ILX Plays: The Legend of Zelda for NES

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

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/