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The Legend of Zelda Series and its place within the History of Video Games
[NOTE ZERO: Spoilers! While we are not going to do a deep dive into every
story twist and mechanic of these games, we will certainly mention some
touching endings, amazing moments with weapons and ingenious tools at the
player’s disposal. So if you want to go into these games completely fresh,
better go play ‘em]
[NOTE ONE: This will be a four-part deep
dive into the Legend of Zelda video game series, that is planned (ha!) to
be published bimonthly. While certain sections will look at aspects of the
series as a whole, it will mostly be chronological, so the most recent
games won’t be the focus until the final part. But if you want to know
right now if you should play 2017’s
Breath of the Wild or 2020’s
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the short answers are an emphatic
yes and sure]
[NOTE TWO: Hey, do you like video games? Like, a lot? Then some of this
essay might tread over some very obvious areas of your base knowledge
(whether concepts behind games, or the history of the medium, or parts of
the Zelda series). It's designed to be for both hardcore fans and those
with a passing interest in the (still growing) culture, who obviously know
about Mario, maybe played Sonic, Halo or GTA all those years ago, and have
at lest heard of Atari. Not to say that you'll be totally bored if you can
rattle off your top five Zelda dungeons whenever need be (people like
reading nice things about things they like…and I will proudly defend
Ocarina of Time's Water Temple),
but just a heads up, there might be some ‘yeah, obviously’ moments for
you]
[NOTE THREE: Advances in computer technology have allowed for video games
to improve in quality over the decades and become more and more of an
essential piece of popular culture. At the same time (and also thanks to
computer technology) the video essay
can be created and viewed much easier, the former typically only requiring
an interest in the subject and editing equipment that is available on most
commercial laptops, and the latter only requiring eyes and an internet
connection. As these are both visual mediums, it makes sense that there
are many more video essays covering and analyzing video games than
traditional written essays (it's easier to prove a point about graphics or
gameplay by showing them). But...that's not going to happen here. This is
the old fashioned written word all the way. Which means there can be a
slight disconnect, a bit like reading a book about music that you may be
unfamiliar with (you can’t really understand the music the writer is
describing until you listen to it). So for those who would wish for a
glossary of sorts, or a quick resource to get a visual image and more
basic description of the main points and minutiae of what is being
described here, it is recommended that you have the websites Zelda Dungeon
or Fandom’s Zelda-pedia open in a new tab, ready to clarify]
Prologue: Triangles
Three points connected.
The Pythagorean theorem.
Spatial dimensions.
The
primary colours.
The triumvirate in everything from religious symbolism to political
systems.
Hard and soft rules of three, from tragedy to comedy.
The
family unit.
Hegel's thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, connecting these points,
bringing them together, to create something stronger.
We are attuned to the power of three.
The triangle is the most stable physical
shape.
Through times of slow, noble creation and
quick, terrible destruction.
It remains.
It endures.
We give it meaning, we give it strength, we
pour of hopes, desires and fears into that which does not perish.
Not
everything is chosen.
Some
things are given.
Courage.
Wisdom.
Power.
Each
one a symbol come to life, each one a symbol of life, each one a triangle
in itself.
How these are used is certainly a choice.
The goddesses may not judge, but they knew
to keep these three pieces known as the Triforce apart,
although these three are
forever fated to intertwine.
Protection, healing, and restoration stands
on one side against aggression, sickness, and destruction.
In between – in the third space - conflict
is inevitable. And the din can rattle the heavens.
Time stretches until the details of these feats are
forgotten, when only vestiges of the truth are left:
"The rising sun will eventually set,
A newborn's life will fade.
From sun to moon, moon to sun...
Give peaceful rest to the living dead."
- inscription on the tomb of the royal family,
Ocarina of Time
“Shadow and light are
two sides of the same coin…one cannot exist without the other.”
–
Zelda,
Twilight Princess
“Nothing can stop the flow of time or the passing of
generations. But the fate carried within my bloodline endures the ravages
of all the years. It survives.” - Laruto,
Wind Waker
The
shape of the triforce is deceptive. Yes, the three disparate triangles of
courage, wisdom and power ultimately come together, but when they do, in
its middle is revealed a fourth, empty triangle. That's you, the player.
You fill this emptiness, you play a central role.
And
with that a larger, fifth triangle appears, made of all four.
The
sum is greater than its parts.
The
fifth is the Legend.
Introduction
This
is not a piece about the complete history of video games. Not only are we
glossing over the essential very early years (which will be addressed a
bit in Part Three), but also essential games from the distant past, recent
past, and present. A certain plumber is only going to drop in from time to
time.
What
video games have become in popular culture in the last forty years is
comparable to what film became in the first few decades of the twentieth
century. Since its rise coincided with the rise of the Internet, video
games had the opportunity to become a global phenomenon with little
transport lag, which means many people around the world could experience
them at more or less the same time.
While there has been a variety of game and game genres since the eighties,
the advancement and refinement of them (thanks to rapidly improving
computer technology) over nine generations of consoles means that they
could continually offer more immersive and expansive experiences that
transport the player to impossible worlds and allow them to perform
incredible feats of fun ("If it's not fun, why bother?" – former Nintendo of America President
Reggie Fils-Aime).
The
Legend of Zelda is the one series that best encapsulates video games - its
history, its aspirations, its achievements, and its sheer joy - as a
whole. If you played the first game in 1986 or 1987, you were experiencing
the very best technology and imagination video game programmers had to
offer at the time. Over the next thirty-five years, the industry has grown
and triumphed, and the Zelda series has as well. Mistakes and missteps? Of
course. And this series can represent the mistakes of the industry, too.
One
series here also means one company.
Nintendo.
The
only major video game company that has been there from the beginning, the
one that has sometimes taken the greatest risks and leaps forward, and
sometimes been the one most unwilling to change. This legacy means that
for three generations of gamers (and all generations of consoles),
Nintendo has been an integral part of their childhoods, a shorthand for
video games in general, and a necessary stepping stone to greater
imaginative heights in many other disciplines, personal and professional.
Like
any other industry, competitors have risen and fell (Atari, Sega, NEC),
some for refusing to change with the times, some for changing too quickly,
and some for simply having bad luck.
For
the last two decades, it has largely been 'the big three' when video games
are discussed. Nintendo (a one hundred and thirty year old company that
originally focused on playing cards), PlayStation (owned by Sony, who have
just released their fifth console, the conventionally titled PlayStation
5), and Xbox (owned by Microsoft, who have just released their fourth
console, the confusingly titled Xbox Series X/S). The latter two are owned
by very powerful electronic/computer corporations that have deep pockets.
Nintendo is 'just' a video game company, and as such, every console
release can have a huge impact on the overall state of said company. They
don't have a TV or computer software department to bail them out is sales
sag, and that means you always need to have a reason to buy the console,
and that means having good games, and ideally a really good video game
franchise.("The name of the game is
the game" – former Nintendo of America VP of marketing, Peter Main).
To be glib, since PlayStation/Xbox typically compete for the mantle of
most powerful hardware (better graphics and stronger processing power),
these two companies are here for the 'video', and Nintendo is here for the
'games'.
They
are a company that frequently develops hardware and software in near
tandem for their first party, triple-A titles. A proprietary enterprise
similar to Apple and Tesla, and there are plenty of advantages and
disadvantages that come with such a setup. While it is very helpful to
ensure that you are in complete control of your intellectual and physical
properties (which means you can design games specifically for the
hardware), it is also insular to the point where you cannot always easily
adapt to changes to the wider video game industry (and as every
entertainment company is subject to fads, it is possible to release
products that come out too early, too late, or is riddled with unforeseen
errors to make a positive and profitable impact).
It
is this sort of company that would think practically with its wallet, but
still give its creative directors and their teams all the freedom and
leeway they need to indulge in what they think might be fun to do for
hours and hours in front of your television.
In
the case of The Legend of Zelda series, Shigeru Miyamoto, also the creator
of the Donkey Kong and Mario series, envisioned an exploration game that
was inspired by his childhood memories of wandering through forests and
caves near his home. Something different than simply running and jumping
on a clear path to achieve a high score.
Merging these goals with a medieval-inspired fantasy world was effortless.
The
Legend of Zelda is also a key choice of representation for the industry as
a whole because it hits very familiar story themes that are much, much
older than video games. A young swordsman needs to rescue a princess and
defeat the bad guy to save the land. A tale as old as time, whether passed
down orally or through celluloid, and now you can finally 'be' the hero.
You control their actions with buttons or a joystick, make decisions for
them, slay enemies, explore a large open area of forests, mountains and
more, conquer mysterious, underground dungeons and ominous fortresses, and
die over and over (and over) again.
Another reason Zelda is the focus is because no other series has been as
acclaimed (and aspopular) for so long. There are many big video game
franchises out there, but not many can go back three decades, to the
eight-bit era, and very few of them have sold over one hundred million
copies.
Entries from the series have consistently not
only represented the abilities and creativity of the Nintendo console of
the time, but the high-water mark of video games during each respective
generation. There is the Famicom/NES (home of the first two Zeldas, both
of which offered a massive overworld/underworld to explore with then
unheard of save features), the Super Famicom/SNES (which was certainly
more super, offering ‘A Link to the
Past’, which was superior in every respect, with better graphics,
better gameplay, and a deeper story), the Nintendo 64 (home of the
‘believe the hype’ brilliance of
Ocarina of Time, where the series’ goes 3D with auto-target heaven,
and then the weirdness of ‘Majora’s Mask’), the Gamecube (play solo with the best storyline in
the series with the joyous and buoyant
Wind Waker, or play together
with Four Swords), the Wii
(first swing your controller/controller in
Twilight Princess, a
gothic-inspired wolf-filled epic, and then do the same thing in
Skyward Sword, which is impressionism-inspired repetition), and the
Switch (Breath the of Wild lets
you do whatever you want, whenever you want, including making friends with
dogs and cheesing the game in half an hour. Plus all the titles in
handheld consoles (a format that Nintendo has constantly bested all their
competitors with), but don’t worry, we’ll get to those, too.
The first, self-titled game’s popularity ensured that there would be many
more of them, but after a rushed sequel, Miyamoto and his team stepped
back and took many years developing and perfecting future titles in the
series. It is a testament to the quality of the series that Nintendo
executives and fans have been willing to wait sometimes five or six years
between titles, and still buy them in droves when they are released.
Of course, popularity does not mean a game is good (as Pokemon fans will
reluctantly attest to), but popularity certainly does mean that many
people become familiar with the gameplay the title offers. At the same
time, good doesn’t mean it’s going to sell like hotcakes (as many Pikmin
fans will reluctantly attest to, so this is a enthusiastic recommendation
to download and play the free demo of Pikmin 3 Deluxe as soon as you can).
The fickleness of popularity means that even if other games flirted with
new gameplay or mechanics but failed to make impact, many players first
experienced them through Zelda games if it was the one to utilize said
mechanic in a more effective way.
The term 'video game literacy' refers to becoming familiar with how video
games are designed, and obviously the more you play, the better you are at
them, and at recognizing what parts work (and don’t work) well.
When you 'git gud' at a
Zelda game, you also get better at so many other games that will come
after it, not only within that console generation, but beyond. In terms of video game literacy, this
series is the bible. Or Joyce's
Ulysses (quickly: Link as Leopold Bloom, Zelda as Molly, Navi/Midna/Fi
as Stephen Dedalus...or should Link be Stephen, and any helpful old man be
Leopold?).
Zelda made people learn other video games as they played it, but it is
also exceedingly 'noob friendly'. You don't need to have played previous
entries to have a great experience, as the story of the tenth installment
is not dependent on what happened in the previous nine games.
Whether 2D top-down or immersive 3D, when there have been advances in
tech, in style, or in form of video games, there is typically a Zelda game
that encapsulates this change. The re-invention of gameplay mechanics in
each title mirrors the reincarnation of character and narrative elements
in the overall storyline.
They
even embraced motion controls, perhaps too early (for games released in
2006 and 2011), but the march towards manipulating things in a virtual
world with your own physical actions is inevitable as technology improves.
There are currently twenty video games that are part of the Zelda canon,
And each one has a few sections that are so frustrating that you want to
throw your controller (or Wii remote and nunchuck) at the wall. At the
same time, each game has what the happy blue YouTube video game critic
Arlo calls 'this game' moments, where sometimes you just hold the
controller in your hand and your jaw drops at what is taking place on the
screen in front of you and say those two words out loud. Whether a story
twist, a hulking boss you're about to fight, or simply the massive land of
Hyrule opening up before you and beckoning you to explore, this series has
been able to blow the player’s mind more often than any other.
Other series like Mario, Pokemon, Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty may
have the global recognition, but Zelda has what counts when you start up a
new game. The excitement and emotion that for too long people have assumed
video games could not offer in the same order as books, films, and other
forms of culture.
Miyamoto has said that Zelda was meant to be the 'anti-mario'. If Mario
was 'you go there' (or, more accurately, to the right), then Zelda was,
'you go...where?' (and sometimes you ask that question loudly as you keep
walking through the same two rooms in a dungeon looking for a switch, a
bomb-able wall, or a chest).
Sometimes a Zelda game is the (near) perfect synthesis of the qualities,
technological abilities and mechanics of the games that just preceded it.
Sometimes it introduces new features and options never seen before.
Sometimes one game has both of these. If Zelda wasn't pioneering with its
game mechanics, then it was improving and damn near perfecting on what was
already being utilized in the development community.
The
rest of the video game industry learned from Zelda's successes and its
failures, but because it has done so, so much more of the former than the
latter, it is unquestionably the perfect choice to be the representative
of the history of video games and all the potential this medium has to
offer. This four-part series will look at every game in this series (and
what was happening in the industry at the time of its release), to
hopefully prove this point beyond a reasonable doubt.
And
finally, just a reminder so don't look like an ass and gum up the very
basics if you ever try to talk shop about this series with fans:
Zelda is the titular princess and Link is the guy with the sword and
(usually) green tunic who you actually play as.
Chapter One: Citizen
Kane, Jay-Z, and the Ocarina of
Time
Rosebud.
Hova.
'Hey, listen!'
Like
music, movies, and other pieces of culture, the 'greatest video game of
all time' is not necessarily the same as your personal favourite, which
can frequently buck the general consensus because of a unique life
experience related to said piece of culture.
As
opposed to ‘favourite’, 'Greatest' typically means taking into
consideration the opinions of critics and fans, as well as the influence
this one title had and continues to have on the culture as a whole.
So this is a roundabout
way of saying Ocarina of Time is
the greatest video game of all time, in the same way
Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time, and Jay-Z is the
greatest rapper of all time, even
if they aren’t everyone’s personal favourite in that respective medium. To
be taken seriously when it comes to your opinions on the topic, the
acknowledgement of the greatness of all three is very important (and you
have quite the task in front of you if you want to argue otherwise).
Any time you throw around the term ‘Greatest Of All Time’ (shortened to
GOAT, which is a change from the past when to be ‘the goat’ was the person
or thing who screwed everything up), it has to consider community
consensus and influence over whatever poster you had on your walls as a
kid. Ideally, the more you watch movies, listen to hip-hop, or play video
games, the more you will come to appreciate how these three cultural
artifacts/artisans can properly represent their respective field.
In
the realm of the hypothetical, if you could only show one movie to someone
who has never seen a movie - or even knows what one is - which could
represent the idea of 'movie' as a whole, most people who really like
watching and thinking about movies would say to show this person
Citizen Kane. The same goes for
Jay-Z for hip-hop, and Ocarina of Time for video games.
In
regards to Citizen Kane,
contemporary audiences might find the pacing slow, the story beats and
character developments a bit cliché, and some of the acting wooden. But
for those who consider themselves critics or fans of movies, Orson Welles'
classic rags-to-riches-to-regret tale did so much to what the medium of
film was up that point. It broke new ground in regards to cinematography
and editing, and influenced generations of filmmakers after that it is
still rightly held up as a paragon of the art form (and yes, let state
right now that video games are also art. At one point there was the
discussion of whether or not movies were art, and whether hip-hop/rap was
art, so hopefully all of this is equally settled with a resounding 'of
course').
So
let us turn to the life and times of Shawn 'Jay-Z' Carter.
His personal story alone
is a rags-to-riches one: he had a difficult childhood, he dealt drugs, had
close calls with law, became famous and released album after album of
critical and commercial success (sustained over three decades), still
lived life on the edge (he stabbed a guy at a club!), married the most
successful singer of her generation, and is now a respected elder
statesman not only in hip-hop, entertainment and business circles, but in
the wider culture as well.
He is not only the mythology of hip-hop distilled into one man, he is
also one of the most talented lyricists and performers of the art itself.
Jay-Z has released twelve albums (!), and four of them are top-to-bottom
classics (Reasonable Doubt, The
Blueprint, The Black Album, and
4:44), and even if he’s eschewed the ‘Big Pimpin' lifestyle these
days, that track alone is probably the best song to represent 90s hip-hop
and how it became so dominant. A perfect example of the ‘gangster-pop’
crossover.
So
if you only had one person to represent hip-hop, if you could only listen
to one artist to ‘get’ it, the choice is Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter.
And
The Legend of Zelda:
Ocarina of Time
is like that with video games. While someone playing it fresh today might
find it limited in some ways (since it came out in 1998), it remains an
unparalleled video game experience, an outstanding achievement in the
field of excellence, and an absolute joy.
This was the general critical and fan consensus then, and even when
returning to it, there is very little rust (just some aiming issues with
the bow). Yes, it looks like it was made twenty two years ago, but its
gameplay remains remarkably fluid and engaging. Its story may have a
straightforward goal (defeat the evil wizard king, Ganon), the story’s
twists and turns can be shocking and charming. When the only sluggish part
of the game is rushing through the ‘Hey, Listen’ dialogue that gives you
too much 'how to play' info, you know you've got a classic.
It was also highly advanced for its time (the first 32-megabyte title
Nintendo ever made), and went onto become the biggest influence in the
video game industry going forward. There are many games – and gaming
styles – that have copped from Ocarina over the past twenty years. It
wasn’t the first 3D game by any stretch, but it was the first one that
truly nailed the experience (Super Mario 64 got close) of exploring another world through your
television. Whether you play Halo,
Grand Theft Auto, Bioshock, or even
Counterstrike, there is a tiny blueprint of
Ocarina of Time in there,
showing us all how to navigate a three dimensional digital space.
But calling anything the GOAT is bound to
come with problems.
Expectation kills. Nothing can put you in a more problematic frame of mind
than you expecting the most amazing experience of your life because of
what others have said is the greatest movie, music, or video game.
Especially if you're going further and further into the past.
Citizen Kane might come off slow (and just look archaic to modern
audiences), some of Jay's early albums have plenty of filler, Ocarina's
teaching component slows the action down and finding the exact spot to
trigger the next story scene can be frustrating,
Movies, albums, and games that have come after might be seen as superior
by successive generations, but very direct lines can be traced back to
these key documents, showing how influential and important they are.
The
title of greatest film or rapper of all time can create plenty of debates,
but a discussion would not be taken seriously if
Kane or Jay-Z are not mentioned.
In fact, it would be up to dissenters to mount an argument as to why they
should not be considered the greatest (and it would be a very difficult
one to make).
Furthermore, arguing against the consensus that Kane, Hova, or
Ocarina is number one shows just how big of an influence these
properties are to the form as a whole. They are so firmly rooted at the
centre of the discussion of ‘greatest’ that it’s gotten to the point where
saying they aren’t as good as people say actually reinforces the idea that
they should always play a central part in the discussion in the first
place
Even when Ocarina is criticized,
there is rarely a strong consensus of what game might compete with it as
another 'greatest' candidate, and there is certainly no well agreed upon
shortlist outside of strict (and certainly not wholly representative)
numerical hierarchy of metacritic ratings.
Games like Bioshock, Half-Life
(and/or Half Life 2), Final Fantasy VII, Metroid Prime, Chrono Trigger,
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, Red Dead Redemption, and
Skyrim (to name but a few), are certainly mentioned regularly and
appear high on many critics’ and publication lists, but the only other
franchise that seems to nail the same level of critical and commercial
consensus over and over is The Super
Mario series. It is one year older than Zelda, and there are many,
many more entries in the series, but roughly seven of them are up for the
running as best game ever (Super Mario Bros. 1, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario
64, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Super Mario Odyssey).
Mario involves - brace yourself - a plumber jumping on enemies in a
psychedelic fantasy world to save a princess from a dragon-turtle hybrid
with incredible collection of castles, airships, and clones at his
disposal.
Arguably, the other biggest series of all time in terms of sales, hype,
and recognition (in and out of the video game community) is
Grand Theft Auto, a series made
by Rockstar Games, chiefly for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. Over two decades
they have popularized and perfected the open world style of gaming, with
GTA 3 and
GTA 5 being seem as possible
recipients for the G.O.A.T. title.
GTA 5 is also one of the best selling video games of all time, moving
120 million copies. Only the two block-moving games –
Tetris and
Minecraft – have sold more. Ocarina, meanwhile, hasn’t cracked ten
million.
All the games in the GTA series involve the player doing gangster-related
missions in a fictional version of various American cities. Robbing banks,
moving ‘cargo’, killing people, oddball side missions, and stealing plenty
of cars.
So you can either be saving kingdoms and
princesses, or be building your own underworld kingdom and go to the strip
club.
Such is the nature and scope of video games. Even if the
goal is always ‘win’, the effort that is required can be vastly different
from title to title.
How do you introduce someone to the concept of a video game, of an
interaction with a series of sequential objectives that you are tasked
with completing by manipulating inputs that will test your skills in
different ways, such a button dexterity based on recognizing patterns
quickly, world interaction rules, and lateral thinking puzzles?
Super Mario Bros’ famed 1-1 level is the
best example of teaching via ‘show’, but an interactive 3D environment
like Ocarina
would be the best choice because it can exemplify all
the coveted qualities this medium offers, even for gamers who haven’t
played a game that was made before 2010.
For every moment where
it is familiar (story) and engaging, there is another moment where the
gameplay introduces new and exciting mechanics that can excite and thrill
the player, encouraging them to continue and triumph. At the same time,
the best of anything should hold appeal to novices and experts, and while
that is a difficult balancing act,
Ocarina of Time does this effortlessly.
While a game two decades old typically needs
to be seen with rose-tinted glasses or dollops of nostalgia, that it was
created in 1998 only makes it more impressive today. Just as
Citizen Kane still resonates,
and Jay-Z still owns the mic.
Is it possible for another game to one day
supplant to this one as the greatest game of all time? Of course.
But it hasn’t happened yet.
Okay, a sizeable segment of the video game community at large (both
critics and players) agrees, but don’t you want to talk about what it’s
like to actually play Ocarina
of Time?
That's coming up in a later chapter.
Interlude:
What's in a name?
A video game is created like a film but played like a
sport.
Because they are called 'video games', that second word - along with the
person pressing buttons being called a 'player', the frequent presence of
several rounds of play, high scores and a goal of defeating your opponents
- created the initial impression that they should be classified as a
sport. A form of competition. A game.
And
that's because it is certainly a sport, a professional one at that.
E-sports is a multi-billion dollar industry (inside a bigger multi-billion
dollar industry) with players making millions of dollars (either solo or
on a team) competing in front of thousands of fans in arenas worldwide.
Or
perhaps calling it such is a grave insult to people actually run around
with a ball on a field or a court in the real world, and video games are
just a fun thing to do usually while sitting down, like a hobby?
After all, not every
game has you chasing a high score (like...uh...The
Legend of Zelda series).
But
there are goals. Story-type goals, like saving the land from the villain,
parachuting onto a moving train, or solving a puzzle by arranging certain
words that create specific rules for the world-space.
Suddenly you aren't playing against other people and the points they
accrued, but against the programmer's creative level designs and their
often-simplistic story that you can interactive with and change to a
limited degree.
And
if you fail, you can try again. And again. And again.
Hell, if you succeed and you really enjoyed succeeding you can play again.
And again. And again.
While everyone would like sporting events to be exciting back and forth
contests with comebacks and incredible catches’shots, that's rarely the
reality. Blowouts or dull stretches of unremarkable play are frequent.
This endless variation in outcome – along with the path to get there – is
not present in the same way with video games. You reach the end of the
stage, or you don’t, and there are only so many ways to succeed in doing
this (even as contemporary games give us many more options, there is still
a limit).
Playing any game means rigidly following a set of rules, and when it comes
to video games, even ‘cheating’ is built into the game with certain codes,
along with the ability to take advantage of programming glitches that
allow you to do certain tasks much quicker or easier. And like real
sports, it is both frowned upon by some, and reluctantly acknowledged as
being part of the wider institution by others.
And while this all sounds very game-like, there’s that other word to
consider. The first one, actually: Video.
Visual media that gives the appearance of movement on an electronic
screen. We are already dealing with illusion, and that’s something we’ve
forgotten as we stare at high definition images: they aren’t real, they
are just elaborate representations – sometimes of real life occurrences –
arranged out of flickering transistor lights in our televisions, computer
monitors, and phones.
We are willing to be fooled for our amusement, and in other cases, for
knowledge. When we are watching a live news feed of an unfolding event on
the other side of the world we conveniently forget that we are staring at
a screen that is reassembling tiny bits of electric signals that fly
through the air, sent from a light-capturing device (a camera) that is
recording the actual event.
Film and television tell stories that can
be experienced by anyone across the globe at their leisure, to the point
where the ideal position to engage with this is sitting comfortably on a
couch. Watching is a heck of a lot more passive than any sort of playing.
Even video games give your thumbs and fingers a workout.
But because they involve a screen, it is
inexorably linked to everything else that involves a screen. But you
can't 'lose' at
watching a movie, right? Heck, you might be completely bewildered by a
convoluted plot twist, but that’s not the same thing as getting a ‘game
over’ screen.
Moviemakers and video game designers both
lead the viewer/player along an intended course, one that is meant to
excite you, to challenge you, to have you feel moments of frustration and
despair, only to end it (ideally) with joy and triumph and appreciation
for the journey you’ve just taken.
Which is what art is supposed to do.
During Zelda’s triumphant rise in the
nineteen-eighties and nineties, video games weren’t seeing as artistic
endeavours by the cultural world, even as the stories got deeper and the
graphics and environments were becoming more complex and worthy of
reflection and consideration.
Maybe something isn't 'art' until someone critiques or examines it with
the same metrics as other widely acknowledged forms of art. A
qualitative-focused analysis instead of a quantitative one.
Video games now are where films were in the 1940s. Forty years prior,
movies were dismissed as a cheap novelty, being nothing more than short
filmstrips of a horse running for ten seconds or a train bearing down on
the camera, created by winding up a series of still photos.
That was not art, it was said, because only live theatre was how stories
can be shared and how we can all have a compelling social and intellectual
experience. Even when movies took their first narrative steps - thanks to
early pioneers like Griffith and Eisenstein - there was just a small
selection of fans and critics who acknowledged that there was a
possibility of it changing entertainment, art and culture as a whole
across the planet.
By
the 1940s moves were massive forces to be reckoned with, its popularity
constantly growing, and many huge developments in technology (sound,
camera quality) and storytelling devices. Still, many people at the time
pointed out that while this is true, other forms of art were still a
superior form of aestheticism. You can't replicate that on a cardboard set
full of cameras and no audience.
Video games are on this same trajectory, with the same sort of people
criticizing them being the ones that said movies will never have the same
(or replace the) impact of theatre, and whatever cultural phenomenon there
was before.
Of course, dismissing
video games was effortless in the 1980s.
Mashing buttons, mindless repetition, cruddy graphics, ran
on quarters, was just for kids. The superficial sort of criticism that has
been levied against video games regarding its status as art has been said
over the years about rock music, impressionism, and the novel.
Except the agency that is given to the player, which is unique to this
medium.
Interpretive agency is obviously given to the reader, the viewer or the
listener, but the choices expand exponentially when playing a video game,
even ones on the early generations of consoles.
This sort of choice of how to interact has never been given much attention
when it comes to aesthetic discourse of video games. So many choices mean
a communal, identical experience is impossible, and not in the same way
that a film about a divorce can mean something different for a couple in a
love and someone recently separated from their partner. Because of
different abilities and approaches, even the most basic platform or puzzle
game will unfold differently for each person.
As
Klosterman puts it in his 2006 article regarding video game criticism:
"Every player invents the future."
That's enticing for a player, and maddening for a critic.
This abundance of choice means it is too
easy for people to write off video games as a
‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ (a book series that was ‘just
for kids’) with a gun or a sword.
And while games like
Hypnospace Outlaw, Undertale, and What Remains of Edith Finch
certainly challenge video game expectations in creative and exciting ways
(and can give people plenty to write about), when it comes to video game
criticism,
another practicality quickly rears its ugly, honest head.
Time.
People just don't have
the time to devote that amount of time to entertainment, even if they're
curious.
It's easy to talk about
and debate music because most albums are under an hour and you can do
something else while you listen. Movies are usually around two hours, with
you and everyone else having identical sensory input experiences as you
sit in theatre on the couch.
Meanwhile, blockbuster, triple-A games are typically designed to take up
dozens of hours for a simple play-through, and some can take up to one
hundred hours or more if you try to do everything (known as ‘one hundred
percent-ing a game’). And you can't just sit back and relax and check your
phone as even games with occasional cut scenes demand button pressing.
Even a small quirky
game like the joyous
Untitled Goose Game (for
people who assume all video games are about shooting or stomping on
things, this is the perfect lighthearted introduction) still takes around
five or six hours to finish. Your time is limited and precious, and with
indie studios churning out plenty of don’t miss games themselves, it’s
hard enough to play all the big-name ‘best of the year’ candidates.
With peak TV/streaming
continuing unabated, you have to make decisions of which shows to watch
and which ones you have to skip, which means trying to shoehorn in time for a video game that might be
confusing at first before it gets fun doesn't sound that appealing unless
you've already dove headfirst into the culture. Getting into anything else
– movies, music, memes – is so much easier. You just watch or listen, and
maybe even do a completely different activity at the same time.
Video games require not just more time, but more attention and engagement.
Lots of repeated button presses, many of which perform different functions
for different games, and the necessity of getting familiar with the rules
of the fake world you’ve suddenly found yourself in.
So why not choose the mythical land of Hyrule?
Chapter Two: 'The
Legend of Zelda' - The Game!
When you press start,
that's it. The game has begun and you can move around and…what do I do? Where do I go?
As
philosopher Jean Paul-Sartre said to his uncertain student, “choose, that
is, invent!”
Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to create an experience that was similar to him
exploring the forest near his house when he was a boy (an oft-repeated
anecdote (ha) from an in-depth 2010 New Yorker article). And there’s only
8-bits, four buttons (two if you don't include start and select) and a
d-pad to work with. But The Legend
of Zelda (sometimes we're going to shorten it to
TLoZ, and sometimes it's
Zelda 1) did wonders with so
little.
You can move left-right and up-down, but up
is going north and down is going south. In 2D Zelda, there is no jumping
(yet). There is
the ground to walk on (light brown). There are grassy fields (green).
There is water (blue). There are mountains (dark brown). There are
entrances to caves and dungeons (black).
Eventually there are shitloads of enemies that re-spawn (reappear) after
you leave one section of land and then turn around and return to it. There
is treasure, there are tools, there is a kingdom that needs saving,
although you are not told this if you didn't wait around to read the
opening crawl after the title screen and just created a character name and
got on with it.
There is no timer.
There is no scoring.
There is no pressure.
There is only your sense of curiosity (and
maybe a knightly sense of duty).
This
alone is extremely different for what video games were up until this
point. Even in the first Super Mario Bros level there were enemies bearing
down on you as time wound down, and the slower you went the less points
you got at the end.
Not
here. Take your time. Move when you want to. Think about things for a bit.
Some puzzles will insist that you stop button mashing and start brain
crunching. Getting lost will become a way of life.
You
can go backwards to where you just were, which is a bit of a surprise if
you are attuned to the Super Mario Bros, always-moving-to-the-right way of
life.
Where other games tell (including later Zelda entries), this
one shows.
And
the one 'tell' has become a famous line in video game history all by
itself, when early on the old man gives Link a sword and says:
'It's dangerous to go alone! Take this!'
And with that sword – not the Master Sword, mind you, that’s not formally
named until five years and two games later, although…uh… that game takes
place before this one – you will begin the never-ending process of using
and cycling through items that will best assist you at the moment.
It was an action game where you cut down
enemies with your weapons, it was a puzzle game where you had to stop and
think about where to move these blocks to open up a door, and it was a
role-playing game where you had to build up and strengthen your character
(adding hearts, finding better armour, exchanging letters for favours)
while talking to other non-playable characters (NPCs for short) for
information regarding your quest.
And it did all of these things incredibly
well for 8-bit technology in the mid-eighties.
There was nothing quite like
The Legend of Zelda when it was
released, and the same can be said about
Super Mario Bros., which
preceded it by six months. This had a lot to do with the fact that the
developers – led by Miyamoto – spent about two years just trying to figure
out what exactly they technology they had at their disposal could do.
It
was released in 1986 in Japan on Nintendo’s Family Computer (nicknamed
FamiCom) Disk System, and in 1987 in North America and Europe on the
Nintendo Entertainment System (nicknamed NES).
Despite these different names and physical appearance, the processing
power of these two systems was identical, as were the design setup for the
games (although there were some titles that were only sold for certain
markets). These superficial differences would continue for the next
console - The Super FamiCom in Japan (out in 1990), The Super NES in North
America and Europe (out in 1991) - but after that, all Nintendo consoles
would be uniform and identical in title and appearance. What complicates
matters for Zelda is that the first two games required the additional
‘Disk System’ device in Japan, whereas the North American and global
releases did not.
The gameplay and
graphics of TLoZ were cutting
edge at the time, and with
its high fantasy tropes
(a land in peril! A captured princess! Swords! Magic! Evil pig-like
creatures!), the lore was a lot deeper than anything that came before.
Hyrule was alive, full of dangers and secrets in equal measure.
To best help/control Link, you needed a life
hack to get caught up to speed. Fortunately, this was
when games shipped with
instruction manuals, and they were very much that. For this title, it was
a lot more than warranty info and a description of which button does what
(with so few of them, the difference between holding them button down and
just tapping it can be huge).
There were maps of the over world, a glossary of all the
enemies, a rundown of items, hints, and a ton of story info.
For
all the things the game the shows you, the manual tells.
Which is a good thing, because going in blind to the first Zelda game can
be frustrating, whether in 1986 or today. We have the hive mind of the
Internet to help you unlock every single item and easter egg, but the
booklet that was packed with the game was the original cheese*-maker
(Zelda’s even encouraged players to draw the maps of the dungeons as they
moved through them).
* - the term for finding a strange shortcut or
strategy in video games, sometimes coming down to luck. Not exactly
‘cheating’, which is why that’s not the term.
Instruction manuals would continue to be shipped with video games for
decades, and it's only in the last ten years or so where games include a
manual or overview of sorts within the game menu itself. This is also due
to the massive increase in people downloading games rather than purchasing
a physical copy.
The comparable isolation
of playing this game when it first came out – you wouldn’t find it at many
arcades, since it’s not designed to be a ‘quarter-eater’ – meant your
discoveries and triumphs (and failures) were much more your own. This is
partly because Miyamoto and the team either developed new ideas or
perfected slightly older ones. Even if each new dungeon was a level, and
getting from one to the next was sort of like another level, the
interconnectedness masked the stop-start nature of Mario (levels are
labeled 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, etc.), so it felt more like an interconnected
adventure than a series of rounds. It was progression that felt like a
story, an immersion that at this point could only be achieved by playing
RPG table-top games. You can bomb trees and rocks to discover caves that
might hold supplies or money games.
Find
a new item in a new area and use it to defeat the main enemy. This new
item will also grant you access to another area, where you can repeat the
process.
Soon you'll have a bunch of items that will become standard across the
franchise: Bombs, boomerangs, bows (for arrows of various magical
abilities), and some that don’t even start with B. Since Link’s arsenal
slightly changes in every game, no one title can be played the same way,
and you can never be too familiar with any particular kit.
Eventually you will find nine dungeons, where there will be several
challenges and puzzles (kill all the enemies in the room, move around
block to a certain spot, bomb a wall when you’re at a dead end), and a
nasty boss at the end who is guarding a shard of the triforce of wisdom
(in future games, the set-up of the triforce and its parts will become
more refined).
The
game looks like an eighties arcade game, and plays a lot like it, in the
sense that it is hard. Yes, the point for arcades games was obviously to
have fun, but also to make you keep playing again and again, and it was
assumed that the best way to do that was to get you hooked with some easy
stuff early on, then kill you a lot. It was the 'keep dumping quarters
into it' mentality, even though this was a home console and you spent all
your quarters up front.
2017’s Breath of the Wild was
lauded for offering the open-world freedom just like this one on a grander
and more attractive scale, but that recent game is still much, much easier
than TLoZ. And not just in terms
of combat, but of just figuring out what to do next.
In
later games, there will be NPCs who conveniently suggest where your skill
might be useful next. Starting in the nineties, the 'bomb-able wall' will
have obvious cracks in it, which was meant to suggest to the player that
maybe a well-placed explosive could reveal a treasure or path. No dice in
the original, you just had to guess, which meant wasting your limited
supply of bombs (and sometimes when enemies in the dungeon don’t drop
bombs after you kill them, you have to head out to restock).
There are fewer clues, but that makes finally finding secrets and
treasures that much more rewarding. 'You' figured out how to make your way
through the ‘endless’ lost woods, ‘you’ spent all that time exploring the
massive final dungeon and all its dead ends. In 1986, there wasn’t a quick
google search so you can cheese it.
Even
beyond secrets, simply completing some of the dungeosn can be maddening,
and not necessarily because of enemy difficulty, but not wanting to
backtrack and have to fight the enemies in a previous room you barely got
out of with your life.
If you've never played a video game where you had to solve a block puzzle
before or find which NPC to talk to for directions, there's no pool of
knowledge to dip into, so there is a lot of trial and error. And when the
hardest part isn’t the puzzle, but evading the several enemies quickly
buzzing around you, tossing arrows or fireballs, it takes a whole other
skill set. With two buttons and a d-pad you are forced to try acrobatic
maneuvers around six blue darknuts and two bubbles that constantly bump
into so you can’t attack for five seconds.
Especially for a series' first title, the 'video game literacy' starts
here.
At
this point in the console era, it was rudimentary sports games, pong/space
invaders clones, and mostly text based RPGs. It’s why Zelda and Mario both
dropped like mind-expanding joy bombs on the gaming world.
In interviews decades later, Miyamoto referred to ‘the garden experience’
when taking about TLoZ. It was a
place to continually come back to and explore, as if you were tending to
your garden a bit everyday. You weren’t expected to finish it quickly and
in one sitting. In this way it is much different from both the arcades
titles and Mario, too. You invest time with Zelda games, exploring every
area slowly, getting more familiar with the land of Hyrule, without any
timer or high score (just…uh…the threat of the destruction of the world at
the hands of Ganon). Just chip away at your leisure, feeling like every
little triumph was you beating the game in totality.
And you could do this by what the Famicom’s disk system allowed:
Saving.
Save
the princess? Save Hyrule?
Well
first you have to save yourself.
And now you can. You don't have to devote hours and hours in one sitting
to completing the game. You can do it in chunks.
The Disk System made creating a save file easy to do. For the NES, which
relied on cartridges, the solution was to place a tiny battery inside of
the cartridge that allowed a bit of energy to continue to flow through it
even when the power to the console was off, effectively saving your
progress. It kept your adventure going, always ready for you to come back
and continue.
All this is taken for granted now. Of course you can save. When today’s
games don't have a save mechanic
it's almost a selling point to highlight its challenge or uniqueness (and
is almost exclusive to the perma-death stylings of the rogue-like genre).
Before TLoZ (and actually after,
for many other titles), there was no saving of your game file, but they
had other ways of helping players if they can’t finish the game in one go
(because of dinner, bed, or work-time). Reaching a certain level would
trigger a code to appear on screen. You could write that code down and
when you play the game again the next day, you could enter that code and
you would be transported to that level right quick. This wouldn’t work
exactly for Zelda, however, as there would be no way to ensure all your
specific items and rupees can be recovered with a handful of numerical
codes.
Miyamoto stressed that being able to proverbially put the game in a drawer
and come back to it whenever you liked was key to the immersion. What
makes this title so important and impressive is how it straddles the style
of gameplay from what video games were (in the seventies and early
eighties) and what they would become going forward. [It's 1986 in Japan
(and 1987 in the rest of the world). The video game crash of 1983 - which
was a good ol' economic bubble burst of too many companies trying to get
in on the fad of offering low quality games just when the general public
had moved onto something else - is in the rearview mirror. Things were
looking up for Nintendo, because while the FamiCom home video game console
came out in 1983 in Japan, it started to do much better in sales years
later thanks largely in part to that plumber guy and his thirty two levels
of side-scrolling perfection. Its release as the NES in North America in
1985 found similar success. Not surprisingly, making quality products is
great for business, and that means engaging and fun video game
experiences. Some of the bigger
companies like Atari and Sega had weathered the storm and were hoping that
Nintendo’s popularity would help them as well. Atari was the first
home console titan, thanks in part to
Pong in the seventies, and Space
Invaders in the early eighties. Both games were featured on the 2600,
which came out in 1977 and was a massive success, selling thirty million
copies and bringing arcade classics into the living room. Nintendo’s first
console (titled – yes, really – the Color TV-Game) came out that same
year, but only in Japan, and moved a couple million units. Atari’s second
console (the 5200, so you can see the naming protocol) came out in 1982
and sold…one million copies (cough). So a lot was riding on their 1986
follow-up, debuting in America a few months after
TLoZ debuted in Japan. The Atari
7800 was also first backward compatible system (meaning you could play
older Atari 2600 games on it as well as new ones), but it tanked even
worse due to a small selection of uninspiring games, as well as
manufacturing issues. Meanwhile, Sega’s
SG-1000 was released on the exact same day as the FamiCom in 1983, and
heralded the beginning of the third generation of consoles (we’ll get into
that dull taxonomy later), but it was the Sega Master System (1985 for
Japan, 1986 for America) that really gave Nintendo some modern
competition.
It should definitely be noted that at this time
home consoles was still a secondary option for dedicated gamers, as the
arcade was still a place where kids, teens, and the ‘coolest’ adults would
come together to play games in a much more social setting. A handful
quarters always seemed like a cheaper alternative than plunking down a
hundred dollars for a strange box that goes beside your TV.
Even
Super Mario Bros could be found
in these public spaces, because level after level of increasing difficulty
was the entire point of the arcade. It was right at home alongside
Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Centipede,
Frogger, and yes, the other, other Miyamoto blockbuster,
Donkey Kong.
But the massive success of the Famicom/NES (62
million units sold worldwide) changed everything, with
Mario, Duck-Hunt and The
Legend of Zelda having a massive role in shaping how people would play
video games in the years and decades to come]
The
balance between free exploration and linear progression is the principle
dichotomy in the Legend of Zelda series, and diehard fans will say the
original encapsulated it the best.
Nostalgia is powerful, especially when you
are looking back to childhood experiences, when you really didn’t have a
care in the world, except to save a fictional kingdom inside your
television.
So considering that, is it still fun today?
It doesn't have the ‘easy to learn, difficult to master’* gameplay that
Super Mario Bros.' offers, or the immediate joy of completing a level that
takes a minute or two.
*- a very profound and instructive design quote by
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell
Instead it is daunting and dangerous, since you will
definitely be kicking yourself when you realize you went the wrong way and
have to go back to where you came from. Repetition quickly grinds down its
creative juices.
In this way this game from 1986 straddles
the arcade present and couch future, by offering up a bullet hell sequence
each time you entered a new area and everything was immediately trying to
kill you. After finishing off every Octorok, Stalfos and Lynel off (yep,
they were all here, and just as troublesome), you could finally look
around for a clue or something out of place, and then decide your next
step.
Unlike the overworld, the dungeons felt more
like something you had to survive than something you were exploring. After
twenty official entries and over one hundred million units sold, it’s easy
to take for granted how to solve a block puzzle now, but this was ground
zero for video games in the late eighties.
There is no timeline at this point, so Link is just a scrappy youth who’s
good with a sword, no sense of destiny or power imbued by the gods. There
is no fated relationship between Link, Ganon and Zelda. The princess is
only a note in the game’s prologue and then a sprite waiting to be rescued
in the final dungeon, on screen for only a few seconds. In
Breath of the Wild, to further
connect Link with the player, his unfamiliarity with the world around him
and what he is supposed to do was explained by amnesia, while in
TLoZ there was no need for this.
Only by going on this adventure did each player create ‘The Legend of
Zelda’.
Because the game was riddled with secrets
and puzzles, video game magazines, newsletters and strategy guides devoted
plenty of attention to uncovering them all (following in the even bigger
footsteps of Mario). Communities sprang up devoted to this one game, and
whether it was on school-yards or computer labs, it was hard to deny that
there was a sea change over what video games could offer.
Millions of copies were sold, and
merchandising arrived soon after, in the form of toys, clothes, breakfast
cereal and even animated cartoons (of poor quality, but we did get the
‘excuuuuse me, princess’ meme, because Link non-canonically yakked it up).
The series would go through several changes over the next few decades, to
greater heights of success, along with some longtime fans lamenting the
changes to what they saw as to be the essential components of the
original's success.
It might not hold the title of the greatest
game of all time, but The Legend of
Zelda is absolutely one of the most important.
[Playable on: Nintendo Switch Online, Wii,
Wii U and 3Ds Virtual Console, NES]
Interlude: The Team
The credits roll for video games have grown
exponentially over the last few decades.
Six people worked on the first Legend of Zelda game
in 1985 (for its release the following year). Three hundred worked on
2017's
Breath of the Wild.
Like in film, the work of the team is typically underappreciated because
the bulk of the attention by the general populace goes to the supervisor
of the team, who is typically the director. In video game development, it
is the director and the producer, and typically their roles can blur
together, especially in the eighties and nineties when teams were smaller.
To be a video game designer today means growing up and loving video games
and then going to school for exactly that, although there are obviously
several different disciplines (programming, art, literature, music,
engineering) that must come together to make a game. In the early days,
there wasn’t this huge industry/culture to draw upon. You had to create
it, using your imagination and whatever computer you could get your hands
on.
So this is where we fawn over Shigeru Miyamoto’s incredible, undeniable
talent. He is
simultaneously the Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick of video games,
creating massively popular and fun spectacles for everyone to enjoy, while
at the same time exhaustively exploring (and pushing past) the limits of
the medium in regards to both software and hardware.
Miyamoto joined Nintendo in 1977, when the company was not yet focusing
exclusively on the video game market. His degree is in industrial design,
not computer engineering, and he was initially hired by Nintendo to
develop toys, not video games. And that’s important, because it means his
entire job has always been asking the question:
What would be fun to do for hours on end?
This is the philosophy that has separated well-known Nintendo properties
to other studio’s games – and approach to design – by being one that puts
mechanics over graphics, story, and tie-ins to any sort of movie or fad.
Of course games can have amazing graphics and exciting story twists, but
if the gameplay to get to them is positively dull, it becomes a lot more
‘video’ than ‘game’, and that’s never how Miyamoto (and therefore
Nintendo) approaches their task.
Miyamoto famously dismissed story’s level of importance, having it exist
almost as a simplistic afterthought compared to what actions you will be
doing for most of the game. He is famous for ‘upending the tea table’,
which is a nice way of saying that he tells his team to change major and
minor components of a game at any point during development if he thinks
things aren’t working. In fact, much of
Ocarina of Time’s
story was hastily re-written in the later stages of its development cycle,
meaning it had to
revolve around the mechanics and stage areas already designed, not
developed in tandem.
When it comes to Zelda, Miyamoto was inspired by early RPGs like ‘Black
Onix’ and ‘Ultima’, where much of the ‘fun’ was figuring out how to use
the right weapons and tools from a menu to defeat your enemies, where each
side takes a turn, going back and forth. The puzzle was figuring the best
way to prepare yourself for battle, even if the battle mechanics
themselves was something that left a lot to be desired. Zelda accelerated
this process by adding more action and adventure in real time, where you
are using a weapon and attacking while a monster is doing the same to you.
Only at points where all the baddies in one area are defeated would you
feel comfortable about opening your menu to switch weapons or heal. This
seems common sense now. It wasn’t in 1986.
Miyamoto frequently gives credit to the
ever-expanding teams he has worked with over the years at Nintendo, and
there have been several recurring players who haven’t always gotten as
much praise as he has.
Takashi Tezuka is certainly the Scottie Pippen to his Michael Jordan, the
two of them having sometimes swapped producer-director duties for early
Mario and Zelda games. On the first Zelda game they’re listed as
co-directors. If Miyamoto is the visionary, then Tezuka is the one that
gets it done on the bits and bytes side. In some photos from the eighties,
Miyamoto is standing up in front of his workers, gesturing to several
pieces of graph paper taped to the office walls, while Tezuka stands
nearby, dutifully scribbling down points on a notepad.
While these two definitely came from the game design
side, young whippersnapper Yoshiaki Koizumi arrived at Nintendo in 1991
with a degree in film, drama and animation and had aspirations to direct
movies. So of course he built an elaborate, mythic back story that most
Zelda fans would find first not through gameplay but the instructional
manual of
A Link to the Past.
After that game, Kensuke Tanabe
(designer for Mario 2 and 3) begin working on a Zelda-like
experience for the Gameboy in his spare time (yeah, all these guys like
video games), which attracted the attention of Tezuka and Koizumi. It
became
Link’s Awakening, which was made without the participation of Miyamoto save for
suggestions during the end of the production cycle.
The sprawling
development of
Ocarina of Time
took five years, and many different designers and artists lent a hand.
Miyamoto was the producer, overseeing five different directors (including
Koizumi, but also Toru Osawa, Yoichi Yamada, and Toshio Iwawaki). After
this game Miyamoto took more of a supervisory role going forward, and
directing duties fell
on the shoulders of puppetmaster Eiji Aonuma. This is not a strange
nickname or moniker, but a strange post-secondary degree. Aonuma went to
the Tokyo University of the Arts, getting a degree in composition by
working on intricate marionettes. When he was hired by Nintendo in the
early nineties, he had never played a video game (he (in)famously doesn’t
enjoy the first Zelda game).
He designed
Ocarina’s
dungeons, and after that he and Koizumi co-directed that game’s follow up,
Majora’s Mask, created in a bonkersly short twelve month production cycle.
Aonuma then helmed
Wind Waker
and Twilight Princess by himself
(with Miyamoto and Tezuka producing), as Koizumi went on to focus on the
Mario series.
Artists Yoshiki Haruhana and Satoru Takizawa helped developed the
now-iconic cell-shaded art style of
Wind Waker,
and because it was a hard sell outside of Japan, Takizawa and Yusuke
Nakano did an effortless 180 and delivered the garish gothic realism of
Twilight Princess.
When a litany of Zelda titles arrived on Nintendo’s
handheld consoles in the early 2000s, the director was usually Hidemaro
Fujibayashi (who might beat out Aonuma with the weirdest pre-video game
career, as he designed haunted houses for theme parks). While at first
working for Capcom to develop
Oracle of Season/Ages,
Four Swords, and Minish Cap
(with Nintendo keeping a close eye to make sure it met Zelda standards),
he switched over to Nintendo proper and directed Skyward Sword
and Breath of the Wild under
Aonuma (credited now as producer, with the same supervisory role that was
formerly Miyamoto’s).
With much of the core team having worked on the series’ for decades at
this point, all these artists can bring the same sort of keen and creative
eye to development that Miyamoto has given from the start.
It is not going to be possible to acknowledge everyone who worked on
Breath of the Wild (great job at character rigging, Daisuke Nobori and Toru Hombu), but
ideally this attention to detail and the willingness to hear suggestions
from anyone up and down the hierarchy is seen in an improved finished
product. With movie-like cut scenes and ever expanding world interactivity
with rag-doll physics, a Zelda title is not just meant to be a game, but a
unique and special experience.
And getting it done on time is not always possible.
Video game crunch is a real problem, but Nintendo has gone a little bit
further than other companies to lessen the pressure of completing games
for a deadline.
Some franchises pump
out new games ever year or biannually, whereas Zelda titles have taken up
to six years to develop. The three recent home console games have all been
announced for a certain release window and then delayed for at least a
year. Which leads us to reminding the reader of a probably paraphrased
take of the famous Miyamoto quote:
“A delayed game can eventually be good, but a rushed
game is bad forever.”
With having such a high standard right from the start, every new Zelda
title is characterized by constant changes in gameplay and world
interactivity, even as the basic story remains similar, created by a team
that challenges itself as much as the game challenges the player.
Even if it doesn’t arrive at the table right on time it all adds up to a
massive feast for the fingers, eyes, and ears.
And that last one deserves an-
Interlude within the Interlude: Music
Koji Kondo is the John
Williams of video game music, and for the first two decades of his
employment with Nintendo, he didn’t even have a full orchestra at his
disposal. Yet he was able to create classic,
of-course-you’ve-heard-it-before music with some keyboards, synths and
some creative percussive bursts.
When he started in
1984, the only goal for music in video games was that it shouldn’t drive
players crazy because chances are they are going to hear it over and over
and over (this goal was not always achieved by the industry at large). So
while some of what he wrote was reminiscent of the most addictive
commercial jingles, that was kind of the point. It’s supposed to burrow
into your head.
While his work with the
Mario series is what he is best known for, his work with Zelda is
certainly his finest.
The piece of music
initially chosen for the first
Legend of Zelda’s
title screen was Ravel’s Bolero,
but late into production it was discovered that getting the rights for the
particular chosen piece would be too difficult, so Kondo had to write an
original piece essentially overnight. And it was under this pressure that
the triumphant main Zelda theme – one of the most famous pieces in all of
video games, found in almost every title in the series in some form – was
born.
But coming up with
music was only one of the challenges. Another is fitting the sound files
onto the cartridge. The necessarily processed sounds of classically
influenced music means the Zelda theme is both wholly alien and familiar,
a strange blend of the future and the past.
Zelda’s delicate lullaby was written for
A Link to the Past, but was more fleshed out for Ocarina of Time, and it was in that game where we got the inspiring Hyrule Field theme
and the creeping ambient tones when Link descended into the dungeons (and
the Temple of Time’s theme beat Halo’s ethereal, haunting intro by three
years).
Like Miyamoto and the main Zelda team, additional talent was brought in
to work alongside Kondo as the series progressed. With the rushed
production schedules of
Majora’s Mask
and Wind Waker, Toru Minegishi and Hajme Wakai came on board, and they have gone on to
play larger roles in helping score games like Twilight Princess,
Spirit Tracks and Breath of the
Wild.
Just as several gameplay and story elements in recent games reference
older ones, so too does the music. The main theme will typically play at
heart-pounding and important moments, but in
Breath of the Wild it faintly and
wistfully heard if you gallop in your horse through the plains of Hyrule
long enough. You can always expect some percussion heavy leitmotifs for
the Gorons, some ethereal piano twinklings for Zoras, and it was a
plucking of the heartstrings when Wind Waker’s Dragon Roost Island theme
was remixed for Rito Village.
Music is never just a wonderful soundtrack experience, either. Typically
they become gameplay, or at least a McGuffin. You have to collect instruments to play the lovely ‘Ballad of the Windfish in
Link's Awakening.
There are songs to learn with the Ocarina in (shock!) Ocarina of Time
and Majora’s Mask.
There’s a baton in Wind Waker,
you howl as a wolf in Twilight Princess,
and in Skyward Sword
you have to physically conduct Fi's
lovely singing voice with the Wii remote.
While video games largely remain a visual medium,
the work of Kondo and his successors prove that music does not have to be
a series of beeps in the background. There is nothing better than when
these two artistic expressions combine harmoniously to create an
atmospheric virtual world for you to immerse yourself in. And hey, even if
Spanish flamenco guitar doesn’t belong in the desert, the
(for those of you want a taste of this orchestral
musical greatness, the 45-minute TLoZ 25th Anniversary Original
Soundtrack album (packaged with a special edition of
Skyward Sword)
is a perfect introduction, and can be streamed pretty easily)
===
In summation, it is easy to say that Link does it
all himself, just as it’s easy to say that Shigeru Miyamoto deserves all
the credit for The Legend of Zelda series. But Link has help in many
different ways during his adventures, from sages to friendly beasts to
ghost boats to oddly specific advice-dispensing townsfolk. And Miyamoto
has incredible team that he led early on and now largely supervises at
various stages of development (with Aonuma now taking the role of lead
producer). To remember this as you play is not only a good way to
appreciate every person who has had a hand in creating these games, but
also a reminder that it is dangerous to go alone.
Chapter Three: The Sequel: 'The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link'
The
follow-up is hard to do…if you want to do it right.
It's the Video Game Industry, after all, and that means you make
more of a successful product, and you make it quickly, because who knows
when another crash will come along, or when the public will just stop
caring about something that came out one whole year ago.
Yes,
even after Link has saved the day in the first game, evil comes back not
long after and it’s, 'aw shit, here we go again' (see, this is where a
screenshot or gif of that GTA meme would work great).
To
no one’s surprise, much like the movie industry today, video games run on
franchises, sequels, reboots, and remakes. And they always have.
From
the early years...
After Pac Man was released in
1980 came Ms. Pac Man, Pac Man Plus,
Super Pac Man and Baby Pac Man…all
in 1982!
Donkey Kong offered up Donkey
Kong Jr, Donkey Kong 2, and
Donkey Kong 3 right quick.
Even the (original)
Super Mario Bros. 2 came out in Japan less than a year after the
first breakthrough game.
Right up to today…
Pokemon, Call of Duty,
Assassins Creed, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Halo,
Half-Life,
Bioshock,
Far Cry,
Uncharted, the list goes
and on and on and on.
The reasons for this are obvious. Once you
get the idea of a movie or game in a person’s head and they try it out and
– wait for it – like it, they’ll be much more willing to hand over cash
for another entry. And sequels can be easier to make (operative word:
can). You don’t have to start
from scratch. In fact, you’re kind of discouraged from it, since the whole
point is to give gamers more of the same, since that’s what worked the
first time.
Considering how closely the first
Super Mario Bros game was
developed in tandem with The Legend
of Zelda, it’s no surprise that a follow-up was destined for Link as
well, and like the (original) Super Mario 2, this new one was going to be
a lot more challenging.
Today some games are designed with the thought of sequels
while they are first being developed. If the design team really thinks
they’re onto something and there are some leftover ideas they had to set
aside early on, or if the marketing team realizes that kids having the
ability to kick a bad guy’s head off will be totally awesome, then
preliminary plans for a second game might be kicked into high gear before
the initial title is even released.
Of course if the first game tanks, everything might come to abrupt stop
right then and there. Not only might you lose money on this initial title,
but if the gaming public thinks the game has the stink of failure, it's
less likely they'll buy any more down the line, no matter how much
re-tooling might be attempted.
But
with the first Zelda game being a huge critical and commercial success, it
was a no-brainer that a second one would follow.
Zelda II: The Adventures of Link
was once again made for
the Family Computer Disk System in Japan (the same add-on device to the
Famicom that the first game used), and released on the same NES in the
rest of the world.
It
was released in January 1987, less than a year after the first Zelda game,
but it wouldn't make it to international markets until the back half of
1988. In both cases, it allowed for the gaming public to get all excited
about what another adventure might entail.
Was there a lot to love about the first
game?
You bet!
Was a lot of it there in the sequel?
Heck no!
‘Subverting expectations’ has become a
lightning rod term, suggesting that the creators of a cultural property
(movie, tv or video game franchise) go out of their way to not give the
public what it expects, because it’s better to surprise them (even if the
‘surprise’ is less enjoyable than the expected result).
The video game industry is such a behemoth
now that doing such a swerve is a financial version of Russian roulette,
but in 1987 it was actually easy and a lot less risky. Despite the big
money success of the first Zelda game – and the NES in general - in
1987 you could still fit all the people who make a video game in one van,
and Miyamoto chose to make The
Adventures of Link with an almost wholly different team than who make
the first game. Now it’s not a given that a new group of people is
inevitably going to create a completely different game, so
credit goes to Miyamoto and the developers for wanting to add plenty of
new features and styles, some working well, and some not.
There are lives!
There are interactive towns!
There’s a magic meter!
There’s XP!*
There is side-scrolling (as opposed to the
near-constant top-down perspective in
TLoZ) when you are in towns,
dungeons and ‘enemy zones’ (boo, hiss)!
*-okay, XP stands for ‘Experience Points’, and they are hallmarks of
role-playing games. They represent your character’s strength, and the more
enemies they slay and tasks they complete, the higher the XP number
climbs. Early on in the game certain enemies might take a lot of sword
slashes or arrow shots to kill, but as you get more XP (and become
stronger), you can defeat them with fewer mashings of the attack button.
Are any of these mechanics groundbreaking,
even in 1987? Nope. Is it absolutely bananas that they are added into a
sequel of a mega-popular video game? You bet. Why risk strangling the
golden goose when Nintendo could have made a near-identical copy of the
first game? Because Nintendo – while still being a large, publicly traded
corporation – has no problem taking risk when it comes to developing
games. In true sequel fashion they will replicate more often than innovate
(Pokemon’s mega-billions are proof of this), but when they do the latter,
it’s impressive that they’ll trust their developers’ (namely Miyamoto)
creative instincts with the Zelda franchise.
So to start,
in contrast to the first game where you could explore
at your leisure (and could take a breather after killing all the enemies
on the screen, or choose to run away from them), once you leave a town,
castle or any other location in
Zelda II and are walking around in the map, you are now being hunted
with a mini game of bullet hell with enemies descending upon you. They
move much quicker than in TLoZ,
and If they catch you, Link is transported to a short side-scrolling
sequence where he has to evade a handful of malevolent creatures before he
can continue his journey in the top-down over world. These sequences can
range from nuisance to fatal, which is why rushing towards and reaching a town
is such a dopamine hit.
Here you can walk around and talk to people and go inside their houses and
they will give you (very) cryptic hints and maybe restore your health. The
same goes for dungeons, but now it is a completely side scrolling
endeavour, so enjoy the ability to – shock, horror – jump, Mario-style.
And the darknuts and wizzrobes you hated in top-down are just as hard in
this setup as the first one.
And like
TLoZ, Zelda II is light on
story if you just jump right in and skip the instruction manual, which is
nice and confusing only two titles in. It takes place six years after the
events of the last game, and Zelda’s handmaiden Impa tells Link that a
different Zelda (wut?) was put under a sleeping spell by her evil-ish
brother and his very evil wizard friend (sigh), because she wouldn’t tell
them the secrets of the Triforce. So Link has to go to six palaces
(dungeons) to ultimately unlock the Triforce of Courage (again), which
will help wake her up (it doesn’t involve a kiss, shippers, and there is
only an implied one at the very end when she is back to normal). Oh, and
there are a bunch of Ganon’s former followers who want a piece of Link,
because they need to pour his blood over their former leader’s ashes to
revive him.
Sure, why not?
To lure in old and new fans right away,
improved graphics made for an easy surface upgrade. This mean you can
actual discern Link’s features (and that of other characters), and his
initial move-set has grown (he can crouch!).
It feels like most sequels in the sense that it doesn’t match the
excitement of the original, but it’s also clearly not a re-tread.
Since you don’t interact with anything in/on the overworld, it doesn’t
feel like a real place at all. You aren’t trying to appreciate the
(admittedly 8-bit) scenery, because going anywhere doesn't seem as novel
or wondrous because much of time you are running for your life (literally)
so you don’t have to go through yet another bullet hell section.
While this series is known for retaining
elements of its previous incarnations,
Zelda II is impressive for
introducing so many new ones…and then seeing many of them discarded in the
follow-up (which is not called Zelda 3 at all, but patience…).
There are a few keepers, though.
It is the first inclusion of ‘Dark Link’,
essentially an evil version of our hero who is drenched in shadow and has
the same abilities as Link himself does (it knows you’re just going to
button mash A). In terms of story tropes, Link spends most of his time
battling nature, occasionally battles other humans (or human-ish
characters), but now he’s finally battling himself. And that wasn’t
necessarily easy, both conceptually and practically. It was a tough fight.
Consequently, The Adventures of Link
is frustrating, difficult, and a perfect representation of 1980s video
games that are hard just for the sake of being hard. The changes from the
original means you have to throw out the heart system, and get used to a
health meter. The not-so random encounters that become side-scrolling
sections get increasingly more difficult as you progress. The dungeons in
this game have a strong Metroid-Vania* vibe, since you do have to
back-track quite often.
*- (deep breath) Okay, Metroid-Vania is a term for a
style of video game that are (originally) 2D side-scrollers in complex,
multi-leveled mazes and labyrinths (which look like caves or haunted
manors or fortresses or alien bases or laboratories) where you find items
to access different area and frequently have to double back across the
map. It's named after the two game series that have popularized this
style, Metroid and Castelvania. Oh yes, these games can be maddeningly
hard, too.
You could run from fights in
TLoZ. Sometimes it was clearly
the best way to advance. But in the sequel, having XP meant you couldn’t
just avoid enemies. You had to confront and defeat them to earn those
points to level up so you would have the power to kick the boss’s ass. If
you were level two, it might take fifty thwacks with a sword to kill a
boss, but level five might take only twenty. But to reach this higher XP
level, you had to…grind*.
*- okay, ‘grind’ is a video game term involving certain tasks repeatedly
to get an item (like cutting down entire fields of grass for rupees to
have enough money for arrows) or to level up (so you will have the right
amount of XP to be able to defeat a tough enemy). As the name suggests, it
can be quite distinct from fun.
After this, all Zeldas would get easier, but this is also a
trend that the entire industry will follow as the decades go on. Even if
the Zelda series was never meant for arcades, the ‘make it hard but
addictive for money’s sake’ was still in the mindset of most video game
designers in the eighties.
Making part of the title
The Legend of Zelda II was an
easy way to get money from fans of the original, but after this the series
would ditch numbers and instead always have ‘The Legend of Zelda’ as the
header before the new game’s actual title. After all,
calling 2006's
Twilight Princess 'Zelda 12' doesn't really scan.
Since it was capitalizing on the first game,
Zelda II certainly felt rushed,
even when one considers that taking six months to make a game was actually
fairly average during the third console generation.
Meanwhile, Ocarina of Time took
so long to develop and was such a critical and commercial success that
when the programmers were pressed for a follow-up, they didn't bother
starting from scratch. Majora’s Mask
recycled so many graphics that you get a whiff of confused nostalgia when
you see that the excitable character who wanted you to bring him bugs in
Ocarina is now running the bank in
Majora (with the exact same animation, which is a bit unbecoming for
a financial advisor).
On the other hand, the
next game in the series, 1991's A
Link to the Past was so beloved and successful that they only
waited…twenty two years to make the official sequel,
A Link Between Worlds for the
Nintendo 3DS handheld console (was it worth it? We’ll cover Zelda handheld
games later, but…yes).
They are doing the same with the sequel to
Breath of the Wild, and
considering that this title is the best-selling game in the entire series
(approximately twenty million copies by the end of 2020), it’s not a
surprise. Breath of the Wild is also a great example of a title seeking
to balance between offering more of the same and pushing the boundaries,
but we’ll cover that later. [It's 1987 and 1988. The success of
Super Mario Bros and
The Legend of Zelda proved that there was still great financial
success and fun to be found with video games, leaving the 1983 crash in
the dust. Many well known series emerged in the years afterwards. A
sample: Double Dragon, Street
Fighter, Metal Gear, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, and
Contra. All of these will be released on the Famicon/NES, meanings its
competitors were essential picking at Nintendo’s leavings (even if they
were offering the same games). The Sega Master
System goes out worldwide in 1987, but they don’t waste any time and
release the 16-bit Mega Drive in 1988 (which will be renamed ‘Genesis’
when it debuts later in North America). NEC releases the PC-Engine in
Japan, which would be better known as Turbo-Grafx-16 for the rest of the
world. So while there are
several companies vying for the ever-growing video game industry, the
consoles wars aren’t quite here. Truly the late eighties was a Golden Age
for Nintendo itself, having the top console, the best game library, and an
exponentially growing fan community. While there had always been lively
and plentiful press for video games in So Nintendo was on
top of the world. What could go wrong? A price fixing scandal! Sure, having great games helps sell software and
hardware, but you know what also comes in handy? Threatening to withhold
the product from various retailers if they don’t sell it for the $100 that
you demanded (that’s right. An NES cost one hundred bucks in the late
eighties). By 1989, Nintendo dominated nearly 90% of the
American video game market, up to the point where it wasn’t even called a
‘video game industry’, but just ‘Nintendo’. Evidence piled up that
Nintendo would cut off shipments to toy stores (and toy store chains) if
they lowered the price to get an edge, even if it was just by a couple
cents. And Nintendo didn’t call this punishment, but ‘inventory
management’, saying they were limiting supply to keep demand high.
It worked so well that the Feds didn’t have to work hard to make a case,
and Nintendo didn’t even really deny it. Instead they settled for about
$30 million dollars, a vast majority of which was offering $5 rebate
coupons to customers…which they just spent on more Nintendo products.
At least learned their lesson, right?
Nah, they did the exact same sort of thing with even more vigour in Europe
throughout the nineties.]
Like most sequels,
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link didn’t sell as well as the original,
but it still did great business, shipping nearly five million copies.
And nobody loves it.
Oh, you’ll find plenty of fans, especially
those who can attach some youthful memories to playing it in the
late-eighties, but there is pretty much no one who ardently swears by this
game as their favourite ever, or even favourite in the series.
Even as you do grind through it and get
better, there is more repetition in the mini-levels and dungeons than the
first game. Visiting a town and ‘talking’ to the people is a nice change
of pace from speaking to them in caves like in the first game, but the
most interesting person simply announces ‘I am Error’ to Link (which isn’t
a glitch).
There is a lot to like in this title, but
not a lot to love. And while that will certainly be sufficient for many
other video game franchises, the bar for Zelda has always been
ridiculously high.
This feeling has only strengthened in
retrospect, and The Adventures of
Link has typically been seen as the series’ weakest effort. It was
caught between the criticisms that would fall upon most sequels. Either
too close to the original, or straying too far from what made it great.
Because of its financial success,
development on another title in series began less than a year later. But
it was quickly realized that to make Miyamoto’s lofty new goals a reality,
a more powerful hardware system would be required. One that didn’t exist
yet.
Until that time came, millions of gamers
found that Zelda II would
suffice.
[Playable on: Nintendo Switch Online, Wii,
Wii U and 3Ds Virtual Console, NES]
END OF PART
ONE
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