ILX Plays: The Legend of Zelda for NES

http://www.zeldadungeon.net/images/News/10-10-10-Legend-of-Zelda.png
how quickly can you beat it?
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/art_thelegendofzelda_overworldmap.png

it looks so small

open image in new tab

but yes, it's amazing how little real estate there genuinely is in a game that felt so infinitely sprawling when i first played it.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/master-of-play

When Shigeru Miyamoto was a child, he didn’t really have any toys, so he made his own, out of wood and string. He put on performances with homemade puppets and made cartoon flip-books. He pretended that there were magical realms hidden behind the sliding shoji screens in his family’s little house. There was no television. His parents were of modest means but hardly poor. This was in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties, in the rural village of Sonobe, about thirty miles northwest of Kyoto, in a river valley surrounded by wooded mountains. As he got older, he wandered farther afield, on foot or by bike. He explored a bamboo forest behind the town’s ancient Shinto shrine and bushwhacked through the cedars and pines on a small mountain near the junior high school. One day, when he was seven or eight, he came across a hole in the ground. He peered inside and saw nothing but darkness. He came back the next day with a lantern and shimmied through the hole and found himself in a small cavern. He could see that passageways led to other chambers. Over the summer, he kept returning to the cave to marvel at the dance of the shadows on the walls.

(btw, that map in the OP has the prices of everything in the respective stores, the order of the dungeons, what's in every cave and the answers to the mazes; should prove useful)

That block quote about Miyamoto is fantastic. What a perfect origin story.

not so perfect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-qBkWerZDg

let me blow your mind: the guy in that commercial was the voice of the Crypt Keeper
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0440885/

woah

rarely felt so bereft as when losing my shield to a likelike

later installments, coddling, let you get it back

otm

I like how the desert really is a desert. No secrets or landmarks at all.

I've beaten this game multiple times. I love it. It gets right to the action without having to wait through an annoying tutorial or opening section.

Here's some impressions from playing it today.

- if you go immediately left, the screen has rocks that look like an arrow pointing back to the right. wrong way.

- you can't reach the zoras without first encountering octoroks, giving you the blockable projectiles before the unblockable ones.

- weird how the boomerang isn't in a special room. no treasure chests in this game, just caves within caves.

- I dislike how shops can have different prices for the same items. I'm glad they didn't include this in later Zelda games.

- I love how far you can go in the map without any special items. It does exploration excellently.

- I think of this as the game that finally got away from the arcade game model. It's meant to be gnawed at through multiple sessions instead of being a quick shot of a game where you can see everything in one short sitting.

- Original code name: Adventure Mario. "Adventure" after the Atari game, which was named after the text game "Adventure" because the room exits were in the compass directions. (Also, dragons.) This is how "adventure" came to describe both action-adventure games like Zelda and graphic adventure games like Myst.

I was so into Zelda when I was a kid. I played that and the TMNT game so much one summer she eventually disconnected my NES and hid it from me. Of course I found it right away and would hook it back up to play every time she left the house. She came home one afternoon when I wasn't excpecting it and caught me playing Zelda. Without skipping a beat she ripped the NES out, took it to the back dack, and smashed it to pieces with a hammer. It was very traumatic. Still, this was the best game.

- I think of this as the game that finally got away from the arcade game model. It's meant to be gnawed at through multiple sessions instead of being a quick shot of a game where you can see everything in one short sitting.

first console game with battery saving, i think-- the launch title for the famicom disk.

The sound effects used the Famicom's PCM channel in the cartridge version. It also used the microphone built into the Famicom's controller that was not included in the NES.[37] This led to confusion in the U.S. as the instruction manual reads that Pols Voice, a rabbit-like enemy in the game, "hates loud noise".[38]

this really was very confusing.

Ohhh, really? I was replaying this a couple weeks ago and confused about that.

Pols Voices die really easily to arrows anyway.

I had to look up where to find the power bracelet. This game can be so random.

in Phantom Hourglass there is a point where the game tells you to yell into the mike. afterwards it says you could have just snapped your fingers. that doesn't actually work in PH, but I think it did work in the original Famicom Zelda.

great posts so far, everyone.

I dislike how shops can have different prices for the same items. I'm glad they didn't include this in later Zelda games.

disagree actually! it's a very small thing but in such an abstract world your mind fills in a lot and it somehow gave this place more texture to think to yourself, as you're chugging across the landscape, "ugh, that's the ripoff shop, don't go there, i hate that guy."

yes, definitely. had to write down prices and shop around for deals.

did you ever consider the possibility that the reason some of the shops have elevated prices is because they're dealing with supply-chain disruptions caused by the ruthless murder of untold numbers of Hyrule creatures, many of whom work in the transportation industry?

actions have consequences

meanwhile the shops with low prices thrive because they have side-deals with Link and their employees are safe. and you, with the controller in your hand, just playing along and supporting all of this. you all make me SICK

also you wouldn't believe the overhead for a shop concealed down a flight of stairs underneath a statue, it's hard out here. grumble, grumble . . .

NES didn't have the processing power to communicate the psychic pain of these creatures, wandering, never sleeping. the sun never set in Hyrule in those days.

not to mention other bills. you have your never-extinguished pile of fire on the left. and don't even get me started on that never-extinguished pile of fire on the right.

LET'S PLAY MONEY
MAKING GAME.

"BOY, THIS IS REALLY EXPENSIVE" refers actually to the cost of doing business. poor guys.

just realized that despite all its other RPG-esque developments, zelda ii gets rid of the economy! how strange now that i think about it... and a mistake, imo, much as i admire that game. marshaling your one water of life, and having to hike back and save up to get it refilled, was a nice part of the first game's rhythm.

Would you guys judge me if I told you I am creating a 3D reboot of this game by coding it completely into Minecraft? And also adding the prologue as a playable aspect and another Minecraft-elements-homage easter egg side quest as well? I've been shy about sharing this with ILX for some reason...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhuhdw_9Hnk

?

Great idea, Evan. This Polygon post is about your game, I'm guessing? Looks really good.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/26/8110555/zelda-in-minecraft-overview

Thanks! Yeah that's it. I was very much not interviewing well during that tour, yeesh. I blush anytime someone watches it in front of me.

Project has come a long way since then, too. I get a ton of fan mail about it. People are really excited for the release, which is cool for us.

wow, that looks awesome

Thanks! It'll be a free download once it's all done.

that's super exciting Evan! I have been looking for an excuse to boot up Minecraft again. I do hope you keep ILX posted now :)

damn that minecraft remake looks amazing. congrats!

seriously, very cool!

yeah, impressive work and then some!
i got to the first dungeon last night and have resolved to throw away my current controller.

i never had this as a kid so after the first dungeon i have to consult a walkthrough =( for all the crap people give Castlevania II for being obtuse, this game feels just as foggy to me.

you need to live that vandal lifeystle, just wandering hyrule burning down trees, blowing up shit, pushing over gravestones

only then can you find what you need

i've never beaten a zelda, so i'm going to give this a shot tonight. i'm going to try to avoid a walkthrough, but if i get frustrated i'll probably just consult the image forks posted at the top of the thread.

you should stream it. i used to be able to beat this game on one life, no continues. also had a theory abt the most efficient way to beat this game i think it was like 1-3-4-5-2-8-6-7-9 iirc. getting the best sword asap makes the game a lot easier and there are so many heart pieces easily accessible from the start

lamp otm multiple times

this game is completely beatable and still very playable. difficult but learnable with some effort.

Thanks for all the support, everyone! I'll definitely keep you all in the loop going forward.

Yes please Karl stream yourself playing this game!

Here's a nice resource for all the maps in one place: http://ian-albert.com/games/legend_of_zelda_maps/

i'll stream it if i have the house to myself for a while, but i feel weird doing it when anyone's around! also i am very bad at zelda and usually drink too much when i play videogames, so there's that too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aM7kg0-6ys

fwiw this is a cover (sort of) of the Zelda dungeon music from a band i used to play in. i played theremin.

i wasn't impressed by the gee-wow polygon interviewer who seemed to be aiming for the little kid demographic.

i like the various additions you put in. hope you don't get a cease&desist letter.

Yeah, Sometimes Jon and I will laugh about his giddiness for flying behind the old man in the cave. He's a nice guy though.

There is a TON more additions now, that whole idea kind of snowballed. For example, as I said we are building a whole playable prologue into the game based on the text in the original instruction manual (pages 3-4). Also there will be a side quest where you have to collect items hidden in all of the Minecraft homages tucked away throughout the map. The incentive for doing this will involve the story of a character we are adding in. That being said, all of this will not conflict with the flow of the original narrative/gameplay.

Not incredibly worried about the cease & desist as many people have built Zelda stamped Minecraft projects before, also functional. This one got attention for being a unique spin and particularly ambitious but we aren't exactly developing an actual indie game that utilizes brand equity, it's still really just a big Minecraft project?

i got to the first dungeon last night and have resolved to throw away my current controller.

same here! I need a real usb controller I think. PS4 controller wasn't working for some reason.

really? it works perfectly for me! i'm using OpenEMU on a mac. i just plugged the controller in, it automatically detected it, and there's no lag.

Yeah I don't know. The controller application saw the controller and recognized it as a DS4, but Nestopia didn't recognize it anymore. Not sure what the deal is.

But whatever, I'll just get a USB controller.

Also, it isn't that bad to use the keyboard. It has some advantages actually.

i used a keyboard up until i got a ps4. i felt like it worked alright for some games, but was was nearly impossible to use for games where you need to move diagonally

Stream happening or no?

not sure...leaning toward no. i won't be at home for another 2 hours, and then i think i'd only be able to play for about an hour and a half or so before stopping. if i decide to do it, though, i'll post the link here!

gonna play this on my Dreamcast which has an NES emulator. so i can use that sweet CRT

K I lied, I'm gonna start streaming in about 10 minutes. I'll just get as far as I can in 90 minutes or so (precog spoiler: not far) and resume it another day

http://www.twitch.tv/weinventyou

Aw crap. I just saw this now.

I'm coming back on in just a bit actually. i thought i only had til 8:30 but it turns out i have more time, so i thought i'd eat a quick dinner.

i suck really bad.

beat the 1st dungeon with the help of tips from a friendly advisor, then wandered and eventually landed in 3rd dungeon.

just about to fire this up via NesterDC

or wait, never mind for tonight!

"its a secret to everybody"

could be good pop music lyrics

feel like someone's done that

i never had this as a kid so after the first dungeon i have to consult a walkthrough =( for all the crap people give Castlevania II for being obtuse, this game feels just as foggy to me.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 4:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you need to live that vandal lifeystle, just wandering hyrule burning down trees, blowing up shit, pushing over gravestones

only then can you find what you need

― LEGIT (Lamp), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 4:43 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when i played link to the past for the first time recently (which is way less obtuse than this game is afaict) i found myself frustrated by the amount of wanderin' around the game wanted me to do. but also wanted me to want to do--like i really think this is me playing wrong (or playing anachronistically), not bad game design

i don't know quite what i'm trying to articulate. it seems a weird interpretive sticking-point as to how i feel about zelda. but one that doesn't have an analogue in books. well, i guess it's a bit like wishing you'd already read dickens so you knew which bits you'd feel okay skipping.

it's interesting, the points about how not-quite perfectly worked out this game is. i think of it as SUCH a classic but yeah, the parts that involve semi-random exploring, and the early availability of heart containers, sort of push against that a little - like you'd figure in a really finely-tuned, perfectly-optimized game machine those things would really be paced out a bit better. link to the past basically solves this and then some IIRC. but i still can't really hold it against zelda! another example of a game where, if the basic mechanics are satisfying in themselves, then roaming around exploring can make for a completely enjoyable play session in itself.

just now reading thwomp's last posts and yeah - this is probably a key dividing line that would keep somebody from really loving this game! they absolutely count on you finding the experience of wandering around to be a dazzling and immersive adventure in itself. you're miyamoto discovering the cave. some of that is lost to the sands of time because it's the shock and delight of such amazing graphics and such a huge world, playing so fast (i.e. not a CRPG). only seven years separate adventure on the 2600 and zelda on the famicom!

another one we were playing, in between:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaKtZYMBbwM

so i was also well-prepared to fill in a fairly abstract landscape!

i like that the world is JUST big enough that making it all the way to the top of the mountains without dying is certainly practical but, especially early on, is pretty daunting. no need for extra creepy music or animated lava or anything to give you the sense that you're far from home and in the forbidden hostile wastelands.

http://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda01-the-legend-of-zelda-walkthrough-01.php

I am using this walkthrough, which loads you up w hearts, the blue ring (2x DEF), the silver sword (2x STR), candle, bombs, etc. before the first dungeon.

I still think this is the best Zelda. Just having no dialog at all but some mysterious world dwellers. Every time I give OOT a try I get stuck watching a cutscene of a dumb fairy telling me a tree is sad or something.

Zelda was good because of the mystery. Kind think they missed that in the rush to be cinematic in 3d.

the self-writing map is brilliant. is this the first game to have that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahTyGckSJqw

secret/treasure sound effect of all time

I had some okay times with OOT and think very very highly of Majora's Mask, but I basically agree. Even LTTP has almost too much story/dialogue (but maybe just enough, and I think the elaboration of dungeon puzzles was a fine move); there's something about the first game that makes me think it really has a lot more in common with Mario than it might seem. Like, this is not a game waiting to become something richer, more dramatic and story-driven than it is: what you want to do is pop it in and be swinging your sword at some Moblins. Mario 64 'got it,' but the N64 Zeldas, despite being great games, maybe don't quite grasp "Zelda" as well as they might have.

of course Koji Kondo is the man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7T6ZNgoP5M

Like, this is not a game waiting to become something richer, more dramatic and story-driven than it is: what you want to do is pop it in and be swinging your sword at some Moblins

yes its an early RPG focused on prolonged play over a long period of time. quite a new concept for a video game in 1986.

i really appreciate the presentation. the graphics are killer. the dungeons have this nice 3d diorama look to them. the rooms are conducive to imaginative play. i find myself imagining what a modern 3d remake would look like of some of these scenarios. fighting a bat in a moonlit dungeon room, the minimalist room architecture suggesting a pillar or other obstruction. an encounter with three red monsters in the forest. the creepy scrape of a Wall Hand suggesting .... screams? .... some inhuman shriek? .... electronic ghosts in the machine.

just beat the first dungeon. is that final boss an homage to Atari's Adventure?

http://www.cnspace.net/cge/atari2600/adventure.gif

http://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda01/Walkthrough/02/014.png

Zelda was good because of the mystery.

I guess I disagree here. I see Zelda, from the very beginning, as being more about romance than mystery, and in that respect OOT and Majora's Mask are completely natural evolutions. Given the ability to tell a richer story, that was the route Zelda had to go, and I think OOT and MM get the balance just about right.

kinda felt bad about blowing up the triceratops

I think we said this already on one of the poll threads, but it does seem a shame that there was never a third NES Zelda. The first game is three years into the Famicom life cycle, and the sequel was only a year later (!) - before the first game had even gotten its North American release! It would have been great to see a circa 1990 game that takes it back to basics but with the richer graphics and world --- the SMB3/CV3 equivalent. None of the Zelda-inspired games really did it for me - I just wanted more Zelda for crying out loud.

Still deeply annoyed about the guys I lived with in Columbus accidentally ("accidentally") leaving the house with my LTTP cart when we were all moving out three years ago. Not that it's massively rare or anything, just, y'know. Principle of the thing! At least they also got stuck with shitty Jurassic Park, and I made it out clean with Super Metroid and Yoshi's Island.

zelda oot is faultless

link to the past is the best zelda, followed by majora's mask.

@thomp - thats sort of interesting to me. i think the exploration in this game isnt that great tbh but i enjoy wandering around the hyrule of lttp. part of the problem is that color palette for a lot of screens is unappealing to me, theres too much brown. theres also a lot of empty screens which probably made the world seem larger in 1986 but just makes running around hyrule take too long now.

i will say that i generally like collecting heart pieces and finding random hidden items of little practical value (nice cape) more than i enjoy the dungeons of most of the zeldas.

as has been noted above, it's hard to believe how many of the standard rpg tropes began with zelda. minimaps, dungeon puzzles, push the brick to unearth the secret, boomerangs, lore...

- I had a hard time finding level 2. You need to take a left from a room that looks generic and has four exits.
- 2nd level is pretty simple. No staircase in it -- I checked a guide to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
- The level numbers are something the player can see but Link can't. Not that they really matter.
- Darknuts sure are hard. The room late in the game where you need to kill all the blue darknuts might be the hardest room of any Zelda game.
- This game starts out around the center of the bottom edge of a rectangular map. I wonder how designers decide on starting locations. Perhaps starting on an edge constrains the initial directional choices. Here's the starting points of the next games:
II: near the top left of an irregular map
ALTTP: center of a square
Link's Awakening: bottom left of a square
ALTTP seems like the odd one out.

i like how fast you can travel. if u need to get to the next dungeon and it is all the way across the map it will still only take you a minute to fly through 8 or so screens.

really appreciate being able to keep everything even after you die. encourages exploration.

also my B attack defaulting to the boomerang after i ran out of bombs. how considerate, Nintendo.

Even LTTP has almost too much story/dialogue

waaaaay too much of the latter. u cd cut every line after yr uncle bites it and the game would make perfect sense in dumbshow

i like the game boy one a lot. ofc it's also the only one i played as a kid for more than a minute

the sprite work in these games is pretty beautiful. the og one has the most appalling 2-bit Nintendo color scheme, lttp is objectively as good looking as any game ever made

i made a rule for myself whereby i can only play games i can find physical copies of, even if on an emulator, so instead of playing this i am going to go play landstalker probably

u cd cut every line after yr uncle bites it and the game would make perfect sense in dumbshow

i might extend it to the moment you exit the sewers with zelda but yeah definitely somewhere around here is the delineation point between an okay, overwordy script and probably the 15-30 minutes of absolute peak-zelda in terms of atmosphere and plot-integration: please help me. i am a prisoner in the dungeon of the castle. my name is zelda... i'm going out a while, link. [alternately: i'm going out a while, FUCKBALLS.] don't leave the house. the roar of rain on the roof. louder outside. (and beautiful. the snes showing off.) go home, kid!

after yr uncle dies (press B, then release it using the secret technique handed down by our people! FUCKBALLS, you can do it!) the best stuff in lttp is, absolutely, dumbshow: stepping into the master sword's clearing for the first time as woodland creatures scatter; the monkey clambering up the vine-encrusted temple facade to flip the switch for you; the flute boy gently petrifying. these moments are what put it at the top i think, tho arguments exist for link's awakening (unusual focus, weirdo atmosphere), majora's mask (formal ambition), and wind waker (gorgeous, swashbuckling). the lttp dumbshow is cinematic in the real sense: just images and movement. people are awful gassy in the 3D games. (i am firmly of generation ocarina and when i was 10 i thought the time-travel refinements it made to lttp's palimpsest world were just awesome and epic and even poignant--the way he winds up back in the garden at the end, etc--but nowadays lttp seems obviously better, simpler, more direct: light and dark, order and ruin. speaking of palimpsests and ruin, was ff6 before or after lttp?)

wordy stuff from various wise men aside, lttp's cinema is totally in the spirit of zelda 1 imo, not just because they share a pov but because zelda 1 contains primitive examples of the same kind of cinema: dungeon doors sliding open, stairs appearing, that kind of thing. (my favorite moment is when you get the raft and set off from one of the docks. all this country you've ranged over, and then the vertiginous thrill of setting to sea. landing somewhere else. PALPATING ITS PEBBLES TASTING THE PANIC AND SPLENDOR OF THE EVENT FEELING IN THE PIT OF ONE'S STOMACH THE SEPARATION FROM TERRA THESE FORM THE MOST ROMANTIC SENSATION AN EXPLORER HAS EVER KNOWN STOP.) these are all very brief moments of course, but most of lttp's "cutscenes" aren't much longer. and the reason the flute boy's transformation is the best-remembered one is that it has the least to do with the plot. cinema in zelda should imo be in the spirit of miyamoto's elemental boy-finds-a-cave premise: it should be stuff link sees, stuff he finds, weird stuff, scary stuff, sad stuff. zelda 1's hyrule is unpopulated and wild and way more dangerous than say ocarina's hyrule field, but because it's not as straight-up hostile as zelda 2--you don't dread long trips--crossing it feels like a lonely ramble. (a little like lord of the rings, another product of walks.) my ideal zelda is about that kind of a ramble--finding caves, finding rivers, fencing dangerous wildlife and haggling with hermits--while also witnessing, and taking glancing part in, strange and troubling events. like here's a word zelda should embrace: vignette. in 8th grade i maintained a small zelda fansite and wrote analyses of zelda in the unused back of the school paper.

a great thing about z1 (and the best, plot-lightest parts of lttp) is the seamlessness: except for teleporting to the surface of each dungeon after grabbing a triforce piece, the game just flows up mountains and down into caves and through layers of dungeon and into boss rooms and out again uninterruptedly, without any change of interface or stage-one/stage-two boundary, link swishing his sword without pause. metroid another series that made great, groundbreaking use of this. mario never did. (though if jumping through paintings involved a little less menu-navigation, mario 64 might qualify.) 3D zeldas were constantly interrupting you for lavish camera-capturing cutscenes, or fading to black, bethesda-style, when you opened a door.

I had some okay times with OOT and think very very highly of Majora's Mask, but I basically agree. Even LTTP has almost too much story/dialogue (but maybe just enough, and I think the elaboration of dungeon puzzles was a fine move); there's something about the first game that makes me think it really has a lot more in common with Mario than it might seem. Like, this is not a game waiting to become something richer, more dramatic and story-driven than it is: what you want to do is pop it in and be swinging your sword at some Moblins. Mario 64 'got it,' but the N64 Zeldas, despite being great games, maybe don't quite grasp "Zelda" as well as they might have.

― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, December 2, 2015 10:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You all might want to check out this article?

http://www.gamnesia.com/articles/dear-sequelitis-theres-no-definitive-zelda-formula-its-about-finding-the-ba

In the video in question, Egoraptor is kinda yelly and stuff (he is a popular youtube personality, after all) but he makes some reasonable points about game design. I think the article as a rebuttal makes some better ones, but the whole debate ties in nicely with the discussion here.

a little like lord of the rings, another product of walks

this is a great link i had never thought of and i have been grinning and going 'huhh' for like a full minute

evan i got halfway through the first sentence of that article and no, we all do not want to check out that article, what the hell is wrong with you

There is something to be said for letting the epicness of the quest speak for itself, and there are certainly parts of Ocarina that beat you over the head with this. I tend to ignore cutscenes about the Triforce and goddesses, which feel too far removed from the action to be at all interesting. In general I would say the weakest thing about story in Zelda is not the characters or dialogue, it's the unnecessary framing, the suggestion that Link's quest is cyclical, that he's a boy of destiny, which on one level functions as an acknowledgment that these are franchise games with a repeated formula, but can also lead to this kind of excessive literalism:

http://www.zeldadungeon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ZeldaTimeline3.png

feel like dlh otm. i have never played through OOT though, something I should probably remedy ASAP. I hear so many good things about it. lol ive seen Sequelitis it has some good points but yes it hails from the hallowed YT video game critic tradition of YELLING EVERYTHING LOUDLY

lol, god help us (re: that timeline). one of those series where you sort of wish they didn't have the iconic elements (link + zelda + ganon + triforce + master sword) because they were starting to really become burdensome. i did a short, goofy paper in grad school picking up on this stuff particularly with relation to the geography of hyrule, which had relevance for semi-contemporary architectural concerns about indeterminacy, iteration, "anexact-yet-rigorous" sets, etc. it also had to do with the overlapping space of the dungeons packed underneath the landscape. fun, silly little project....

but yeah, what if the only thing they'd kept in the "legend of zelda" series had been... zelda? or zelda+triforce? so 3 you would have played some farmer with a bow and arrow, 4 would have been a monk with a staff...i don't know, just an idea. love the idea of series based in quality, confidence in production value: this label means it'll be a great action-oriented exploration game.

re: minimaps, dungeon puzzles, push the brick to unearth the secret, boomerangs, lore...

thing is, none of this comes from zelda (well, except boomerangs maybe). ultima was up to IV, wizardry was up to III, first bard's tale was out. i'd have to defer to crpgaddict on tracing exactly which features come from exactly which games, but i'm PRETTY sure the major stuff here was all in place, and those games were definitely known and popular with japanese gamer nerds! tokihiro naito's hydlide had already made the translation to a top-down action format - it just wasn't very fun or sophisticated. the genius of zelda is solving those problems, getting less stat-oriented but more satisfying in the action, with wayyy better level design, better control, infinitely better combat etc.

love the discussion of the script density in LTTP. great posts dlh. (and yes it's way before final fantasy VI (1991 vs 1994).)

lttp is objectively as good looking as any game ever made

Totally agree with this, by the way. LTTP and Wind Waker are the best looking of these games.

wd read dr casino's paper

re that timeline: i spent an hour on the zelda wiki, about a month ago, reading about the 'timeline', and i came to the conclusion that the people who play videogames don't deserve videogames

yeah, that era of 16 bit gaming basically locks down the way i want games to look, then and forever. see also ten thousand odes to pixel art and stuff but basically i want my video games brightly colored, carefully but not fussily detailed, with big expressive sprites. i think chrono trigger takes this a step further than LTTP in terms of detail, atmosphere, and basically "special effects." but LTTP is magnificent no question. seiken densetsu 3 and FF6 get more detailed and 'tough' looking which fits their epic quest vibes, but imo isn't near as pleasant to look at.

it also had to do with the overlapping space of the dungeons packed underneath the landscape.

want to hear more about that! so if you compare the layout of the dungeons with the space "above" them in the overworld, what does it look like? do any of the dungeons come close to each other in the underground space?

why are the games where he's a kid on the "adult timeline" and vice versa?

i just don't understand this series

It's amusing to me that the lake in Hyrule features not one but two evil island dungeons, basically right next to each other.

evan i got halfway through the first sentence of that article and no, we all do not want to check out that article, what the hell is wrong with you

― thwomp (thomp), Thursday, December 3, 2015 9:37 AM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?? OK. Is it the fact that it involves a discussion around a hard to bear nerd celeb? Maybe don't watch that video then. Otherwise it's a similar conversation. It's relevant.

xx-post: The timeline splits after Ocarina of Time, into the adult timeline, which is what the game shows, and a kid timeline, where kid Link manages to avoid the whole thing, and then goes missing in Termina.

rmde at timelines, plots, plotholes, etc. i cant believe how hung up people get on that crap. they need every single plot point explained, there is no room for their own personal imagination, or interpretation.

it also allows people to say "this thing in the game is unnecessary" because it doesn't connect directly and literally to the main narrative. as if there was anything necessary about a video game. as if the game didn't exist to be merely played but to instead accurately detail the adventures of the player character avatar.

it also had to do with the overlapping space of the dungeons packed underneath the landscape.

want to hear more about that! so if you compare the layout of the dungeons with the space "above" them in the overworld, what does it look like? do any of the dungeons come close to each other in the underground space?

― Karl Malone, Thursday, December 3, 2015 3:34 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3uzz1xlaqU

Argh, so what was wrong with the link? Does it not also discuss the emphasis and importance of story vs. freedom of exploration across the Zelda titles? Touches on the pros and cons of linearity and gameplay dynamics and all that junk. I'm going to assume it's because it hinges on arguments originally made by someone annoying. Right? Sorry, I hate being dismissed.

i haven't watched it (i'm at work) but i'm sure it was fine! if it involves a yelling videogame dude, some people have higher or lower tolerances for that kind of thing.

for my part, i am wondering what the let's play of Links Awakening which shows where to get all the items has to do with the layout of the dungeons in comparison to the overworld. there are many video-related mysteries on this thread this morning!

i made a rule for myself whereby i can only play games i can find physical copies of, even if on an emulator, so instead of playing this i am going to go play landstalker probably

if i send you a copy of langrisser ii can you play it instead?

Yeah, though the yelling videogame dude can be ignored, the article mostly allows you to skip it by summing up the actual points. Don't mean to be sensitive, though!

When you were asking about the overlapping dungeons, which game are you referring to? The first? They don't exactly match up with the above overworld as far as placement goes.

xpost

the first game! i don't know, i just thought maybe dr. c had some cool old documents he could share. i am always a big fan of homemade maps and diagrams and the like.

Well, you may know that the dungeons all interlock together, as this was a space saving technique the developers used. Though from experience rebuilding this whole game in a more immersive way, we were forced to make our dungeons accessible via "warp" to another location, as it was tricky enough to fit all of the caves below the overworld (these are accessible via literal stairs) alone, much less with a whole network of dungeons which didn't line up with their entrances anyway.

xpost well that answers the following! cool!

re: dungeon layouts - they're gibberish. i mean the main, lame point i was making at the time was that they're a bigger-on-the-inside-than-the-outside kinda deal. they cover the whole overworld and then some, and overlap each other crazily (though this could easily be explained by just saying they're at different levels or whatever.) i have it in a PSD file with everything layered up in its appropriate spot - this was used to make some JPEGs which i used to make a powerpoint file showing it layering up one by one. the powerpoint file seems to be lost however.

i wonder if they do "fit together" in the sense that, say, all the dungeons and extradimensional places in Ultima VII: Serpent Isle are actually in the same space as the overworld, if you use the debug tools to jump around, so they all have to fit in the same x-by-y grid of space. so they had to find a place to put the things, the dungeons couldn't just be whatever shape or size:

http://www.zerker.ca/zzone/maps/U7/sSIin.png

i just had a weird vision of dystopian google maps where you can look into people's houses and see the layouts of their basements

I'd post a map of the dungeons but I don't want to be spoiler-y.

I found the PDF showing them layering up - will Dropbox in a sec.

Is architecture in games something that interests you, Dr. C? I feel like there could be a lot to say about it.

Okay - it's up here. The Zelda stuff starts page 28 of the slides, the mapping exercise on p. 45, adding second quest at 55 I think. I haven't let myself reread the text, and don't necessarily recommend you do - suspect it is me at the absolute heights of dizzying architecture-school verbiage, really stoked on the far-out readings we were doing for that (generally awesome) seminar but not necessarily feeling the need to make a lot of sense or support any arguments.

I've never really gone into architecture in games as a "thing" though yeah there should be tons of potential there. I think, and this is maybe the distillation of the paper draft in that link, that games are maybe most relevant as places to inhabit and explore impossible forms of space, or just ones we've never experienced before, in a really comfortable, identifying way where you 100% accept that that's you in there. VR is actually sort of pointless in this respect.

Actually linking architecture in games up to real-life architecture gets a bit silly; buildings in games don't serve the same functions (technical, social, economic, whatever) as buildings in real life, so it's not surprising if they get their Gothic wrong or have no clue how a hydroelectric plant is actually laid out, because it's laid out to make an awesome FPS map, or for maximum spookiness for the villain's lair. In this they're very much like film or TV - was thinking about this while watching Executive Decision the other day - pretty sure planes don't just have massive, open, unused "attics" for John Leguizamo to zip around in, but hey, you need that for the scene. The difference might be that in games, again, it's YOU... so while it's sort of fun to discover that houses in sitcoms make no logical sense and bear no resemblance to any house you've ever been in, it doesn't have the real mind-expanding potential (IMHO) of seamlessly and comfortably inhabiting these baffling non-Euclidean zones, like how Pac-Man's world is clearly a maze seen from above, but we see Pac-Man and the ghosts in profile, and never struggle with that for even one second. That's neat!

Fans, of course, will screw this up, by putting ALL their effort into resolving the many Hyrules and Brittannias. At least Castlevania has the excuse that the castle just will be different each time, due to Dracula's freaky magic, but I wouldn't be surprised if some loon has systematically compared each version of the clock tower, etc.

Yeah, when building the overworld map, the little inconsistencies between the sprites and the intended perspectives start to really stand out.

ha okay so i fell down the rabbit hole of re-reading my own paper from seven years ago. and yikes is it high on archi-school stuff. i do still mostly stand by these bits though:

This indeterminacy is heightened and deepened by the fact that the storyline of the games is repetitious in the extreme – one always plays a hero named Link at the cusp of manhood, who almost always proceeds to acquire the Master Sword, save the princess Zelda, defeat the evil wizard Ganon, and recover the powerful Triforce artifact, not necessarily in that order. So in addition to the geography, the scenario of the games is reiterated, obviously with numerous variations in each game. What this means is that a long-term player of the games is invested not so much in a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, but rather something more like folklore, in which the same tales are rehashed, recombined, and revived to respond to present circumstance. The “Legend” of the title lives up to its full implications of a nomadic text, a multiple or “minor” literature. (...)

While the Second Quest by its name seems to suggest sequence (and hence, primacy and originality for the “first” quest), there are two short-circuits to this logic. One is that the “first” quest is never actually named as such – it’s just that the other one is the second. Perhaps the one we first play through is the third or ninetieth quest! More convincingly: the second quest can be accessed without beating the first quest, if one enters one’s name as “ZELDA” on the opening screen. Given that the game is titled The Legend of Zelda, how many players may have unknowingly found themselves in the second quest the first time through? (...)

Thus, an expert player of the Zelda series constructs a nested set of irreconcilable mental maps, each taken at face value. Across the series, she knows a dozen Hyrules; within the game, she knows two Quests; within each Quests, she knows an overworld and a set of underworlds that do not reflect each other. The ultimate geography of Zelda’s world is anexact, not reducible to a readable or writable map – another lore, produced through exploration by the player.

wow thank you for linking this paper! really looking forward to reading this.

you just read the best parts! seriously, it's real amateurish stuff, clearly a lot of excitement but not a lot of...work. but thank you!

holy shit, that's bazonkers and interesting

haha thanks! one thing i now wish i'd added: the fractal quality of the triforce itself. somehow seems very fitting that you patiently assemble a triangle out of lesser triangles... and it's only one of three big triangles!

if the dungeons have different depths, they are not overlapping in space

perhaps somebody already said this

still a very fun map ty

i did say "this could easily be explained by just saying they're at different levels or whatever" but it was in the midst of a kind of rambley post.

Every time there is one of these side-view rooms I am happy.

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/312916-the-legend-of-zelda-nes-screenshot-finding-the-raft.png

yeah no kidding. even when it's just the stair down/stair back up, it feels really special.

The other thing I'm not sure you're even accounting for in the map is the space allotted for the caves as well? Really, we're just talking about some staircases being really really long.

i did say "this could easily be explained by just saying they're at different levels or whatever"

but yes, it's true, i probably should have stayed up at studio until 2:30 rather than stopping at 1:45, to add the caves. or taken a shorter donut break (possibly wendy's, or pizza) - based on date modified i was totally off the grid between 11:04 PM and 12:42 AM. architecture school is rife with pathetic work habits like that.

Heh, I only mean the caves add even more craziness to the twisted labyrinth of networks below the overworld, not that you weren't being thorough enough.

anyway, miyamoto probably wanted the player to feel the horror and confusion of an impossible space

the "moon's tears" in Majora's Mask are miyamoto basically admitting that he staged the US moon landing

ha, no worries evan! you've put way way more thought and effort into your zelda project than i ever put into mine, my hat's off to you.

for my part, i am wondering what the let's play of Links Awakening which shows where to get all the items has to do with the layout of the dungeons in comparison to the overworld. there are many video-related mysteries on this thread this morning!

― Karl Malone, Thursday, December 3, 2015 4:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in links awakening all of the dungeon/cave room are stored on two big grid 'maps' that the game pulls stuff from to make the dungeons. so a lot of the doors on the big map silently warp you to another bit.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/zeldaspeedruns/app/public/system/images/1041/original/LADX%20Underworld%201%20Map.png?1408116175

the links awakening let's play is using a glitch to move around on these two base maps and break the order of the game, because when you leave other than by a doorway it just looks for the next room across

like there is a 'real' architecture to links awakening which is different to the one the player experiences, i find this endlessly fascinating

lamp are the langrissers any good? i saw the hilariously packaged saturn omnibus the other day:

http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/6/4/1/31641_front.jpg

wwooooah that's crazy w/ link's awakening. must have been a nightmare to keep that straight while designing the game.

Yeah that's awesome thomp!

if you're familiar with the game you should watch that's let's play, it's a fantastic piece of comedy/games crit/performance

lamp are the langrissers any good? i saw the hilariously packaged saturn omnibus the other day:

i've been really, really enjoying 'langrisser ii' but its probably more satisfying than it is good. its genuinely challenging in a way that i find rewarding and i like the half-finished and awkward look of the game. the rom i have is translated from the japanese but the english font fits the text box poorly, accentuating the horse_ebooks quality of the game. also theres just lots of mostly unnecessary stat and class manipulation available that i am enjoying figuring out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyU7Fscd2KU

Has anyone played Oceanhorn? Is it more Zelda 1 or more endless tutorial 3D Zelda?

http://www.gog.com/game/oceanhorn_monster_of_uncharted_seas

the rom i have is translated from the japanese but the english font fits the text box poorly, accentuating the horse_ebooks quality of the game

yeah i loaded it up when you mentioned it before and i was like woah that's kinda crazy. it seems like a lot of work maybe, for something so unrewardingly early-genesis looking. i might play warsong first.

'landstalker' which is just started is also, man, such an ugly early-genesis festival of browns and greens

played this (LoZ) a little last night while projecting suffragette because cinema is dead. had forgotten it is by any definition an open-world game! such exciting scale and variation and yet no sprawl: you pass quickly from biome to biome like link's crawling across a terrarium, and though it suggests the kind of epic heroism the series would later chase it's also cozy, a little wild toy world. one-button swordplay visceral and tense. boomerang useful in top-down zeldas as it never is in the 3D ones, where it's mostly there to solve certain puzzles designed for it; in loz and lttp you can wipe out roomfuls of bats by maneuvering to change the boomerang's return path. not sure i've ever cleared more than four dungeons in this game--as a kid i wandered and wandered. (lttp is almost as open but much less cryptic; zelda 2 is linear in a final fantasy way, with successively opened zones. i found them both easier.)

it's interesting how many people have come back to the size of the world here. feel like a lot of mid/late-90s games that went for 'epic' often did it by sheer bigness. i found a lot of ocarina of time very enjoyable but a lot of it also felt empty. like they had to add the horse just to make moving from place to place less of a chore. interesting to hear that the final fantasy vii remake might eschew its overworld entirely... sounds funny in a JRPG of that genre but also makes a lot of sense.

LTTP's twin worlds are just at the outside edge of being too far to slog across just to try something out or check on a hunch, and there they add blinking icons on the map to tell you what you're actually supposed to do next. wonder if it'd be remembered more or less fondly without that feature.

i found a lot of ocarina of time very enjoyable but a lot of it also felt empty.

stepping into hyrule field for the first time is often and rightly remembered as a major moment in gaming, but the field's aged a lot worse than most such totems, because yes it is barren. (pc snobbery: the likes of betrayal at krondor dulled oot's impact for me on the 3D-world front, tho i was totally enraptured by the cinematic stuff.) hyrule field in the daytime is almost void of enemies (though i love that they unexpectedly decided the peahats were the size of houses); in the older ones moving across each screen is a little like playing a shmup.

tons of evocative moments in oot of course, including plenty of denser, richer environments than the field-- am thinking of kakariko village and its graveyard; the forest temple; the shuckling scientist's little house by the lake. majora's mask's relatively small scale was the right move, i think, even if the four-spoked world is a little overregular. (incidentally clock town probably belongs in the discussion in the fallout thread about virtual cities.)

oh man, i have some memories of betrayal at krondor. not coherent ones, and i'm wondering if i should save them for the relevant poll thread... but man there was so much there that hooked into certain parts of my brain i didn't know i was missing from other games, and so much that confirmed my sense that CRPGs were way, way over my head.

i liked majora's mask much more and certainly this compactness (though on some level an absolute necessity given the time-limit gimmick) was part of that. the goron environment in MM is much clearer in my brain than the one in OOT, clock town beats all the equivalent areas, etc.

i remember having the almost inconceivable sum of $60 and making an agonized choice between return to krondor and ocarina of time. i chose return to krondor, which was wrong.

ocarina of time was the last cool thing i beat, i would've played that game forever. zelda nes is fun, that map in the o.p. has been v helpful

Has anyone played Oceanhorn? Is it more Zelda 1 or more endless tutorial 3D Zelda?

I played it through, and it's more like Link to the Past: technically an open world, but you can only get to certain locations once you've gained certain objects. It's not perfect, but I'd still recommend it... The fact that it imitates Zelda is very obvious (and I doubt the developers would deny this), and the final boss is a but of a letdown, but it has a cool world (a Waterworld-style post-apocalyptic planet consisting of small island, except they're in bright-coloured fantasy style), a simple but neat story, and the exploration is fun. Basically I think it's the one PC game that I've ever played that comes closest to replicating the LttP experience, so if that's what you're after, it's well worth playing.

"consisting of small islands"

Great deku tree and stepping into hyrule field hold up very well for me

like they had to add the horse just to make moving from place to place less of a chore.

and so many games with big worlds have something like this (horse, hot air balloon, etc.) because every world, while impressive at first, becomes a slog.

i do think it's a good aesthetic move--commitment--for wind waker to be like, you think THAT was big and empty?

I could imagine a pretty good top twenty list of games where the first couple hours sees you through a very carefully-realized small world giving way to an "oh shit!" unveiling of the bigness of the world overall --- thinking again here of FF7. My sense is that very few such games are able to sustain the wonder and joy of the great big world for all that long. But it's still a cool and memorable moment.

that's at the heart of all the elder scrolls games

And fallout!

it's very good in oot where your little-kid quest to save the world ends up destroying it--ganon taking the stones off you cuz turns out an eight-year-old is not a better hiding place than three separate monster-stuffed dungeons scattered across the world--and the second and much longer part of the game is in a sense atonement.

sorry, that's really analogous to lttp's lightworld/darkworld shift, not to the immediate post-tutorial wow! of hyrule field/oblivion/f3.

I am basically always on board for "wow, this game was awesome but kinda weird that it feels like I'm almost at the final boss" followed by OH MAN THERE'S A SECOND WORLD ENTIRELY, see: symphony of the night, final fantasy VI, etc.

that's the miyamoto cave system revelation, yes? it's deeply optimistic and kind, this suggestion that there's so much more than we thought and it's waiting for us to step up.

http://kottke.org/15/12/beating-legend-of-zelda-without-a-sword

We posted an update for our Minecraft map reboot if anyone is still interested:

https://zeldaminecraft.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/the-legend-of-zelda-30-year-anniversary-map-updates/

excellent. :) wishing you all the best on this, it looks amazing already.

Thanks!

are you doing this as your main gig or just in your spare time? i can't imagine the amount of time..

Spare time...

I still go out and do things, believe it or not. I don't know where I find the time, but only one or two nights a week are actually dedicated to working on it. There's still a lot left to do. I essentially built the majority of the whole thing myself. Jon wrote some plugins to so I could create mountains (cones with customizable values) and we're using something called "Spigot" that helps me do other sweeping things like clear areas, copy and paste sections or replace block types. But much of the detailing is by hand.

Meant to delete that "to" in there.

sad lonely ILE thread

Legend of Zelda

goddammit nintendo, stop cease and desisting people's cool projects
https://www.zelda30tribute.com/