All things The Legend of Zelda

[Flabyo]

Anyone that took the time to play this for the podcast, I applaud your dedication to the cause. This one wasn't considered that great even at the time...

I really dislike it. It's fiddly, too hard, too punishing, too long and often too obtuse. It's hard to imagine that for a while the zelda series was one decent game and one pretty awful one. It's very much uphill from here for several generations at least...

I do like that Ocarina has a nice link to this game where the towns here are named for the sages in Ocarina (it does make sense, this game is later in the timeline than ocarina)

[Craig]

It's hard to imagine that for a while the zelda series was one decent game and one pretty awful one.

To be fair, that was the course for a lot of NES games. For some reason a lot of developers didn't just iterate on their first game so there were quite a lot of dodgy sequels with interesting takes on the first game.

[Alex79]

Yep, I ended up giving up on this game. I knew after about an hour it wasn't for me, but I kept playing as long as I could. I'm a little disappointed with myself to be honest, but I feel like I gave it a fair go. It just seemed a lot less fun and a lot more irritating than the first game which I did enjoy. Some games are timeless, and some age far less gracefully. This definitely falls in to the latter, and for that reason, I'm out!

THREE WORD REVIEW : Skip this one.

[Suits]

Cool, sweet game this.

I've bought this on the Wii U VC to play along with you guys.

[AndrewBrown]

Three Word Review: Hammer clears Forest?

Zelda II may be one of the most important Zeldas. It shows that the series is not just a formula, that a tiny bit of its essence can be captured in a game which you would otherwise be forgiven for not recognizing as part of the canon. In spite of its greater emphasis on character stat development and shift to a field of battle when encountering enemies on a tiled world map—clear signs of influence from burgeoning console RPGs—players still develop Link into a stronger and more diverse fighter by exploring towns, caves, forests, and dungeons, enhancing the PC through the spoils of exploration. Similarities to Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest are superficial; one cannot simply grind their way to success. This apple may have rolled quite far from its tree, but it carries with it still the Zelda essence: Power via Discovery.

While the great emphasis on side-scrolling may be alien (and alienating) to longtime fans of the series, I must cast myself as apologist to that design decision. Particularly in the top-down “classic” Zeldas, Link is more of an acrobat than a warrior, dodging in and out to get in hits on enemies. The Link of The Adventure of Link, however, is a bruiser, and he is only able to be so because of the side-scrolling design. He does not dash in and out, dealing a quick blow when the moment is ripe. He stands toe-to-toe with his foes, absorbing their melee attacks with his shield (a thing no Top-Down Link would dare to try), retaliating with a comparatively diverse repertoire of swordplay. He does this because, thanks to only being able to move in two directions, he has no other choice.

This sense of power is stunted by the game’s difficulty and learning curve, but once players adjust, Zelda II’s Link feels like one of the most powerful in the series. This serves to make the boss encounters even more intimidating; these are enemies even this powerful Link cannot go toe-to-toe with, and as the player regresses into hit-and-run tactics once more, they feel, if only subtly, the terrifying strength of these guardians. It is no accident that the Link of Super Smash Bros. feels like he was pulled more from The Adventure of Link than any other game, and as Zelda broke through the polygon ceiling, this brute of a hero was resurrected. It may be limited by the technology it is played on, but the sword-and-shield play of more recent Zeldas would not exist without the experimentation at play in Zelda II.

To players of the late 1980s stepping into The Adventure of Link for the first time, this new form of combat must have felt like what happened with the swordplay in the more recent Skyward Sword: Crude, clumsy, imprecise, infuriating… but a glimpse into what would come.

[seansthomas]

I've always been curious about A Link to the Past since I started playing the 3D Zelda games about a decade ago, so I picked it up on Virtual Console last summer to make up for Zelda Wii U's delay. However I only started playing it when I saw Cane & Rinse were covering the series in the new volume(s).

Much like Super Metroid, which I also played in 2015 for the first time, the overriding impression I have of this title is how far ahead of its time it was. I owned a Master System at the time and progressed onto an Amiga and PSOne, but this game far outstrips many of the best titles for those machines. So much of what I came to love about the series several years later was already present here; a huge variety of innovative accessories, complex dungeons, secret areas galore, a great sense of scale to Hyrule, that iconic theme tune and the ability to explore the world at your own pace. And for a game this old, that's incredible.

At times, I've enjoyed the combat and exploration more than in recent outings in fact. I've discovered and worked out puzzles on my own that have given me a sense of achievement Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword's hand-holding assistance lacked entirely. I've also found areas hours before I needed to and got items that I still have no idea how to use. It feels like a genuine head scratcher and quest.

This inevitably leads to some minor problems too. At times, I've had little idea what to do next (for example, how to find the Silver arrows) or wasted hours trying to relocate NPCs in the wrong realm, but in fairness the puzzles were largely logical. The only one I plain failed to crack was realising a dark world warp portal and dungeon entrance was accessible using a medallion acquired by throwing a stone into a pool I had missed in a hard to reach swamp. I have uncharacteristically resorted to a guide on several occasions - more for general guidance than specific puzzle solutions - and due to the unkind respawn points post-death and my limited gaming time, am a serial abuser of restore points. Without either, I am pretty sure I'd have thrown the towel in by the third dungeon. I certainly couldn't have beaten Ganon without the ability to quick save.

Other gripes are more personal issues. I don't love the dark realms in many of the Zelda games; the idea of a level having a dual purpose is incredibly clever and Soul Reaver played with this amazingly well back in the day, but in the Zelda series I see it as more of an irritation that takes me away from the fun and colour of Hyrule, so its a shame you spend more time in it than the light realm. I also am a terrible navigator of 2D games. My sense of direction is great in general and I can remember the tiniest of details in 3D game worlds, but here my brain struggles to differentiate one doorway from another. As such, I'd wager that 20% of my playtime in latter dungeons was spent merely trying to find previously unlocked rooms again.

But all in all, A Link to the Past deserves the classic status its regularly given. Even played for the first time 20+ years after release, its a great title and up there with the best adventures a gamer can have.

3 word review: The series template

[seansthomas]

Oops that's a bit long. Cut out that last but one paragraph if you like!

[gallo_pinto]

I never owned an SNES and I'd already played Ocarina of Time and several other Zelda games by the time I got around to playing A Link to the Past. I played the Gameboy Advanced version and my first time through the game, I thought it was way too hard. I remember liking the game, but not completely understanding what all of the fuss was about.

Last year, I played the wonderful Link Between Worlds and that inspired me to go back and play A Link to the Past again. This time, I understood what makes this game so beloved. After I beat Ganon, I immediately started a new game and played it through a second time. The art direction is so strong and both the main Hyrule Field Theme and the Dark World theme are amazing tracks. I also think that this game struck the perfect difficulty balance. It's challenging and doesn't hold your hand as much as later games, but it's not as infuriating as Zelda 1 and 2. This game ages wonderfully and I look forward to going back and replaying it every couple of years.

Three Word Review: 2D Zelda Perfected

[rezzobob]

This was my second game I owned on the snes I still remember the awe I felt when I first saw the intro It blew me away. I was used to to little to no story as NES and commodore 64 game rarely had any any compared to the original Zelda which i still love it showed me what video games could do. I have replayed it countless times due to tight dungeon design and large amount of secret items in the over world. It was the first game that truly allowed me to escape into it I love that the wizard was Ganon I thought they had changed the last boss just like Zelda 2. My favorite moment was when I first arrived in the dark world and I released that the game was a lot bigger than I thought.

[Matthewjbutler]

Three Word Review:

Hyrules Them All

[fieldy]

This was my very first foray into the Legend of Zelda Series at the age of about 10 or 11. I loved this game for its music initially and was slowly drawn in from there.
It took me some time to figure this game out and I remember hours of sitting round a friends house with his copy of the game trying to find a way forward and in fact we never actually finished it, that is until 2014 when I bought this on my 3DS and saw it through to completion. Overall I found this game to be really enjoyable with the design being spot on for a handheld each square on the map representing a different frame of scenery. This is in my top four Zelda games along with Majoras mask, ,Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker but as I mentioned the music in this entry has to be some of my favourite from the Zelda games.

[Todinho]

Unlike most people I know I didnt grew up with the Zelda series,the most experience I had with it was watching my cousin play 5 minutes of Majora's Mask,i was so ignorant about the games that I still thought the main character's name was Zelda instead of Link. So a few years ago,In a effort to change that,I decided to go back to the beginning of the series and play all of the games to understand what the big deal was,unfortunally I ended up failing immediatly. The original Zelda proved itself to be a challenge far greater then I previously thought,I died all the time,got lost constantly and just plain couldnt get anywhere in the game despite many attempts.I didnt even consider trying the infamous Zelda 2 after hearing that one was the "Hard" Zelda game on the NES,I was ready to give up on the series until I decided to give A Link to the Past a try, Im glad I did because this game quickly became one of my favorites 16-bit games of all time.

From the get go A link to the Past stands out from the original not only because of it's presentation but because it actually tries to teach the player how to play the game and it does a pretty good job at it,to the point I would compare it's introduction to those of Mega man X and Super Metroid in how it almost effortlessly manages to teach the player all the basics without holding their hands.
While A link to the past might not be as open as the original it more then makes up for it by having a really good structure that keeps the player feeling that they are always making progress and being challenged at the same time;speaking of which,the way this game does exploration is probably my favorite thing about it,like in the original exploration is required to beat the game but unlike Zelda 1 exploring the world is an absolute joy,for starters just moving around feels alot better then on the NES and finding stuff is rewarding both for getting the item itself but also by the player having to overcome a small challenge to get it and just by the way the game is laid out you're constantly finding secrets which just feeds back into a loop that makes you want to keep exploring,it really helps then that you have an actual map that makes finding your way across the world a whole lot easier and not only that but you also unlock several different tools to facilitate or aid your exploration in some way or another,the game also does a great job at cluing the player in what to do, whether by a mark on the wall,a line from an NPC or by giving you an item.Exploring the world however can be only so engaging if the the world ends up being boring and luckly while A link to the Past Hyrule isnt anything too different from your standard fantasy world it has enough character to stand on it's own thanks to it's distintic art style and gorgeous music.
If I have a criticism of the game is how the combat works,there's nothing really wrong with it but it's just not really interesting and while the game goes some ways trying to fix that by giving you itens and techiniques that help make combat a bit more interesting it's just not enough,by the end of the game I would just avoid combat or use magic to wipe an entire room rather then trying to fight,the boss fights stand out as the most interesting combat encounters but that's because they are more of puzzles then a check of skill in swordplay.

In the end of the day though the game more then succeeds in what's trying to accomplish,to me this is what the original Zelda should have been,it manages to convey the feeling of exploration and wonder the original was aiming for while making it a well structured and accessible experience out of it, and while A Link to the Past still remains as the only Zelda game I completed Im really happy to have given this series a shot and am looking foward to play future games and see how they iterate upon the template set here.

TWR:exploration done right

[Chaos9001]

This was my first Legend of Zelda game, and it ignited my love for this series. I will always remember drawing maps of the Ice Palace to help a buddy of mine, while I should have been studying 7th grade English. However I will never understand why the wishing well Fairies think its okay to take all of my rupees for bomb and arrow upgrades. War profiteering is bad.

[matfantastic]

I will never forget the first time I saw The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It was the summertime and my parents decided to leave me at my Grandparents for a long weekend. I was dreading it, the thought of being away from my friends and videogames for an entire weekend was killing me! So when I went to store my belongings in the spare bedroom and saw a SNES hooked up under the tv i was ecstatic! Turns out, it belonged to my grandmother, and she was in the process of completing A Link to the Past for the first time. That entire weekend was spent watching her play through the game, and as soon as she finished it, she started again! It was an incredible weekend and i will always cherish those memories. I myself had actually never beat A Link to the Past until a few years ago when my Grandmother passed away. After the funeral, i spent some time at her house with my Grandpa. I remembered that weekend from my childhood and decided to see if she still had that SNES. Sure enough, buried under some old blankets in the garage I found the SNES and A Link to the Past. I took them home straight away and spent the next 2 days relentlessly playing until I had finally beaten it. It was bittersweet of course. The game was just as amazing as I'd remembered, but I wished she would have been there to experience it with me. That SNES and the game are still sitting in my closet where i put them after finishing the game. Maybe I should dig them out and give A Link to The Past another go. For Grandma.

Edit: This is my first post here in the forums. I know I didnt really speak much about the game itself, but so many other posts in this thread have done an amazing job at that so I thought I would talk about what the game meant to me. Hope thats okay.

[ratsoalbion]

Hey Mat, welcome.

We love this sort of post, thank you for taking the time to share.

[AndrewBrown]

Three Word Review:
Favorite Classic Zelda

Hot Take:
While A Link to the Past is justly remembered as a well-crafted videogame, one of the things it does best often goes unrecognized: How the player traverses space.

While at first glance A Link to the Past would seem to be an improvement mainly on the first game in the series, seeming to ignore series pariah Zelda II, in actuality it is a compromise, or synthesis, of both these games in its approach to space. While the first game allowed the player relative freedom to explore the X and Z planes of the directional axis, and the second moved the emphasis to alternating between the X/Y and X/Z planes, A Link to the Past allowed the player to explore all three dimensions while cementing the now-"Classic" top-down view. Every videogame that utilizes three dimensions must do it by way of suggestion and illusion; even our most sophisticated games are still a two-dimensional image in reality. A Link to the Past, in particular, accomplishes this by creating not just multiple floors, but multiple levels within each floor; the player can not only go "upstairs" or "downstairs" between floors, but also "upstairs" and "downstairs" on each individual floor, creating a sensation, via forced perspective, of flat, square rooms possessing depth as well as width. Players encounter this as early as the first dungeon, when they rescue Zelda from Hyrule Castle and find a safe path past the guards through a previously-inaccessible upper path, and is iterated upon with greater and greater complexity throughout the rest of the game. Today, when even poorly-made games still create a sense of three-dimensional depth through the use of contracting and expanding polygons, it's easy to take for granted what A Link to the Past does with static sprites. It would be foolish to do so, for it is this sense of depth and verticality which makes A Link to the Past work as well as it does, whether the player realizes it or not, and isn't the greatest trick of all the one you don't even realize you fell for?

I could go on at length about all the things that A Link to the Past does well, but I want to keep my contributions manageable and relevant, so I will say little more. It's a game I struggle to find negative things to say about; in my most recent playthrough, the only negative thought that stuck with me was the nagging sense of Orientalism present in the Dark World, of the bright, "good" European-ish Castle that is the centerpiece of the Light World, and the dark, foreboding Pyramid/Ziggurat that is its "evil" counterpart in the Dark World--however, consider that the castle hides evil within (Agahnim), while the pyramid hides good (the Great Fairy). The rather blatant washing away of Christian references and iconography is a bit condescending, too (the Book of Mudora is obviously a Bible). These are niggling bits of social criticism, and they far from ruined my return experience with the game.

The Zelda series found its legs in the first game, but it was here, in its third entry, that it found its soul.

And Another Thing:
I also did a livestream of A Link to the Past a few weeks ago, and--life permitting--I plan to do one for every subsequent Zelda podcast. I did this one a bit early; I'll do the Link's Awakening livestream in the week before the recording of that podcast, as well as subsequent Zelda podcasts. I will also attempt to livestream other scheduled games, if I own them. So if anyone is following along with the podcast but doesn't have access to the game in question, I'm a possible resource for that. Livestreams can be watched live or in archives on my Twitch channel (https://twitch.tv/criticalbytes, also linked to in my signature) as well as archived on my YouTube channel, at the links below.

ALTTP Livestream Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFTz96j9K2k
ALTTP Livestream Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAibW5Vsme4
ALTTP Livestream Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot5Oq-FUhrY

Disclaimer: My livestreams are being done as part of the Cane & Rinse fan community and are not endorsed or sanctioned by the podcast, its hosts, or its contributors.

[Craig]

This Zelda really set the template for future Zelda's to come with so many things established in this entry. With good reason too. It's a wonderful world to explore, buzzing with secrets and life and with just the right balance of difficulty. Miyamoto has said that the bottles were his idea of a dynamic difficulty system where, if you thought it was too hard you could stock up on fairies or too easy you could bring none. It's always fair and really makes you feel comfortable to explore in stark contrast to Zelda II. Even when you get to the dark world where suddenly everything looks odd and does a lot of damage, you're never penalised too harshly.

The only issue I have is that because rupees are essentially worthless outside a few major items (another trait that has unfortunately carried forward to other Zelda games) means that the thrill of finding a secret is sometimes undercut by an underwhelming reward.

Big thumbs up to the sound design. The music is great with some wonderful songs bit the sound effects are really where it shines. Particularly the stretching, growling roars of the bosses when they are hit and when they finally die. Fabulous.

[Suits]

This was my first Cane & Rinse play along and was great fun , sorry if it's a bit long, I just had so much to say about it !!

My Zelda history really kick starts here, It's one that for the early part of my years revolved around things being too far out of reach and my cousin that lived in Cardiff and was 2 years older than me.

I also blame ‘this’ Zelda, for introducing a luring depth to computer games that I'd previously never experienced, knew was there, or even knew I wanted. It was I think the first computer game that I really started to think about after I’d turned the console off.

I feel that a slight back story is necessary to underpin my unconditional love for this game, I’ll try and keep it as salient as possible.

1991 - My very first serious knowledge of Zelda, (apart from the side of my GameBoy Box) was from a Nintendo sticker book that I must have had when I was about 7. It was filled with various first party Nintendo games, focusing mainly on the back end of the NES generation and it's library of games, culmination in an obvious Super Mario Brothers 3. Amongst other games I'd never heard of, or played, there was a full double spread page dedicated to Zelda. It looked odd and hard to understand but I remember being totally mesmerised by the shiny for that game - Link's shield.

1993 - I'd had my Gameboy for a few years now. It had pride of place next to my Master System II and helped me bridge the gap between the Sega and Nintendo camps. I was aware of Zelda:Links Awakening, mainly from accidentally playing Mystic Quest (one of my all-time great games - Palm Trees and 8) on the Gameboy and being blown away in what was my first experience of an RPG. Being close to 10 years old now, the whole idea of an RPG was starting to become clear to me and something I liked the idea of more and more. One day I collected all of my Gameboy games, my pocket money and convinced my father to drive me into town where there was a game exchange centre. I think it may have been called 'That's Entertainment' or something similar. It was sort of an early Cash Convertors I think. Anyway, they had a Zelda cart and I wanted it. Much to my father’s misunderstanding and anger, he witnessed me trade in most of my games and all my money for this game. Loved it, totally. It was everything I wanted, needed and expected from it.

1994 - By now I was well aware of Zelda and needed more. I needed the next step. One day I was visiting my cousin (which was a 30 minute drive away, or more integrally rather around how often I could convince my mother to go visit her sister.) We were getting tired of playing Super Mario World and the other games he had at the time. We were dreaming up ways of how we could play Zelda:Link To The Past. One day, in our quest to get hold of a cartridge (outside of Christmas or a impending birthday celebration) one of us came up with the idea of checking the Free Adds paper, to which there was an advert for a cartridge swap for a number of other SNES games, one of which being Hook. Hook had a dusty place in my cousins library of SNES games and after much egging on and persuasion, we got our act together and begun the trade finer points. Being about 11 and my cousin being about 13, the idea of effort for no immediate reward was perplexing but being old enough to understand that this was possibly the only realistic way we could get hold of the cart, was a sobering one and focussed us in organising the trade and essential postage dramas. I left my cousins that time with the hope that by the time I'd get back, possibly a few months or even longer, that the trade will have been completed and I could witness this wonderful game.

1995 - By the time I'd managed to get to my cousins again he had smashed through the whole game and was very blasé about it, sort of in the manner, "yeah, I've played Zelda and finished it, it was good" then started talking about something else, possibly a Simpson's episode or another new game he rented or borrowed. All I wanted to see and play was Zelda. He loaded it up for me and as soon as I saw the top of the pyramid with the cracked big hole in it, red tunic, colossal mirror shield and the plethora of hearts across the top of the screen, I nearly died with enthusiasm and questions. I just needed to play that game for the story, the weapons and how he managed to collect all of those extra hearts. It was at this point that my cousin was beginning to pine for my goods that I had brought with me. I'd often bring my Master System, or in later years my Mega Drive, up to Cardiff on visits so we could play each other’s games. At the time I'd just managed to get my hands on NHL '94, an incredible game, truly great sports game that I had played the buttons out of. He wanted that. It was at that point our eyes lit up with enlightenment and we decided to swap consoles until our next encounter. The details of which we happily skipped over, in excitement of both agreeing on a trade of which I could play Z:LTTP and he could play NHL94, solely and under no family get together time frames. I took home with me a SNES and a copy of Zelda:LTTP.

That feeling of extreme possibility and excitement that grew from such a trade, or one that’s completed in the playground at break, is something that you’ll never manage to precisely re-create in adult life is such a wonderful, memorable feeling of childhood.

Because of all of this I was filled with trepidation going back to LTTP, I’ve played a lot of older games from this age and not always came away with the taste in my mouth that I was looking for. The last time I played this was on a SNES in the late 90’s, not even to completion either, just to show someone it that had perhaps missed out in it. I’d managed to fend off the urges to emulate it and when tempted put off by the rather expensive cart prices available online. I honestly don’t know what happened to my original copy, more than likely it was traded in for a PS1 game a long time ago.

I played through on the Wii U virtual console this time, both on the big screen and on the gamepad with headphones, when the TV was unavailable.

The first thing I considered after the famous rain, castle, sanctuary intro, was the SNES colour palette and graphics really played a strong game here, you feel that the whole scope of this system was pushed and even perhaps designed with this sort of title in mind; it’s a perfect marriage of system capability and art design. Things just look so perfected, little details are enough to give personality to almost every non-mob character, caves, hills, trees, dungeons all still look fantastic and have a soft, almost slightly 3D feel to them, like it was all made of Haribo.

I did, however, find the main Zelda series adventure theme quite jarring and repetitive this time around. I couldn’t remember it being so intrusive and remember liking it at the time. Coming back to it I had to turn it down in the end as it was just giving me a headache. Thankfully, once you crack the Master Sword mission and then spend a large chunk of the game in the dark world, the music switches and is much more sedate and easier to handle in large doses. Now, this may be something to do with that fact that this time round, instead of a mono sound 12” CRT I’m using a 50” Plasma with 5.1 surround speakers. This may have caused the discomfort to the SNES chirps and pips as when I was playing it on the gamepad, the music wasn’t half as irritating. So with all things considered, the score is still great, just maybe not designed to be amplified in such a modern way.

The first 3rd of the game, collecting the amulets and then the master sword are sort of tutorials upon reflection, which would prepare you for the serious chunk of the game afterwards. Here, saving the princess’ would push you in new ways and challenge you in ways that the first 3rd wouldn’t. The 1st third teaches you combat, movement and items. In the 2nd third, it’s actually thinking, trial & error and adventure that gets you through the rest of the game – this is where you‘ll spend the majority of your time in LTTP. A good balance of; here are the tools, play the game and you’ll need your head to play this also. Brute force need not apply here like in some modern day RPG’s Skyrim for instance and was extremely refreshing to have to rely on skill and thought as opposed to leveling up a weapon or grinding to make a damage push.

This I think for me, in terms of style and graphics, is the best example of an old 16bit game still holding up today, it stands the test of time very well. In terms of delivery and relevance it still hits all its marks and numbers. It wasn’t trying to look real, it was trying to tell a story and create a world that would best tell its tale. If this was remade in today’s technology, it wouldn’t be any better of a game; it wouldn’t be any clearer in terms of story or application. This game was created by a team where design, graphics, storytelling hand holding all managed to plateau at the same point and arrive together to bring a perfectly rounded gaming experience. Not one point for me is standout better than anything else. The world was large enough to hold mystery and surprise but small enough to feel manageable and able to manipulate with your actions. Small encounters make the world seem larger than the initial feeling would suggest, Ki Ki the monkey that grants you access into the first Princess dungeon is an example of variety to what is a common procedure of entering new areas. Small bits of programming that could have easily been cut out, make all the difference in the long run. The programming seemed to offer reward for time spent, having to trudge all the way up the river to the waterfall to meet with Zora, only to find out that you needed 500 rupees (which at that point you probably didn’t have) seemed fair and adventuring, then making the trip back later to get the flippers and swim back or investigate all the waterfalls and islands seemed genuinely rewarding. This is before the times of mission icons and overly obvious markers which can sometimes dilute the actual thrill of adventuring. It was a great balance of world, rumours and accessibility.

I hold an extremely fond place in my heart for the whole franchise but more importantly this game. It was something that brought family, excitement, expectation, delivery and reflection on a series and ultimately a whole genre, that I haven't and possibly never will, feel in the same way again.

[Craig]

I played through the regular pea green version of this as a kid and more recently as an adult and it really holds up well. It's a remarkable achievement considering the hardware it was on. Despite the limitations, it still managed to deliver a thrilling and curious world.

Despite how well it has held up when looking at it as a whole, there are still some little but persistent issues that arise due to the original hardware. The limited amount of buttons on the original Gameboy lead to a less than elegant solution of constantly changing the a and b button for items. This really becomes an issue when even items that could have been context sensitive such as the gloves need to be constantly switched. There is an area in the mountains where you need the gloves, feather and Pegasus boots to traverse all within less than a minute which means a lot of opening the menu and changing items.

This becomes more annoying when you accidentally press into something you can pick up or smash into with the Pegasus boots a text box pops up.

Which become infuriating because of the limited size of the screen meaning the text is delivered two lines at a time, and overly verbose. These text boxes annoyed me so much that I would avoid the acorn and triangle power ups because I would have to sit there for a good 10 seconds banging on the a button.

Fundamentally it's a brilliant game. It just has a few issues which in reality don't actually change the way the game plays, but just slowly irritate through the game.

Link's Awakening is like walking on a beautiful beach with a stone in your shoe.

[alastairadon]

Although this isn't my favourite Zelda game it will always hold a special place in my heart as my first Zelda game. And for some reason I have an exceptionally clear memory of the day I picked this title up.

My younger brother had just got a Game Boy for Christmas that year and after playing Super Mario Land to death we were both eager to find something else to play on the system. I can still clearly remember standing in the shop with my brother and mum looking at the various titles on offer. Being quite young and still relatively new to gaming at the time, we really didn't have any idea what we wanted or what games were actually worth spending our pocket money on so the decision was based entirely on what the box cover was like and what the blurb on the back sounded like - such an innocent time!

I can remember being drawn to the gold box and the words on the back - "Koholint Island, a place where dreams and reality collide". Even my mum (who had no interest in games really) commented that it sounded exciting so we made our decision and just like that I started my love affair with Zelda.

The Game itself was a marvel. My only real experience of games up to that point had been some pretty basic Commodore 64 titles and the Super Mario series. I'd never really delved into anything with such a cast of characters, locations and story. I was hooked. I spent hours trying to figure the puzzles out and exploring the dungeons but it was the characters and setting that really resonated with me.

I never finished the game sadly. I can't remember how far I got now but my lack of gaming experience back then eventually led to me getting stuck somewhere in a dungeon and I eventually moved on to other things. Koholint Island stayed with me though. I even started writing my own short stories based on the island and using the characters and locations that I could remember from the game. A few years later I even wrote down and learned how to play the "Mabe Village" theme on Piano (that earworm will never, ever die now!)

I've gone back to it a few times over the years but still never been able to finish it. With so many games competing for my time these days I struggle to make enough time to fully complete these older titles but I will always remember my first steps into the world of Zelda. My fascination with this title meant that when Ocarina of Time was announced years later I followed it's development closely in the gaming mags at the time. But that is a story for another time....