The hero of Hyrule

[gfish]

I just beat Legend of Zelda. Yes, the original. Yes, for the first time. I'm 20 years late, but it's something I've been meaning to do. I did resort to using a walk-through a couple of times. This Google Maps based view was also helpful, but a bit spoilerful.

Overall, I quite liked it. A surprising amount of depth to the world design, for something that could fit on an NES cartridge. It must have been a very frustrating game before emulators and 'save state', though.

Comments

[tommusic.livejournal.com]

I used to subscribe to Nintendo Power magazine, and that had a note somewhere that talked about using the name "Zelda" for your character, and getting to skip to the second quest.

As a result, my entire first play through was on the second quest -- later on when I played the first quest, it felt so foreign and exotic!

[cow.livejournal.com]

You know you're only halfway done with the game, right? :D

[koruja.livejournal.com]

I have the original NES cartridge if you want to play it that way! I love the Zelda series. That game, more so than Mario, is what got me into video games.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

That would be fun, if I had a TV and NES. Back when I had slightly more spare income, I probably would have done it that way, but the emulator worked just fine. :)

I am kind of thinking of getting a USB Nintendo controller, though.

[tnarg42.livejournal.com]

Um, actually, I think Zelda was about the first home cartridge-based game that *did* let you save your state. In fact, *digs in box* I actually still have a copy of Zelda, and a working original NES. I believe it had a lithium battery inside, and I seem to recall that you had to be somewhat careful to prevent the memory from getting wiped out.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

You could save games, sure, but you couldn't save the entire game state to disk, letting you start back up immediately before you died.

W00t!

[avicado.livejournal.com]

Thank you GrendelFish. But our princess is in another castle!

Good thing for the mushroom dudes that Mario didn't have Link's sword when he got to the end of each world, huh?

Try the second quest. It's not quite the same, and is challenging and different enough to let you enjoy the game again even moreso.

This post made me smile, as I had long ago modified my LJ to say "Hero of Legend of Zelda" instead of "Link" on the bottom of each post, making this particular post extremely appropriate.