@Chicken Brutus: Because we're all still gamers, and none of us just rant about the newest awesome sports or FPS title, that's why. We have enough overlap of tastes to get along. Plus, you're funny. I like that.
My Backloggery Updated sporadically. Got my important online ID's on there, anyway. :P
My use of "on here" was misleading, I guess. I meant another forum-goer who posts on Nintendo Life regularly. The accusation, however, was made in another medium. I won't say who it was as I'm not trying to embarrass anybody (he's welcome to pipe up himself, though, if he's so inclined), but I was pretty dumbfounded by the theory.
Mind you, I didn't dispell it. For some reason I thought it would be funny to let him continue thinking that me and Adam were the same person, if only because it wouldn't take long for him to wonder why Adam/Chicken was always arguing with himself...
First I got lazy, then I got thumb surgery. I might try to tough it out this weekend to post something about the next game on the list. Sorry...I haven't forgotten! Hopefully we can get the list back on track, and I can start blogging again about how I have nothing to blog about.
Given the thumb surgery, I'm amazed you've been doing well enough to play and review games, Chicken Brutus! Take all the time you need for this silly little list...it's not like there's anything good on it anyway.
My Backloggery Updated sporadically. Got my important online ID's on there, anyway. :P
You really need to stop taking shots at the first two Zeldas, especially Zelda II. You know it hurts my feelings.
I recently replayed Link to the Past for the umpteenth time though, and despite being mostly bereft of challenge once you learn where three or four of the bottles are, it was very enjoyable. I think I died six times, if I recall correctly (it says in the credits, which is pretty neat -- never noticed that before). I still think Link to the Past has the best video game soundtrack out there. The Dark World theme is amazing. In fact, the series as a whole has better music than any other series I know of, and this is including my beloved Mother series (great music as well). The Gerudo Valley theme is enough for me to forget much of what I don't like about Ocarina when I play it.
I recently replayed Link to the Past for the umpteenth time though, and despite being mostly bereft of challenge once you learn where three or four of the bottles are, it was very enjoyable.
Yeah, it's funny. I remember playing it as a kid and finding it extremely difficult to make it very far. (I'm sure I only beat 3 - 4 dark world dungeons then, and it wasn't easy.) Now I can blast through it without any trouble. I tend to forget where things are, but wandering around fighting baddies until I find it isn't difficult.
I kind of like that, actually. Super Mario World was also much easier than its 8-bit fore-runners, but it's my favorite 2D Mario game. Maybe the lower difficulty is what appeals to me about Link to the Past; until now I've never given it much thought, though.
When I play through a game for the first time, I usually am not too particular. But if I'm to play a game again and again, I usually feel the need to be challenged or it just becomes boring routine.
I think I just love the color and detail of Nintendo's first-party SNES games (and their soundtracks) so much that I can overlook this usual requirement. When I think of the SNES, the first thing I think about is color.
Plus, they tend to be short, so replaying them is not an ordeal at all. I finish Mario World in a few minutes and Link to the Past in a few hours. Super Metroid feels the same way, though the time it takes depends on if I play it straight through or in small doses since I'll get lost if I forget what I've done already.
I have to say that I prefer to ALttP both Link's Awakening and the original game... and possibly 4-Swords as well, just for the multiplayer joy, but that's a different genre I suppose. Link's Awakening just feels like a more charming version of ALttP, with better characters, more enjoyable dungeons, etc.
The original game is impossible to surpass for me in certain respects that are difficult to describe quickly (and my word-count per post will be dropping a little here until this carpal tunnel problem disappears), but suffice to say that there was a certain mysteriousness in that original game--whereby I had no clue what sort of world I was entering when I picked up the sword in that first cave, no clue how the items or enemies would behave, nor even a single notion of a "dungeon" until I stumbled into that tree--that's best likened to the original experience of cinema in its early days, when it was felt to have a ghostlike quality of disembodied representations speaking to you on a screen, an experience now so commonplace that we no longer feel the strangeness at all. There was this world living in my television, which I could slowly explore and come to master, and about which I knew nothing. Suffice to say that I'd never really played a video game before I got the NES, and I only owned SMB before Zelda came along.
Twitter is a good place to throw your nonsense. Wii FC: 8378 9716 1696 8633 || "How can mushrooms give you extra life? Get the green ones." -
Well said. For me that mysteriousness was compounded by the fact that I didn't know where the game came from. It appeared in my game drawer one day, and one day it was no longer there. I'm still not sure how that happened, and I don't want to ask and ruin the mystery. Hope your carpal tunnel does not last long. I had some serious wrist pain for almost a month once, but never went to a doctor so can only assume that's what it was. It sucked. No DS, very little computer, no guitar... It sucked. I guard my wrists with my life now.
No saving is a difficult thing to get used to now, but very few NES games offered it. At the time it was just a given, which is probably why it doesn't bother me. In fact, certain games (such as Punch-Out) feel wrong to me to continue from where I left off. You were expected to battle your way back up every time, which is probably why I became such a master of that game. A save feature is nice, but with the short length of most NES games, I feel like I'm cheating if I don't start at the title screen.
Some excellent points for a excellent game, it never occurred to me how innovative this game was, it was one of my favourite games when i was young and i feel the same sentiments towards it that you describe.
It's fun to imagine where we'd be if the save file had for some reason never been adopted. I think games would in general be more fun. NES games without saves focused more on instantly playable and replayable experiences without forcing long introductions on players to wade through until the game gets fun later on. And I know this is weird (I'm called weirdadam for a reason), but I even miss passwords. Bringing pencil and paper into a video game, even in such a simple way, makes it more interesting because in a way part of the game is now outside of the cartridge and on paper, even if it is in an intangible way. I remember having a bucket full of those goofy Mega Man graph passwords from all the different games I rented. Even the MMX games for some reason used passwords. Digging through those stacks of papers was part of the adventure, somehow.
About Maniac Mansion... I've never played it. I've heard a lot of praise for it, but I mostly ignored it because I was under the impression it was a point and click (still not sure, but the screen shot from your review looks more text-based). The look of it (that's the first screen shot I've ever seen, at least of the NES one) and your review makes it look/sound very interesting, though. I hope it comes to VC now.
Wow, Maniac Mansion is pretty cool. I never played it before now. It's about as creepy as a NES game can get, hehe. I got to the third floor, then all my people were caught.
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