in this day and age and I love this bit in particular. I often see / read sentiments along the lines of "Those silly old game designers, they didn't know anything about good user experiences, didn't they? Yeah, we're so much smarter now." But could it be that they knew very well what they were doing and that, in an effort to combat user frustration, a lot of emotions we go through while playing a game - such as tension and satisfaction - feel a lot less intense in modern games?

Almost as an aside, the Zelda solution for wild goose chases (with bombs) has been to put the overly obvious, exact same copy of a cracked wall in bombable areas. And I don't think that's a real improvement.
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

Post by daftchunk »

I'm really glad that you're covering this series. I've wanted an excuse to play through the series and now that they are all available to me via Wii/U/3DS it will give me the kick up the backside to go through with it. Ashamedly I've only ever played four of the titles (Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) and I've only ever beaten one (Link's Awakening).

So I've just bought The Legrnd of Zelda and Zelda II on the eShop and I'm about to jump into them for the first time! Can't wait to Cane and Rinse!
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Re: Our next podcast recording: The Legend of Zelda

Post by gallo_pinto »

The Zelda franchise is my favorite franchise in video games and Ocarina of Time is my favorite game of all time. That being said, I didn't really have much of a history with the original Legend of Zelda on NES. I have vague memories of playing it as a four or five year old and then in high school I tried using save states to cheese my way through some of the dungeons on an emulator.

As a result of the podcast, I got it off the Virtual Console for my 3DS and really enjoyed the first few hours. The whole map is open for you to explore and you have to be really smart in how you attack enemies because there isn't much margin for error. I like that because Link only has a stab attack, you have to be really precise in combat.

Starting around dungeons 5 and 6 though, the difficulty ramped up in a way that I didn't think was very much fun. Even though the blue knights and the teleporting wizards were hard, I thought they were a good type of challenge. Once you learned strategies for fighting them (or found more heart containers and stronger swords), you got better at defeating them. The stuff I didn't like was having one room filled with the monsters that permanently destroy your magic shield and then filling the next room with enemies and torches that shoot fireballs at you. Fireballs that can only be blocked by that just-destroyed (and very expensive!) magic shield.

I am really interested in how people figured out some of the hints and clues before the internet. I had originally pledged to beat the game without looking online, but had to give that up. I had fun with some of the puzzles, like the directions for the Lost Woods and walking through the waterfall. But I never would have figured out how to enter dungeon 7 or what to do with the meat. Did a ton of people just get stuck and never beat the game?

Overall, I liked a bunch of things that this game did and I loved seeing the original blueprint for this fantastic series. Having said that, I don't think I'll ever come back and play it again.
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The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo's 1991 classic - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
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The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo's 1993 action-adventure videogame - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. This discussion also includes 1998's The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX.
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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo's 1998 videogame - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
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The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
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The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages. The discussion can also cover The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons.
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The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
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The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures.
This podcast will include talk of Four Swords (GBA), Four Swords Adventures (GameCube) and Four Swords Anniversary (DSiWare).
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The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Capcom/Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.
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The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

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Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
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