I was an Atari, Commodore and Sega kid, my best friend Diego was a Nintendo and ZX spectrum kid. We were always together, always playing. I often go back at that time with my memories to regain strenght.

A lot of my friends got Zelda for Christmas in 1987. After being turned off by the commercial with the crazy guy calling out "Zelda!" I had pretty much dismissed it. Watching my friends play it that Christmas break got me hooked and I eventually hounded my mom into getting it for me around Valentine's Day 1988.

I love coming back to the beginning of Flashback and re-listening to the episodes!

In those days Zelda wasn`t my fav game I got lost for hours without knowing where to go. Later I started to like Zelda being older. Thanks for your videos, they are reallt good and nostalgic for our generation.

Me and my son have been playing this together taking turns. It’s our tradition, we swap after a death, or after 20 mins with breath of the wild. I think it shows how good this is that it’s still fun for an 11 year old today. Luckily the internet means we are never stuck for long, I don’t think any of his school mates are playing it to get tips from.

Buying Nintendo games in the late 80's and the early 90's was always such a crap shoot. It was like buying new music that you didn't know in late 90's and early 2000's. You just looked at the cover and picked the coolest looking one and hoped it would all pan out.

FUN FACT: The guy in the Zelda commercial is actor John Kassir better known as the voice of The crypt keeper from the HBO Series ;)

I didn't get an NES until the Christmas of '88 and I had the exact same thoughts about The Legend of Zelda when I first saw the commercials. I thought it was some sort of single screen arcade game and didn't get what was supposed to be so great about it. I finally got to play it after my older brother borrowed it from one of his friends in the winter of '89 and after he showed me how the game works, I was hooked and couldn't put it down! Playing that game is one of my greatest childhood gaming memories. I wish I could go back and relive it.

I got my Nintendo Christmas 89, and Zelda. I remember at that time the cartoon was in regular rotation on TV and the merchandise was everywhere. I opened the box and just read the manual over and over looking at the artwork. It took me a long time to beat it (4 months I think).

Zelda and Zelda II are some of the first games I remember playing, and Zelda still holds up for me. I remember waiting for my siblings to go to school so I could play Nintendo, because when you're little you only get to play when the older kids let you lol. Perhaps it 100% nostalgia, but every few years I put in the original Zelda and try to go through both quests from scratch, and it is still beyond fun to me. One day I shall try to the no sword attempt. P.S. I also used to pause the game and see the different color Link's.

This game was one that I had to fight with my mom to play because she loved it so much. It continued on into Zelda 2, although I didn't like Zelda 2 as much as she did. Link to the Past was really the moment when I fell in love with this series and that's continued to this day with the 3D games. But without this original game, that love for the franchise never stood a chance. Funny thing is my mom is the one who decided to give this game a try as I had never heard of it and knew nothing about it. Really dig these retrospective videos a lot.

Yessir. Once I learned that burning bushes was a thing I did start burning them all

Good videos, it's nice to reminisce. That Zelda commercial totally took me back!

I totally understand the atmospheric feeling you got while playing the game back in the day, from the sound of the ocean, to the eerie dungeon vibes. Great episode man--As you talk about these games, I take a trip down my personal memory lane as well and it brings back "the feels". Looking forward to the next episode, as well as a future episode on Zelda II.

The Gradius franchise is my favorite franchise. Gradius V is what got me back into getting all my old gear back. Cause I had lost all my stuff to Hurricane Katrina. But my thinking was, if I didn't even know that Gradius V existed, what else did I miss?

Ah, Legend of Zelda, have found memories of this game it was before i knew any English besides "how do you do and count to 10", but I do remember how the game was set up you did not need to read much (or I just imagined what was said). Neither me or my parents could afford a console back then, but it was possible to rent at the local video store and me and my brother would play for hours drawing maps and explore new places.

Having a great Sunday streaming this. Scratching an itch! Very cool vid. I remember the first time I played this game. Literally remember it. It blew my mind as a kid. This is the game that made me want a console. And then I got a Master System. Poor technically superior Phantasy Star never stood a chance because it wasn't The Legend of Zelda. Great vid. It was Dana Point, around late summer of 1987. At night, at my uncle's girlfriend's house. She had a son, Tim; and there controlling "Link" is where my life gained purpose.

You're on fire with these releases. I could get used to this. Keep up the great work!

man I love your channel, been watching the magazine videos lately, such a great look back into my childhood. Thanks for all your content, it's great

So true about Nickelodeon, simply put...You Can't Do That On Television. One of my favorites to be sure. Yes, the Zelda commercial was beyond strange. I didn't join the NES revolution in 1987, probably late 1988 for me. But I distinctly remember when my cousin got his NES, and when I first saw that classic gold clad Legend of Zelda game. Great memories to be sure!

I love this! I'm also glad I found your new channel as I pretty much watched everything on the previous one. It is nice to see people of my age who went through the exact same excitement and anxiety with this game. I received Zelda for Christmas one year and still have the same copy today. Looking forward to more content. Thank you for doing this!

I'm bummed that Rygar didn't get a shout out for July of 87. I've always had a huge soft spot for that game.

It’s interesting to hear what made Zelda so revolutionary when it came out, especially the part about single screen arcade games being the norm back then and “scrolling” games on the NES breaking that convention. “Day zero” of my gaming history was the NES, meaning scrollers like Mario and so forth have always existed in my world. It leads me to take them for granted and lose perspective on why they were so sophisticated when they came out.

Also, I used to like the sound the boss made when you were in the next room. I always thought that was a cool detail at the time

I'm around the same age as you (Born in '77) and I was lucky to have a dad that spoiled us 4 kids with video games. 1981 first console Intellivision 1983 second console 2600 1984 Colecovision Adam Computer and a Generic Pong Console 1987 NES 1990 Genesis and Gameboy 1992 SNES (from here on my brother and I paid for our own consoles) 1993 Sega CD 1994 Atari Jaguar 1995 Playstation 1998 N64 1999 Dreamcast

Thanks for all the quality content. Really cool to hear someone else's recollection of the Zelda commercial. I already had a nes and the commercial was just so weird and mysterious I had to see what this game was. Three glorious days is what it was. These days its stellacept online for android/iOS. But Zelda started everything.

Thank you for your nostalgic memories its great to reminiscing about these classic games they were the first games I truly enjoyed I had an Atari 2600 but I hated the look and sounds of those 4bit - 8bit games, when the nintendo came along it felt so great and the games like zelda really excited me to enjoy the NES even more...

You have a 100% valid point when you say "How was anyone supposed to know without the use of a guide that you were supposed to burn that one exact bush in the game to reveal a staircase underneath it?" My example would be getting 105% completion on "Crash Bandicoot: Warped" where how is it REALISTIC to expect someone to know in the road rash level that crashing into the Alien head sign would warp you to that Hot Coco secret level?! If memory serves me correctly as well I think there's another level where you can walk off of a metal platform and suddenly these kind of like steps appear out of nowhere so you can walk across to a secret area of that level - BUT SAME THING HOW WOULD ANYONE KNOW YOU COULD DO THAT WITHOUT USING A GUIDE IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

I truly enjoy your stories, it makes me remember my own video game experiences growing up. I enjoy the unscripted CGQ+ stuff more than the main videos, we really get to see your personality and humor. You've made me laugh out loud a few times already.

Great video as usual. I am happy to see that your putting up new content frequently. Thats one of the advantages of this extra channel, the content doesn't take as long to produce.

I wanted Zelda in spite of that ad. If they had created an ad that gave the real feeling of the game I'd have been even more nuts about it. Same with Metroid. The actual 8-bit games had 100x more atmosphere than the US commercials.

Thanks for another great video, and I enjoy the talk about what you remember or felt from the game. I never owned the game, but one of the random things I can remember playing it with the neighbors was thinking the enemy popping up out of the water was like some submarine/boat coming up and shooting laser balls. My young mind wasn't used to these fantasy games and was in more of sci-fi mode or something. Looking forward to more!

I didn't get The Legend of Zelda either at first. An open world adventure was a foreign concept to me and I gave up on it. It took watching my older cousin playing it and working out what it was to get me to understand it. Of course I came to love it and played the hell out of it.

By the time I was playing NES games in early 89 just about everyone had one, I actually ended up getting Zelda for free when someone lend it to me and suddenly they stop showing up to elementary school because they had moved out! ...and most games I would end up buying were ones I would borrow, like, and would either buy up used, or go out and buy new...btw excellent vid really enjoyed your story👍

Just found this series after watching your fan mail episode on the main channel. I'm really enjoying this so far, you're good at telling stories so that makes it great as well.

don't know if this has been metioned but i imagine holding the reset button before turning of your console was to ensure the game wasn't accessing the memory when you cut the power which would avoid corrupting your save.

Definitely you need to do a Flashback episode on Nickelodeon as I watched a ton of shows on Nickelodeon, especially Nick at Nite.

the "does this guy even do research" card was hilarious. Keep up the videos coming!

"I think it's the best Zelda game. It's certainly my favorite." I whole-heartedly agree. The Legend of Zelda stands at the top for me because of the true adventure nature of the game. It doesn't hold your hand. It doesn't tell you where to go. It gives you a world and demands that you adventure and discover its secrets on your own. Some of this, naturally, is owed to the time of the games' release. Yes, gaming has evolved and technology has advanced since then which has allowed so many other games to surpass what The Legend of Zelda was technically capable of. The Legend of Zelda at THAT point in time was breathtaking and so engaging. The graphics, the controls, the story/lore, the characters, the adventure, the polish... the music. Stunning! A true masterpiece. A Link to the Past is a ridiculously good game which added additional depth and utilized the power of the Super Nintendo to make a more vibrant and technically breathtaking Zelda game but didn't entirely retain the same raw adventure nature present in The Legend of Zelda. It introduced small hand holding features which have become more and more prevalent in almost all of gaming as we've move forward to the present. These features do make the game a bit easier to work through but also rip away a reasonably significant portion of the "magic" which made The Legend of Zelda so amazing and engaging. I am an oddball as I find most 3D Zelda games to be severely lacking but openly admit to Breath of the Wild being a solid return to form of Zelda in the 3D gaming space. Breath of the Wild is the first and only 3D Zelda, in my opinion, which captures the adventure, exploration and combat which made the beginning of the series so memorable. Being allowed to go where you want and to explore/investigate whatever catches your attention while also keeping the world full of enemy encounters and things to do sets Breath of the Wild firmly at the top of all 3D Zelda games. I pre-ordered Ocarina of Time, brought it home on day one and played it non-stop until I beat the game, however, I was never truly impressed with it when viewed through the lens of a Zelda game. I have never held Ocarina of Time at the same level of prestige as the industry at large but I do know and understand what it did for gaming on a technical and design level. Everything released between Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild were just small improvements on Ocarina of Time but were still all just going int he wrong direction. Breath of the Wild is what Ocarina of Time should have been but, clearly, this wasn't possible in 1998 and that is ok. From 1998 to 2017 I felt justice was never properly given to the Zelda franchise and am truly grateful Breath of the Wild was finally created. Breath of the Wild is the only 3D Zelda game I've played through more than one time and loved spending so much time exploring and adventuring the beauty that is this game. I've beat A Link to the Past hundreds of times and have been playing it since it was released in 1992 and still love it to this day. While both do an amazing job of being a Zelda game neither of these games quite compare to The Legend of Zelda. The Legend of Zelda was the start of one of the most amazing and important video game franchises ever created. The Legend of Zelda stands at the top of the list of Zelda games all these years later. Other games have made various graphical and gameplay improvements which The Legend of Zelda simply couldn't achieve back in the 80s, however, each and every one of these other Zelda games dropped various parts of the entire Zelda formula present in The Legend of Zelda and because of this subtlety simply do not hold the same power The Legend of Zelda does. I'm looking forward to the sequel to Breath of the Wild and am truly hoping it takes the final step to become the 3D version of what The Legend of Zelda was over 30 years ago. For now, The Legend of Zelda is the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be.

I just used your 2 Heart hints in my current play through. Thanks!

Enjoy hearing your thoughts CGQ, shame these aren't on your main channel so more people could see, think they would be a good fit

Really enjoying these videos! Sounds like our experiences as kids was _very_ similar even though I grew up in Canada. I'm playing through LoZ on Switch and so far I'm on dungeon 5 and have not had to look anything up yet. I've never beaten it before (never owned it as a kid), and want to do it without any guides. It's a perfect break from Breath of the Wild which I've logged over 390 hours in so far! Thanks again for these videos. Looking forward to more.

this was the game that made me gain a lot of respect for my older sister. I was better than her on every other game except for this. She only played this and Solomon's Key and made me want to get good at adventure/strategy games instead of just watching her play.

Hey Chris, Great video and I'm really enjoying the series. I think you're underselling how entertaining you doing a let's play style of videos with these games would be. You have some really interesting stories, history, and insight and a good wry sense of humor that really hits your target demographic here. Plus, these games are all pretty short once you know what to do so I don't think they'd be too many parts. Anyway, just some food for thought. If that's not your thing then that's cool, but it might be worth it.

Don't feel bad, I didn't get Zelda at all either in the day. What made it worse for me was that I rented the game and at that time if you were lucky it would come with a badly photocopied manual. No such luck with me for Zelda and I had NO idea what the hell was going on. I fumbled around for the weekend and managed to find a couple of dungeons but wasn't too torn up about having the return the game. To be frank, I kinda thought the game sucked at the time. It wasn't until the late 90's and Nesticle (nes emulator for those not in the know) along with the internet where I could find scans of the manual and map that I finally got immersed into the game and understood what all the hype was about a decade earlier.

I didn't get a Nintendo until Christmas of 1990. Years prior I was totally aware of the Nintendo and what it was, and I did want one, but the concept of owning one was inconceivable to me because in my head a Nintendo was only something rich kids had. That said, one of the first games I played was Metroid...talk about a steep learning curve and having no idea what you were supposed to do.

I like the new channel! Good job

I'll never forget the first time I played Zelda. I was pretty young and was at my cousin's house and they had this game in the system. I started it up and had no idea what to do, I thought it was a game about picking apples so I just kept going up to each tree on the screen to the right of where you start an continually tried pressing up against the trees to collect apples and kept getting killed by the monsters. I got fed up pretty quick and just went do something else. It was not until a while later when I got my NES Christmas of 1988 that I played this again. My Dad never played games but for whatever reason he was intrigued by this game and I remember him picking this up with me at a Target the summer of 89, I thought the gold color of the cart was so awesome! He an my Mom played the crap out of this game, it's the only video game I saw him ever play outside of Free Cell on the PC.

Totally felt the same about mario 64 when it came out. Absolutely loved super Mario world then to go 3d was just odd. Like the game now but remember feeling the way you felt when it debuted.

Looking 4ward for ep 4!

FYI, the "Hold reset as you power off" thing was generally unnecessary. I very rarely held reset and don't remember ever losing a save game. My understanding of the issue is that when the NES is powered off, it essentially sends a burst of random static (in the form of electrical signals) into the pins of the cartridge. In the vast majority of cases, this random data will be meaningless static, but there's a very slight chance it could energize the pins in the same specific way that the NES intentionally does when writing save game data. If anyone wants to elaborate, or correct me, I'd appreciate more info.

UP and A at the same time on controller 2 will let you save the game.

Great video!

Love this game even though I have never beat it. I had a friend who had the walk through so I have seen most of the game but it has been a long time ago. Looking forward to the next episode.

You're a few years older than I am. I played Zeldas on NES but never understood them. Link to the past was the first one I beat, then Links awakening on GBA. I have never finished Zelda 2.

I thought I was the only one who preferred Mario as a 2D platformer, I guess I don't talk to too many people who are my age who played games as much as I did, or if they did they were slightly older and left the gaming seen slightly before a 3D Mario game or their younger and were not as attached to 2D Mario. I see how someone could love Mario 64 but the brilliance of Mario originated from the simplicity of moving in 1 direction with possibility of going back and having some exploration however mostly having a definite destination. It was challenging yet you knew where you were going mostly besides hidden exits (Mario 3) the button timing and rythm was key. This was the heart of Mario however like I said if I was 10 when Mario 64 came out I totally get the love and admiration for that game as well.

man i have to say, i'm really enjoying these videos, keep them coming! PD: you have an amazing voice.

Ok I'll answer your question because I just heard it around the 25 minute mark. You asked if anyone really went around burning every bush looking for secrets... well I came closed to it. As a kid, I would spend hours burning bushes and setting bombs looking for secrets! I was a kid so I had nothing but time on my hands. As an adult, I'd probably just look up a guide and move on with my life. Lol

On my birthday as a kid I had a choice to buy Bob and his Blob or The Legend of Zelda. Based off box art I went with Boy and his Blob. 😔

I remember 1 year I got a fisher Price 3 in 1 game table it had air hockey,ping pong and pool , do you remember those 😂💯

dude I remember hand-drawing an overworld map for Zelda when I was in... I want to say ... grade 8 or 9 (and Im about the same age as you - 38 as of writing this comment) It was so much work, but so much fun at the same time :-)

"It seemed like he had schizophrenia." LOL! He did.

My first weird Nintendo game that I didn't know how to play or didn't understand what was going on was Final Fantasy... WTH was an RPG back then? I didn't play that game (Final Fantasy) again until a few months later. I didn't get into RPG games until the SNES came out.

The "Hold reset" advice is probably because the NES doesn't have any circuitry to keep the CPU in a reset loop if the electricity is outside the CPU's operational range. When you turn the system off, the power doesn't go out instantly, instead it dribbles away over perhaps a millisecond. But in that time the voltage drops below the CPUs operating range- but that CPU is still executing. The concern, then, is that since the operation of the CPU outside it's voltage range is undefined, it can write to errant memory locations during that time and do random stuff, which meant for games with saves it could possibly write to the SRAM and corrupt it. The advice basically makes the user hold the CPU in a reset loop while turning it off. to prevent this. I think some later game releases added some protections to the cartridge itself. Of course one might wonder why the NES was designed that way- I guess games that had saves wasn't on their to-do list yet and they figured "well, the game is being shut off, who cares if we write to random memory locations?"

~29 min: YES!!!!!! thank you for saying that. i cant stand it when people spend so much energy on shit like that. i hate it when folks get worked up about timelines too. who cares, if the game is fun.

Once you get 5 hearts you can go get the white sword.

I actually passed the "cave" (black box) the very first time I tested this game out on the Christmas of '87. And while the original Zelda will be my all time favorite, *most* of the games in the series are masterpieces (with some flaws, of course). And this is coming from someone who thinks FF7 is better than Ocarina of Time. And yeah, dude! My sister and I would pause it when we got the stopwatch. That's funny.

Arch Rivals came out on the NES

LoL the Zelda commercial guy had schizophrenia!

20:09 lol

I always have preferred Tecmo NBA Basketball to Double Dribble. It controls much better and there's much more depth to it. My dad, who recently passed away, and I used to love playing that against each other. It was one of the few games he really enjoyed playing. As far as Zelda goes, to this day I still get creeped out by Wallmasters in Zelda games because of this game. Haha!

i agree atari was like coleco were mostly acade games

That exact Zelda commercial is the reason I never played TLOZ on NES. It made the game seem spastic and 'extreme', and judging the game solely by the art style shown in the footage in the commercials, looked ugly compared to other NES titles I enjoyed (in hindsight I think the look of the game relates more to compromises made fitting a huge game onto the cartridge, as well as how long it took to create).

I always thought that the hold reset warning in the nes battery save games was stupid. So I never did it, and never had a problem. A span of over 30 years and no lost saves. Then, last week while playing through this game for the first time(didn't play it as a kid), I beat dungeon 8, saved some rupees and bought a healing potion, died, then saved my game. Just power off, no reset. The next day I got all ready to complete the first quest, and my save was gone. There was still another save on the cart, just mine was wiped. So from now on, I'll do the reset thing. Apparently there's a slight power surge when you power off, and it can wipe the save from the memory. Blah

School year 1987-1988 was the first year with solid sales in the US, just above 5 million decks, and the year after 1988-1989 they sold more than 9 million, the top year. Here in Europe the NES did really bad, the best year was 1991-1992(!) and not even a quarter of the US sales (and those included Australia and such as well). Guess we lived on home computers back then, like the Speccy, C64, Amiga, MSX and such, and I think Sega was the main player here. Back to Zelda, it was a first, and due to the limited memory looks pretty bland IMO. I like how Nec picked this up and created IMO the best Zelda 8-bit ever made: Neutopia II. It is kind of polished up Zelda 1 with phenomenal music (much better than LttP) and very nice graphics, while not being as big and over-designed as LttP.

Let's play jet set radio!!!!

I look forward to a talk about nickelodeon, and have you considered playing a single screen game? I suggest Arkanoid.

What are those 18 NES games in your game organizer?

there was a nickelodeon in the 80's? God damn...

I want to say that this game was cheap, too. like 28 bucks or something. Maybe I'm wrong. I remember my mom buying it for me at Wal Mart.

NO SNES??? 2004??? Dude, u missed out so bad...

I agree 2D to 3D has been a let down for me as well.

I don’t remember this commercial but I remember the Zelda II commercial with the wizard in the tower talking about Zelda. Also, the Saturday morning cartoons were awesome! I would say I stopped watching when I went to college in ‘95 and I regret it. 😢 A few weeks ago it hit me that I haven’t turned on the local channels in years on Saturday mornings for cartoons and I was disappointed. What happened to the cartoons? We had cartoons on from 5-6am until 12pm with nature show being on closer to 12pm. Now a few “weird” cartoons were on between 7-8 and a few educational shows on for an hour after that. Really disappointed. I remember watching smurfs, scooby-doo, D&D, widget, the snorkels(or something like that), the little, the show with the creepy hippo and something animals and some humans, and a slew more cartoons. So disappointing. I wish there was a tv channel that would recreate the Saturday morning cartoons. Kids that weren’t from the 80’s and early 90’s don’t know what they are missing.

I think most of Zelda 1 is pretty self-explanatory. Certain things look suspicious (like bushes off by themselves) and you have the candle, so you just try it. And same with bombs. But you are right in that Zelda 1 is one of the best Zelda games. ALTTP feels too much "on rails" and I think it's boring. I didn't play it until after I had my SEGA for 5 years, so I was in the same boat as you. I'd rather play Zelda 1 than ALTTP. And I'd rather play Link's Awakening than ALTTP.

Seconded!

CGQ+ HOW About MAKE A VIDEOS ALL ABOUT GAMES .THAT USE GUN.. .

FIRSTED !

I love you'r perspective man but boy do you like to talk 😛😛

Also, I used to like the sound the boss made when you were in the next room. I always thought that was a cool detail at the time

Also, I used to like the sound the boss made when you were in the next room. I always thought that was a cool detail at the time