ZELDA MARATHON- 3/20
The jump from the NES Zelda games to A Link to the Past is like a 5-year-old gaining consciousness for the first time and realising it's alive.
Everything in ALttP is a massive step up. The game looks leagues better due to the SNES' hardware upgrade, the music is much smoother (and there are more than a handful of tracks), the story is told beyond the manual and a poorly translated intro screen, and the gameplay is just better in every regard.
The Light World/Dark World switching is a fun gimmick, the bosses are mostly much better (The worm from the Tower of Hera can eat shit though) and the game actually tells you where dungeons are on a map that's more than a grey grid with a white dot on it.
In fact, telling the player anything at all is probably the biggest improvement from NES Zelda that I could ask for. It's not like the game tells you everything, though- Hyrule is absolutely crammed full of secrets just waiting for the player to dig up- Pieces of Heart, multiple secret items, item upgrade stations (one of which you need to find to kill Ganon) and more. Despite laying out the foundations of where you need to go sooner or later, in terms of collectables ALttP plays its cards pretty close to the chest and is all the better for it.
Pretty much every issue I had with the first Zelda is rectified in ALttP. Unfortunately I think it suffers a little bit from having 11 whole dungeons (12 if you count the opening castle crawl), which means the game feels like it's spinning its wheels a little in the last two or three dungeons, but it's not really an issue- the Ice Palace and Misery Mire are the only dungeons I really dislike.
A real standout of the already-fantastic SNES library and sets an excellent template for the rest of the series to follow.
Next- The Legend of Zelda- Link's Awakening DX
Previous- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
The jump from the NES Zelda games to A Link to the Past is like a 5-year-old gaining consciousness for the first time and realising it's alive.
Everything in ALttP is a massive step up. The game looks leagues better due to the SNES' hardware upgrade, the music is much smoother (and there are more than a handful of tracks), the story is told beyond the manual and a poorly translated intro screen, and the gameplay is just better in every regard.
The Light World/Dark World switching is a fun gimmick, the bosses are mostly much better (The worm from the Tower of Hera can eat shit though) and the game actually tells you where dungeons are on a map that's more than a grey grid with a white dot on it.
In fact, telling the player anything at all is probably the biggest improvement from NES Zelda that I could ask for. It's not like the game tells you everything, though- Hyrule is absolutely crammed full of secrets just waiting for the player to dig up- Pieces of Heart, multiple secret items, item upgrade stations (one of which you need to find to kill Ganon) and more. Despite laying out the foundations of where you need to go sooner or later, in terms of collectables ALttP plays its cards pretty close to the chest and is all the better for it.
Pretty much every issue I had with the first Zelda is rectified in ALttP. Unfortunately I think it suffers a little bit from having 11 whole dungeons (12 if you count the opening castle crawl), which means the game feels like it's spinning its wheels a little in the last two or three dungeons, but it's not really an issue- the Ice Palace and Misery Mire are the only dungeons I really dislike.
A real standout of the already-fantastic SNES library and sets an excellent template for the rest of the series to follow.
Next- The Legend of Zelda- Link's Awakening DX
Previous- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link