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Samus Aran on 16 December 2014
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TheLastStarFighter said:
Samus Aran said:
TheLastStarFighter said:

That's the problem.  A historian doesn't know what it was like to experience a situation, and you don't.  

Actually, the whole point of historiography is to sympathize and understand the situation you're studying. If you're studying medieval history you need to think like a medieval person. That's hard to achieve and only someone with mastery over a certain subject can achieve it. And it by no means is perfect, but that doesn't negate the whole study.

So yeah, you have no clue what you're talking about. Are you saying only survivors of the Holocaust are allowed to speak about it? Because then we have a problem in the not so distant future...

What I just described is called the "Verstehen" method. There's no point to act like an elitist here. You think that with my passion of gaming and history I never combined the two? Because you're wrong if you think that. 

The truth is, you would never know if you have captured the perspective of a medieval person, because there are none around.  You can only think like you think they would think, which is very different.

I'm telling you - as someone who experienced the event of popping in that magical gold cartridge for the first time - that you have failed in your attempt to understand the perspective of Zelda 1.  You are calling it a broken game, weak, etc, and I'm advising you that you are quite simply wrong.  In my youth Zelda was the talk of the playground, the pinacle of gaming.  Not one person said it was too hard, or impossible without a guide, or any of that.  It was viewed as a challenging title, one a step above contemporaries like SMB.  Killing Ganon was the pinacle of playground gaming cred, one step above Mother Brain.  No one felt it was random or a grind.  It was a game where anything is possible so try anything.  That's a fundamental aspect your missing of the experience.

You're calling me an elitist, but you are the one saying you have an understanding of something that you didn't experience, and debating it with someone who did. Using your Holocaust example, it would be like me telling a survivor that it really wasn't that horrible and a modern genocide is actually much worse because I've read about it and imagined what it's like.  You should try to learn from those who actually experienced something.  It's a rare treat as a historian.

Your post is again all wrong. You do realize medieval persons have left us with sources that can learn us plenty? There are a lot of medieval diaries out there, that describe personal experiences of events they deemed important. And no real historian would ever say the Holocaust wasn't horrible. So your example is pretty bad. What you're refering to is what we call negationists... They do NOT master the historical sources. They distort it. 

I can read Middle Dutch hand written sources of the 14th century. Don't tell me I can't learn from those who experienced something. 

Zelda 1 was a weak entry, but it did provide something new to the gameworld. Future Zelda games have all improved on the formula of the first game (with the exception of the second game, which is even worse). 

Super Mario Bros. is still very much playable to this day. If you want a good top down Zelda game look no further than A Link to the Past. This is the game that left the biggest impact on the franchise together with Ocarina of Time. 

We're not looking here for games that were great in 1986, we're lookg for games that can still be good in 2015 (the year Zelda U will hopefully release).