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r3dhalo's The Legend of Zelda (NES)
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| [January 19, 2007 06:17:40 AM]
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Today I went back to my Legend of Zelda game and finished off the first dungeon. The boss of the dungeon is pretty standard fare as far as bosses go, a dragon. The boss was pretty easy once I learned his attack patterns and used my sword lazer to nail him in the head. After completing the dungeon I spent the rest of my time just wandering around the overworld. I remember when I first played the game I called the dungeons "levels" but now I've realized that this is perhaps one of the first games I played that didn't actually have "levels". I had been used to playing something like Super Mario Brothers and simply progressing through areas left-to-right in order untill I was done and when I was presented with something so original as Zelda I was only able to define it by what I already knew. In my game design this is the hurdle that I hope I'll be able to get over, I hope to be able to look at the medium of games in a new way and create something that is new and fresh, instead of refining the current conventions (although this is acceptable too, just look at new games like Gears of War which does not do that much new but does everything nearly perfectly).
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| [January 18, 2007 02:38:58 AM]
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Playing this game again after so long reminded me of both how much games have changed, but also how certain aspects have stayed the same. One thing that I was reminded almost immediately of is that you start the game with virtually zero description of where you are, what you are doing, or where you should go next. You are simply dropped into a plane and left to figure things out for yourself. After you walk into the cave and get the sword (one thing I remember from the first time I ever played this game is how the look on Link's face and the way he holds the sword in the air was burned into my memory, even though his facial features are made up only by a few pixels I was very effected) you are pretty much free to explore the world map. The last time I played this game was so long ago that I had not even realized the map on the upper part of the screen. The map shows only where you are on a large solid colored rectangle that represents the whole overworld map which is a method that I don't think would fly by todays standards. With no cues on where to go you are pretty much forced to simply wander around the map untill you run across the first dungeon. The variety of types of land and enemies really helped me to ignore the dated graphics and be pulled into the objectiveless exploration that I was doing around the beginning of the game. The difficulty of the game increases greatly when there are multiple enemies attacking you at once, since you can only move in four directions and only attack in one direction at a time I sometimes found myself panicking and fighting the controlls when there were multiple enemies bearing down on me before I got better at forcing the enemies to come at me a few at a time. I eventually moved onto the dungeon, inside the dungeon the developers use different color schemes, music, and enemies to really add to the experience of not being in the overworld anymore. Now, instead of being able to leave your square area from any open space at the edge you are forced through doors which must be unlocked by either keys or puzzle solving (such as the secret door I opened by pushing a block). Inside the dungeon you also find the dungeon specific items (that have now become a symbol of the series) which are the map and compass. The map gives you an overhead layout of how each room in the dungeon connects to the others and the compass tells you the location of the dungeons boss. Inside the dungeon I also found the boomerang weapon which greatly helps fighting multiple foes since it stuns whoever it hits leaving you the opportunity to take them out one at a time.
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