@400KrispyKremes the map was not complete, at least not the one I got. There was a majority empty space on the grid, it was white so you could draw it in.
I thought about that too, but it's not true you can't play it without that, you could play one single binge session and beat both quests in one sitting. Or, as some of used to do, pause the game, leave the nintendo on, but shut the tv off until you are ready to play again. Only thing is cable tv used channel 3, which the nintendo often did, (not sure about Britain or Australia though) so if someone wanted to watch tv they'd need to turn off the nintendo.
My cartridge’s battery stopped working in the 90’s but if I left the cartridge in the NES and didn’t unplug it or change the game, it would keep the save file working. That was how I finished the game, because I was motivated to finish it so I could play a different game. If my brother took the cartridge out to play a different game I would have to start over, so I had to memorize a lot of the game.
@@Cyclingismywholelife as I understand it, even a battery that is NOT is use will eventually lose it's charge, when you buy insertable batteries at a store they have an expiration date. And, no it's not true if you take the game out of the nintendo that it loses it's charge, we took Zelda out several times and when we put it back in we could load the saves
I was explaining to my 13 year old son how I experienced this game as a kid. You nailed it. New information reached me on the whispers of fellow gamers. Sometimes from friend and often from foe we would spread the word of anything that helped us the previous day. Yes I said foe. I would get lots of precious intel from kids who I hated. My dad played as well but lacked the network of kids at work so he’d often walk into the house after work and say so what did you find out today? This video brought back some memories!
That's so kind, thank zou. Good memories too of how video games would just occasionally build little bridges. I had that experience too. They didn't last long, but sharing tips with the school bully at least let you see each other's humanity for a brief moment. Glad the video brought back memories and thanks too for sharing yours. That's why we're here! 🙂
Odyssey inparticular had an absolutely incredible world full of beautiful scenery and interesting characters. Unfortunately you couldn't do anything with it. With no emergent gameplay and map markers I just ended up taking almost a straight line to where I needed to be, not appreciating the world around me. Still an awesome game, I really enjoyed the story, the combat, and the missions, but it was open world for the sake of padding rather than to provide a true open world experience.
@@TheRetroSofa When a lot of younger programmers in a dev group I'm in ask about open world design, us older guys tend to push them towards learning world building before hand. So many of those kids just made large prodecurally generated worlds where only 5% of the km^2 has something in it, and the rest is just static scenery inbetween. Keep telling them it's not about large open spaces. In fact, size is not a primary attribute of open world, but a secondary and derived element. Open refers to accessibility. Encouraging them to practice making smaller worlds, but filled with interesting and interactable elements. Even programming an environment that undergoes changes depending on plot points and even mundane conditions like time of day or actions. The more two different playthroughs can feel like different experiences the better. The moment a player knows when and where to expect something you lose that "new car smell."
The kid on the playground who spoiled everything was just as much a part of the experience as the internet is today. In fact, game designers counted on it in the early days when there wasn't much room in the code for exposition and hand holding. When games came to the US they had to come up with a way to give rural American kids the same experience and Nintendo Power and the Nintendo Hotline were born.
@@rrudeljr I think I had the one you're talking about. It had a set of stickers in it. Then there were Nintendo Power magazines, game magazines in stores, and game books, often with just text and no screenshots at all, that I used to get from the library.
I justed played this game for the first time in 2024 with no help, guides or discussion with anyone in 2024. Its very possible for people like me who never ever ever look at guides for anything.
@@kevinscovers7171 Doesn't matter at all. I'm not trying to prove a point, just wondering what the experience was like for you. Important thing is you had a good time however you chose to play it.
You are correct about how we played this - my whole neighborhood was on the case. I was maybe 7 or 8. We would play together and separately. Nintendo power helped a little. And all of our hand drawn maps. So many maps. Now I don't need a guide - it's all up in my head - I don't like to think of the knowledge I could have stored there instead. I can practically speed run it these days thanks to all of the secrets I remember.
That's really cool! Sounds like you got the optimal Legend of Zelda experience there and the one we'll never have again. Even my seven year old nephew is on TH-cam watching gameplay videos and one time we played some Super Mario World together and he was telling me where the hidden blocks were!
@@TheRetroSofa Thanks for this video, because until now, I didn't realize that I got the proper 1987 Zelda experience - I never played it on my own before I knew the answers, so I didn't even think about how hard it would have been without the gang.
I still don't understand this argument. I finished this game in the early 90s as an 8 year old with no Nintendo Power, no guides, and no friends to discuss this with. The only things remotely difficult are the "grumble grumble" moment and the final dungeon being outright labyrinthine.
@@thesnare100 It's simple: You try your items where it makes sense to do it. Games nowadays are way too hand-holding, and that numbs players' curiosity and creativity. Games of that era use that logic: you got something, you try something with it where it makes more sense, and sometimes to know where was ''the place that made sense'' it was needed to keep the clues you find on your way. Of course, some games are better than others for that matter. (I beated Castlevania 2 at 12, and that one was cryptic af, but still beatable) But if players are expecting the game to prompt them every time there is something required to do to progress, they will rarely pay attention to hints or try to think by themselves. And under that scenario, if you give them Zelda 1, they will say it is unplayable.
You are spot on! 7 year old me loved this game, and I had indeed never completed level 9 without guidance. But here’s my rebuttal: 43 year old me is starting to forget things! So I have had to roam around again and try to remember where things are. And boom! The magic had returned! I just started a new game 3 days ago, and I’m yet again lost in death mountain!
I can still play the original Zelda to this day without a problem. I just recommend a guide. Yes, the NES game didn't age well compared to later games like A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, or Breath of the Wild, but there's no denying that it was revolutionary for 1986.
Absolutely. My problem though is I followed a step-by-step guide to closely and I think I didn't enjoy it as much because of it. People in the 80's weren't playing it like that.
The original Legend of Zelda, you either had to figure out all this on your own, take a friend who had gotten far in the game's word, or read the manual (which is why that game's manual is a big collector's item) to figure stuff out. Ocarina of Time was also like that for me as it was my first Zelda and I spent literal days trying to figure out the Water and Shadow temples each.
Why cant you just get the game and the manual it came with and just...play the game? Not only that, back in the day game magazines were really popular, and tons of people used the guides Nintendo made themselves in Nintendo Power. I actually just had a similar, pretty pure experience with Metroid and its original manual. I even drew my own map like the manual suggests. I think youre off base on this one.
That's funny because I agree with everything you said. 🙂 Back in the day whether it was friends or magazines we got enough information to draw our own maps and figure it out. These days I'm not going to have the fun of drawing my own map, I'm just going to download a map. Or watch a video. Or if one guide doesn't explain something clearly enough for me to understand rather than expend the energy figuring it out I'll find another guide. And I don't think that's entirely a me problem, I think that's a human problem and unless we're conscious of it we all to some degree ruin our own fun by getting too much information and not enough discovery. The problem is these days that it's very hard to find anything between basically a map with arrows on it telling you screen by screen where to go and "EASTMOST PENNINSULA IS THE SECRET".
@@TheRetroSofa Watch some players play then(Not the ones knowing everything). You will see things they thought and checked that you didn't but also things you got and did that they missed and they made wrong etc. Is similar to watching a friend play and seeing him do things differently and learning from it. Just don't watch after the point you are in a game. I do that when i feel very lost and stuck.
It's very playable. But its mystery is only intact if the player makes an intentional choice not to look at a guide. With one, the mystery is just a "game mechanic", like using the flute at the dry fairy fountain for a dungeon to appear, or blowing open a wall and having to pay a repair fee. Which, if I'm being honest, is the most random thing to encounter in any game.
It's pretty funny though. The problem is if you go in completely blind you're in for a world of frustration. You want some guidance but not all the guidance and I don't know how you do that in 2024.
@@TheRetroSofa I don't think is hard not to look at a guide. You just start playing, actually that is what i do for all my games because i find it no fun trying to follow everything as should be done and not making mistakes etc. Not to mention even more troublesome since i can't just start playing but have to study guides which is no fun when i want to just play. Then am not playing, i am just doing instruction following and the game is ruined because nothing surprising or cool since you expect everything after seeing them on a guide. The frustration issue for me is easily solved. When am stuck somewhere and nothing is happening and i start feeling annoyed i always take a break. Usually when you let some time pass and come back to it with a fresh mind you start having new ideas you could possibly think when you were stuck in your ways and frustrated at the moment. But even if i try again and again a few different times and nothing gets going then i just try to get some tips or see what other players do at that point, not follow a full guide. Even if i get a bad ending or i didn't get everything i could or if i end up not being able to finish and win because i didn't built my character correctly etc is not much of a problem because i consider it a full playthrough since i played as far as my abilities could master and there was no helping it about not getting the ending if i did things wrong at the start. I can just do another playthrough doing things differently. Games are all about trial and error in the end. If you really enjoy playing a game then you don't mind. That is why is important to not play games just because they are popular or they are supposed to be great if you don't enjoy them and just play games that get you going and can't put them down. Some of my most favorite games are games others go "what is that?" or "isn't that just some below average game?". Well i don't care, i got addicted to them and i played them again and again because i loved them. I tried game that were called masterpieces and i felt disappointed if i did anything wrong because it meant i had to play more to get things right. At that moment is when i pause and think "Wait! if hate the idea of the possibility of playing more of this, why am i playing it in the first place?"
The hints came in the form of paying rupees for information to the old men. That's how the game was intended to be played. In link to the past it was called a fortune teller and they had the same equivalent in the nes original. That's how I progressed when I was stuck
I beat the Game the year it was released I was 9 years old at the time no guides or hotline i just explored and tried everything figured out the mechanics pretty quickly it was the first game of its type as far as I knew I was hooked from start to finish i didn't play any other game while i was playing it the only thing i looked at was the manual I'm now 49 and still have fond memories of the game and its still my one favorite game series of all time.
Cool! You're more patient than I am to have done it without hints. I'm not so much and I feel like for me there's a sweet spot inbetween "full walkthrough" and "nothing" where the game is the most enjoyable. It's a great game but like many great things it's worth taking care in how you experience it.
here's the thing I love to play video games for escapism. I'm a 35 year old mom with an incredibly emotionally draining job... I live in Canada where Switch games cost $90 after taxes - that's a significant investment. I love exploring and figuring things out in games.... but I have limited "me" time and If I'm incredibly stuck on beating a monster or can't figure out what to do next... I'm gonna look it up.
Absolutely. In Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe there's an interview with comedian Dara O'Briain where he says games are the only media that lock content you paid for if you're "not good enough". He's right and it's worth looking up. For someone who runs a video game channel I'm pretty bad at video games so I also feel no shame in using cheats, guides, or lower difficulty settings to get the maximum enjoyment out of the limited time and money I have available to spend on gaming. The difference is that you can't get a hint anymore, you can really only get the full solution. Sometimes I don't want a complete dungeon guide, I want "you'll find the item you need in a nearby cave to the north" and that's enough to figure out the rest myself.
this is not a good take at all. Seems people have forgotten how to play games that don't hold your hand. Because a game doesn't hold your hand with markers and maps now doesn't make one that does not have this trash unplayable. randomizers have no real story therefore no point in playing them, I hate randomizers or procedurally generated worlds...just no fun for me at all.
The original Zelda experience is unplayable today, as in you literally cannot play it as kids played it in the 80's. Doesn't mean the game's bad or that markers are inherently good. No shame in playing games for the story. People look for different things in their games and that's great because it just means more games. 🙂
I beat Zelda about 5 years ago for the first time. And did it without following a guide, kind of. I had a friend that I knew wasn't going to play the game himself look up a guide, and when I got too stuck I'd tell him to point me in a direction or give me a vague hit. Still the way I play most games like this. No it's not the exact same, but it is closer. It's not that you can't play it like it was done in the old days, it is that most people will choose not. Which is a shame, but I'm not going to police people on how they play games.
Oh yeah I'm not going to police anyone either. I'm lamenting a way of playing games that you don't get so much any more. Sounds like you found a good friend and a decent imitation of it. Play how you want to play but the problem I have is that what I think is the optimal way to play Legend of Zelda is no longer available to me. But at least we have randomisers. 🙂
@@TheRetroSofa Yeah. I think the biggest difference was back in the day we didn't have a choice, and now you have to actively make that choice. I wouldn't say the old ways are dead, but they are definitely 1000x more difficult to do. Because even if you want to play games that way you kind of need a community that also wants that experience.
I suspect games like Zelda were made so that they could boost the sales of magazines and guides at the time. Also it increased the time to beat games in order to drive more rentals.
We didn't have no "Internet" when I beat this game. I literally had to get hints from friends at school and oddly enough, my Grandma! I never had a strategy guide either. My Grandma also beat "Zelda II: The Adventures of Link" Weeks after it came out😂
The Legend of Zelda was the first Nintendo game I ever beat. None of my friends played it, there were more into sports games. I did have the Nintendo Power issue that goes over the second quest in great detail, and a fairly incomplete map of the first quest. I used graph paper and drew my own for all the parts that were missing. I was around 11 years old by then. Took me a good 2 years to beat the game. No "crew" to help me, and only the bare minimum of guides. I had to figure out a lot of it myself. Including mapping what trees I could burn to open secret doors.
I played these as a kid, grew up with them. There is still a binder of hand drawn maps of the Zelda dungeons with the NES gear packed away that my dad drew as a guide.
I actually ended up starting a new ALttP randomizer run yesterday. I was trying to optimize the run a bit by avoiding the pendants and Agahnim 1, only to realize that Titan's Mitt and Hammer were both in Dark World. 👀 Anyway, my first time playing through the entirety of Zelda 1 actually didn't involve a guide. It was on Switch, and I'd picked up enough hints from the public consciousness over the years that finding the necessities wasn't that much of an issue. I did end up heavily using save states against Ganon, though. I was _not_ in the mood to do that whole thing over and over until I finally succeeded.
I finished the original LoZ as a kid, and knew every hint and trick from friends and kids at school. When I was older I went back to play the 2nd quest blind and had to figure it all out myself. THAT was hard. When I finally found the entrance to dungeon 8 after countless hours of searching, I nearly cried...
Patience definitely rewarded there. Cool that you got the proper Zelda experience as a kid though! I haven't tried the second quest but I am interested in this Tunic game people keep telling me about.
The problem you're describing isn't really an issue with Zelda, but with gaming in the age of information in general. For instance, does anyone organically discover all the crafting recipes in Minecraft? It also comes down to the amount of gaming options available these days. When I was a kid new games were a rare occurrence and I extracted every last drop of gameplay from any game I had even if it sucked. Today there are so many games(and free games) that if someone loses patience they either look at a guide or move on to something else.
I have lately been enjoying this aspect with the Zelda 2 Randomizer. It has randomly generated overworlds and randomly generated palaces using the rooms from the base game and a few community created rooms. When I start I have no idea where anything is located beyond a few rules of what can be placed on what "continent". It can still be on the difficult side of things though.
Sounds cool. I still have to finish base Zelda 2. The only copy I've seen in the wild was in French but soon as I see one in English for a reasonable price I'm snapping it up.
I finished it when I was 10 year old. I discovered that there was an actual real map with came along with the game just a couple years ago. I was the only one between my friends to complete it. ❤
Tunic (a very cryptic zelda-like) has a community that is pretty dedicated to helping people progress without telling them outright and spoiling big surprises and things. I recommend trying Tunic if you haven't. It's one of my all time favorite games, just try to go in as blind as possible.
Yep, it's on my list! I mentioned it in a video a few months back and still haven't got around to it. Thanks for the recommendation. I did not know that about the community and it sounds like just what I'm looking for.
I did everything in it over and over again. I was 11 and 12 though, and we didn't have many games. I had the whole thing memorized by 1989. I like to play through it every couple years or so even though I remember everything. The reason that worked then but wouldn't work now is because there are so many games to play now and there weren't then unless your parents were at least upper-middle class. Any kid in 2024 is never going to spend that kind of time on it. Same thing on Super Mario Bros. The crazy stuff I found on there really says a lot about how much time I had as a kid. That and being a huge nerd.
Agreed. I often lament selling all my old Nintendo games but if I take the time to think about what I had, there weren't that many. We made the most out of what we had back then.
I don't really get your argument. Why specifically THIS game? Why not any other open world game before or after it? Internet didn't spoil just this game it spoiled ANY game. Or rather it spoiled the experience of discovery.
@@TheRetroSofa This isn't true for any games. It is only true for certain people who need hand held to play a game or are incapable of preventing themselves from going and looking up stuff on the internet. The games are just as playable today as they were intended to be as they were when they came out. It is the people that changed.
I played al caslevanias, but zelda is to criptyc for me. I can't get a hold what direction i need to go in or what the next target is. What item i need for what.
I've been playing this game since the '90s but I never actually beat Ganon until just a few years ago. I hadn't touched the game since the early 2000s, but I managed to finish it without a guide considering just how many hours I sunk into the game trying to discover all its secrets. I was the kid who would burn every single bush and bomb many random spots in order to discover all the secrets, and I learned where all the cheaper items were sold, where many of the money gifts were given, and where all the heart containers resided. Unfortunately, I was the only kid as either my friends didn't own Zelda, or they had a Genesis instead, so everything was up to me. The farthest I ever got was halfway through Level 9, so I didn't even know what Ganon looked like. Some of the cryptic stuff still eluded me as a kid; for instance, I didn't realize that the "How would you like to have more bombs?" guy was selling me a bigger bomb bag until that complete playthrough, and I did discover a few more caves. I do understand people these days not having the patience to dump hours into this game, but I feel like if you're looking for a Breath of the Wild type of experience where you play for a couple hours just discovering the world instead of taking a linear trajectory from level to level, you can get a lot out of this game.
Very true. It's not the "original" experience but this game can still give the right kind of person a great experience. Thanks for sharing the memories.
It took me almost six months to find level six of the second quest when I was 5-6 years old. And the breakthrough happened by playing a hunch (recorder lol) at a mysterious area labelled in Nintendo Power... The feeling of elation upon discovering it was indescribable over 30 years ago
Makes me glad that the zelda 1 redux romhack exists, fixes a bunch of bugs, add cracks to walls and slight blemishes to bushes, you can completely beat it guide-free.
same is true for point & click adventure games of the day, it was a lot of fun playing these together with friends, and then discuss each day on the school yard what you found. it was near impossible to finish these without a guide (which we didn't have) or working together and share the solutions.
I remember playing Mircle Warriors on the Master System back in 87-88 and there was this one spot on a land bridge where a skeleton like guard would sit. I could never beat him even tho i came so close. I was too young to understand that I should have been grinding my levels a bit more. I would grind for gold and horns and this would level me but when i got to the land bridge, I had everything I needed up to that point. It wasn't til i got a bit older that I understood what needed to be done and that was with the help of Phantasy Star.
played this back in the 80's (in my mispent 20's) got through it almost with no help. had to go to a BBS for a tip on bombing every available wall to find something before continuing on
I think "randomizing an existing game" is the way to good procedural generated game. Nany GameDevs have problems designing good games for proc gen and tank their project in the process. I think this is a good blueprint to start from.
I watched my dad and friends beat this game and my dad made one of the first walkthroughs ever created on graph paper with all the secrets with many phone calls made to the 1-900 Nintendo hotline before the Internet when you had to pay for information instead of getting it for free.
A Link To The Past and Link's Awakening defined the series. The two NES games are, sadly, in my opinion both just a little *too* broad in scope, and a little *too* cryptic. I wouldn't go as far as to call them unplayable, mechanically they play well enough, but the game design lacks the finesse of the Super NES and Gameboy titles.
The gameplay of both the first Zelda games is pretty solid. The problem is they're hard to get into going blind and if you get a full guide you spoil the experience.
I can’t disagree more with you. If you lived in that time it was complete magic and the community involvement needed to complete the game was basically part of the game.
Actually not a bad take on LoZ. I'd also say that a good way to play it now is really not looking at any guides, getting the print map (or running off a new one), taking notes, and crucially, having a friend who can play through it to ask questions of :P
I beat OG Zelda in 89 at 4-5 years old .. no guides.. no friends.. no manual .. solo.. I can't be the only one .. now 2nd quest.. I gave up on that back then cuz I did play outside also
I started playing this again a few months ago. i just spent 2 days trying to find dungeon # 2 without googling.. could NOT find it. And it turned out that ive been finding ALL squares but not that exact one LUL
Oh man! Easily done though. I feel like A Boy and His Blob got more magazine pages than it warranted. It wasn't a bad game I don't think but it was all over the place in the early 90's like it was some big hitter. I remember always wanting it but never getting it, trying it as an adult and not getting the hype.
I figured this game out enough as a kid to beat the first quest. I don't remember how much I completed, but I got stuck on the 2nd quest. I did beat the game after coming back to it as a teen and using the internet. It never occurred to me to use the flute in random overworld screens until I randomly tried to use it to warp in one of the deser screens and accidentally found a secret. This let me eventually find level 6. I know I never found level 8 because who would think to bomb the wall on the other side of the river.
I had a master system and have only played the original at 30-minute stretches and never got that far in. I did finish the original Gameboy version without any notes or help. I may try the challenge of finishing the original without help.
As a kid who had the original front loading NES, I get your point, but even back then there were guides in bookstores and Nintendo Power. I will grant you it was not the same as it is today, I didn't have access to these myself. I didn't even have the map, my mom threw it out lol. There was something about talking about it at school to try to figure it out. I even remember drawing the screens on graph paper and making this big, crude map with hand written notes all over it, including enemy spawns.
Original Metroid would be a similar experience I think. I beat it with a guide recently and time after time thought “I never would have figured that out on my own”
My mother was into this game and bought a book of video game guides solely because it had this game in it XD Even then we needed guides. They just weren’t as easy to acquire.
Yeah and if you got one guide but one bit wasn't well-explained or you didn't understand it, well that was your guide. You probably weren't buying another one. Nowadays you can just pop on TH-cam and watch the whole game start to finish with 100% collection.
My first time playing Majora's Mask I got frustrated by the time mechanic and gave up. Then I re-played it on 3DS and now it's one of my favourite Zelda games of all time and same as you I went in blind. I think the quality-of-life updates of the 3DS remake made it easier to get into.
I remember bombing every wall and burning every tree, while all my friends were outside burning actual trees out of frustration.. but I did end up beating it. 🤘
I think that Minecraft has some connection to this - It's the only game in recent memory that had it's own wiki as an instruction manual, which everyone either needed to use, or learn bit-by-bit from watching videos online.
All my favourite streamers are all over it! I'll probably give it a try at some point but I feel like I've already missed the boat for making videos about it.
I remember we had no idea why we couldn't take the white sword in 1987 (you must know why by now), when we finally got it, we were like "How were we able to pick it up this time?" How ecstatic we were when we killed Aquamentus in level 1 and got this shiny triangle thing. I never knew the north, west, south, west path meant you could use it to get through the lost woods. But, if I had done it I probably would have wasted by the Lionell's (I think they're the hardest overland enemy) It's too bad some of the Japanese version stuff was mistranslated and made it into the English version, or didn't belong in it (such as pols voice hates loud noise, with the American NES having no microphone and you wondering why the whistle did nothing to them) East most pennisula I'm not what was supposed to mean, except the North East corner of the overworld.
The translation quality certainly wasn't great and only served to make the game more obtuse than even the original in some ways. Thanks for sharing your memories though. I don't know if I ever even beat Aquamentus when I was a kid. I probably just had a few goes at the first dungeon then went back to Mario to be honest!
Story time? The only time my mom was ever a gamer was for dragon warrior on the nes, she had a notebook full of notes and hints, she went from 0 knowledge, to absolutely figuring out the game from start to finish, nothing other then her drive to finish it all. I only ever finished that game because of her notebook. My first strategy guide, if only I could have got her to figure out Zelda for me too.
Thanks, that is a great story. Maybe there's something to the idea that non-gamers will have more patience to figure out an experience like this because if you're figuring out gaming as a whole, what's the difference? I don't know. Your mom's cool anyway.
@@TheRetroSofa yea she’s awesome, and how the hell she ever figured out where that flute in the damaging swamp is before internet or strategy guides is beyond me lol.
Your view is flawed. Just because you have all the information about the game available doesn't mean that you _must_ play the game using it. You can just try to explore the game on your own as far as you can until you can't figure out how to advance, and _then_ look up the answer to that from Internet and continue exploring without any additional information. That's what I did when I played it for the first time. So, not unplayable.
I played and finished the game myself with no help from friends in 1988 when i was 11, and then I discovered the second quest. It's not as hard as people make it out to be. I will admit having problems with Zelda 2 though.
Actually, I finished the game as a kid and did not have a guide. Later, when I got a guide, I learned that I missed a lot of useful secrets, that I didn't do things in the correct order, and that I could have replayed the game on a higher difficulty, because once you finish it, the game restarts at the beginning, but this time it's much harder (I thought it just looped, how on earth would I have known that?). All you had to do was keep exploring the world and keep trying to find the next dungeon. I have to admit that I got stuck a few times as some dungeons were super hard to find and there was no progress for weeks. I was just running around and getting more and more annoyed and in the end I only managed to find them because I started doing all kinds of crazy shit out of sheer frustration, but apparently that's how you have to play the game without a guide. You have to start burning stuff, play the flute in every screen, try to bomb every wall, try to run through walls and rocks, or you have to find all the clues and be very good at deciphering them (I wasn't good at the latter and didn't even manage to find most of the clues).
I will never forget. I had link to the past for SNES. I was stuck. My friend came over and showed me where to dig up the flute. If he didn't show me that. I would have been stuck for quite a while
A more modern example of this kind of thing from the internet age is that Demon's Souls and the very early days of Dark Souls were a lot like this too. That was a huge part of their appeal back when they were new. A lot of their reputation for brutal difficulty just comes from people not knowing how to get powerful because the systems around stats and equipment were so obscure. Now there are so many resources available online that you can pretty much trivialize those games if you look everything up. The only problem with that is that lots of people online will tell you that if you don't run around in your underwear bonking everything with a big stick you're playing the game wrong, but if you ignore them and accept that sometimes the game's just going to kill you to teach you something and that's not a big deal, then if you look everything up the games are pretty easy. If you try to play completely blind you will miss a lot though. It's basically impossible to experience what it was like back in 2011 when we were all sharing scraps of knowledge online, and now these games are so popular that even when they release a new one it only takes a couple days for the community to figure basically everything out. Of course, once you've really learned one Fromsoft game going through the rest blind is pretty fun. They're similar enough that the differences are usually things you can figure out, but first getting into them is just not the same as it was in the early days. There are randomizers, and they are fun, but the real knowledge checks are game systems, not progression, so it's not as good of a substitute.
I really did try Elden Ring but the systems were a little too obscure for me so I looked stuff up and then I was crouching in a hole slashing at a dragon from such a weird angle that I could no longer see it but it couldn't hit me and then I thought "what am I doing" and went and played something else. What I wanted was someone to explain to me just a little bit what I needed to do to get started and get a feel for the game mechanics but all the guides are about minmaxxing your way to ultimate power as soon as possible and, tempting as that sounds, it's not the most fun way to play.
@@TheRetroSofa Yeah, I wish I could just explain everything you need to know in a single TH-cam post, but the problem is the ways it's too obtuse are different for everyone. There really can't be a one size fits all solution that gets everyone started without just turning into an overpowered guide. Elden Ring is a little easier than the previous games just because there's so much of it that just going all over the place doing as much as you can will level you to the point that you brute force your way through the early bits until you've had the time for things to start making sense, but other than that the only things I could say that might be useful are super vague things like the stat that raises HP is really good. Not exactly rocket science there, and it's hard not to get into the weeds of minmaxing once you try to get past that. I dunno. Sometimes people find that after a bad first experience with a Fromsoft game they try a different one, or wait a few years and come back, and suddenly everything clicks. Sometimes it just never works for some people though, and as much as I love the games, I totally get it.
Zelda was the game that truly took me on an adventure as a 9 year old kid and yes a bombed every stone wall and burned every possible bush. 😅😅❤. I sometimes forget how special that game was to me.
It's an incredibly special game and I'm lucky to have memories of it from when I was a kid as well. It was my nan's cartridge so I could only play it when we visited her. Maybe if I'd taken it home I'd have had more time to get into it.
Nintendo themselves acknowledged the problems with original Zelda's cryptic nature and redesigned the gameplay loop for the next games in a way that creates illusion of free exploration, while actually allowing you to always progress in a single main direction (throwing couple of side-quests here and there to support the illusion of freedom).
So it could be completed either collaboratively or alone. With friends and in my case family, we literally banged our heads against it until we beat it into submission, however, there was another way. Another method, with which to defeat Ganon, that did not require an inquisitive nature and two good friends... One only needed the power.... Nintendo Power.
I didn't finish the game past the second dungeon (there was a supplemental map in the game box). I just found it too hard to move around in the overworld to explore. I never did figure out how to consistently stab an enemy without taking damage myself. The sword was so short and was out so little. So as soon as I lost sword beams, it was always only a matter of time before I died.
@@TheRetroSofa Forgot to mention: dying was less of a problem in the dungeons. But resetting me back to that one place in the over world was hard. My first Zelda was actually Link's Awakening, with the sword that slashed diagonally and stayed out, and saved your place. That one I did get stuck on for a little while (Figuring out how to get into dungeon 4 since you had to jump from a screen transition). But I eventually beat it, despite dying hundreds of times.
This got my attention because I literally replayed this game earlier this year (not gonna lie, beat it hella fast - felt like it took forever when I was a kid)
Dude I played the game back in the day without any help or a guide, all I had was the manual and the quickstart guide. I'm sorry you couldn't figure it out.
Others have said it in one form or anther below but I remember bombing every wall, marking that map we got in the box. I used legos as a template and made my own maps I beat this game without any guides when it was out. I think the real reason today is most kids/people don't have the patience or focus to just sit there and burn every bush every where or bomb every wall. Just to explore every screen/room and see what was hidden. (I lost a TONE of ruppies on damn door repairs tell you what...) Also now-a-days you have a "game pass" (names vary) but you can do that and have access to what, a 100+ games. I had this game. That was what I had for more than a few months. Same with FF1 That was my Christmas present. I played that until March where I had a shot at getting a new game.They want faster gratification. I still have the picture my step mother took of the TV end screen of the second quest showing 0 deaths. ran both quests one life. I also remember beating it with no ring just to see Zelda in a green dress. (memory limitations base her dress on Links color. So blue ring she is white and blue, red she is red, and as I said no ring = green Link = green Zelda) I was also the little boy no one liked so this was all I had.
I think the point about having fewer games then than now is a really good one and I wish I'd thought of it making this video because it's certainly a big part of it. I think you were still more patient than I was, but that's at least partly a "me" problem. 😉
Nintendo Power magazine printed a map to the Legend of Zelda and that helped me get through the game! I didn't look at any guides or hints or anything, I just used the map and explored.
Yeah, that's it! You had a little bit of help in the form of the map, but not so much that it spoiled the experience of discovery. Sounds like a good time.
@@TheRetroSofa The Nintendo Power article dealt with the 2nd Quest, and that wasn't released until July/August of 1988 two years after the game was released. Most people had beat the game the first time through and didn't realize that you could play a second quest, which was why the fact that you could use the name Zelda to go straight to the second quest was revealed then as well. The majority of the people mentioning problems and things like Nintendo Power were beating it after a lot was known. I think what people today don't grasp or remember, is that back then people were able to navigate themselves better than they are today. An 8x16 grid was not that difficult to remember. Any kind of town, even small ones typically were larger than that and we did perfectly fine getting around to our friend's houses. Today however, people don't bother to learn how to remember how to get somewhere, they let their phones do it all for them. Honestly, today most people let their phones think for them. No discovery is being spoiled unless you actively choose to spoil it. The only way that the first Zelda game can be spoiled is if you actively choose for it to be spoiled for you.
I beat this game at the age of 8 over the course of a summer... and yes both quests. I had no friends that also played (they were either still on their parent's Atari or were more into SMS). I wasn't subscribed to Nintendo Power and I didn't have a Nintendo Atlas. It was the first game I ever beat growing up.
Well done. Sounds like a great summer. I think the time and patience we had as kids is another topic I could have gone into with this video but I think if I give my seven-year-old nephew The Legend of Zelda as his first Zelda game he won't fall in love with the series.
The opposite of this is the classic roguelike ... stuff like the original Rogue, Moria, and Nethack. They have random layouts and even randomized items every play. The original programmer wanted to be able to play his own game without already knowing all its secrets. But it could be really cool to make the classic roguelike more of a shared experience. The game world would be pseudo-randomly generated by an input string, so you could share your exploration experience with a number of other people playing the same game world.
That would be cool. I don't know much about modern roguelikes, I think the last one I played for any amount of time was Nethack, so maybe there are some that have a multiplayer element like that. I'm seeing the A Link To The Past-based roguelike is the new hotness so might check that out at some point but I can't imagine I'll enjoy it more than randomiser.
They had Nintendo Power that put out Tips and tricks and guides. I had to use the map that came with the game and a couple of the tips for that they put out in Nintendo Power. I think they even put out a walk through for it.
I put that game away for many years. I then bought a Nes mini even though I had it for original hardware still. Needless to say, I couldn't remember where the shield and sword were, or how to dispatch certain enemies. So it was newish. Some games I bought and am still completing them years after the fact. I don't have to return them to the rental store after all. You might forget some of your progress even with a game save after some months go by. I don't like cheaters guides because they insult a persons intelligence.
Thanks and good luck! I don't know your situation obviously but I understand the first step's the hardest and I believe anyone who takes it can take the rest too. I don't know you, but I believe in you!
This game is very playable. And I have a port on my phone throu an emulator. Which I conquered both quests recently. Partially from memory from my original 1986 game I had when I was 6.
I’m playing Metroid prime remastered and using a guide. I gave up years ago after putting in two or so hours in the phazon mines without a save and dying and I can’t do that again 😂 What do you think of a Link between Worlds and the ‘renting’ system?
Put me off at first but turned out to work really well, adding consequence to failure in a unique and interesting way. I finished Metroid Prime recently and I'm slowly making my way through Prime 2. Prime 2 seems a bit easier to find your own way around. I definitely looked up a few Chozo artefacts when I was going through the first game.
Aw man. Don't worry about it. I sold or gave away almost all the games I had when I was a kid. You can't let it haunt you. Find cool new things and gradually replace the stuff that matters to you.
So randomizers are nice but i think what Maximillion Dood did is extremely close if not spot on. He played on twitch but chat was not allowed to tell him anything. He was allowed 2 calls to friends the equivelent of phone a friend. He was allowed to look at the map that came with the game once for like 2 min and try and figure what if anything he could from there. He was allowed to use an old Nintendo Guide physical not digitial again 2 min interval. Finally he was allowed to use twitch chat once... for one question. Half way through the game he had run out of hints and it was amusing to see him sweat it out and figure out the game realising he had hit some challenging walls and had no clues left. Ah but did he hear about it Not really max doesnt follow zelda so to him it was completely new experince and in that i envy him becuase few people have not heard of the nes zelda. I do think that modern players need to have some self control in how much information they allow themselves to recieve before playing in order to actually enjoy the game with an exploration focus. I dont believe its 100 percent the owneness is on the game developer . I do agree however that the devs need to build towards more controlled variables and secrets in open world games. a good open world should feel more like a series of rivers and less like a giant pond. thats my thoughts good video but i dont think its as hard if both the player and the dev respect the medium.
Thanks for commenting. I respect your opinion on this and if you're lucky enough to have the kind of community Max has then you can emulate the kind of thing I'm talking about. Self-control is an interesting point. i *think* (and I'm correction on this) that just knowing the information is available changes how you feel about the game. If you're stuck on a frustrating part and pushing through, knowing the shortcut is available makes us less patient than we were in the 80's. That's my theory. Even so, like, self-control is hard and I'm playing games to have fun not to learn self-control. There are downsides to just the information being there and being available whether you use it or not. But I do agree that putting some thought into how you want to approach a game like Zelda and maybe finding creative ways to get the best out of it is absolutely better than just throwing yourself in blind or opening up a guide. It's a great game and should be enjoyed. I have watched some of Max's videos and I even remember watching a bit of this challenge, though I'd forgotten about it until you mentioned it. It's a brilliant idea but it shows the difficulties in coming up with restrictions yourself for a challenge when you don't really know what the challenge is. I think anyone who was familiar with The Legend of Zelda would have at least given him more map time, you know?
@@TheRetroSofa Thank you for your time and respect, Also yes 100 i really think he should have given himself more map time. Glad that you agree that if a persons willing to put a little bit of preparation and thought into how they approach the game they can experience the game rather close to what it was during release.
you can still kinda do it, if download zelda classic and then a custom quest that there is zero guide out there for, theres lots i coulkdent beat i want to try again but there are SO MEANY i CANT remember the name so cant even TRY again.
Wait till the apocalypse, we end up in a new Dark age with barely any electrical infrastructure and suddenly, someone accidentally digs up a sealed copy of LoZ and an NES.
You'd need a replacement cartridge connector before you finish the game and who's selling those post-apocalypse? The zombies? Otherwise it's a solid plan and I say we go for it.
I still have my family’s SNES from back in the 90’s along with our copy of Zelda. I was never able to beat it because I struggled with reading and writing when I was a kid back then and I didn’t really have any friends to help me figure it out. I was finally able too beat it back in late 2019 but I had to use TH-cam to help me get around and figure things out a lot. I got Legend of Zelda Links Awakening for the GameBoy like 3 years ago and I still haven’t beaten it. Theses kind of games are not easy to play
I think it's okay to use whatever tools you have to see more of the game and enjoy it how you want to enjoy it. One of those options though used to be hints in gaming magazines and sadly those are long gone now. If you get chance, it's worth playing through Link's Awakening to the end. I can definitely recommend the Switch remake. It gives the game a bit of polish and not having to constantly swap out your sword makes it more playable.
9 year old me bombed every wall and burned every tree. No friend help or guide. My friends played sports titles.
Me too. I was surprised the first time I was "fined" by the NPC, then annoyed by how many were around.
The game came with a whole ass map man. lol
@400KrispyKremes the map was not complete, at least not the one I got. There was a majority empty space on the grid, it was white so you could draw it in.
@@jeffdavis6657 He said, "No Help". Not "some" help.
Ahh, when I had free time to do that.
I thought this was going to be about how the save function no longer works on old cartridges without a battery replacement.
I've been pretty lucky with that. I'm afraid to turn on my Pokemon Yellow though. Got some Schrödinger's Pokemon in there.
I thought about that too, but it's not true you can't play it without that, you could play one single binge session and beat both quests in one sitting. Or, as some of used to do, pause the game, leave the nintendo on, but shut the tv off until you are ready to play again. Only thing is cable tv used channel 3, which the nintendo often did, (not sure about Britain or Australia though) so if someone wanted to watch tv they'd need to turn off the nintendo.
@@thesnare100 The UK had a specific channel for connected devices. 36, I think?
My cartridge’s battery stopped working in the 90’s but if I left the cartridge in the NES and didn’t unplug it or change the game, it would keep the save file working. That was how I finished the game, because I was motivated to finish it so I could play a different game. If my brother took the cartridge out to play a different game I would have to start over, so I had to memorize a lot of the game.
@@Cyclingismywholelife as I understand it, even a battery that is NOT is use will eventually lose it's charge, when you buy insertable batteries at a store they have an expiration date.
And, no it's not true if you take the game out of the nintendo that it loses it's charge, we took Zelda out several times and when we put it back in we could load the saves
I was explaining to my 13 year old son how I experienced this game as a kid. You nailed it. New information reached me on the whispers of fellow gamers. Sometimes from friend and often from foe we would spread the word of anything that helped us the previous day. Yes I said foe. I would get lots of precious intel from kids who I hated. My dad played as well but lacked the network of kids at work so he’d often walk into the house after work and say so what did you find out today? This video brought back some memories!
That's so kind, thank zou. Good memories too of how video games would just occasionally build little bridges. I had that experience too. They didn't last long, but sharing tips with the school bully at least let you see each other's humanity for a brief moment. Glad the video brought back memories and thanks too for sharing yours. That's why we're here! 🙂
Your point about Assassin's Creed is spot on. Open world games that don't understand why they're open world are universally the worst.
Odyssey inparticular had an absolutely incredible world full of beautiful scenery and interesting characters. Unfortunately you couldn't do anything with it. With no emergent gameplay and map markers I just ended up taking almost a straight line to where I needed to be, not appreciating the world around me. Still an awesome game, I really enjoyed the story, the combat, and the missions, but it was open world for the sake of padding rather than to provide a true open world experience.
@@TheRetroSofa When a lot of younger programmers in a dev group I'm in ask about open world design, us older guys tend to push them towards learning world building before hand. So many of those kids just made large prodecurally generated worlds where only 5% of the km^2 has something in it, and the rest is just static scenery inbetween. Keep telling them it's not about large open spaces. In fact, size is not a primary attribute of open world, but a secondary and derived element. Open refers to accessibility. Encouraging them to practice making smaller worlds, but filled with interesting and interactable elements. Even programming an environment that undergoes changes depending on plot points and even mundane conditions like time of day or actions. The more two different playthroughs can feel like different experiences the better. The moment a player knows when and where to expect something you lose that "new car smell."
And that's why games like GTA, BOTW, and TOTK win.
The kid on the playground who spoiled everything was just as much a part of the experience as the internet is today. In fact, game designers counted on it in the early days when there wasn't much room in the code for exposition and hand holding. When games came to the US they had to come up with a way to give rural American kids the same experience and Nintendo Power and the Nintendo Hotline were born.
I couldn't find proof but I think you're right and they designed around the playground. Well put!
@@TheRetroSofamiyamoto quote about tower of druaga
plus people had strategy guides from the store.
@@TheRetroSofa they also had the old big black strategy guide that covered lots of Nintendo games.
@@rrudeljr I think I had the one you're talking about. It had a set of stickers in it. Then there were Nintendo Power magazines, game magazines in stores, and game books, often with just text and no screenshots at all, that I used to get from the library.
I justed played this game for the first time in 2024 with no help, guides or discussion with anyone in 2024. Its very possible for people like me who never ever ever look at guides for anything.
Good job! How long did it take you?
@@TheRetroSofadoes that matter if had fun? Some people ENJOY the search, the journey….the learning on their own
I played it when I was eight, 1996. I am sure you got the actual experience the game was developed for. 😌🙌🏼
Pics or it didn't happen.
@@kevinscovers7171 Doesn't matter at all. I'm not trying to prove a point, just wondering what the experience was like for you. Important thing is you had a good time however you chose to play it.
You are correct about how we played this - my whole neighborhood was on the case. I was maybe 7 or 8. We would play together and separately. Nintendo power helped a little. And all of our hand drawn maps. So many maps.
Now I don't need a guide - it's all up in my head - I don't like to think of the knowledge I could have stored there instead. I can practically speed run it these days thanks to all of the secrets I remember.
That's really cool! Sounds like you got the optimal Legend of Zelda experience there and the one we'll never have again. Even my seven year old nephew is on TH-cam watching gameplay videos and one time we played some Super Mario World together and he was telling me where the hidden blocks were!
@@TheRetroSofa Thanks for this video, because until now, I didn't realize that I got the proper 1987 Zelda experience - I never played it on my own before I knew the answers, so I didn't even think about how hard it would have been without the gang.
Heh. Your experience sounds pretty cool. A lot different to my rural Australian one (except for the maps!)... 😅
I still don't understand this argument. I finished this game in the early 90s as an 8 year old with no Nintendo Power, no guides, and no friends to discuss this with. The only things remotely difficult are the "grumble grumble" moment and the final dungeon being outright labyrinthine.
Well done! Our experiences were different but that's okay. Some people have a lot more patience than I do.
how would you/did know you could burn bushes/bomb walls, and play the recorder to reveal things?
And did you finish the second quest, too?
@@thesnare100 It's simple: You try your items where it makes sense to do it.
Games nowadays are way too hand-holding, and that numbs players' curiosity and creativity.
Games of that era use that logic: you got something, you try something with it where it makes more sense, and sometimes to know where was ''the place that made sense'' it was needed to keep the clues you find on your way. Of course, some games are better than others for that matter. (I beated Castlevania 2 at 12, and that one was cryptic af, but still beatable)
But if players are expecting the game to prompt them every time there is something required to do to progress, they will rarely pay attention to hints or try to think by themselves. And under that scenario, if you give them Zelda 1, they will say it is unplayable.
Dodongo dislikes smoke
@@randylivengood3112yeah and the bomb explosion generated multiple clouds of smoke.
You are spot on! 7 year old me loved this game, and I had indeed never completed level 9 without guidance. But here’s my rebuttal:
43 year old me is starting to forget things! So I have had to roam around again and try to remember where things are. And boom! The magic had returned! I just started a new game 3 days ago, and I’m yet again lost in death mountain!
Thanks! I'm glad you're getting to experience it again and enjoying the magic.
I can still play the original Zelda to this day without a problem. I just recommend a guide. Yes, the NES game didn't age well compared to later games like A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, or Breath of the Wild, but there's no denying that it was revolutionary for 1986.
Absolutely. My problem though is I followed a step-by-step guide to closely and I think I didn't enjoy it as much because of it. People in the 80's weren't playing it like that.
The original Legend of Zelda, you either had to figure out all this on your own, take a friend who had gotten far in the game's word, or read the manual (which is why that game's manual is a big collector's item) to figure stuff out. Ocarina of Time was also like that for me as it was my first Zelda and I spent literal days trying to figure out the Water and Shadow temples each.
The Water Temple was a nightmare for me to figure out too. 🌊🏛🤯
Why cant you just get the game and the manual it came with and just...play the game? Not only that, back in the day game magazines were really popular, and tons of people used the guides Nintendo made themselves in Nintendo Power. I actually just had a similar, pretty pure experience with Metroid and its original manual. I even drew my own map like the manual suggests. I think youre off base on this one.
That's funny because I agree with everything you said. 🙂
Back in the day whether it was friends or magazines we got enough information to draw our own maps and figure it out. These days I'm not going to have the fun of drawing my own map, I'm just going to download a map. Or watch a video. Or if one guide doesn't explain something clearly enough for me to understand rather than expend the energy figuring it out I'll find another guide. And I don't think that's entirely a me problem, I think that's a human problem and unless we're conscious of it we all to some degree ruin our own fun by getting too much information and not enough discovery. The problem is these days that it's very hard to find anything between basically a map with arrows on it telling you screen by screen where to go and "EASTMOST PENNINSULA IS THE SECRET".
@@TheRetroSofa Watch some players play then(Not the ones knowing everything). You will see things they thought and checked that you didn't but also things you got and did that they missed and they made wrong etc. Is similar to watching a friend play and seeing him do things differently and learning from it.
Just don't watch after the point you are in a game.
I do that when i feel very lost and stuck.
It's very playable. But its mystery is only intact if the player makes an intentional choice not to look at a guide. With one, the mystery is just a "game mechanic", like using the flute at the dry fairy fountain for a dungeon to appear, or blowing open a wall and having to pay a repair fee. Which, if I'm being honest, is the most random thing to encounter in any game.
It's pretty funny though. The problem is if you go in completely blind you're in for a world of frustration. You want some guidance but not all the guidance and I don't know how you do that in 2024.
@@TheRetroSofa I wondered why hint books back then were called "hint" books when they were blown 100% spoiler books
@@TheRetroSofa I don't think is hard not to look at a guide. You just start playing, actually that is what i do for all my games because i find it no fun trying to follow everything as should be done and not making mistakes etc. Not to mention even more troublesome since i can't just start playing but have to study guides which is no fun when i want to just play.
Then am not playing, i am just doing instruction following and the game is ruined because nothing surprising or cool since you expect everything after seeing them on a guide.
The frustration issue for me is easily solved. When am stuck somewhere and nothing is happening and i start feeling annoyed i always take a break. Usually when you let some time pass and come back to it with a fresh mind you start having new ideas you could possibly think when you were stuck in your ways and frustrated at the moment.
But even if i try again and again a few different times and nothing gets going then i just try to get some tips or see what other players do at that point, not follow a full guide.
Even if i get a bad ending or i didn't get everything i could or if i end up not being able to finish and win because i didn't built my character correctly etc is not much of a problem because i consider it a full playthrough since i played as far as my abilities could master and there was no helping it about not getting the ending if i did things wrong at the start.
I can just do another playthrough doing things differently. Games are all about trial and error in the end. If you really enjoy playing a game then you don't mind. That is why is important to not play games just because they are popular or they are supposed to be great if you don't enjoy them and just play games that get you going and can't put them down.
Some of my most favorite games are games others go "what is that?" or "isn't that just some below average game?". Well i don't care, i got addicted to them and i played them again and again because i loved them. I tried game that were called masterpieces and i felt disappointed if i did anything wrong because it meant i had to play more to get things right.
At that moment is when i pause and think "Wait! if hate the idea of the possibility of playing more of this, why am i playing it in the first place?"
@@TheRetroSofa Not at all true. Anyone who actually played the game when it was actually new knows that it wasn't actually frustrating.
The hints came in the form of paying rupees for information to the old men. That's how the game was intended to be played. In link to the past it was called a fortune teller and they had the same equivalent in the nes original. That's how I progressed when I was stuck
I beat the Game the year it was released I was 9 years old at the time no guides or hotline i just explored and tried everything figured out the mechanics pretty quickly it was the first game of its type as far as I knew I was hooked from start to finish i didn't play any other game while i was playing it the only thing i looked at was the manual I'm now 49 and still have fond memories of the game and its still my one favorite game series of all time.
Cool! You're more patient than I am to have done it without hints. I'm not so much and I feel like for me there's a sweet spot inbetween "full walkthrough" and "nothing" where the game is the most enjoyable. It's a great game but like many great things it's worth taking care in how you experience it.
here's the thing
I love to play video games for escapism. I'm a 35 year old mom with an incredibly emotionally draining job... I live in Canada where Switch games cost $90 after taxes - that's a significant investment. I love exploring and figuring things out in games.... but I have limited "me" time and If I'm incredibly stuck on beating a monster or can't figure out what to do next... I'm gonna look it up.
Same, nothing wrong with that if you’ve given it a solid try first 😊
Absolutely. In Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe there's an interview with comedian Dara O'Briain where he says games are the only media that lock content you paid for if you're "not good enough". He's right and it's worth looking up. For someone who runs a video game channel I'm pretty bad at video games so I also feel no shame in using cheats, guides, or lower difficulty settings to get the maximum enjoyment out of the limited time and money I have available to spend on gaming. The difference is that you can't get a hint anymore, you can really only get the full solution. Sometimes I don't want a complete dungeon guide, I want "you'll find the item you need in a nearby cave to the north" and that's enough to figure out the rest myself.
Same! I, too, play games for escapism. Sometimes, it's just nice to leave the real world behind for a little bit.
*I replay 1986 Zelda, and A Link to the Past on my Samsung Tab S9, all the time. I use an 8bitdo PRO 2 controller via bluetooth and a WAAAAY we go.*
Randomizers are one of the best things that ever happened to video games.
this is not a good take at all. Seems people have forgotten how to play games that don't hold your hand. Because a game doesn't hold your hand with markers and maps now doesn't make one that does not have this trash unplayable. randomizers have no real story therefore no point in playing them, I hate randomizers or procedurally generated worlds...just no fun for me at all.
The original Zelda experience is unplayable today, as in you literally cannot play it as kids played it in the 80's. Doesn't mean the game's bad or that markers are inherently good. No shame in playing games for the story. People look for different things in their games and that's great because it just means more games. 🙂
I beat Zelda about 5 years ago for the first time. And did it without following a guide, kind of. I had a friend that I knew wasn't going to play the game himself look up a guide, and when I got too stuck I'd tell him to point me in a direction or give me a vague hit. Still the way I play most games like this. No it's not the exact same, but it is closer.
It's not that you can't play it like it was done in the old days, it is that most people will choose not. Which is a shame, but I'm not going to police people on how they play games.
Oh yeah I'm not going to police anyone either. I'm lamenting a way of playing games that you don't get so much any more. Sounds like you found a good friend and a decent imitation of it. Play how you want to play but the problem I have is that what I think is the optimal way to play Legend of Zelda is no longer available to me. But at least we have randomisers. 🙂
@@TheRetroSofa Yeah. I think the biggest difference was back in the day we didn't have a choice, and now you have to actively make that choice. I wouldn't say the old ways are dead, but they are definitely 1000x more difficult to do. Because even if you want to play games that way you kind of need a community that also wants that experience.
1:58 had me dying😂😂😂
I suspect games like Zelda were made so that they could boost the sales of magazines and guides at the time. Also it increased the time to beat games in order to drive more rentals.
We didn't have no "Internet" when I beat this game. I literally had to get hints from friends at school and oddly enough, my Grandma! I never had a strategy guide either. My Grandma also beat "Zelda II: The Adventures of Link" Weeks after it came out😂
The Legend of Zelda was the first Nintendo game I ever beat. None of my friends played it, there were more into sports games. I did have the Nintendo Power issue that goes over the second quest in great detail, and a fairly incomplete map of the first quest. I used graph paper and drew my own for all the parts that were missing. I was around 11 years old by then. Took me a good 2 years to beat the game. No "crew" to help me, and only the bare minimum of guides. I had to figure out a lot of it myself. Including mapping what trees I could burn to open secret doors.
I played these as a kid, grew up with them. There is still a binder of hand drawn maps of the Zelda dungeons with the NES gear packed away that my dad drew as a guide.
This isn't the first comment I've seen where dad drew a map and I just think that's really sweet.
I actually ended up starting a new ALttP randomizer run yesterday. I was trying to optimize the run a bit by avoiding the pendants and Agahnim 1, only to realize that Titan's Mitt and Hammer were both in Dark World. 👀
Anyway, my first time playing through the entirety of Zelda 1 actually didn't involve a guide. It was on Switch, and I'd picked up enough hints from the public consciousness over the years that finding the necessities wasn't that much of an issue.
I did end up heavily using save states against Ganon, though. I was _not_ in the mood to do that whole thing over and over until I finally succeeded.
For me it was ocarina of time, chatting with my friends at lunch “what do you do with the deku stick?”
I finished the original LoZ as a kid, and knew every hint and trick from friends and kids at school. When I was older I went back to play the 2nd quest blind and had to figure it all out myself. THAT was hard. When I finally found the entrance to dungeon 8 after countless hours of searching, I nearly cried...
Patience definitely rewarded there. Cool that you got the proper Zelda experience as a kid though! I haven't tried the second quest but I am interested in this Tunic game people keep telling me about.
Finding level 8 in the second quest wasn't too bad for me as I stumbled upon it while looking for level 6... THAT took me almost six months to find...
The problem you're describing isn't really an issue with Zelda, but with gaming in the age of information in general. For instance, does anyone organically discover all the crafting recipes in Minecraft? It also comes down to the amount of gaming options available these days. When I was a kid new games were a rare occurrence and I extracted every last drop of gameplay from any game I had even if it sucked. Today there are so many games(and free games) that if someone loses patience they either look at a guide or move on to something else.
Very true. Zelda is an example but there are many.
Congratulations on channel monetization. Subscribed due to the DOOM SNES video AKA day one.
Thanks, and thanks for sticking around!
I have lately been enjoying this aspect with the Zelda 2 Randomizer. It has randomly generated overworlds and randomly generated palaces using the rooms from the base game and a few community created rooms. When I start I have no idea where anything is located beyond a few rules of what can be placed on what "continent". It can still be on the difficult side of things though.
Sounds cool. I still have to finish base Zelda 2. The only copy I've seen in the wild was in French but soon as I see one in English for a reasonable price I'm snapping it up.
I finished it when I was 10 year old. I discovered that there was an actual real map with came along with the game just a couple years ago. I was the only one between my friends to complete it. ❤
My brother still has the maps we made that show which trees to burn, rocks to move, etc.
That's so cool. I love the family maps. I didn't know it was a thing when I made the video but of course it is.
Tunic (a very cryptic zelda-like) has a community that is pretty dedicated to helping people progress without telling them outright and spoiling big surprises and things. I recommend trying Tunic if you haven't. It's one of my all time favorite games, just try to go in as blind as possible.
Yep, it's on my list! I mentioned it in a video a few months back and still haven't got around to it. Thanks for the recommendation. I did not know that about the community and it sounds like just what I'm looking for.
I did everything in it over and over again. I was 11 and 12 though, and we didn't have many games. I had the whole thing memorized by 1989. I like to play through it every couple years or so even though I remember everything. The reason that worked then but wouldn't work now is because there are so many games to play now and there weren't then unless your parents were at least upper-middle class. Any kid in 2024 is never going to spend that kind of time on it. Same thing on Super Mario Bros. The crazy stuff I found on there really says a lot about how much time I had as a kid. That and being a huge nerd.
Agreed. I often lament selling all my old Nintendo games but if I take the time to think about what I had, there weren't that many. We made the most out of what we had back then.
I don't really get your argument. Why specifically THIS game? Why not any other open world game before or after it? Internet didn't spoil just this game it spoiled ANY game. Or rather it spoiled the experience of discovery.
Because this is the one I was playing when I realised. You're right though, this is true of lots of games.
@@TheRetroSofa This isn't true for any games. It is only true for certain people who need hand held to play a game or are incapable of preventing themselves from going and looking up stuff on the internet.
The games are just as playable today as they were intended to be as they were when they came out. It is the people that changed.
The internet has spoiled everything
You had to be there.
I played al caslevanias, but zelda is to criptyc for me. I can't get a hold what direction i need to go in or what the next target is. What item i need for what.
I've been playing this game since the '90s but I never actually beat Ganon until just a few years ago. I hadn't touched the game since the early 2000s, but I managed to finish it without a guide considering just how many hours I sunk into the game trying to discover all its secrets. I was the kid who would burn every single bush and bomb many random spots in order to discover all the secrets, and I learned where all the cheaper items were sold, where many of the money gifts were given, and where all the heart containers resided. Unfortunately, I was the only kid as either my friends didn't own Zelda, or they had a Genesis instead, so everything was up to me. The farthest I ever got was halfway through Level 9, so I didn't even know what Ganon looked like.
Some of the cryptic stuff still eluded me as a kid; for instance, I didn't realize that the "How would you like to have more bombs?" guy was selling me a bigger bomb bag until that complete playthrough, and I did discover a few more caves. I do understand people these days not having the patience to dump hours into this game, but I feel like if you're looking for a Breath of the Wild type of experience where you play for a couple hours just discovering the world instead of taking a linear trajectory from level to level, you can get a lot out of this game.
Very true. It's not the "original" experience but this game can still give the right kind of person a great experience. Thanks for sharing the memories.
If a young person today wanted to ask people for tips instead of reading a guide, they'd be seeking out the knowledge of old men just the same.
It took me almost six months to find level six of the second quest when I was 5-6 years old. And the breakthrough happened by playing a hunch (recorder lol) at a mysterious area labelled in Nintendo Power... The feeling of elation upon discovering it was indescribable over 30 years ago
Great memory. The magic of the hint!
Makes me glad that the zelda 1 redux romhack exists, fixes a bunch of bugs, add cracks to walls and slight blemishes to bushes, you can completely beat it guide-free.
I haven't tried it but that sounds like a good idea. There's a Zelda 2 Redux too that I've played a bit.
same is true for point & click adventure games of the day, it was a lot of fun playing these together with friends, and then discuss each day on the school yard what you found. it was near impossible to finish these without a guide (which we didn't have) or working together and share the solutions.
Yep, good point. I didn't have Zelda friends at the time but a few years later I had Monkey Island friends.
I remember playing Mircle Warriors on the Master System back in 87-88 and there was this one spot on a land bridge where a skeleton like guard would sit. I could never beat him even tho i came so close. I was too young to understand that I should have been grinding my levels a bit more. I would grind for gold and horns and this would level me but when i got to the land bridge, I had everything I needed up to that point. It wasn't til i got a bit older that I understood what needed to be done and that was with the help of Phantasy Star.
played this back in the 80's (in my mispent 20's) got through it almost with no help. had to go to a BBS for a tip on bombing every available wall to find something before continuing on
I think "randomizing an existing game" is the way to good procedural generated game. Nany GameDevs have problems designing good games for proc gen and tank their project in the process. I think this is a good blueprint to start from.
I watched my dad and friends beat this game and my dad made one of the first walkthroughs ever created on graph paper with all the secrets with many phone calls made to the 1-900 Nintendo hotline before the Internet when you had to pay for information instead of getting it for free.
That's a really sweet memory and I'm glad you shared it. Your dad's cool.
A Link To The Past and Link's Awakening defined the series. The two NES games are, sadly, in my opinion both just a little *too* broad in scope, and a little *too* cryptic. I wouldn't go as far as to call them unplayable, mechanically they play well enough, but the game design lacks the finesse of the Super NES and Gameboy titles.
The gameplay of both the first Zelda games is pretty solid. The problem is they're hard to get into going blind and if you get a full guide you spoil the experience.
@@TheRetroSofa Nah, the gameplay of AoL is garbage. No wonder Miyamoto all but disowned it.
I can’t disagree more with you. If you lived in that time it was complete magic and the community involvement needed to complete the game was basically part of the game.
Actually not a bad take on LoZ. I'd also say that a good way to play it now is really not looking at any guides, getting the print map (or running off a new one), taking notes, and crucially, having a friend who can play through it to ask questions of :P
Sounds good to me! And thanks.
I beat OG Zelda in 89 at 4-5 years old .. no guides.. no friends.. no manual .. solo.. I can't be the only one .. now 2nd quest.. I gave up on that back then cuz I did play outside also
I started playing this again a few months ago. i just spent 2 days trying to find dungeon # 2 without googling.. could NOT find it. And it turned out that ive been finding ALL squares but not that exact one LUL
That was my approach when I started and by the end I was pausing the game after every screen looking where to go next. Neither is ideal.
I appreciate you using my video clip and crediting me. Very good video. I look forward to seeing more! :)
Thanks! I'm glad you don't mind me using it and thanks for putting it out there in the first place. 🙂
One of my biggest blunders as a kid was passing up the original Legend of Zelda for Boy and his Blob! 🤦🏻♂️
Oh man! Easily done though. I feel like A Boy and His Blob got more magazine pages than it warranted. It wasn't a bad game I don't think but it was all over the place in the early 90's like it was some big hitter. I remember always wanting it but never getting it, trying it as an adult and not getting the hype.
When I played Zelda when it was first released, my friend and I had the Nintendo Power magazine with the guide. So once again Gutenberg strikes again.
I figured this game out enough as a kid to beat the first quest. I don't remember how much I completed, but I got stuck on the 2nd quest. I did beat the game after coming back to it as a teen and using the internet. It never occurred to me to use the flute in random overworld screens until I randomly tried to use it to warp in one of the deser screens and accidentally found a secret. This let me eventually find level 6. I know I never found level 8 because who would think to bomb the wall on the other side of the river.
I had a master system and have only played the original at 30-minute stretches and never got that far in. I did finish the original Gameboy version without any notes or help. I may try the challenge of finishing the original without help.
As a kid who had the original front loading NES, I get your point, but even back then there were guides in bookstores and Nintendo Power. I will grant you it was not the same as it is today, I didn't have access to these myself. I didn't even have the map, my mom threw it out lol. There was something about talking about it at school to try to figure it out.
I even remember drawing the screens on graph paper and making this big, crude map with hand written notes all over it, including enemy spawns.
Original Metroid would be a similar experience I think. I beat it with a guide recently and time after time thought “I never would have figured that out on my own”
I reach for Neutopia II for Turbografx 16 when I need an old school Zelda fix
My mother was into this game and bought a book of video game guides solely because it had this game in it XD Even then we needed guides. They just weren’t as easy to acquire.
Yeah and if you got one guide but one bit wasn't well-explained or you didn't understand it, well that was your guide. You probably weren't buying another one. Nowadays you can just pop on TH-cam and watch the whole game start to finish with 100% collection.
I beat majora using a hook shot and sword back in the day as I didn’t have the fearce diety mask and didn’t know about it
My first time playing Majora's Mask I got frustrated by the time mechanic and gave up. Then I re-played it on 3DS and now it's one of my favourite Zelda games of all time and same as you I went in blind. I think the quality-of-life updates of the 3DS remake made it easier to get into.
I remember bombing every wall and burning every tree, while all my friends were outside burning actual trees out of frustration.. but I did end up beating it. 🤘
When I was a kid the bus and the playground were the internet ❤❤❤
I think that Minecraft has some connection to this - It's the only game in recent memory that had it's own wiki as an instruction manual, which everyone either needed to use, or learn bit-by-bit from watching videos online.
Yeah that's a good example. My nephew's into it and straight away I was like "I'm not learning all this, we've got other stuff to talk about".
Legend of Zelda: Infinite Dungeons is a roguelike that just got released a few days ago. It's LttP based.
All my favourite streamers are all over it! I'll probably give it a try at some point but I feel like I've already missed the boat for making videos about it.
I remember we had no idea why we couldn't take the white sword in 1987 (you must know why by now), when we finally got it, we were like "How were we able to pick it up this time?" How ecstatic we were when we killed Aquamentus in level 1 and got this shiny triangle thing.
I never knew the north, west, south, west path meant you could use it to get through the lost woods. But, if I had done it I probably would have wasted by the Lionell's (I think they're the hardest overland enemy)
It's too bad some of the Japanese version stuff was mistranslated and made it into the English version, or didn't belong in it (such as pols voice hates loud noise, with the American NES having no microphone and you wondering why the whistle did nothing to them) East most pennisula I'm not what was supposed to mean, except the North East corner of the overworld.
The translation quality certainly wasn't great and only served to make the game more obtuse than even the original in some ways. Thanks for sharing your memories though. I don't know if I ever even beat Aquamentus when I was a kid. I probably just had a few goes at the first dungeon then went back to Mario to be honest!
@@TheRetroSofa my cousin was like "If you go that way, you'll run into a large dragon" And, I was like-ok? so? Is it unkillable or something?
Story time? The only time my mom was ever a gamer was for dragon warrior on the nes, she had a notebook full of notes and hints, she went from 0 knowledge, to absolutely figuring out the game from start to finish, nothing other then her drive to finish it all. I only ever finished that game because of her notebook. My first strategy guide, if only I could have got her to figure out Zelda for me too.
Thanks, that is a great story. Maybe there's something to the idea that non-gamers will have more patience to figure out an experience like this because if you're figuring out gaming as a whole, what's the difference? I don't know. Your mom's cool anyway.
@@TheRetroSofa yea she’s awesome, and how the hell she ever figured out where that flute in the damaging swamp is before internet or strategy guides is beyond me lol.
Same thing for my mom. We got dragon warrior for free with our subscription to Nintendo power. She loved DW, Zelda, and “pinbot”.
Your view is flawed. Just because you have all the information about the game available doesn't mean that you _must_ play the game using it. You can just try to explore the game on your own as far as you can until you can't figure out how to advance, and _then_ look up the answer to that from Internet and continue exploring without any additional information. That's what I did when I played it for the first time. So, not unplayable.
I played and finished the game myself with no help from friends in 1988 when i was 11, and then I discovered the second quest. It's not as hard as people make it out to be. I will admit having problems with Zelda 2 though.
Still works perfectly fine on my NES plugged into my CRT.
Mine too! Love gaming on a CRT.
Actually, I finished the game as a kid and did not have a guide. Later, when I got a guide, I learned that I missed a lot of useful secrets, that I didn't do things in the correct order, and that I could have replayed the game on a higher difficulty, because once you finish it, the game restarts at the beginning, but this time it's much harder (I thought it just looped, how on earth would I have known that?). All you had to do was keep exploring the world and keep trying to find the next dungeon. I have to admit that I got stuck a few times as some dungeons were super hard to find and there was no progress for weeks. I was just running around and getting more and more annoyed and in the end I only managed to find them because I started doing all kinds of crazy shit out of sheer frustration, but apparently that's how you have to play the game without a guide. You have to start burning stuff, play the flute in every screen, try to bomb every wall, try to run through walls and rocks, or you have to find all the clues and be very good at deciphering them (I wasn't good at the latter and didn't even manage to find most of the clues).
I will never forget. I had link to the past for SNES. I was stuck. My friend came over and showed me where to dig up the flute. If he didn't show me that. I would have been stuck for quite a while
A lot of the things are found by talking to people in the Zelda games. There are always hints.
Great first video in a way.... You earned my subscription. Thank you for your view on things!
Thanks!
Enjoyed your perspective on Zelda. Great storytelling.
A more modern example of this kind of thing from the internet age is that Demon's Souls and the very early days of Dark Souls were a lot like this too. That was a huge part of their appeal back when they were new. A lot of their reputation for brutal difficulty just comes from people not knowing how to get powerful because the systems around stats and equipment were so obscure. Now there are so many resources available online that you can pretty much trivialize those games if you look everything up. The only problem with that is that lots of people online will tell you that if you don't run around in your underwear bonking everything with a big stick you're playing the game wrong, but if you ignore them and accept that sometimes the game's just going to kill you to teach you something and that's not a big deal, then if you look everything up the games are pretty easy. If you try to play completely blind you will miss a lot though. It's basically impossible to experience what it was like back in 2011 when we were all sharing scraps of knowledge online, and now these games are so popular that even when they release a new one it only takes a couple days for the community to figure basically everything out.
Of course, once you've really learned one Fromsoft game going through the rest blind is pretty fun. They're similar enough that the differences are usually things you can figure out, but first getting into them is just not the same as it was in the early days. There are randomizers, and they are fun, but the real knowledge checks are game systems, not progression, so it's not as good of a substitute.
I really did try Elden Ring but the systems were a little too obscure for me so I looked stuff up and then I was crouching in a hole slashing at a dragon from such a weird angle that I could no longer see it but it couldn't hit me and then I thought "what am I doing" and went and played something else. What I wanted was someone to explain to me just a little bit what I needed to do to get started and get a feel for the game mechanics but all the guides are about minmaxxing your way to ultimate power as soon as possible and, tempting as that sounds, it's not the most fun way to play.
@@TheRetroSofa Yeah, I wish I could just explain everything you need to know in a single TH-cam post, but the problem is the ways it's too obtuse are different for everyone. There really can't be a one size fits all solution that gets everyone started without just turning into an overpowered guide. Elden Ring is a little easier than the previous games just because there's so much of it that just going all over the place doing as much as you can will level you to the point that you brute force your way through the early bits until you've had the time for things to start making sense, but other than that the only things I could say that might be useful are super vague things like the stat that raises HP is really good. Not exactly rocket science there, and it's hard not to get into the weeds of minmaxing once you try to get past that.
I dunno. Sometimes people find that after a bad first experience with a Fromsoft game they try a different one, or wait a few years and come back, and suddenly everything clicks. Sometimes it just never works for some people though, and as much as I love the games, I totally get it.
Zelda was the game that truly took me on an adventure as a 9 year old kid and yes a bombed every stone wall and burned every possible bush. 😅😅❤. I sometimes forget how special that game was to me.
It's an incredibly special game and I'm lucky to have memories of it from when I was a kid as well. It was my nan's cartridge so I could only play it when we visited her. Maybe if I'd taken it home I'd have had more time to get into it.
Nintendo themselves acknowledged the problems with original Zelda's cryptic nature and redesigned the gameplay loop for the next games in a way that creates illusion of free exploration, while actually allowing you to always progress in a single main direction (throwing couple of side-quests here and there to support the illusion of freedom).
Yes, and then the linearity became “too” linear, and limited the exploration. I feel like Breath of the Wild really nailed the open world vibe.
So it could be completed either collaboratively or alone. With friends and in my case family, we literally banged our heads against it until we beat it into submission, however, there was another way. Another method, with which to defeat Ganon, that did not require an inquisitive nature and two good friends... One only needed the power.... Nintendo Power.
By which I meant the magazine by the way. Totally cheated my ass off with that.
I didn't finish the game past the second dungeon (there was a supplemental map in the game box). I just found it too hard to move around in the overworld to explore. I never did figure out how to consistently stab an enemy without taking damage myself. The sword was so short and was out so little. So as soon as I lost sword beams, it was always only a matter of time before I died.
I had that when I was younger too. There is a rhythm to the combat you can get into but it takes a lot of practice.
@@TheRetroSofa Forgot to mention: dying was less of a problem in the dungeons. But resetting me back to that one place in the over world was hard.
My first Zelda was actually Link's Awakening, with the sword that slashed diagonally and stayed out, and saved your place.
That one I did get stuck on for a little while (Figuring out how to get into dungeon 4 since you had to jump from a screen transition). But I eventually beat it, despite dying hundreds of times.
@@ZipplyZane Oh yeah I remember that one. Link's Awakening's great. Have you played the Switch remake?
@@TheRetroSofa A little on emulator (though the first dungeon). Planned to play a lot more, but life got in the way.
This got my attention because I literally replayed this game earlier this year (not gonna lie, beat it hella fast - felt like it took forever when I was a kid)
Video name might be true the motherboards are expiring
Emulation is preservation. 😉
Glad I was not the only one.
Dude I played the game back in the day without any help or a guide, all I had was the manual and the quickstart guide. I'm sorry you couldn't figure it out.
Others have said it in one form or anther below but I remember bombing every wall, marking that map we got in the box. I used legos as a template and made my own maps I beat this game without any guides when it was out. I think the real reason today is most kids/people don't have the patience or focus to just sit there and burn every bush every where or bomb every wall. Just to explore every screen/room and see what was hidden. (I lost a TONE of ruppies on damn door repairs tell you what...) Also now-a-days you have a "game pass" (names vary) but you can do that and have access to what, a 100+ games. I had this game. That was what I had for more than a few months. Same with FF1 That was my Christmas present. I played that until March where I had a shot at getting a new game.They want faster gratification. I still have the picture my step mother took of the TV end screen of the second quest showing 0 deaths. ran both quests one life. I also remember beating it with no ring just to see Zelda in a green dress. (memory limitations base her dress on Links color. So blue ring she is white and blue, red she is red, and as I said no ring = green Link = green Zelda) I was also the little boy no one liked so this was all I had.
I think the point about having fewer games then than now is a really good one and I wish I'd thought of it making this video because it's certainly a big part of it. I think you were still more patient than I was, but that's at least partly a "me" problem. 😉
Nintendo Power magazine printed a map to the Legend of Zelda and that helped me get through the game! I didn't look at any guides or hints or anything, I just used the map and explored.
Yeah, that's it! You had a little bit of help in the form of the map, but not so much that it spoiled the experience of discovery. Sounds like a good time.
@@TheRetroSofa The Nintendo Power article dealt with the 2nd Quest, and that wasn't released until July/August of 1988 two years after the game was released. Most people had beat the game the first time through and didn't realize that you could play a second quest, which was why the fact that you could use the name Zelda to go straight to the second quest was revealed then as well. The majority of the people mentioning problems and things like Nintendo Power were beating it after a lot was known.
I think what people today don't grasp or remember, is that back then people were able to navigate themselves better than they are today. An 8x16 grid was not that difficult to remember. Any kind of town, even small ones typically were larger than that and we did perfectly fine getting around to our friend's houses. Today however, people don't bother to learn how to remember how to get somewhere, they let their phones do it all for them. Honestly, today most people let their phones think for them.
No discovery is being spoiled unless you actively choose to spoil it. The only way that the first Zelda game can be spoiled is if you actively choose for it to be spoiled for you.
I beat this game at the age of 8 over the course of a summer... and yes both quests. I had no friends that also played (they were either still on their parent's Atari or were more into SMS). I wasn't subscribed to Nintendo Power and I didn't have a Nintendo Atlas. It was the first game I ever beat growing up.
Well done. Sounds like a great summer. I think the time and patience we had as kids is another topic I could have gone into with this video but I think if I give my seven-year-old nephew The Legend of Zelda as his first Zelda game he won't fall in love with the series.
The opposite of this is the classic roguelike ... stuff like the original Rogue, Moria, and Nethack. They have random layouts and even randomized items every play. The original programmer wanted to be able to play his own game without already knowing all its secrets.
But it could be really cool to make the classic roguelike more of a shared experience. The game world would be pseudo-randomly generated by an input string, so you could share your exploration experience with a number of other people playing the same game world.
That would be cool. I don't know much about modern roguelikes, I think the last one I played for any amount of time was Nethack, so maybe there are some that have a multiplayer element like that. I'm seeing the A Link To The Past-based roguelike is the new hotness so might check that out at some point but I can't imagine I'll enjoy it more than randomiser.
They had Nintendo Power that put out Tips and tricks and guides. I had to use the map that came with the game and a couple of the tips for that they put out in Nintendo Power. I think they even put out a walk through for it.
I put that game away for many years. I then bought a Nes mini even though I had it for original hardware still. Needless to say, I couldn't remember where the shield and sword were, or how to dispatch certain enemies. So it was newish. Some games I bought and am still completing them years after the fact. I don't have to return them to the rental store after all. You might forget some of your progress even with a game save after some months go by. I don't like cheaters guides because they insult a persons intelligence.
I was 8 or 9 when I first played it. Beat it in a week or two. But, it wasn't until I was 15 when I found everything.
You got my sub it’s my last day free turning myself into rehab wish me luck yall ❤
Thanks and good luck! I don't know your situation obviously but I understand the first step's the hardest and I believe anyone who takes it can take the rest too. I don't know you, but I believe in you!
This game is very playable. And I have a port on my phone throu an emulator. Which I conquered both quests recently. Partially from memory from my original 1986 game I had when I was 6.
Nice! Vaguely remembering bits from your childhood is a great way to play the game.
Great video And amazing Points
Congrats on the monetization
Thanks!
Love your narrative style. Subscribed
Thanks and welcome!
Randomizers are great for fixing this
I’m playing Metroid prime remastered and using a guide. I gave up years ago after putting in two or so hours in the phazon mines without a save and dying and I can’t do that again 😂
What do you think of a Link between Worlds and the ‘renting’ system?
Put me off at first but turned out to work really well, adding consequence to failure in a unique and interesting way.
I finished Metroid Prime recently and I'm slowly making my way through Prime 2. Prime 2 seems a bit easier to find your own way around. I definitely looked up a few Chozo artefacts when I was going through the first game.
The only thing that makes me angry is I give away my gold cartridge version when i was a kid.
Aw man. Don't worry about it. I sold or gave away almost all the games I had when I was a kid. You can't let it haunt you. Find cool new things and gradually replace the stuff that matters to you.
So randomizers are nice but i think what Maximillion Dood did is extremely close if not spot on.
He played on twitch but chat was not allowed to tell him anything.
He was allowed 2 calls to friends the equivelent of phone a friend.
He was allowed to look at the map that came with the game once for like 2 min and try and figure what if anything he could from there.
He was allowed to use an old Nintendo Guide physical not digitial again 2 min interval.
Finally he was allowed to use twitch chat once... for one question.
Half way through the game he had run out of hints and it was amusing to see him sweat it out and figure out the game realising he had hit some challenging walls and had
no clues left.
Ah but did he hear about it
Not really max doesnt follow zelda so to him it was completely new experince and in that i envy him becuase few people have not heard of the nes zelda.
I do think that modern players need to have some self control in how much information they allow themselves to recieve before playing
in order to actually enjoy the game with an exploration focus.
I dont believe its 100 percent the owneness is on the game developer .
I do agree however that the devs need to build towards more controlled variables and secrets in open world games.
a good open world should feel more like a series of rivers and less like a giant pond.
thats my thoughts good video but i dont think its as hard if both the player and the dev respect the medium.
Thanks for commenting. I respect your opinion on this and if you're lucky enough to have the kind of community Max has then you can emulate the kind of thing I'm talking about. Self-control is an interesting point. i *think* (and I'm correction on this) that just knowing the information is available changes how you feel about the game. If you're stuck on a frustrating part and pushing through, knowing the shortcut is available makes us less patient than we were in the 80's. That's my theory. Even so, like, self-control is hard and I'm playing games to have fun not to learn self-control. There are downsides to just the information being there and being available whether you use it or not. But I do agree that putting some thought into how you want to approach a game like Zelda and maybe finding creative ways to get the best out of it is absolutely better than just throwing yourself in blind or opening up a guide. It's a great game and should be enjoyed.
I have watched some of Max's videos and I even remember watching a bit of this challenge, though I'd forgotten about it until you mentioned it. It's a brilliant idea but it shows the difficulties in coming up with restrictions yourself for a challenge when you don't really know what the challenge is. I think anyone who was familiar with The Legend of Zelda would have at least given him more map time, you know?
@@TheRetroSofa Thank you for your time and respect, Also yes 100 i really think he should have given himself more map time.
Glad that you agree that if a persons willing to put a little bit of preparation and thought into how they approach the game they can experience the game
rather close to what it was during release.
you can still kinda do it, if download zelda classic and then a custom quest that there is zero guide out there for, theres lots i coulkdent beat i want to try again but there are SO MEANY i CANT remember the name so cant even TRY again.
Good video. Your delivery is great. I have had the Zelda SNES game when it first came out but never got into it. Now, I’ll give it a go!
Thanks! SNES one's the best one IMO.
Wait till the apocalypse, we end up in a new Dark age with barely any electrical infrastructure and suddenly, someone accidentally digs up a sealed copy of LoZ and an NES.
You'd need a replacement cartridge connector before you finish the game and who's selling those post-apocalypse? The zombies? Otherwise it's a solid plan and I say we go for it.
I still have my family’s SNES from back in the 90’s along with our copy of Zelda. I was never able to beat it because I struggled with reading and writing when I was a kid back then and I didn’t really have any friends to help me figure it out. I was finally able too beat it back in late 2019 but I had to use TH-cam to help me get around and figure things out a lot. I got Legend of Zelda Links Awakening for the GameBoy like 3 years ago and I still haven’t beaten it. Theses kind of games are not easy to play
I think it's okay to use whatever tools you have to see more of the game and enjoy it how you want to enjoy it. One of those options though used to be hints in gaming magazines and sadly those are long gone now. If you get chance, it's worth playing through Link's Awakening to the end. I can definitely recommend the Switch remake. It gives the game a bit of polish and not having to constantly swap out your sword makes it more playable.