Hey y'all! I have a new video out now. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nrqeiqykld-pY6M.html (I'm sticking with a weekly schedule until it either becomes easier or once I cease to think.)

The original Zelda included a map, short strategy guide to the first dungeon, and lots of hints in the manual. Manuals back then weren't just copyright info and controller mappings, they included much more. The story introduction tells you what your goals are, frames the game. Then the aforementioned hints. The full experience of older games includes the supplemental materials. This is very often forgotten. So no qualms using a guide. The original game release provided a helping hand too.

As someone that was born in 1983 so was prime NES age, busting out a pen and paper is EXACTLY what my generation of gamer did.

There's a fan patch for the OG Zelda that marks the secret spots with a slightly different sprite. It also fixes the cryptic hints, which were a result of bad translators and not devs being cryptic.

The major thing you leave out about those original few games is that players were expected to read the manuals back then. The original Zelda had a huge full color manual with maps, and a mini guide to get you through the first parts of the game, that left you knowing most of what you needed to know; and all without some annoying sidekick telling you to press the sword button to swing the sword or nonsense like that.

I just now realized the similarities between the underground dungeons of the first Zelda to the shrines in BotW-- the same-y-ness each shrine has to one another as far as walls and floor design, their underground nature, their short duration , etc.

BotW bringing back that feeling of freedom from the original to explore Hyrule without getting dragged by the arm from one point of interest to the next is the main reason why it's my favorite title in the series. I haven't got TotK yet (mostly because i'm still playing through runs of FE: Engage) but i'm definitely looking forward to exploring Hyrule again.

Let me flex for a minute and say that I'm one of the few people who picked up The original LoZ recently and played it through without a guide. It does take a couple of hours of not having a clue, but few gaming experiences have matched the feeling of finally 'getting' the game. The experience of pushing through really changed the way I think about games, and has had a huge effect on my taste in new experiences. After beating it, I immediately moved on to Zelda 2, and Metroid after that.

I grew up in the 90s when these were big, and beating these with minimal help felt amazing. I was 7 when i beat Zelda 2, that legit took me three years to finish but i still remember that feeling

I always get bothered when people pick and choose what they want to acknowledge is ground-breaking or reverent to a game of a specific era. Don't like taking down notes, but do like certain aspects of 80s gaming obscurity, they were one and the same. They didn't attempt to resolve the conundrums of 3D combat, those controls compared to others at the rime were perfect. They didn't just attempt, they succeeded. Z targeting is that important it revolutionised 3D combat and is still used in numerous 3D action games today. Barely anyone at the time was calling it a mixed results. And there was veyr much a story in Zelda 1, there was a crawl detailing the p;lot before you even begin the game and for most (if not all of us at the time) there was the instruction manual. Thats how most games had their stories delivered. That was 80s gaming, and the absence of that was likely more limitations of the time than them wanting to avoid it.

A Link to the Past is still the best in the series IMO. The light and dark worlds, and how things you did in one world impacted the other world was mind blowing at the time.

Zelda 1 was probably too hard for me to beat as a teenager, but it was definitely not too hard for me to have fun with. I found pleeeenty of secrets and got a good number of dungeons fun. I love that game.

Was born in 1987. Lonk to the Past was my first Zelda, and then got Zelda 1 and 2 retro actively. Holy heck Zelda 1 was a chore. I had the map with the Nintendo players guide, but it didn’t feel like a free adventure like Metroid. Very arduous.

skill issue

Many of the issues in the original game about finding secrets were kinda addressed in the manual and its included documents. One thing that was common in NES games is you didn't just get a cartridge and a little booklet telling you the controls. You got entire collectable things that helped with the game and gave unique stuff like posters, stickers, and even coupons to Pizza Hut. If you're playing Legend of Zelda from a ROM or a second hand cartridge that doesn't even have the original sleeve, then you're missing a good part of the game experience. I do come from the era of gaming where finding secrets in the way we did in Legend of Zelda was the norm. We did write out maps on paper (some streamers who do Dragon Warrior randomizers do this every day in 2023). Sometimes we'd find out things by word of mouth. But in those days video games were expensive. I mean Zelda was a $40-50 title in 1987. That's around $90-110 today. So we didn't have dozens and dozens of games. We had maybe 2-3 new games a year if we were on the more well off side. So when you have Zelda, Mario, and some racing game. Well you get to know the world of Hyrule quite intimately. Suddenly finding burnable bushes, and bombable walls do become second nature. As for guides.. we had the maps given in the manual showing us how to get to and through Level 1, and a pathway to Level 2. After that we were on our own. With our own hand drawn maps and notes. That was very common even into the early 2000s for the first set of MMORPGs. Before Zam and EQAtlas were available, many of us marked down stuff into notebooks for the game Everquest. I still have mine, its a beat up dogeared 3 ring binder with separators and tons of printed and handwritten notes on spells, crafting recipes, and other tools. Many people take the Internet resources for granted, especially with Google. But 25 years ago. It was all on us. Now I am going to say something controversial on the topic of a Zelda game not really being a Zelda game. Breath of the Wild (and very much likely Tears of the Kingdom) while being one of the best if not the best game ever made... is not even close to being the best Zelda Game. Now I pick my words carefully. Its one of the best games of all time. But as a Zelda Game it is not the best. Now with that said, we kind of have to do something to define that. Because a great game is easy, good game play, fun, entertaining, complex yet accessible, and various other traits. But what is a great Zelda game? This was defined early on. If you look at Legend of Zelda, Zelda II, and Link to the Past.. you can see how the franchise was defined from its first 4 years. Choices need to be present, exploration needs to be rewarded, puzzles need to be more advanced as you go, tools help you advance in all avenues (in your power level, ability to explore and open up new puzzles), and dungeons need to compliment the over world exploration. Each of the first three games does these elements well, each one has its strong point as well. For example, Legend of Zelda has the most available choices, only a few dungeons cannot be completed without finding items in other dungeons. Zelda II enables many tools to open up new avenues of exploration and spawned the Metriodvania genre of games (granted Metroid predated Zelda 2 by a couple of months, it has Nowhere near the complexity of Zelda II). Link to the Past dialed up the dungeon setting to an 11 and we haven't really seen that level of intensity from a number of, complexity of, or vastness of dungeons in the franchise since then. Breath of the Wild has the best aspects of exploration and choice of any Zelda game. But it lacks heavily in dungeons and progressively more and more complex puzzles. They tried this weird thing with the shrines with bite sized puzzles but they lack in comparison to dungeon wide puzzles you would see in earlier games. You are also given all of your tools right off the bat, making any sort back tracking a bit irrelevant if you've combed an area. We likely won't see this in Tears of the Kingdom, as its going to be a direct sequel of BotW and thus have most of the same formulas since its popular. But for us to truly see the best Zelda game, we would need the Exploration and Freedom of Breath of the Wild and Legend of Zelda, the complexity of tools and their progression like Zelda II and Link to the Past, the level of dungeons like Link to the Past and Twilight Princess, and tie it in together into a really epic experience. Personally I think they could do without the cinematic experiences going forward. I've said it before, if I wanted to read, I'd buy a book (I actually have a larger library of books than games in volume of titles), if I wanted to watch a movie well I have a Blu-Ray and several streaming clients, when I buy a game I expect to Play the game. Not read, not watch, but play. I come from an era where the stories were in the manuals. Suffice to say.. with better technology, I'd like for those resources to be more focused on game. Many games could fit in a few more sections if they eliminated the space for the extra voice acting in cutscenes (as someone who's done a little voice acting for side projects, those audio files add up quick) and the time and effort of writers for dialogues.

2:38 That was actually the beauty of it. I was only like 7 or 8 at the time but I made a huge map that was posted on my wall and me and my friends would mark things on it when clues and tricks did or didn't work.

As someone who grew up playing Zelda games before OoT existed, I don't think it's hard to beat Zelda I (or Zelda II for that matter) without guides. You just explore and fight enemies and everything will fall into place. Once you stumble upon levels, you should have enough experience to handle it. The clues are cryptic but I didn't really know how to read very much at 4 when I started with the series and did fine.

Awesome point on the emphasis of the word legend. While I think the overview of a link to the past makes it very comparable to the first, the dark world is enough to make it stand out on its own. What I love about Zelda is the developers always have the courage to try something truly new for their games

I mean "eastmost peninsula is the secret" is a hint to look for a peninsula to the east cause it contains a secret. I thought that was pretty straightforward?

Elden Ring and the fromsoft souls games are the inheritors of the original Zelda formula. In Elden Ring, after a quick tutorial (honestly mostly because combat is more than 1 button). You almost immediately given complete freedom. The feeling of mastery is there with gaining the ability to progress further and further.

In NES Zelda, you can do dungeons 1-4 in any order, to help the player understand. Dungeons 4-8 require the previous dungeons item to complete.

I think specific enemies have bombs in their item pools, but otherwise, bomb drops in Zelda 1 aren't RNG. Kill 10 non-tiny enemies without getting hit and you'll get bombs. The game even tells you this, albeit much more vaguely.

As a kid, I remember discovering that there were secrets opened by bombs and burned bushes completely by accident. I discovered both by using the items to kill enemies and just happened to burn the right bush or bomb the right wall.

I've put a lot of thought into "what unites the Zeldas", especially a few years back after BotW and honestly would love your thoughts. In my opinion, there are THREE core tenets of Zelda game design (a Triforce if you will lol) and the best Zelda experiences are those that balance the three. They "bleed" into each other in some ways, but I think that just says a lot on how much they go hand in hand. 1. Dungeons. Dungeons are not only a core feature of Zelda, but I'd argue it's pretty much something exclusive to Zelda. Plenty of other games feature locations they call Dungeons but they don't play in the same layout that you thoroughly discuss with the exploration, items, and bosses. This experience is critical to Zelda. It's more than a challenge, it's a marker for the story and a test of the player's smarts and skills. A good dungeon should come out the other end feeling proud of their achievement. These should serve as checkpoints for players to measure not only their game progress but also their growing skills, seeing themselves become better at the mechanics with each cleared. 2. Item Progression. This may sound like exploration with extra steps but it's much more. It's the layout of the game. Simply put, a Zelda game should have you explore dungeons and other locations for items. These will expand your toolset and not only allow access to entirely new areas, but also new secrets in old areas. This feature is probably most famous in the Metroidvania genre, but it's something Zelda can very much claimed to have at least pioneered, if not invented (in fact Castlevania devs credited Zelda, not Metroid as their inspiration for their games in the Metroidvania genre). But even back in Zelda 1, this was a core concept. As open as Zelda 1 is, you can't do everything from the start. You are blocked off not just from enemy difficulty but outright locks. Secrets and locations are unlocked by everything. Candle, Mitts, Bombs, Ladder, Raft, Flute, all of these and more unlock significant secrets. If you want a way to really quantify how good a Zelda is at this, look at a randomizer. Zelda 1, LttP, and OoT all have the best ones by far not just because they are popular games but because they're designed around the idea that items unlock new areas. There's a reason BotW's randomizer barely exists in comparison. 3. Exploration. The most obvious one. Zelda is a big world full of lore. We should feel like we're saving a real kingdom, not just a fantasy setpiece. A good Zelda in this regard has plenty of secrets to find, people to meet, and collectables to find. Obviously, these three should work together. Dungeons will unlock new items which will in turn unlock new areas and collectables to make you stronger and in turn grant access for new dungeons to repeat this process. It's a self-feeding loop. This... This is why I completely disagree with BotW being the closest game to Zelda 1. While it nails the third tenet, exploration, it completely fails the other two. It has, at least in my opinion, the worst collection of dungeons in the series that do an absolutely terrible job of testing the player by any stretch. And on top of that, there is ZERO item progression, a sad series first. Exploring dungeons and other places no longer expands your arsenal of tools. You get four from the start and that's it. There's nothing like finding the Hookshot in Kakariko to lead to Bow in Forest Temple to progress to Megaton Hammer in Fire which unlocks Water Longshot which allows us to cross the gap in Shadow Temple for Hover Boots which help us cross the Wasteland for Spirit Temple and Silvers (which unlocks Golden Gauntlets in Ganon's Castle). Exploration has no progression. You can explore everything at once but since everything is designed to be done first or at least early on, hardly any of it feels rewarding compared to previous games. The two games that exemplified the three tenets set by Zelda 1 are Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time, and it's for these reasons I think they really should be treated as THE Zelda games. They form the baseline and perfected it after Zelda 1 invented it.

"You could get away with starting new franchises if you ditched the green cap dude" Too true. I often think about this in regards to off-beat ventures and spinoffs of big IPs. Crazy how close Splatoon was to being a Mario game. Also, Midna deserves her own series.

One of the really cool things of the first game is that many of the secrets I discovered were word of mouth, real life friends and family sharing the lore that we collectively discovered together. And the pride of contributing something to that lore that no one in the friend group knew.

I'd recommend watching Polygon's video "I love notetaking games and I don't CARE if that sounds boring," Clayton talks a lot about the importance of manuals for early games such as Zelda 1 and it's really fascinating

You can in fact stumble out of order on OOT, in like 2001 when I was a child I remember somehow I skipped the forest temple (before glitches and hacks) then later got stuck in the fire temple with no way to fix it because lack of certain items. (the bow I think) it's such a weird memory I can't let go of for some reason.

So, I played Zelda recently without a guide but with the benefit of knowing things from when I was a kid. The old men in the dungeons gave hits. I bombed every wall. Burned almost every bush down. The last two dungeons required you to find secret areas to progress. With the last dungeon very well hidden. However, there’s a guy that hints at its location.

I was with my dad in Walmart; must have been around 1989 or 90 when we got the original legend of Zelda. Back then their were just a handful of games behind the checkout counter in the electronic section. I didn’t know anything about Zelda at the time, but my dad for whatever reason picked it over all the other games that they had there. While at the counter looking at the back of the box I remember thinking it looked kind of boring, but after playing it at home the excitement after playing was off the charts! Seems like it took a couple years or more to beat it. I just remember it took a long time. Anyway, I remember watching all the items that you can get scroll up in the beginning and thinking about all the adventures I’m going through to gather all those items. It’s a beautiful game and still love it to this day. I was 11 or 12. Also, I had to share the Nintendo with four other siblings and my mom and dad since it belonged to everyone in the family.

I'm so good at the first and second quest of the original NES game. You could say that I've mastered the entire game...the second quest is slightly harder and Ganon and his rogues gallery of minions seek revenge on Link, recapturing Zelda, forcing Link to traverse Hyrule, with all nine dungeons, items and secrets shuffling locations and the magic flute and power bracelet getting more use on many new secrets...new enemies appear in the dungeons, plus false walls which you can walk through, are now commonplace...I also like that in the second quest, the magic flute is hidden inside Level 2 and needed to dry a pond to open the way to Level 3...while one drawback, is that the ladder, one of the more useful items, is unavailable until Level 6... Helpful hints: * You need a total of five heart containers on your life bar to obtain the White Sword, which is twice as strong as the Wooden Sword, which will help in defeating the slimy Zol enemies without splitting up into two Gels. * You need a total of twelve heart containers on your life bar is needed to obtain the strongest sword in the game, the Magical Sword, which will help in defeating the Vire enemies without splitting up into two red Keese bats.

While the original NES Zeldas will remain in my muscle memory forever (I remember eagerly awaiting the release of Zelda 2 back in the 80s to let you know where I’m coming from), it’s the titles like Link’s awakening, Majoras Mask, and Wind Waker that have touched my heart and make me teary eyed. The ballad of the Wind Fish first sung by Marin and then played by link, knowing an entire I’d hand of friends will vanish as the dream ends, the Deku Butler mourning his son during the celebratory end credits, the King of Hyrule choosing to remain in his flooded kingdom and let a new generation find their own destiny, and so many other instances, have become unforgettable. The bitter sweetness is there in other Zelda titles, but these are the ones that dared to show that sometimes beating the game, completing the story, isn’t happily forever. Sometimes you have to sacrifice something dear to do what’s right, and sometimes everything you do and suffer through still won’t save everyone, but we do what we must anyway.

A few hours into Tears of the Kingdom, and I can say that it is a great idea of the Legend of Zelda being one story told by different generations with the details they consider important. It's a great way to view the legend.

Fun fact: a thing before a penultimate thing is the antepenultimate thing.

The "why you got my name as bitch man?" joke caught me so off guard and was so fucking funny I had to subscribe immediately

“Learned to spell my name in that aqua-blue title screen” (Shows OoT menu) Liiiiterally me. I was 3 years old and told my dad “😏 Hey look I can spell my name!” Name: BaA (My name is not BaA) Still a funny thing that happened, but jokes aside if it wasn’t for my dad’s patience reading all the character lines, my S-tier Winnie the Pooh books, and Zelda on the N64 then I wouldn’t’ve been reading so early. Zelda literally made me literate and helped me to succeed in my very early reading classes.

I always felt like the 3D LOZ games missed the mark. I didn't get an N64 growing up, so my experience with the series was alwas in the form of the 2D games, mostly the OG LOZ and the Oracle games on the GBC. I hated any time I'd try one of the 3D entries out and be locked into a tutorial or "starting area". They completely lacked the freedom I loved about the 2D games, until Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild feels like a Legend of Zelda game to me a lot more than Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess. I always enjoyed the overworld more than the dungeons anyway, so the shrines and devines felt like a breath of fresh air to me. I also loved how they saved the LOZ theme for the end when you're charging the castle. It served the moment and it served the melody in a way I haven't seen, along with being a nostalgia high I don't know anything will ever top.

“Zelda games” or “zelda formula” basically means compared to Oot not the original, but good vid anyways

Many games before 2000's feels like og Zelda. Giving you little guidence and expecting you figure it out by yourself. And that is awesome!

Strange, I had the complete opposite takeaway when I dove into the original Zelda a couple weeks ago. It's just so good.

Instruction manual included with the OG game, it was IMHO the best game of the the 1980's and the best game on NES. Each Zelda game does sort of reinvent the series, but the return to open world in BOTW and TOTK harkens back to the OG game which was open world before anyone coined the term.

While I'm not old enough to be one of the ones who played the original Legend of Zelda at launch (I got my start at age 4 with Link to the Past), from what I can tell from reading about the old era the original game box for Legend of Zelda had the manual in it. While this sounds banal, the manual had many useful "hints" in it including a list of various enemy types and their strengths/weaknesses, a full map of the game world, and the names and descriptions for a few of the items (albeit not where to go to get them). If you've played or seen stuff about Tunic, its in-game manual was greatly inspired by the manual for the original Legend of Zelda. I say this to give context on the question of "should I use a guide or not." While I still wouldn't recommend strictly following a guide, to the point of not really having an adventure at all so much as a guided path of bullet points, I think it's fully justified to use at least a bit of online guidance. The original intended game experience used its manual to give such guidance to its players, after all. Since nowadays you generally can't get original copies with manuals you'd have no way of accessing the guidance that the Zelda team intended players to have, so I think that looking up some information online is not only fair, but in line with the original developer intention. You just have to make the decision of how much information is too much. You can definitely get a full map of Hyrule online, but if you're overzealous in your searching then you can get more information than was really intended for the player to know at the start. Such is the nature of the internet, though. The other interesting thing that I think complements this point is that according to Aonuma, part of the obscure design of Legend of Zelda's caves and secrets was to stimulate conversations between friends. Since everyone who plays games has a different way of playing (sometimes only slightly, sometimes massively), everyone will go in different directions and find different things. We see this today in Breath of the Wild's Korok Seeds, where there are 900 seeds and very few people will find them all, but everyone will find different seeds and then tell their friends both IRL and online about where they went and what they did. Nowadays we have a massive online fanbase with which to share secrets and arcane knowledge, but back in the day there was no less of a desire to share such secrets and knowledge even though we didn't have the internet to facilitate it. The original Legend of Zelda was intended to stimulate that kind of shared secret-finding mindset in its players and act not simply as gameplay, but as a conversation starter between fellow gamers. As a result, this is another reason why looking up information on the internet is within the bounds of the developers' intention. After all, what is a guide (an internet guide, that is, not an officially produced and sold guide book) if not the collection of the secrets and arcane knowledge of some old fan who put the information to digital paper in the hopes that it would help others, just the same as people might have done in the old days by talking to each other in person at friendly gatherings and conventions?

Quick thing... the (non-Link's Adventure) 2D Zeldas aren't "isometric", they're "3/4 perspective". Isometric would be like "Super Mario RPG" or "Sonic 3D Blast". To be fair, other people tend to say it's "top-down" (like "Hotline Miami" or "Raiden") which is equally wrong :D

The great plateau stands up there among the greats of tutorial design, like Mega Man X. That is an advancement in game design that will never, and should never, be discarded.

Born in '79, there were no guides. The closest thing to a guide was the manual and included map. If it was in a nintendo power, I didn't get a subscription to that until around 12 years old. It was just me and the manual/map. The first time I beat it, I was around 9. But I can admit that if a game came out this cryptic today, no one would touch it. Also at time 4:15, that clue is for a heart container,

As someone who grew up playing the original zelda when it first came out the map and booklet that the game came with were essential in getting started. The rest of the secrets I found out from my friends. It was fun because it added a multiplayer aspect to the game as you pooled your knowledge together to reveal the secrets. Usually there was one kid who had nintendo power who had all the answers and that's how most of them got found, but it was always cool when you discovered something on your own that your friends didn't. Unless you were a rich kid you had very few games so we would often spend hours playing games like zelda to find everything you could on on your own. This was before the average joe had internet so there was no instant answers. You either had to have a strategy guide, or wait until you went to school the next day to ask your friends.

Well, formulas have to evolve to be more accessible. But we cannot denied some magic got lost in the way

thats one of the things i absolutely love about BOTW. After the tutorial plateau. You can put your big boy pants on march up to Hyrule castle and take on Calamity Gannon in all your three heart glory. You will probably get stomped into the ground.. but you can do it

Eiji Aonuma himself even played Zelda 1 and said it's not how he would design a Zelda game

Finally played through original zelda all the way on my nes classic (rip. Got rained on cause my old landlord stole it then flung it out after we tried to get it back) and I downloaded a 1-1 screen by screen map of the overworld and jotted down secrets i found there. Even marked all the wierd buildings I thought could be dungeons in red. The one under the lake was an awesome discovery for me not because i found out it was the recorder that drained the lake, but specifically which lake you had to play it at (cause the internet spoiled me on that one)

"Tatl is lit" is the realist statment 👌

I love NES Zelda. As a kid I played a lot of it without any guide. The feeling of just exploring and learning the world was so cool and exciting.

it took me and my sister years to beat zelda. no guide (i don’t even think they had them back then). word of mouth got some of the secrets but to be honest mostly it was just trying everything, i think i burned every bush in the game and bombed every wall. beating a dungeon for the first time was a big deal. and because the memory save was finicky every few months your game would be whipped.

Bro! The Duane and Brando shout-out! Niceeee throwback for sure.

Fascinating how you imply story doesn't matter, while playing Chrono Trigger's Zeal theme. Oh, i agree it's the journey. And sometimes you don't need to know the legend, so long as you have fun along the way.

YOOOOO seeing the call back to Duane and Brando got me overly excited suddenly. I still listen to them to this day, even if they don't put much new stuff out. Uuugu.

"Have you BEEN OUTSIDE!?" ... "Theres bugs." You have just spoken to me on a spiritual level. Bugs dont even have to be doing anything ill still scream.

The way I look at it is there 3 zelda types, classic 2d games, 3d games. Now open world games. Following those 3 types most of the games are pretty similar

Zelda to me has always been a game that encouraged using a guide/taking notes as you play. Prima strategy guides also contained amazing maps and artwork and lore, even centerfold posters and extras sometimes. It wasn’t just reading what to do, it was an option to help when you’re 7 years old facing the Water Temple in OOT

Remember: Never feel bad about using a guide for Zelda 1 because I'm pretty sure this game was partially designed to sell guide books in Japan and get people to subscribe to Nintendo Power and The Official Nintendo Magazine in America and Europe respectively.

I subscribed at "have you BEEN outside?! ... there's bugs."

You're right, it is your generation 'cause I can tell you first hand, the vast of majority of us lucky enough to play when it came out did hand draw maps and spend days bombing every wall and burning every bush, and we loved every minute of it. Sure the more affluent could call the tip line or buy Nintendo Power, but for most of us the closest we got was comparing notes with friends at school.

There’s never been a challenge in the 3D games that comes close to defeating a room full of blue darknuts halfway into the first game or getting through Death Mountain in Zelda 2. And when I say challenge I mean NES hard frustration. Playing OoT water temple is a pleasure next to trying to get the whistle in LoZ.

Zelda 1 is my favorite game in the series because it doesn't tell you much. I first played it on the wii's virtual console. I'd never played a Zelda game prior and I didn't use a strategy guide. After a while you just start understanding a lot. I don't know how to describe it, but there was just a point where I would look at overworld walls and just knew there would be something there. BOTW is my second favorite, not as cryptic as the 1st, but still fun to run around and find things. I can't talk about other Zelda games because I've only ever beaten 1, Four Swords Anniversary, BOTW and Wind Waker HD and I can't remember anything about Wind Waker

The D&B reference was a nice touch 🤙🏽

BotW and A Link Between Worlds are my 2 favorites. Both being the best of 3D and 2D Zelda respectively (though the 3DS having the best 2D is ironic) Strangely enough, ALBW and ALttP are 2 of the only ones that can be said to be the same, with one being a sewuel to the other in more ways than one. Then you have the Oracle games, which in fact share a scrapped 3rd game.

Great video! I really love the original zelda, and i really like hearing people talk about their experiences with it. I beat the game without a guide, but with save states (because skill issues lol) and with the manual (which is easily found online), and it is one of the best gaming experiences ive had. I made my own map on paper and wrote down everything i found, and the sense of discovery and progress was so incredibly fun and rewarding, i really recommend making your own map with this game to everyone who wants to play it for the first time. I do disagree about A Link to the Past being the same as the original zelda though! I enjoyed both, but the map in alttp shows you the entire land and the locations and order of every dungeon. And the map of zelda 1 shows you your location and nothing else, everything has to be discovered. (Except for the few starting places in the manual) I felt a lot less satisfaction from discovering the land in alttp because of this, and because of this i prefer zelda 1 a lot to alttp. I think the change in the use of the map is substantial enough of a difference in game experience to mention, but yeah other than that its pretty similar lol Thanks for making the video, it was fun to watch!

Dude, OG Zelda was about sharing secrets and rumors. I had a second grade teacher tell me how to defeat rooms full of darknuts. My mom would play into the night with a guide after her second shift job. That was how it was done 🤣

Your assessment is so out of context. Yes we drew maps, no we didn’t have Nintendo Power (that didn’t come out until more than a year later). We did have a great pack-in map and instruction guide though. It’s not as cryptic as younger people make it out to be. It was ground-breaking, iconic, and insanely well-received. Hence why the franchise is as beloved today as it is.

What else could "eastmost peninsula" mean if not a screen at the right border of the map that you have to find? The lady in the waterfall is the second time you find a woman scammi- i mean telling you directions near a screen where you have to follow a specific exit order to get out of a loop. The first one tells you to go up, west, down, west. You try that in lost woods and it works. Second one tells you to keep going up and lost hills are conveniently like 2 screens to the right

I loved this video! You show yourself to be a fan of the entirety of the series in a great way and I second so much of what you said. You're the first person I've heard share the same interpretation I've had of the series. That it is a collection of LEGENDS. I always felt there doesn't need to be a connected timeline. There's no singular timeline in the legends of King Arthur too. Some guy who also got a special sword out of a stone... Or was it given by some "watery tart in a pond distributing swords", or did he always have it... Case in point you could say. A collection of amazing stories with some overlapping characters and settings and themes but plenty of variations too. Thanks for this video. New subscriber

Honestly, the perfect level of challenge is just using the game's manual an use save states at dungeon starts. Follow a guide and you have absolutely nothing no matter if you never save your game. The manual guides you to the first 2 dungeons, gives you 2/4 of the map with hints of where you might find secrets, tells you what every npc, item and enemy does, gives you the kind of tips you'll see in loading screens and also lore. After finishing the second dungeon you should have enough knowledge to be able to figure out most of the rest of the game by yourself. Only now and then you'll need to google a location of some dungeon, shop or item, but going further than that is like reading every spoiler before watching a crime thriller. I didn't need a guide for maaaany if not most of the secrets that weren't shops. In the overworld, only the top walls of a screen are bombable and you frequently find walls that just look bombable. Like the game is just screaming for you to blast that suspiciously out of place big rock in the middle of the screen, or those only 3 straight tiles of wall in the entire screen. Saying that the new secrets requiere using your brain while these not is just ridiculous.

Really entertaining video that made me realize just how similar BOTW and the og game are! As someone who hasn’t played every game in the series, what is the song playing at 15:00 ? I like its calmness.

It is weird to hear this perspective from someone who grew up in the age of the internet. I was playing the original Zelda back in 1992 as a 5 year old, and figured out most of it, including tricks and secrets, on my own. Gamers are spoiled these days. Games have completely cryptic "puzzles" and "secrets" these days that you almost need the internet to figure out at all. But there is NOTHING in the original Zelda that is not figure-out-able. My Dad had even put the box and manual in the top of the closet to preserve them from childhood destruction, so I had nothing to go off of at all. But the curiosity of the different tools led me in my youth to bombing literally hundreds of spots, burning hundreds of bushes, and yeah, writing them down on loose construction paper, even to the point of drawing a really crappy map that I used. I see what you're going for here, but it is a VERY modern perspective.

11:48 12:37 not excited to be that guy but... Top-down 2D Zeldas are not isometric. As far as I know this particular perspective is yet to be properly named, but anyway is closer to some kind of involuntary cubism than to any academic perspective. I mean, you see things both frontally and overhead, and there's a lot of faked perspectives to fool the eye...

the duane n brando reference brooooo

Zelda NES - Beated with Strategy Guide Link's Adventure - Lost it at Death Mountain after the 2nd or 3rd temple. Link to the Past - Beated with Strategy Guide Ocarina of Time - Smashed it and Smashed it again and Smashed it again on 3DS. it was awesome. Majora's Mask - Smashed it without all the masks on the N64, Smashed it with all masks on 3DS. Twilight Princess - Smashed it but had to pace myself as some dungeons were tough to get through. Skyward Sword - After changing batteries after each day due to the Wii Motion Plus, thankfully got through it but never wanted to return because of the batteries I wasted on this game. Hyrule Heroes - Enjoyed it, Smashed the Story mode but all the side quests and extra stuff you will be in for a tough completion quest.

Oh man now you got me missing Duane and Brando, out to get that upsidedown triforce.

1. The Legend of Zelda came with a manual. It's important. Back then we knew that it had to be read. What's more, it came with a sealed map that gave away the first major locations in the game. But yes, The Legend of Zelda was intended to be played without walkthroughs, and I can _personally vouch_ it can be done. If you are truly doing it using just the tools the game gives you, however, it may take you actual months to finish both quests. It did me, back in the day. The Legend of Zelda was the second game on the NES I ever completed. The manual tells you where some secrets are; the manual tells you the purpose of the Note; the manual explains what the items do. The manual is essential. 2. Dying in LoZ is expected. Leave deathless runs for the future, there is no shame in dying. If you're finishing it without spoilers, guides or FAQs, it'll happen a lot. 3. "Staying on track." _There is no track._ The game is genuinely designed without the expectation that you will tackle it a specific way. The dungeons are numbered, but mostly you don't even have to follow them. 4. Believe it or not, every important location in the First Quest has a clue pointing to it. The Second Quest is an entirely different matter, it's well off the rails in terms of difficulty, but in the First Quest, all of the essential locations are clued. 5. EASTMOST PENINSULA IS THE SECRET: It is not a required secret (it's in Level 1 after all), but is likely intended to be a clue to the screen in the upper-right corner of the map, with 100 rupees in the First Quest and the Blue Ring shop in the Second. 6. Here is the thing that most current players fail to see about the original Legend of Zelda. _It leaves space for the player to discover things on their own._ Nearly all games now have explicit clues that leave you to every hidden object. LoZ has _implicit_ clues. It teaches you without teaching you. You know how Goombas have a design that practically invites you to stomp them? The Legend of Zelda is all about that. Doesn't it make sense that a bomb might blow open a mountain wall, or a fire might burn a tree? Both items have places in the overworld that are conspicuous, that practically invite the player to try it: the big round mountain area east of the desert, and multiple single trees in the forest. And once you find the first one, a little experimentation reveals _the game is absolutely riddled with secrets_. There are almost more screens with secrets in them than without. Most of them are not necessary to win, thankfully (at least in the First Quest), but that's what makes them genuine rewards and not things that players are expected to find: that they can be missed! More than almost any other game, it rewards actual experimentation and exploration. You can win Zelda without finding any extra heart containers, or either sword other than the Wooden Sword, or even several of the major items. No other game rewards players trying unexpected things like the original Legend of Zelda, and I claim as forcefully as I am able that _that's what makes it great_. All of this said, it's said a lot better in the classic essay on the original Legend of Zelda's game design and how the series has strayed from it over the years, Tevis Thompson's "Saving Zelda," at tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/ 7. I'm not a fan of meme editing. Grumble grumble....

Also, the East most peninsula hint from the NPC is in reference to a wall that you can walk through for 100 rupees, in the top right corner of the map

Dude, My parents played the NES while my mom was pregnant with me (Zelda is in my DNA, OoT was also my first real video game experience). My dad played and my mom drew out each screen. Then they would bomb each wall and burn each bush and my mom would mark it on the map. That's how they found all the secrets. Games in the 80s, man.

@2:46 "aimlessly".. there's a literal arrow pointing you towards a direction.. EDIT: Something you fail to mention is the fact that Zelda 1 was about freedom AND learning the systems and ways the developers wanted you interact with the game in order to move forward. Living inside this new way to have an adventure!! There was a level of mystery and uncertainty that carries throughout the entire game! You never knew what you missed or what was coming. We were still figuring out what gaming was supposed to be.. so complaining about "guides" is not a valid point, when Dark Souls revived that "playground conversation" players love so much even today. You weren't supposed to find everything, and yet, it gave more life to these simple games! With the jump to 3D Zelda, and the disappointment of Breath of the Wild (as a Zelda, not as a game-y distraction, like Minecraft) is that entry level of uncertainty and excitement that was the Plateau (best turorial in gaming?) is quickly washed away by HOURS of boring repetition. There's also no ambiguity as to how you'd approach something (good design or "bad design"?)! And you can sit down without interacting with anyone and consume it completely.. it doesn't linger with you. Personally, I think they set out to replicate the 1° Zelda in Breath of the Wild, and failed miserably.. it is certainly one of the least Zelda games in existence. Also, I'll take a spooky pig that required exploration to beat and could kill you straight up!! .. than a giant one that is not even a threat, and more like a cutscene. Sometimes, the older content was "better".. even with its limitations.

I don't agree with Zelda games being better without a partner. Sure I can agree with the idea they shouldn't force hints how to play onto you... but as just companions I adore them! Personally one of the things that turned me off the most when playing BOTW was the lack of a friend character who travels with you. I just don't often care to be a loner in a game, I like interesting characters, learning their backstories and adventuring with them. Moreover Midna will always likely be my fave partner from this series, I love her tons still after so many years!

THIS ONLY HAS 87k views???? AND YOU ONLY HAVE 6k subs, my man, you deserve at minimum 300k

I was so sick of people saying BotW went far away from Zelda roots when actually it is the only game that actually came back to it's roots since a long time.

"Are you really about to bust out a pen and paper to figure this out?" Why, yes. That's exactly what we did. I still draw maps and notes by hand on paper.

Ha Whippersnapper I beat The Legend of Zelda game back in the 80s with nothing but playground word of mouth hints and shear force. Also not every hint is valid for the US version. Finding the bush to burn level took a long time and it took me forever to find the place to bomb to get into Gannon's castle. You also rarely have to beat the dungeons in order. I think the recorder and the ladder are the only two items that limit your exploration.

Shiiiiiiiii that Duane and Brando nostalgia hit, damn, gotta listen to it on the way home

“Breath of the wild ends on this gentle tearjerker that-“ Me trying to play through so I can play TOTK: “NONONONONONO NOOOOO, NOOOOOOOOOO, IM NOT LISTENINGGGG” I’ll be back once I finish it ;)

I speak french. I played many of the first zelda games (up until OoC) without understanding a word of either the games or manuals/guides. Yet I did it. The problem wasn't "having no directions", the problem is always just how much you're invested in discovering the games themselves. Not every gamers enjoy the game the same, or for the same reasons, so of course some might get discouraged, some get pissed, some others just... like a challenge. Older games have that charm of letting you know just enough to tell you what you should be doing, without holding your hand or without outside ressources like the internet... and it made "finishing these games" worth every penny.

Word of mouth was a huge element for anyone playing LoZ in the 80s. Everyone was trying to figure it out at basically the same time, and were excited to share discoveries with friends and family. It was the first strand type game 😂

Chrono Trigger music at 13:00.

Back in the day we had guides filled with info about the games. But Zelda 1 is pretty clear even without it. Gather the 8 pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom to defeat Ganon by going to 8 different dungeons. The 1st one is really easy to find and is not that far from the starting point. While others are more hidden the point of the game was its secrets

"Anybody approaching this game is going to reach for a guide" this is funny after I'm coming here after just watching Max's blind run of the game

Back when you were a kid you maybe had 1 or 2 games and a sea of time. I think everyone has a memory of some game where it feels as though they played it for years before beating it. There was no internet and I didn't even speak English. So wandering around the game world and trying things out are some of my fondest memories because you really started to inhabit these worlds. Now we are older and have less time, and less patience, it's simply not possible to experience this again.

one time I opened a dumpster randomly and found an extremely dope unofficial guide for the first two Zeldas from the 80s. I used that to beat them for the first time, that shit hit the perfect medium difficulty zone for me.

Something to note with the original Legend of Zelda that is lost to time was that the game was built to be used with the Player Manual that came with the physical cartridge. The player manual provided information enough to teach players the ropes and get them proficient at the game's "language" without giving away each and every secret the way modern guides do. The only other game I know of that even comes close to replicating this is Tunic. If you haven't played Tunic yet and want a mystery adventure game, it's available on Steam, but absolutely don't spoil yourself for it because game knowledge is progression.

I beat this game on the NES a few years ago. It felt so good to play it on the original console.

As already mentioned, if you played this back in '86 or '87 odds are you had the manual and hint sheet packed with the game. That said, when you only had one game to play for 6 months at a time before your next one, you spend every moment bombing every portion of walls and burning every bush you can. My how the times have changed. And it's overhead views not isometric.

I played the first Zelda with no guide, no map, no pen and paper, just my memory. And I had *almost* as much fun as I did with Tears of the Kingdom hehe