Let me just preface this so nobody gets the bright idea to come in here and say "YEAH OLD GAME DESIGN SUCKS LOLOLOL". That's not what this topic is about. If you're coming in here to say that, turn around and leave. There is no place for you here. Begone!
A few days ago I sat down and played through the original Legend of Zelda again - I referenced a map, which is a heinous thing to do, except that I only did this because I couldn't find my own map. The first time I played through the game I drew out my own grid and filled in details as I explored, and in this way learned the topography of Hyrule. It was pretty cool as far as experiences like that go. Regardless, this time I used a map.
I was struck by the kind of game that Zelda was - my first time through, when I was making my own map, the game took me about fifteen hours or so to get through, and I think I only managed it that fast because I know how to play Zelda games, as it were. This time, in knowing where to go, t took me six, and I was kind of struck by how dense a game it was - enemies everywhere, dungeons short and punchy and difficult to navigate, earlier ones filled with secrets and latter ones requires mastery of secrets just to get through them. In terms of content density, it's one of the richest games I've ever played. You can do so much in so little time, it's incredible.
Today I booted up Link to the Past for the first time in six or seven years. Maybe longer.
Holy shit!
It's hard to convey the kind of change that Link ot the Past was after the first game (and the second one - I played that earlier but never did manage to beat it), and the best I can hope for is to gesticulate wildly in the directions of the things that struck me mmediately.
Firstly, the fact of the game's story presentation - the stuf that's presented when you sit at the title screen a minute - is simultaneously exactly like the original game and nothing like it at all. While it serves the sole purpose of fleshing out the story before you begin the game, like th old one, it aids in its narrative weaving with the use of cutscenes which are short, sharp, and relevant to everything that needs to be conveyed to you. Before the adventure even begins you're given this enormous sense of stnaidng on the precipice of osmething bigger than yourself, like a young boy standing outside of a cave where a hermit waits to give him a sword.
Link to the Past has visibly bombable walls that make a different sound when you hit them. That doesn't sound like much, but it was the start of somehting revolutionary - you have ot understand that in the first game, the only way to see if a surface was bombable was to throw bombs at it.
It has dynamic lighting affected by torches that you light and that go out over time.
It has keys that ae only useful in a single dungeon (though this was introduced in Adventure of Link, to be fair).
The act of stepping through Hyrule Castle - it's had to describe. In the NES days the Hyrule you know is basically a wasteland with a few villages scattered across its surface, looking to rebuild in the aftermath of Ganon's defeat. Link to the Past is like walking through a realization of everything that Hyrule was striving for, an that implied grandeur only made the forboding menace of Aganhim seem more and more terrible.
Playing an older game has helped me appreciate a newer one - I think this trend will probably hold as I continue replaying more games in the series.
This isn't jus a Zelda thing, either - playing through Super Mario Bros. is like a revelation in and of itself, with non other point of reference necessary, but I think I've gone on long enough.
Has playing old games helped you appreciate the way game design has evolved over time?
