| The_Liquid_Laser said: #1 The Legend of Zelda - This is the game that killed the arcades. It took several years, but this is the game that made it happen. The gameplay of Zelda 1 was not possible in either an arcade or a home computer at the time. You needed to be able to save your progress, which was something arcade games couldn't do. And the game was too twitchy for any home computer in the mid 80's. It's the first action RPG, taking Ultima 1 gameplay, but then making it an action game. It also took the item ideas from Adventure and then took them so much further too. The game has tons of secrets. It's the first open-world action game. The game overworld feels huge compared to any action game that came before, and it has 9 dungeons. Zelda 1 just went so far and beyond every similar game that came before it, and since you could only experience this type of game on a home console, it ended up killing the arcades. That is why I put it as Nintendo's #1 most revolutionary game of all time. A true revolution has to overthrow the existing status quo, and that is exactly what it did. Gaming used to be defined by arcades, and even the best selling games on the Atari 2600 were mostly arcade ports. Zelda 1 showed you could make home console games that were a bigger draw than anything that was possible in the arcade. Zelda 1 shifted gaming from games made for arcades to games made specifically to be played on a home console. |
As a Zelda fan, I have to disagree with few things here:
- arcades were already in downward spiral by the time Zelda released...Golden Age of Arcades ended around '83, due to both home consoles and home computers
- games made for home VG entertainment were already quite different than just being arcade ports way, way before Zelda (especially on home computers)
- home computers were more than capable of Zelda's action gameplay and already had quite a few games that were twitch based, while not being arcade alike in structure (proto-Metroidvania, "Montezuma's Revenge" from '84 comes to mind).
- while you'll never catch either Miyamoto or Tezuka admitting it, Hydlide did exist before Zelda (on home computers, no less). Is LoZ better game? Sure. Is it first? No.
Zelda is continuation and distillation of what was happening on home gaming devices already for years prior to it. It is one of the seminal titles in gaming history, but I find it that lot of people are looking at it with too much rose tint in their glasses.
From my POV, nothing really compares to Donkey Kong, which made Nintendo (and saved NoA) into VG juggernaut...that Radar Scope cabinet was doing pretty bad, and DK came as last ditch attempt to salvage it, massively succeeding and in the process codifying new type of gameplay.
