epic games preservation fail: secrets permanently out of stock. there was once a wonder of the ancient gaming world here. but now it is covered in stainless steel and rebar. very few people explore in hyrule anymore. now, its visitors are mostly tourists. if a game like this was released today, people would rightfully call its core design hopelessly naive.

zelda 1 was always meant to be solved with a little bit of help- whether it be homemade maps, schoolyard secret swapping, or good old Nintendo Power™. but that does not mean that the years have been kind to the game. the world map itself remains unchanged 35+ years later. it's us who have changed around it. a whole cottage industry has sprung up on teaching people how to finish video games. sure, guide magazines existed in the 80s. but the rugged, chunky open world is cut through like mist with the guided tours that clutter the first several pages of google search results. the exact amount of help you'll need in this game isn't even clear until you've already spoiled yourself, and the vast, vast majority of people Will need help to get to the end of this game.

miyamoto famously created this game to evoke the feeling from his childhood of trying to piece together surroundings he didn't understand, organically discovering surprises along the way. as a society, no matter how we try and ignore it, we always have a perfect map in our backpack.

Im going to slowly playthrough most of the mainline Zelda games as there are very few I have properly completed so no better place to start than the 1986 classic. Prefix, I played this using the NES collection thing on the Switch.

Like most NES games there isn't any narrative, just a quest. Link has to save Princess Zelda from the evil Ganon. Very simple and the groundwork that the later entries build off. The meat of the game is in the dungeons and overworld exploration. The map is very easy to navigate if you find one online, it makes everything much easier. For the most part the dungeons are good and age surprisingly well, but the last two dungeons ramps the difficulty up out of nowhere which was quite rewarding considering how OP the sword is in this game. Most items were useless besides the candle and bombs as most of them have a single use for the dungeon you get it in. The overworld is mostly just a forest looking area with Death Mountain up to the north and a graveyard to the west, fun to explore and find all the secret hidden rooms, which I have absolutely no idea how people were meant to find these back in the day.

When it comes to visuals, the 8 bit art style is really charming and I love all the enemy sprites, good variety of enemies as well for the first game in the series. Score wise it is iconic, The Legend of Zelda franchise has some of my favourite tracks of all time in it and the first game in the series sets it up well. There are a handful of tracks in this game but the one you hear the most is the overworld theme which is pretty much synonymous with the franchise at this point.

A true classic. I think this game has aged quite for an NES game,. By todays standards it is borderline required to either use a guide or at least a map to save yourself walking around lost, but besides that its a good start to my favourite franchise of all time.

Simplesmente o jogo que deu início a uma das minhas franquias mais queridas. Não vou mentir que muito antigamente eu tinha um certo preconceito com ele por ser antigo pra caralho, e imagino que seja natural. Mas devo dizer que me surpreendi demais, me diverti MUITO mais do que eu esperava, trilha sonora icônica, um mapa bem grande e recheado de coisas, ele tem um escopo que eu não imaginava pra um game tão antigo, imagino que tenha sido surpreendente pra sua época. Eu cheguei até flertar em dar uma nota mais alta, mas infelizmente a maneira como a progressão dele funciona é muito merda, pq pra começar que é muito fácil de se perder, e outra é que ele tem coisas específicas e muito escondidas que você tem que fazer pra progredir e se você não for olhar na internet cê tá fodido kkkk o que eu recomendo é que você pegue um mapinha na internet ( oque eu usei foi esse: https://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/ZeldaOverworldQ1.html ) por que na moralzinha, você vai se divertir muito mais assim. Agora eu tenho que partir pro Zelda 2, que sinceramente tô com um pé atrás, não por muita gente falar que é uma merda ou por não parecer Zelda, mas sim por que parece difícil pra CARALHOO e tem uma rapaziada que fala que sem save state é coisa de maluco KKKK me desejem sorte.

The original Zelda title may not exactly be remembered as one of the series' finest moments, but it definitely laid the foundation for better things to come. The sense of adventure and exploration, the dungeon crawling, the item collection, and the grand bosses are all here, if only on a smaller scale.

Being immediately hurled into Hyrule, with no tutorial, and a very basic backstory, is a wonder of an age long gone. It perfectly captures the essence of what an adventure should be; an exciting trek into the vast unknown. Upon entering the first cave, you'll be greeted by one of gaming's most iconic lines: "IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS." This only further solidifies that idea.

For an NES game, the immersion is there. Hyrule is a fairly large area given the console's limitations, and the dungeons can be fun to navigate and conquer, for the most part. That said, this is a difficult game for sure, and it's what holds it back from greatness. Finding and navigating certain dungeons can be a real chore in the latter parts, and without a guide, it would amount to a lot of hassle and trial and error.

Established fans of the series should not jump into this game expecting a similar ordeal to other 2D titles, as doing so may leave you underwhelmed with its relative simplicity; and possibly even irritated with its difficulty. For anyone willing to look past its archaic design; or anyone simply looking for an old school challenge, I recommend it.

the original gangsta the legend of zelda for nes is a monumental game that completely reshaped the way we play videogames and funnily enough thats what happened with ocarina of time too its just incredible how they cannot miss

as for the game in itself i must say im impressed at how this simple and straightforward formula was completely untouched through the years to this day this game feels like any single zelda i have played in my life till now so i was almost confused at how pristine and rich this game ended up being

unfortunately apart from the fact that you need to play this with another tab with a guide open and a lot of patience i ended up loving this for the first 30 minutes and couple of dungeons until i realized the 8 different dungeons were basically the same thing over and over and over with the same enemies and tricks here and there get in the dungeon clear the room get a key bomb a wall rinse and repeat until you get to the boss fight and thats basically it . its not a surprise that my favourite “level” was the overworld with its iconic music and different biomes here and there for a really incredible feeling of journeying to save your kingdom

the story is also barebones but thats to be expected you wake up and you have to save hyrule the end the sage gives you the sword saying its dangerous to go alone take this and the only thing that i think about is the zelda rap if you know you know and thats it the next story part you will get is the finale the end

i understand people that go umh this game is actually great because it booted the franchise umh ok kevin but its still a chore to fucking play the more you go on with the game the more the dungeons become just a frustrating mess where you have to fight against hordes of enemies without any real change of pace whatsoever or new mechanic or something

that being said i loved playing this game but as a videogame to experience in 2023 its really tough to overlook a lot of obtuse level design and sense of progression but still ??? this was incredible for the time and you have to honor these champions that started everything so that i could play twilight princess 100 times in my life and fap to sidon porn on rule34 thank you

the overworld theme is great and it makes me wet

There's an incredibly fun groundwork to the original Zelda's mechanics. The combat's focus on position and blocking feels engaging, though it is incredibly challenging. The various items are useful and pretty quirky sometimes. It's funny to imagine Link carrying a bridge around the whole time. The game's visual aesthetic is also kinda utilitarian with some fantasy stylization to it, the color signifier for enemy difficulty is pretty cool since it applies to Link's armor as well, giving some nice consistency to the world.

That being said, The Legend of Zelda is a game I wish I could play blind, allowing myself to explore. Yet I find myself dissatisfied with the obscure nature of its progression and secrets. The openness of this game is greatly beloved (especially in the advent of BOTW) but there's little in the way of design to actually telegraph the things the game expects you to do. A lot of my time with the game was just regret that I had to check a guide to progress.

It's hard to justify critique on a game like this given its historical context, and it is definitely revolutionary for its time, but I think the first Zelda game just does not appeal to me in the way that its successors do.

There is a reason why this game single handedly reinvented and popularized the adventure genre, as almost everything about it is iconic and works. Sure, it has aged overtime, but then again, really, what game from 1986 hasn't aged at least a little bit?

The story is simple, yet effective, the graphics are dated, yet iconic, the music is legendary, albeit not too varied, the control is pretty decent, the gameplay is very fun and challenging, the world is massive and has a lot to do, especially for an NES game, and the fact that there is a SAVE FEATURE. Believe it or not, that was a huge deal back in the day.

If I had one complaint about the game, it is definitely what I would call a guide game. Sure, you can find a lot of the stuff in the game easily by just exploring around, but if you really want to go out of your way for 100%, then you will have to break out one to find everything. Not to mention, the dungeons are a little repetitive and the bosses are very easy, but those things didn't bother me too much.

Overall, it is a definitive classic of the NES library, and a fantastic start to one of Nintendo's most iconic franchises. Let's just hope they don't try to fuck up the next entry at all.

Game #15

Breath of the Wild’s attempt to bring Zelda back to its roots revitalized the discourse surrounding the original entry. Since Breath of the Wild was advertised as a return to the classic ideals, the positive reception has spilled over to the first Zelda, and their shared tutorial-free open design has received a ton of praise. The only downside for modern audiences who want to check out the original is that it’s known for being extremely confusing, and a game that you can't complete without a guide. I decided to put these ideas to the test, and I was surprised at how wrong they were. The game is certainly as open as people have been saying, but the caveat is that going outside recommended areas will lead to getting your ass kicked incredibly quickly. The idea that you’re left with no direction in a gigantic open world really isn’t true, it’s just that the direction is given implicitly through difficulty and item limitations rather than explicit dialog. With this perspective, the genius of Zelda’s world design became a lot easier to appreciate. The way you’re always close to the next bit of progression while still being allowed to figure things out on your own gives the advantage of a linear difficulty pacing while still feeling completely open. The truth about this game lies in between the new and old conceptions about it, in how it forms the perfect illusion of openness and mystery even when your journey has actually been planned from the start.

I don't think I can ever truly appreciate this game, but I can try to imagine what it was like at release.

My first Zelda was A Link to the Past, followed shortly by Ocarina of Time, so my introduction to Zelda came with more in-game guidance and greater variety in mechanics. Because of that, the first Legend of Zelda title always seemed overly simple to me. But I try to imagine being a kid in 1986, getting this massive (for the time) adventure game that just drops you in and gives you a sword. I don't doubt that thousands of 10-year-olds spent their summer vacations on a massive adventure through their 128 Kilobyte cartridges, facing down challenges that seemed incredible in their collective mind's eye.

Unfortunately, everything that would have made that experience great boils down to an element of novelty. If you'd never played a video game before, this would be incredible. But when you come back to it after you've seen how games have evolved in the decades since, the experience feels pretty rough.

Playing The Legend of Zelda in 2022 is not a bad experience by any means! I think it's worthwhile for anyone who's a big Zelda fan, or anyone who likes 80's adventure titles. The difficulty level isn't as punishing as Zelda II, so it's definitely accessible to the average gamer without the need for Restore Points. That being said, it might be worth it to employ a guide occasionally. Aspects of this game were designed for kids with nothing else to do but wander around the whole world using their lamp on every tree to see if it would burn. If you're not up for that granular level of trial and error, don't be afraid to look up where some of the secrets are.

Clearly archaic, most notably in how obtuse a lot of the progression and secrets are. The worst part is definitely everything associated with the bombs, hidden doorways you need to blow open with no indication as to the points you're meant to lay this somewhat scarce resource in front of. That kind of design mentality spreads to a lot of different places outside of just the bomb mechanic, making the game somewhere between tedious and frustrating to progress in without outside advice; I get that at the time this would make the game seem more mysterious and expansive, but this style of design has largely disappeared for a reason. I also hate how much the game encourages grinding due to not fully restoring your health when you respawn and requiring you to collect large quantities of money for progression-critical items.

I enjoyed this game quite a bit more than my score for it indicates (maybe a 3/5 or thereabouts), but only thanks to using an overworld map that listed where every character, dungeon and bomb/fire secret was, a guide for the last few dungeons, and save states to generate money with the gambling minigame; I'm fairly sure I would have abandoned The Legend of Zelda in frustration well before the end without these things. I'm glad I played the game, it's an important piece of game history, even now it still retains a sense of wonder to its exploration at times, and it's easy to see how it really helped develop the language of video games, but I really can't recommend people actually play the game outside of anything other than historical curiosity.

Let's stop pretending this game is anything more than a frustrating slog fest, designed to be played in an era where if you didn't make your game extremely difficult or super confusing, it could be beaten in an hour, and this game is exactly that. It was made to be confusing, forcing you to grind for resources to put a bomb on every wall to see if it has a secret door, and use the candle on every shrub to see if it has a secret staircase, the candle which can only be used once per screen, initially I assume that's just some sort of tech limitation, but then you get an upgrade for the candle that lets you use it an unlimited amount of times! Seriously, this game was designed to waste your time.

Remarkably, the good majority of Zelda holds up in the current day. It's interesting to hear people call this a "guide game" in a negative lens because... that's always how it was marketed and sold to us. The manual that comes with the game not only expands quite a deal on the story and context of this first entry, but includes gorgeous artwork and maps - complete with walkthroughs for the first few dungeons - to get a new player started. This was indeed always meant to be an adventure, one the player would get their nose lost in manuals, handwritten notes and drawings, and of course not the least of which murmurings and tips passed between friends in the schoolyard and the fabled Nintendo hotline.

That said, the original Zelda experience isn't without flaw, for all of its adventure purist expression. I think Miyamoto and the team learned pretty quickly that an indicator for which bushes to burn, which boulders and walls to bomb, and stronger guidance for the sake of general gameplay flow were all in order by the time Link to the Past would roll around. The combat so desperately wants Link to have an arced swing of his sword, evidenced by how much combat relies on inter-tile maneuvering, but it's not quite there yet. Still a massive step in the right direction from the competitions' push-combat approach... much as I do like early Ys. What's here is still very solid, and a great deal of fun. I just replayed this with my best friend in an impromptu single session and it didn't drag at all. For as minimal and bare-bones as Zelda feels now, that adds to the unique charm and status it takes within its series and adventure games as a whole.

The first time I played The Legend of Zelda was in 2003, as part of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for the Nintendo GameCube. The disc came as a bonus for re-upping my subscription to the magazine Nintendo Power, and it included four of the five mainline games in the series released to that point (excluding only A Link to the Past). Playing the original NES game, for the teenage version of myself, was a joyless experience, a perceived chore undertaken out of a felt obligation to experience the first entry in what was already, less than twenty years after its inception, a storied franchise.

Intent on completing the game as quickly as possible, I printed an FAQ with explicit instructions on how to reach every point of interest in the game's overworld. Perhaps I had internalized the words of the old man who bequeathes Link his sword in the game's opening minutes: "It's dangerous to go alone!" So intimidated was I by the prospect of facing this game with only my own wits (and reflexes) that I had prejudged it to be impossible without the guidance of those who went before. Perhaps inevitably, I abandoned this attempted playthrough after only a couple of hours. I had psyched myself out of experiencing what later games would underscore as the franchise's most elemental strength: the joy of exploration.

Playing the game again in 2021, this time via the Nintendo Switch's official NES emulator, I approached it as I had learned to approach 2017's Breath of the Wild: as a sandbox dotted with treasures, each one locked behind a puzzle. I swept back and forth across the game's overworld looking for them, impressed with the world's expansiveness but also its coherence. Here, fully formed, were the topographical features of so many games in the series that followed: twisting forests, rife with monsters; crags, cliffs, and rockslides to the north; beaches and deserts, bleached white by the sun.

Unwittingly, I completed the first three dungeons out of sequence. When I discovered this, I was even more impressed with the game for its flexibility: truly, this was an adventure of my own making. In fact, I discovered most of the dungeons without looking for them. More than once, I made it deep inside before discovering that I was missing an important item likely to be found in another dungeon; I would need to leave and restart the dungeon later, when I had the proper tools. The first few times this happened, I didn't mind. But as situations like these became more frequent, I finally turned to an online guide simply to tell me which previously discovered dungeon I was meant to clear next.

By about the sixth dungeon, the fundamental experience of the game had changed. Having initially explored the map on my own but with the Internet now serving as my compass, the game had become primarily a dungeon crawler. The overworld went by in a blur as I raced from one dungeon to the next, with occasional detours to explode a rock or burn a tree or buy potions from an old woman. These were secrets I never would have uncovered on my own, and so I didn't mind using the guide to find them. The dungeons, at least, I was able to finish unaided. Did I clear them optimally? Definitely not. In some cases I had to retread my steps multiple times in search of a hidden doorway or a particular item I was missing. But even so, the self-contained nature of the dungeons made each one conquerable in no more than 30 to 40 minutes. That is, until the final dungeon.

At this point, though, it's worth mentioning that at about this point in my playthrough, I came across Backloggd user chump's insightful review of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Chump writes that the Zelda franchise, by and large, "isn't a dungeon crawler, it's an overworld crawler. Don't get me wrong, Zelda dungeons can be fun or even highlights of the game, but the focus has been on the overworld since the very beginning of the series."

This sentiment gave me pause. If it were true, and given that I'd made the conscious decision to stop experiencing The Legend of Zelda as an overworld crawler and instead as a dungeon crawler, then either I was playing the game incorrectly or I was fundamentally misapprehending the game that I was playing. Was I simply approaching the game with the same cynicism that I had as a teenager -- except that, for whatever reason, I was enjoying myself this time?

It seemed worth taking a step back to consider the essential nature of these concepts. I thought of arguably the original dungeon crawler: Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop game that in its earliest incarnations actively eschewed so-called "roleplaying" in favor of clearing out monsters from dungeons and hoarding their loot.

On the first page of the original Dungeons & Dragons three-volume boxed set (published in 1974), creator Gary Gygax claims that while "it is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign," the bulk of the campaign referee's preparation will necessarily be devoted to "laying out the maps of his 'dungeons' and upper terrain." The game's initial rulebooks and supplements, even the ones purportedly devoted to fleshing out alternative campaign settings, are mostly concerned with the ways game organizers (called Dungeon Masters, starting with D&D's second supplement in 1975) might draw out the gameplay and/or make the players' goals more difficult to achieve. The books advocate for nefarious labyrinths escapable only through false walls; doors that lock behind the players until a certain number of enemies have been defeated; traps that send players to the beginning of the dungeon, effectively resetting their progress. In other words, the aim of the Dungeon Master essentially was to troll the other players.

Had The Legend of Zelda released a decade earlier, its later dungeons would have made Gygax and his collaborators proud. Even once you've obtained a map, the final dungeon is truly aggravating. Upon the game's release in 1986, it would have been completable only by means of graph paper, pencil, and a whole lot of patience. This was the one dungeon for which I followed an online guide, and even so it was by far the longest and most difficult to complete. The number of underhanded traps and overpowered enemies the player must surmount simply to advance from one room to the next is absolutely punishing. It's pure dungeon-crawling, in keeping with the design philosophy established by Original D&D.

In that sense, I think it's fair to characterize The Legend of Zelda as at least equal parts dungeon and overworld crawler -- if not skewing toward the former, especially in the late game. Perhaps that became less true for the franchise over time, but part of apprehending this first game is to understand that its oft-labeled "obtuseness" emerges from a philosophy shared by game designers and players alike, one in which testing boundaries (the game's, the player's) is intrinsic to the very idea of "play."

Yes, it's dangerous to go alone. But Zelda has never encouraged going it alone, not really. It has always understood its relationship with the player in terms of its relationships with other players, as part of a network that, for decades now, has helped its constituents come to grips with this exhilarating, mysterious, challenging game and its myriad descendants. Community is Zelda's strength, not its secret shame. The Legend of Zelda does not tell the player much, not explicitly, but its most famous line is followed immediately by the game's endorsement of this truth:

"It's dangerous to go alone! Take this."

It's The Legend of Zelda and it's really rad!
Those creatures from Ganon are pretty bad!
Octoroks, tektites and leevers too
But with your help, our hero pulls through!
Yeah, Go Link, Yeah, Get Zelda!
Wikki Wikki Wick!

Mi juego favorito de toda la vida y para siempre.
¿Por qué? Porque es parte de mi y siempre lo he tenido en cuenta incluso fuera de los videojuegos .
Aventurarse a encarar al mundo, a definirse tal y como sos defendiéndote a espada y escudo para atravesar los mayores miedos.
The Legend of Zelda es mi grito de amor propio, porque cuando menos te lo esperas, estás sola y tenes que afrontar los mayores desafíos haciendo tus verdaderos sacrificios.
Ningún otro juego me ha educado tanto para crecer y decirme quien soy realmente. Tuve mis peores crisis de identidad, problemas físicos y económicos, fobias y aún así sigo adelante apuntando mi espada hacia el cielo.

PD: Al descubrir cierto canal que también tiene pasión por esta leyenda, resulta que no estoy tan sola después de todo.

I’d argue that most NES games (possibly outside of the Mario games) have not held up particularly well, and that absolutely includes The Legend of Zelda. From the weird need to find items and dungeon entrances behind bombable walls, to the game inexplicably letting you buy 4 of the same item when you can only use 1. It’s for sure a quirky, old game and I’m grateful to modern guides and save states on NSO for making it easier to experience. It took me way too long to finally play the first game from my favorite game series of all time, but I’m glad I did.

+ Cool to see the origins of items, enemies, and characters of the Zelda franchise
+ This game was probably wicked cool in 1986

- Not terribly intuitive to play in 2023
- Hidden dungeons and items behind unmarked destroyable walls
- You can buy duplicates of unique items for some reason
- Finding 100 rupees when your wallet is full just wipes them from the game
- The music loops are so short and repetitive I found myself, for the first time in my life, muting a Zelda game

It's always nice when you play through a game again after nearly 10 years and you end up appreciating the game a bit more!

Is Zelda 1 a hard game to get into in 2023? Absolutely, and I can see why this game would be off-putting to so many people. But, if you can get past the oldness and clunkiness here, you get a game that's incredibly impressive for it's time. It shows a game philosophy that you don't see as often nowadays: a game built around community. A game that's designed to share secrets about it with your elementary school classmates. A pre internet gem. It has it's issues, but in the end it's so charming and unique that I think it's worth going back to nowadays.

Went into this nearly completely blind, though I'm aware of general online consensus that the game is needlessly obtuse. To that I say... it's not really that bad if you refer to the manual, you know, like the opening text crawl actually tells you to! The manual includes information on enemies, treasures, hints, instructions on how to get to the first couple of dungeons, and a pretty detailed map of your starting area, and so I didn't feel like any of the secrets that were mandatory to progression were impossible to find.

The Legend of Zelda is just as revolutionary and influential as a Super Mario Bros or a Doom; its sprawling overworld and extreme nonlinearity bids the player completely immerse themself in the game, and the little touches (the helpful minimap, the treasures and secrets waiting to be discovered, even the fact that this is one of the few NES RPGs where death does not erase your progress or even carry a monetary penalty) only further serve to enhance its adventurous swashbuckling spirit.

The only difference between Zelda and the two classics mentioned above is that I feel this game didn't quite hit on the perfect storm of good game design that made even the first installment feel refined and complete. Hidden secrets all over the world sounds good, but fighting every Armos, checking every tombstone, burning every bush and bombing every wall doesn't exactly sound like my idea of fun (or of engaging puzzle design for that matter). And while the combat could have been worse, the enemy sprites are very simple - they mostly don't indicate which direction they're facing in and don't have attack 'tells', which makes their attacks and movement feel erratic and random and makes dealing with them feel like a matter of luck. Hardware limitations mean that certain enemies teleport or pop out of the ground without warning one square in front of where you're walking, pretty much always resulting in a guaranteed hit. Put simply: all the core concepts that make classic Zelda great are all here, but the game itself doesn't really feel great to play.

This does a heck of a lot more right than wrong and I'd recommend it to any fans of the series who haven't yet tried it for whatever reason - with the caveat that you might want to have savestates or a rewind feature in reserve just in case!

beaten for the first time without save states. it's pretty easy sailing for most of the game (especially given you can waltz into the very first dungeon busted as hell in regards to items and upgrades) until the second to last dungeon where it went to hell. extra heart containers, upgraded weapons/armor, and such can only go so far with some of the combat encounters.

i think this will always be a appreciate for what it is and what it did for the medium while never fully enjoying it by itself type thing for me.

looking forward to slowly working my way through the rest of the series. a lot of replays but there's a few that i've yet to beat in there too.

Hard to say whether it's my experience with future Zeldas or my experience with knowledge-based progression games as of late, but I found so much of this game intuitive when others didn't. There really are objects that stick out, contrast with areas you've seen before, or contradict the design of all other areas, and if I just thought what would work on them, well, a lot of the time those ideas simply worked. A lot of the hints are really good too.

It all falls apart in Level 7. What do you mean "there's a secret in the tip of the nose" old man? It has 0 connection to the actual layout of the level, the thing you could consider a nose is not the way forward, and doesn't help with traversing the level at all. What doesn't help is the level of overreliance on bombs. Level 7 and 9 both share this problem. It is stated in a different hint that every 10 enemies the player should receive a bomb drop, but what's the point.

Even the secret item found there, the red candle, is largely useless when you find the book in the next level, though it may serve as a hint to the player that they should try using the candle more, which may lead them to the next entrance. I found it earlier though, through context clues like I mentioned.

But it makes me wonder, if they could have an upgrade for the candle, couldn't they also have one for the bombs? I mean, they do have an upgrade for the bombs in a sense, by allowing you to carry more of them, but why not just let the player use them freely at that point? Most enemies going forward don't even take damage from them.

I guess every issue boils down to wanting to extend playtime. While I had less of an issue with finding things, which is what a lot of people mention when discussing this game, I definitely had to grind a lot. I set out to play this game for as long as I needed to and use only the manual attached to the game. And it worked, I got literally every single thing I needed, I found entrances to level 8 and 9 before finding the fifth one. It was beautiful. All the way up until level 7, where a completely new block pushing puzzle popped up, and I just couldn't really figure out that out of the dozen blocks on screen that one had to be pushed. Had to look that one up.

That level is just such a bizarre mess of ideas, I can't stress that enough. There's also this room that also doesn't appear anywhere else, where "grumble, grumble" is supposed to indicate that you need to give the enemy meat to pass through? Something only found in the same shop as the blue ring, which boosts your defense, making it one of the most useful items at that point in the game, and costs basically the maximum amount of money you could hold, so you would obviously feel inclined to buy that and move on rather than grind for some meat? I mean, I went back and bought it, so by spamming everything I managed to get through, but still, why are all these weirdo ideas stacked in a single level?

That one dungeon really damages what is otherwise an honestly cool experience. I was surprised with how tight the controls were, there are these sections with statues shooting bolts that often have other enemies in them as well, and I had these genuinely great moments of weaving between these shots and the other threats. They were really tight.

So were a lot of the enemies and bosses. They were tough as nails and extended my playtime significantly, but I always felt like if I played better I could actually squeeze through them while taking less damage, and I often did. Too bad you don't respawn with full health, makes collecting all the containers feel somewhat worthless.

There's some surprisingly good stuff here, though it would be hard for me to recommend this as an introduction to the franchise. I'm usually big on playing games according to release order, but I think the knowledge of how certain items are used in other Zelda titles gave me ideas for solving puzzles and finding secrets. Hard to say whether I'd be able to figure them out otherwise.

Hard to say whether I enjoyed the game much, really. Though I didn't find the secrets to be as obscure, and I found the gameplay engaging, I think the actual designs really didn't grab me, and I was only ever excited to find stuff rather than go through dungeons. There were a lot of NES games that simply looked cooler even then. A lot of the designs and color schemes ended up being changed soon after, and for much better. Definitely not one of my favorite titles on the console, but an incredibly cool and inspirational one, even to me in current year.

Man, I just don’t know, dudes. I feel like the stuff that people talk up about this game is stuff I liked better when I played Dragon Quest for the first time. I mean they’re different genres and I played the updated version of DQ on the Switch with QoL improvements so maybe it’s just the fact that I don’t have the patience for the authentic retro stuff. I got through the first dungeon and the guide I was using… pointed me somewhere wrong for the second? Maybe that’s the problem?

I don’t know, man. People like the open world exploration aspect but I don’t really enjoy wandering around cluelessly and dying constantly. I’m too much of a spoiled baby gamer I guess. I liked solving puzzles on my own in DQ but there was a little more guidance and it didn’t involve you having to have reflexes or hand eye coordination.

You know what would’ve made this game sick, though? If Nintendo had released a version of this for the 3DS that took a page from Etrian Odyssey and let you make your own map on the bottom screen so you could keep track of what bushes you tried to torch with the one use of the candle you had per screen transition (why did they DO that). I heard a lot of my friends talking about how fun making your own map was and shit maybe being able to do an EO would’ve made me get it!

Also I gotta admit that the most interesting thing this game did that none of the follow ups ever did is give the moblins free will. Like why are the “it’s a secret to everybody” dudes turning traitor? Why are all of Ganon’s porcine minions going forward just kinda extensions of his dark whatever? This isn’t a question this game or any subsequent games going forward are interested in answering but man does it ever intrigue me.

The old people being scattered in caves is surprisingly humorous!

I'm not sure I have much new to add here. (I played through most of Level 1-6 and got kind of bored) I like the idea of the levels increasingly feeling soft gate-y and requiring you to try and find the Blue Ring, or the sword upgrades. I feel like if you made it easier to get money +find the heart containers (maybe hide them in mini challenge levels? Or why not do away with the idea of heart containers at all and gate the sword upgrades with triforce pieces?), and fixed up the messed up combat controls, and were more generous in healing you after death - this game is nearly playable without a guide and that's pretty cool for 1986. And in the cases where you do need hints (for me, finding money for the blue ring, and opening Level 7), it doesn't feel like it's ruining the whole experience.

Nearly 40 years on, I'm mostly surprised they haven't tried to remaster or redesign it (I guess there's that SNES version?). The enemy types are varied/fun, but the controls just aren't up to the task. (In some ways this game feels kinda rushed, especially in the dungeon room layouts which become tedious/drawn out, but Nintendo did a good job hiding the rushed-ness overall). I think the main reason is that with its lack of characters, it wouldn't sell well (compare to the character-driven stuff of the later 3D Zeldas). Unless they added some characters? The game gets tiring by the midpoint where you've seen most of the overworld and all that's left are a handful of samey-feeling but increasingly ridiculous enemy layout dungeons.

If I have one complaint, compared to other games around the time, Hyrule's art direction is pretty boring in the dungeons. Not really much sense of a level or place in those dungeons... just rooms stuck to each other. And there's only two songs...? This game is nearly unplayable with sound on, even though the overworld theme is cool (until it's looped the 100th time)

The overworld art direction is also a little so-so for the time (maybe it's the NES's fault), but the overworld has a good sense of geography so it sort of works.

You fight three hundred and thirty cage matches against bats, slimes, mummies, goblins, knights, centaurs, and a pig man. If you don't lose your mind, you get the opportunity to do it all over again but tougher. A raw deal if ever there was one.

I am old enough to admit that most criticisms I have had of this game over the years are not actually flaws. You can hate it, but you can't really say the Legend of Zelda dropped the ball anywhere. When it kicks your ass, it is trying to get you to find ways to kick back harder with timing, evasion, and upgrades. When it throws another maze at you, it wants you to find the cave person who knows the way through. When it buries the way forward under some bush, it wants you to talk to other players and research. It is not random, it is not cheating, it basically invented saving on cartridges so it could let you hold on to your victories. It did always want you to succeed. Sequels would change things to a way I preferred, but I hesitate to say anything was "fixed", and the experience has just about killed any instinct to argue about games "aging poorly" for me.

Beneath every future iteration of Hyrule is the grid of this game's overworld. Not only landmarks like Death Mountain or Spectacle Rock or Lost Woods, but the idea of a continuous world broken up into discrete pieces. Only Link's Awakening would explicitly keep the pure grid structure, but most future games are iterating on this core idea rather than deviating or evolving. The thing about the grid here is how it hides information; you know where you are relative to the world as a whole, you have your memory of the path that got you there, but unless you've stepped on any given screen before you have no idea what awaits you when you push on north/south/east/west. I wonder if Wind Waker was at some point aiming to recapture that mystique: only silhouettes of islands adjacent to you that you couldn't properly see until you made landfall, and anything could be hidden within or beneath. As much as Breath of the Wild aims to resurrect the spirit of this game, that crapshoot element of navigation and discovery is largely lost by virtue of players being able to see long distances and follow whatever path from point A to point B. I've avoided Tears of the Kingdom trailers and details as much as I can, but I wonder if the sky islands and underground hinted at in what I did see are a swing of the pendulum back in the original's direction.

It took a lot for me to come to appreciate this game. I had to play almost all of the rest of the series. I had to keep coming back after over two decades of abandoned playthroughs. I had to gain some skill in Gradius and Getting Over It, Hades and Hollow Knight, Doom and Dark Souls and Druaga. Even then I had to use save states regularly, rewind somewhat frequently, and follow a guide almost to the letter.

I still don't love it or feel moved by it, but I have learned to respect it. Many things I love about the series were either impossible at the time or it had no interest in implementing, and thus what matters most to me is what I can now see of this game in those I do love. It is a hard blade on a table; it only knows how to cut, but with enough ingenuity one can use it to build a house.

6/10 (Decent)

You may not know this but I’ve never played a single Zelda game before. I mean despite my older brother playing it I just decided to never play the series but since I’m older and now getting into new interests I thought since Tears of the Kingdom came out this month and my birthday is soon I thought I might go through all the Zelda games I can.

Anyways I like Zelda 1 a bit. I think the 8-but graphics are good for its time, the controls are smooth and responsive, and overall the combat when fighting enemies is solid.

My main problem with this is that there is so much repetition that makes this not fun. Go in dungeon, backtrack through the map just to get certain things, go back to the spot you were to get something, backtrack in the dungeon and to me it’s not fun.

I really don’t have a lot to say about this since the game isn’t really that long. It took me only 2 hours just to finish and the game isn’t that complex. Overall it’s just ok.