And Now For Something Legendary

I've come to the point where I'm playing The Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition

This is a lotta bang for your buck

The disc comes with four games: The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (both of the NES days), TLoZ Ocarina of Time and TLoZ: Majora's Mask. Let's break down what my moral obligations are to this game.

The first Zelda brings me memories of old days, which is good. It deserves a replay. Majora's Mask is a game I started back in the N64 days but never finished. It is reportedly a wildly underrated game and I intend to finish it. Ocarina of Time I've played to death. Back in 1998 you couldn't get away from this game, and I played it a lot. Many many times, so if I ever replay it, it will not be this time. I beat Zelda II some time in the late 90's and, believe me, once is plenty. I can go either way about game guides, and many games I refuse to play with a guide, but Zelda II was a bit of a chore, so guide it was.

Hey, how's about some love here?

This one here, this is where it's at. What else can I say about this game that hasn't been said already? You can go to multiple places to find out the skinny on this game and read how revolutionary it was. I just want to tell you my Zelda story. I thought it was boring.

Back in 6th grade, my friend Sergio showed me this magazine called The Official Nintendo Player's Guide.

Don't we look official

In this magazine they described Zelda as consisting of an overworld and an underworld, and there were shops and items, and you killed monsters and obtained money and you used this money to go into the shops and buy the items. This to me was the most boring game ever. Go kill monsters, get money, spend it, and do it all over again. Yawn.

Years later, in high school, someone started talking about Zelda and I said it was boring. He asked if I'd ever actually played it. I said yes, for a bit. "Well, did you ever get the raft?" he asked. "Well, no, I never got enough money to buy the raft," I replied.

"You don't buy the raft. You get it in one of the dungeons."

Wait, what?! The raft isn't something you buy? You mean it's just sitting there, waiting for someone to get it? Are we talking hidden treasure? THERE'S TREASURE IN THE DUNGEONS?! I had to be a part of this. Suddenly all my preconceptions about this game had come crashing down. This was a quest. You'd need skill to overcome obstacles, of which there was sure to be many... but the reward would be sweet!

There's a lot about this game that reminds me of growing up. I remember being in the 6th grade and translating bits of English from magazines for my friends desperate for secrets (back then it didn't seem odd to me that I understood what was before me, when most of my Mexican friends couldn't). I remember the thrill of exploration and treasure hunting. But mostly it reminds me that the world of gaming has changed a lot.

There were always secrets surrounding Zelda. You could place bombs in specific places and find things hidden. You could burn specific bushes and find shops of characters with rewards. How we knew that some things had to be bombed or burned, I'll never know. The game itself was primitive and what it affectionately doles out as "hints" are almost unintelligible gibberish. The hints invariably make more sense when you know what it is they're trying to hint at, but if you don't, then you're sheer out of luck. Even the final boss's dungeon is hidden away and well. I can see someone out of desperation placing bombs on any rock that seemed out of place.

Place a bomb on Spectacle Rock. We dare you.

But the most amazing thing about Zelda was that those secrets did get out. Someone DID put a bomb on Spectacle Rock and managed to not only remember it, but to tell someone about it. And the word got out and eventually it got to you. Cause we were talking to each other. We were asking for help. We'd spent afternoons at friends' houses showing each other the tricks we'd found, instead of looking them up on youtube.

So last weekend I grabbed my Zelda Collector's Edition disc, threw it in my Wii and I played me some Zelda. I beat it with some help, I'm not ashamed to admit that I used a game guide, but I will say that even my guide comes with some cred: aside from the aforementioned Official Nintendo Player's Guide, the NES Game Atlas from 1991. Game didn't play itself, though. It was still me saving that princess after all this time.