The Legend of Zelda has been, without question, my favorite series of video games. I love the idea of exploring a fantasy world full of secret passages, strange enemies to defeat, puzzles to solve, special weapons to find, and princesses in need of rescue. These five posts will have my own experiences with the games.
My first memory of Zelda is seeing the original TV ad with
the guy yelling, “ZELDA!” in a dark room (not the one with the 2 kids doing the
“rap”). I thought it looked interesting and maybe along the same vein as, say,
Pitfall. I wanted to play it right away, but didn't have a Nintendo Entertainment System at the time, and no immediate prospects of getting one. I was aware of my parents' financial situation at the time (money was tight, but we weren't starving/homeless or anything) and didn't want to demand anything of them. The initial draw for me was the challenge of the puzzle - finding Zelda.
Months later, I went to my friend Brooks’ 9th birthday party. His cousin Matt was there, and he had brought The Legend of Zelda with him. I didn’t put it together that this game and that one from the
weird commercial I had seen were the same game right away. All I knew is that I couldn’t
put it down. I really didn’t care about the rest of the party; I just wanted to
play Zelda! I found the first dungeon by accident and went inside. I didn’t
know about block-pushing, so I initially tried bombing the blocks surrounding
the stairs that led to the Bow to no avail. I didn’t stop dreaming about that
game and how to get down those stairs for weeks. Besides the exploration and puzzle aspect of it, I absolutely loved the concept of the "shooting sword," and what a cool weapon that was. I learned how to mimic the sound effect as best I could and probably drove my mom crazy with it.
After that I didn’t play any Zelda games for quite a while.
My friend Michael from across the street got a Nintendo, and along with It,
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Like the first game, I had seen a TV ad. This
one wasn’t as goofy, but kept the trope of yelling Zelda’s name.
The thing that stuck out in my mind was the scene where Link
was banging on some kind of “invisible barrier” as he is prevented from getting
to Zelda. It seemed to me that this was probably midway through the game where
the hero is close to obtaining his goal but prevented by some magical means. As
it turns out, Link starts the game by Zelda’s side, and is never lost and her
whereabouts never in question.
Anyway, once I started watching him play that game I
basically lived over at his house. I’m sure Michael’s parents got sick of me
coming over. I played here and there, but mostly watched like it was some kind
of real-life drama being played out before my eyes. Sometime later, as Michael
and I were talking about games and such, we got onto the topic of the first
Zelda game. As he told me about it, I realized that I had, in fact, played it and it finally clicked that the game I had played months earlier at a birthday party was the precursor to this new game I loved.
During this time, it seemed like Nintendo-mania was on an upswing. There was a Mario/Zelda themed breakfast cereal, as well as a TV show - The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. It featured a combination of live action and animation Mario content, but on Fridays, the animation was The Legend of Zelda instead. I looked forward to each Friday for that reason. It was a little cheesy, but that was pretty standard fare for "kids" entertainment in those days. I only wish that more than 13 episodes were made.
On Christmas day of 1989, my family got an NES and Zelda 2,
just like Michael. I finally had my own copy and didn’t have to bother him (as
much). As expected, I played that game a lot and got quite good at it, not only
memorizing where everything is but mastering advanced techniques like killing
Ironknuckles easily.
I had gotten Nintendo literature and posters as inserts of
games or through Nintendo Power, and had always stared at the pictures of Zelda
1. Compared to what I was used to in Zelda 2, the original’s version of Link
seemed short and squat. In my mind, newer was better (and that’s often true
with video games) and I saw sequels such as Super Mario Bros. 2, Zelda 2,
Castlevania 2, and Mega Man 2 as being superior to the originals mainly for
that reason.
I had played and/or seen little bits of it here and there,
like when I went to my friend Chad’s house and we tried to finish Ganon’s lair,
but got lost. I called up Michael and he talked us through it using a map he
had obtained from Nintendo Power. Another time I was at my friend Eric’s house
and desperately tried to finish the first dungeon but didn’t have enough skill.
But it kinda always bugged me in the back of my mind that I
had left a quest unfulfilled, and a game unfinished. I rented the original
Legend of Zelda from Albertson’s and sat down to conquer this game. And that
day, of all days, was the day my dad decided to take my brothers and me to the
school field to play catch. I didn’t really want to go and wasn’t very
enthusiastic, as this was eating into my limited time to play the game.
I didn’t get super far, as I wanted to try to do it all on my
own. I did a LOT of wandering around, because I thought I wouldn’t have enough
time to make a detailed map or anything. I only had Friday and Saturday until 5
PM with this game.
My aforementioned friend Eric ended up moving across the
street from me, so I was able to borrow The Legend of Zelda a few times and
finish it. I wanted to own the game, but didn’t have the cash, and didn’t know
of any used game stores (since most were pretty new at the time). Using Zaks, I made some Triforces. The animated series depicted the Triforces of Wisdom and Power as blue and red tetrahedrons, respectively. However, I ended up making triangular prism-shaped Triforces instead, along with a black one to hold them all together. I kept candy in them, but as it turns out, the real shape of them was in fact triangular prism, and it was confirmed by the title screen of the next Zelda game.
In the summer of 1992, I bought The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I used my own money I had earned from a paper route and took the
opportunity to buy it from Toys’Я’Us in Boise while we were over there doing
something my mom had to do. Along with it I bought a gaming magazine that
featured the game (it wasn’t Nintendo Power). But it didn’t really have many
tips or maps, just kinda previews. After making the purchase, having to run
errands around Boise (including buying an above ground pool) was like torture.
I read the instruction manual and looked through the magazine to bide my time,
but I was very anxious to get home to play it. I continued to read the manual
in the car on the way home. When we finally pulled up to the driveway I jumped
out and ran downstairs, only to find my dad playing Tetris on the NES (which
was hooked up to the same TV). While I waited for my dad to finish, I went and
fetched Michael, as I was sure he would like to see it. Michael came back to my
house and we started playing. We stayed up all night except for a small nap
that we each took. I don’t think either of us had permission to do a sleepover,
but whatever. The next day was rough because I had only gone on a couple hours
of sleep.
Michael was the one who pointed out that the overworld theme
was the same as the original game to me. Once I took a good listen, I
discovered that he was right and loved the music. I also asked him about the
geography of Hyrule from the original game, as I hadn’t memorized it at the
time.
I got stuck on a few spots, and consulted the hint guide
that came with the game. I later had found that the original Zelda had included
a map with some hints because the game gave very little direction and expected
the player to figure things out. ALttP was more or less the same, but the in-game dialogue
was much better and the hint book was to be used as a last resort. There was
also the Nintendo Game Counselor hotline, where one could call (paying long
distance fees, of course) for hints and advice. I ended up calling once, and
expected to get in trouble for doing so, but I was never confronted. Turns out
the phone bill was a source of contention between my parents and my mom
probably didn’t raise a fuss for fear of the month’s total being made aware to
my dad.
I played ALttP over and over, even finishing it in one game
on a Sunday afternoon. I learned how to sequence break a little, and explored
every nook and cranny of Hyrule. About the only secret I didn’t discover was
the Chris Houlihan room.
In the spring of 1993 we got 3 Game Boys, so I could finally
play portable Nintendo games. I bought The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening in
December just a couple days after Christmas. Like ALttP, I played LA a lot and
found Koholint to be quite charming. I remember thinking that a few of the
elements of the game were strange, and that this game represented a bit of a
departure from the series. My friends Edgar and Quincy’s theory was that Shigero
Miyamoto was on ‘shrooms when he produced this game. But overall, it still felt
and played like a Zelda game. I wouldn’t find all of the pieces of heart until
years later.
I would later play it on my Super Game Boy and colorize it with browns and greens. I also lent Michael a Game Boy (we had 3) and LA so he could finish the game. I also was finally able to get my own copy of LoZ from the Card Shop (which also dealt in used games) in near mint condition with an instruction manual. I traded my copy of Contra III on the SNES for the game straight over for it. Now that I had unlimited access to it, I played through it several more times, even completing a swordless run. My mom purchased some Zelda and Mario placemats for us, which I believe was the first bit of Zelda merch that we had (other than the breakfast cereal).
Michael’s copy of Zelda 2 had stopped working and borrowed
ours one time. He returned it a few days later while I happened to be playing
basketball outside with my brothers. I was being lazy and didn’t want to run it
inside, so I set it on our front porch, figuring it was out of danger of being
hit. Well, at some point the basketball hit a corner and bounced funny. The
ball landed squarely on the edge of the cartridge and chipped off a piece,
exposing the gold contact points.
Sometime around here there started to be rumors swirling of the next Zelda game. Somehow my mom heard that the next one would allow you to actually play as Zelda. Looking back now, I realize that she had gotten wind of the CD-i games, and was probably talking about Zelda's Adventure. Perler Beads started becoming popular around this time, and using the 6-sided star pattern, I was able to make a fairly large Triforce out of them and melt them all together. I hung it above the door to my room, not knowing that it would be similar to something in the next Zelda game, which was . . .
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was scheduled to be out
in November of 1998, five years since the last (official) one was released. Unfortunately
I was (ironically) in Japan at the time and wasn’t able to play it. I stood and watched the game demos running in electronic stores for hours, while reading the brochures and any other free literature I could get my hands on. I also ended up buying a package of OoT trading cards and the soundtrack to listen to in anticipation. I also found the original Japanese ALttP guidebooks at a second-hand bookstore for a fairly good price.
As soon as
I got home in April of 2000 I was itching to play it. I played Ocarina during
most of my free time as I reintegrated into the American culture. My mom
started to get annoyed with how much I was playing, but Michael understood, as
he had gone through the same thing 2 years earlier. I felt a need to discover everything about this new version of Hyrule and learn more about its lore. I felt like this was a new chapter about the history of Hyrule that had been written about in the manual for ALttP as the backstory. One funny thing that happened was that I didn't bother unfreezing King Zora before heading to the Water Temple. I figured the Zora Tunic would be the treasure in the Water Temple, and that I just had to suffer through holding my breath to creatively get around the dungeon until that point. In other words, I accidentally made the game quite a bit harder.
I probably went through Ocarina three times in the next five months, memorizing all the little secrets and finding new ones. During this
time I moved out of my parents house and became a roommate of Edgar, who also
had a N64 and Ocarina. Another roommate, Todd, was slowly making his way
through the game. I would sometimes watch him play to see the problem solving
process he was working through from a perspective different from my own.
Edgar had bought a Game Boy Color and the colorized version
of Link’s Awakening. He hadn’t really gotten to play the original much but
enjoyed the game. I didn’t pay too much attention to it, as I figured the
colorization was basically the same as what I had done with the Super Game Boy.
But it turns out it was much better and also included a bonus dungeon. Sort of
like how it bugged me that I had never originally finished LoZ, it kinda bugged me that
there was a new dungeon that I had never finished, but I let it go for the time being.
In October of that same year, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask debuted. I
bought it the morning of the release day, the first time I had done that. Edgar
and I were both playing it in our free time, having a friendly competition to
see who could finish certain things faster. I ended up completing the game
sooner, but I was missing many of the masks and around 15 heart pieces.
Occasionally on the way home from work I would stop into the Target I bought
the game from and take a quick peek at the strategy guide for a few pointers.
I really loved MM; the sadness, the story, and getting to
interact with NPCs who didn’t just stay in the same place saying the same thing
the whole game. It quickly rose to the top of my list as my favorite Zelda
game.
Around the time that MM came out, I started dating the woman who would become my wife. When I wasn't out with her, I was usually playing Majora's Mask (or trying to get the last few cheats on Perfect Dark, but mostly Majora's Mask). She even helped me go spider hunting in the beach spider-house one time. Lucky for me, I got to connect the two biggest things on my mind at the time and kill two birds with one stone.
Right after we got married, we moved into an apartment and didn't have much of anything besides a mattress at first. But we did have my 13" TV, the SNES, and the N64. She didn't have a job at the time, so she played ALttP, LA, and OoT to kill the time. At some point she had finished those 3 games and started MM, but she didn't like the 72-hour mechanic and didn't complete the game (this also coincided with her getting a job and starting to do some daycare, so she didn't have as much free time).
The following year for Christmas we got a minor Zelda game, Link's Crossbow Training. It was a shooting game that took advantage of the Wii Remote's pointing capabilities. It came with a special accessory that allowed the Wiimote to function more like a gun with a trigger. It was a fun game that was cheaper, came with a cool accessory, and reused the music and graphics from Twilight Princess. 
The next game we got was The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I bought it on release day, but had to wrap it up for Christmas. I had high hopes for this game for many reasons. First, it was the first console Zelda game since Twilight Princess (2 other handheld games, 2 remakes, and 4 spin-off games had been released in the meantime), which was actually a GameCube game. This one would be for the slightly more powerful Wii, so it should look even better. Second, the motion controls were supposed to be really good. The original motion and aiming controls for the Wii version of Twilight Princess felt sort of, "tacked on," because swinging the Wii Remote in any direction made Link swing the sword in the same manner; essentially, the swinging motion replaced pressing the B button. But now there was Motion Plus, which promised 1:1 movement mirroring. 
Third, this game happened to come out during the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, and so I expected big things for a celebratory game. I suppose most disappointment is caused by the gap between expectations and results. Finally, in the promos and advertisements, it featured a new song called, "Ballad of the Goddess," which was amazing. What made it even better was that when played backwards, part of it was Princess Zelda's theme! 
