Zelda Retrospective Part 1

I thank God for granting me another year in decent health and am very thankful to everyone out there reading this.  Today I am 24 and not too long ago, one of my favorite game franchises celebrated it's 25th anniversary.  I'm of course talking about The Legend of Zelda and I felt that this would be the perfect time to reflect not only upon the franchise itself, but also the individual characters and the role they played in my life.  Join me on my retrospective of one of the most influential franchises in gaming history and possibly share your thoughts in a comment below.

Keep in mind, this is all opinionated and based entirely on my own experiences.  You're entitled to your own opinions and I respect them.  Also, this is mainly written fresh from the mind so there may be some errors.

I was born in 1987, the same year that The Legend of Zelda was released in America.  Technically, the Americanized Zelda franchise is the same age as mine but since it was first released in Japan in 1986, it really is 25 years old.  I began playing games at a young age and managed to beat the original Mario Bros at the age of 2 or 3.  I remember one day my pops inserted this shiny gold cartridge into our NES and this odd tan colored background came up.  I've always had a good memory and would often memorize things my dad did whenever he played.  Sometimes, he would forget to hold down reset when turning his system off and *poof* all of his memory would be deleted, meaning he'd start from the beginning.  This ensured that I spent many hours seeing the same sequences repeated which embedded them into my head. 

When I finally decided to attempt this massive quest, I got to about the 2nd dungeon until I began to get lost.  Keep in mind that I was only 4 or 5 at the time and majority of the games we played as kids involved us moving right and beating up everything in our way so it's not surprising I would lose my way.  I eventually would grow tired of not knowing where to go and would eventually play something else but every so often I would go back and as I continued to grow I would get further and further.  This was before the internet was readily available with guides and I didn't have a subscription to Nintendo Power so I had to rely on help from my father or hope to get lucky.  For those who played the original Zelda, this game was ripe with secrets!  Whereas more current Zelda titles usually indicate explodable walls with an obvious crack, some walls in the original NES didn't have cracks and could easily be missed.  This resulted in many hours spent bombing every wall and attempting to burn every bush around which didn't really translate to much fun as a kid. 

Thankfully, I was able to replay through the Legend of Zelda on my GBA and made it all the way up to Ganon, yet for some reason never beat him.  I had a bad habit at the time of making it to the final level/dungeon/boss in most games but never beating them (like Beyond Good & Evil, Jak II) and regret not finishing him off.  It might have had to do with the fact that I was spoiled with controls more akin to A Link to the Past and hated jabbing enemies to death as opposed to Link's sword slash.  This is not to take anything away from the Legend of Zelda and unlike some NES classics (Metroid) this game has actually aged pretty well.  I as well as many others out there regard this title as one of the most influential titles ever created and while I don't consider it the best, it definitely is a great lesson in nostalgic gaming.

While I have warm fuzzy feelings when discussing the original Legend of Zelda, the same can't be said for it's sequel The Adventure of Link.  I know that many fans out there are crying foul but please allow me the opportunity to defend my opinion.  I was a young kid and wasn't ready for the drastic changes along with the increased difficulty so I quickly dismissed this title.  Nintendo took a risk changing it's well praised top-down perspective along with it's formula in favor of a more dominant side-scrolling romp.  These days it's a pretty wide agreement that Zelda II was a very good title, but like Mario 2, there are still some out there that consider it the dark sheep in their respective franchises.  It has been years since I touched Zelda II but I truly can't consider myself a fan unless I make an attempt to play through this underappreciated gem.

*I didn't realize how much I had to say about Zelda so I will be splitting this up into different parts.  I don't know how many parts I'm going to have so I will try to continue as soon as possible.  Please let me know your opinions and feel free to share your own thoughts.  Thanks for reading!