/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7882949
>I would love to hear what it was like to see such a large world contained in a video game for the first time
Ultima already did it 6 years earlier. Lords of Midnight and Elite were the most mindblowing large open world game at the time, not Zelda. Even back in japan, zelda was just seen as another hydlide clone. Falcom games were the shit.

It seemed like a lot bigger and more mysterious game than it actually was.
Back then players were not as up on the limitations of the technology so they didn't know what surprises were in store next.

Extra note: the first Zelda player I knew in the 80s was an adult-aged woman who completed both NES games.

>>7882954
Before i accept your response, was OoT mindblowing and a large open world to everyone when that came out? Specifically when they first walked out into Hyrule field for the first time?

>>7882990
To little kids who had only played nintendo games maybe. OoT had great graphics, but the 3D open world wasn't much of a novelty to those who had been accustomed to DOS RPG games where first person perspective was quite commonplace, and other open world 3D games like Magic Carpet. Might and Magic 6 Mandate of Heaven came out in the same year as OoT and it blew everyone's mind. Not sure if Hyrule field was that impressive, even console players had played MDK on the PS1 and it had equally massive levels.

The impressive thing about OoT was how highly detailed everything felt though. It really felt like a handcrafted game with secrets hiding behind many corners.

>>7882949
I was born in 1986, my family got a NES in 1990, that was in France.
From what I remember, it was a fairly popular console in France. Lots of my friends in school had one, including Zelda. I remember we used to talk about the game, sharing what we had found. To me, the game felt huge and full of secrets. It was made more obscure by the fact that the game was in the same broken English as the American release, and no one around me spoke English well enough to translate.

>>7882949
No idea, but it must have been blue balls tier frustrating considering I played it for the first time in early 86. It was an interesting fun nintendo kiddie style take on an RPG but hardly mind bending. You have to consider that video games weren't nearly as main stream as they are today. Anyone over the age of 5 had probably played a CRPG of which Zelda is fairly derivative. Maybe if I was 10 years younger at the time I'd have been more impressed.

>>7883026
>Magic Carpet. Might and Magic 6 Mandate of Heaven came out in the same year as OoT and it blew everyone's mind
This?

>>7882949
I loved video games, but had almost no interest in Zelda, which I had only seen at a nerdy neighbour's house. It looked ugly and seemed like only something someone whose road hockey stick was way too long, who wore rubber boots on dry days, and who called his mom "mommy" in front of everyone would like

But now I realize that it's a masterpiece. It's one of the greatest games in existence

>>7883118
Yes. Truly kino game.

>>7883161
Kys.

>>7883026
I enjoyed Magic Carpet but you're having a laugh if you're calling it an open world game. You might as well call Doom open world.

>>7883172
You can't compare this to Ocarina of Time. Nobody did lol. You can humblebrag about your sweet video game tastes in posts of their own, you don't have to do it like this.

>>7883089
>played it for the first time in early 86
were you living in japan?

>>7883190
>large open ended outdoor levels with deformable terrains
>not open world
Maybe not a fully seamless open world, but each level is bigger than Zelda's outdoor environment and you gotta be retarded to compare it to Doom which didn't even have an outdoor level.

>>7883195
I said OoT was impressive in a way that it was an open world game with handcrafted and highly detailed 3D environment, like a more sophisticated Tomb Raider game. As an open world game, it impressed none other than nintendo fans themselves though. There wasn't much to do or to interact with, everything felt linear and scripted. It only had one town. You weren't even allowed to go anywhere you want without completing a set of objectives. Graphics don't make gameplay.

>>7883161
looks like your neighbour ended up browsing this place >>7883178

>>7882949
I was like 5 (playing on the golden cartridge, so I guess it was the '91? release) so of course it was mindblowing. Took me 10 years to actually beat Ganon, but I did it with my tattered, pencil marked original map.

To this day it's the only game from my childhood that I still hold in the highest regard.

>>7882990
I would say N64 in general was mind blowing kids like me who came straight from SNES

>>7883216
>Doom which didn't even have an outdoor level
It kinda did, E3M2 is basically a bunch of rocky canyons and caves. That's the one though, and it certainly wouldn't be open world by any stretch of the imagination.

>>7883568
I came straight from the NES and Game Boy, so the N64 was pretty impressive to me.

>>7882954
Seeing it on a console game however was pretty cutting-edge since console games before this time were just, like, Pac-Man.

>>7882954
While true, CRPGs like Ultima were very geeky and not accessible to normies. Zelda repackaged the format in a nice easy straightforward setup that didn't necessitate memorizing 20 obscure key combinations to do anything.

>>7882949
>Was it as mind-bending as the transition from 2D to 3D
The real mind-bending thing in the 80s was seeing Super Mario Brothers, a fast, dynamic side-scrolling game like being played on the TV at home rather than in the arcade was the big deal. After that, Zelda was more like "oh wow yeah that's the exact kind of game I really want to play." The size of the world wasn't really the amazing part. When you played it, it just felt like the size it was supposed to be. Easily my favorite NES game and one of my top games of all time for sure.
(Comparison with ugly awkward and clunky PC RPGs like Ultima 1 aren't relevant.)
>>7882990
> was OoT mindblowing and a large open world to everyone when that came out
Not to me, although I was in college by that point. The only game I found to be "mindblowing" in the open world sense in the late 90s was Everquest. For people my age, FPS and RTS games were way bigger than OoT. Half-life was the big deal that year specifically, although people were playing a variety including Quake, Duke Nukem, and Goldeneye. And of course the most common console was PSX so you'd see a lot of Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, MGS, Final Fantasy, etc. Personally the main game that took my attention from Ocarina during that time was X-Wing Alliance for PC.

>>7883213
I was basically living out of a suitcase lots of places, but regularly went to Japan because I was doing a lot with Sanyo.

>>7882954
I can say this thousands of times, but what makes Nintendo great is not innovation or doing things first. Their philosophy is dubbed "lateral thinking", after all. Nintendo has an uncanny ability to refine what is good. They are skilled in only take what is good from other games and leaving behind what is tedious or unnecessary. A simple example I can give is you can drift in Mario Kart and it has good enough physics to be fun and rewarding, but you can't easily lose control and spin out while doing it. The clutch kick is automated and the angle of attack is limited.

>>7884041
>Comparison with ugly awkward and clunky PC RPGs like Ultima 1 aren't relevant
Games like Ultima were made by IT neckbeards for other IT neckbeards, they weren't something an average 10 year old could pick up and play. That doesn't make them bad, it just means they were targeted at a more niche audience.

>>7882949
>What was it like
Well it was sort of like I came home from school one day, and there sitting in my bedroom with my NES was Miyamoto. He said "Herro Anon, very fun game for you to pray". But he is also naked. And then it was like Miyamoto-san pinned me on all fours to the ground, my face craned upwards to the tv. Then it was like he forcibly penetrated my grip with an NES controller. Tears were streaming down my face at this point and I was scared. Then it was like Miyamoto started screaming in my ear "Regend of Zeda for you baka gaijin" as I tried to input my name into the save. Finally going through the open world was like he finally took me all the way and after he was done whisperered "I rick you crean". I couldn't stop crying for days, and my parents didn't understand. No one in my home played video games so they didn't understand what it was like to play Zelda and how life changing it was.

>>7884138

>>7884138
wew

>>7883118
theres quite a lot to those old CRPGs
dont knock it till you try it

>>7883195
>You can't compare this to Ocarina of Time.
That's the thing. OoT came out at the tail end of the 3D revolution, after the PC revolution, during the console generation dominated by the Sony Playstation. It came out at a time when there were dozens of fantastic games to choose from, especially if you're focused on the size and scope of an open world. OoT might have had a higher level of overall polish than most of them (especially a lower-budget niche affair like Might and Magic VI), but 1998-1999 was a far cry from 1986 when it came to home videogame options. There was a very long tail of high-quality alternatives, M&M VI is just one of them.

>>7882949
I only have vague memories of my parents renting it, I got lost in the graveyard, and didn't know what was going on. It was probably one of the first NES games I ever played so that it was so different from SMB left me confused. I was probably 7 at the time so not very smart either.

The thing with comparing OoT or Z1 to CRPGs is that, while CRPGs did beat just about every console game to the punch by years, like 1% of the population played them, if that.

Console games were accessible. Especially to kids, kids whose family happened to have a pc with CRPGs were rare as fuck. PCs were mega expensive back then.

The other thing people often dont mention, is most of those CRPGs were turn based or had action that was, putting it lightly, clunky.

PCs only competition with Super Mario Bros was Commander Keen, which came out way later and wasnt close to as fluid. PC comparisons to Zelda 1 were nearly all turn based (if anyone knows exceptions please tell me, I’d genuinely love to hear about them).

Ultima Underworld is an amazing immersive sim, but it’s also got tedium and has pretty fucking bad combat. OoT’s combat has issues, but compared to UU it’s extremely fluid, intuitive and, yes, fun. Now, there’s a six year difference between when UU and OoT released, and my knowledge of CRPGs ends with UU. If a more informed anon can shed light on what real time action was like for CRPGs in 98, I’d be interested to hear it.

But my point is, 99% of gamers played on consoles. 80’s CRPGs did immersion first, but consoles managed to do (lesser) immersion paired with ACTION. At least until the 90’s, when PC games started catching up on that front with games like Doom.

>>7884676
>Console games were accessible. Especially to kids, kids whose family happened to have a pc with CRPGs were rare as fuck. PCs were mega expensive back then.
You could get a C64 at K-Mart for $150.

>>7882954
>Ultima
>not Zelda
oh lets just forget the original concept of zelda

>>7884676
All good points, but again I'll point out that for Ocarina specifically, the landscape had changed a lot. The market for PC games, and non-Nintendo home videogames in general, was much bigger in 1998 than 1988.

>>7884668
>but 1998-1999 was a far cry from 1986 when it came to home videogame options
this
not only did you have PS with basically its full roster by that point, but PC was in a spot where more people could actually afford 3d acceleration cards
hell, people forget that you could literally emulate PS on PC around that time, and with improved graphics with shit like bleem

now i still like OoT a lot desu, and play randomziers semi frequently, but its certainly not the best game ever, nor even the best game of its year imo
i think its gotten a retroactive kind of legendary status simply due to the fact that zelda as an IP has remained so constant and relevant for all these years. any major franchise like that will draw numbers, and OoT is simultaneously one of the more polished, but also accessible, games in its series

also
yall niggers aint even play hype the time quest an shieeet
hype > OoT

>>7884820
>the original concept of zelda
considering it was designed as a hydlide rip-off, and hydlide sucks giant cocks, id say they did alright

now super hydlide
thats a different story
that game is probably the closest thing consoles ever got to a CRPG
unsurprisingly, it did terribly, and everyone hated it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSVeoxWmNt4

>>7884854
wrong Sir.
it was designed to casualize dragon warrior & ultima

>>7884703
Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595 (equivalent to $1,596 in 2020).

That’s what I’ve found online. I dont know at what point the price would've dropped that low.

Hydlide sucks ass, and I can enjoy Atari games so it’s not just a matter of it being too old for me.

>>7884884
well they fucked up pretty bad considering its not even in the same genre as either of those
its not turned based like DQ, and it has absolutely nothing to do with ultima on literally any level

hydlide is an ARPG
thats what zelda ripped off: real-time action.
and im fairly certain ive heard this admitted by one of the old nintendo dorks too

>>7884895
You can never be too old to swallow dank e-celeb memes it seems.

>>7884885
It was only $600 for the first eight months.

Playing the first Zelda was like watching somewhere between 7 and 12 hours of Sesame Street. Started from season one. I wish it would pick up some, but the show never improves. The combat in Zelda reminds me of my dead father. Lost my to Prostate c and parkinsons two weeks ago. Gotta go bury him soon. Yeah, I know, its a long wait. Normally you bury quick but there were circumstances. Now I got a big fight ahead of me with sister and company, which is somewhat like exploration from the game. The quest to save Zelda reminds me of my one joy in life, when I legally married my anime girlfriend back in 2018 when there was a fluke sanctuary city law passed that didn't require the spouse to be present. We are living well but now I am wondering if it's gonna affect me down the line. That's about how it feels in my opinion to play Zelda 1 back then.

>>7884970
>considering its not even in the same genre as either
missing the point entirely, sigh,, many such cases

>>7884834
>bleem
holy shit that's a throwback

>>7882949
I was never really wowed by a NES game. The first console that impressed me was the Genesis because of parallax scrolling.

That's not to say there weren't a good 20-30 really good NES games. There were. It just didn't make my jaw drop. I grew up with PC games, and I usually saw what Nintendo did in a better form earlier than Nintendo did it.

>>7882949
I first saw it when I was 8. The graphics looked incomprensible to me at the time. I didn't understand the color scheme, and Link looked like an alien flying through the sky.
A couple years later I rented it, then bought it, and made to the last dungeon. By that time, I had already played a lot of Phantasy Star, so I wasn't amazed by Zelda really. It was just a fun game.
In my mid 20s, years after I threw all my consoles and cartridges in the garbage, I fired it up in an emulator on a laptop and beat it.

>>7885059
the games that do wow you are first party titles and select Konami and Capcom stuff mostly

>>7885046
innit?
i fucking loved that shit as a kid
i eventually got a used PS, mostly just so i could play 2-player games and not have to sit at my desk all the time, but all my early experiences with PS were, ironically, on PC

seems ridiculous by modern standards to pay for an emulator, but for when it was made, and what i assume those dudes had to do in order to reverse engineer the entire PS architecture, its honestly a miracle that it worked as good as it did
plus, their horrifying nightmare of a lawsuit with sony is, to a certain extent, why we have emulation at all anymore

>>7885059
From a purely technical POV the NES didn't really do anything the C64 or Colecovision or Amiga didn't already do and it wasn't until the Mega Drive that you had truly next-generation hardware.

>>7885098
Those systems couldn't scroll as fast as the NES

I mean if you're a kid I don't think graphics are the impressive part. Arcade golden age was happening. Pac Man came out in 82' and Dragon's Lair came out in 83' Seeing people play that for the first time is bananas. Zelda for NES was pokemon for 90s kids.

>>7885124
C64 scrolls as fast as the NES does, even faster considering it streams data from the RAM most of the time and not cartridge. Amiga is literally 32 bit so of course it does everything better than the NES.

>>7885098
Luv me TMS99xx, and some of the games on those systems were great, but it's 70's technology and comparing them to the NES just outs you as a zoom zoom.
The commie machines are a different story. The C64 is comparable, even better in some ways, to the NES. The OG Amiga blows it out of the water.

>>7884998
I'm sure you thought all of that was hilarious as you were typing it out

>>7884041
>Comparison with ugly awkward and clunky PC RPGs like Ultima 1 aren't relevant.
By the time Zelda came out, there were 4 Ultima games already plus tons of other open world RPGs, anon. Not to say Ultima 1 was unpolished, just because it had a bit different set of rules from modern RPGs and high difficulty doesnt mean it's not polished. And yes, Ultima is older and bigger than Zelda, it is the more impressive game.

>>7884065
Do you think that is unique to Nintendo? Sounds retarded. That's literally what every game designer is doing, with a varying degree of success. I wouldn't say nintendo has been more successful than the others, more kid friendly maybe, but other people would find those games boring. NFS Underground and Ridge Racer games have more enjoyable drifting than Mario Kart even though theyre all casualised.

>>7882949
The first time that i played zelda 1 was in 2000 or 2001. I think i was 6 or 7 years old.

It came in a cd with a bunch o computer games that some companies (not nintendo, local companies) used to sell on newsstands around here.

I'm from Brazil and at the time i didnt know about the existence of the NES. I didnt even know that this game was from nintendo.

I really enjoyed it at the time. Everything was mysterious and fun to explore and discover new thing. The graphics were cool and all.

I remember that i drew with my mother a huge map of the game in order to not get lost. We would go to each room and draw it and in each room we would use the candle in each tree in order to find a secret room.

I've never beat it, though...

IDK but I grew up with super nintendo, played ALttP first then LA, then the original. Liked it but it already felt dated. Metroid 1 pissed me right the fuck off though.

>>7885124
>>7885136
The C64 has a slower CPU than the NES to begin with and the normal method of scrolling the screen is chuggy and eats 20% of the CPU. Now you can use VSP for fast scrolling with low CPU use but that wasn't discovered until 1992 or something.

>>7882949
Confusing. Then I went back to mario.

>>7883519
Brother, physical maps and nintendo power magazines were the only way back then. I probably blew through a tree's worth of paper writing down megaman passcodes back then.

>>7882949
Maybe not mind bending, but it was probably the last time (minus the FFX blitzball FMV on PS2) that a console's performance matched my excitement. Zelda was good, but Mario 64 was the real deal.

>>7885170
>By the time Zelda came out, there were 4 Ultima games already plus tons of other open world RPGs, anon.
Yeah I know. It doesn't matter. The Ultima games, as well as every other 80s CRPG, is in a very small niche with a small fanbase. Ultima and Wizardry and groundbreaking and influential games in the industry, but did not have the reach to influence the general perception of Legend of Zelda. It wasn't like 1998 when it was only a minority of Nintendo-only kids who had never played anything but Nintendo games and thus had their minds blown by Ocarina of Time. In 1988 you had maybe 50,000 people playing the most popular CRPGs while you had over a million playing Legend of Zelda. Meanwhile in the late 90s you have a huge list of massively popular titles on PC and PSX.

Though to be clear, I'm not saying that LoZ1 was considered amazing for its huge open world. Just that the typical player did not use Ultima (or any turn-based CRPG) as a frame of reference. Those games had no influence on a typical player's expectations.

>>7885320
PSX sucked shit pickles

>>7885330
It had a lot of games people would rather play than Ocarina of Time.

>>7885219
>played ALttP first then LA, then the original
mine was the other way around
then OoT and then the GBA port of 1

i fucking love LA
marin is best gril
i still say that between that and the other two GBC games, those were the best top-down zeldas ever tbf tho, ive never even seen, let alone played, a zelda game past WW
LttP is definitely more of an epic, but the world seemed so much less alive than the GBC games imo. theres like 2 named characters, outside link ganon and zelda, that you talk to maybe twice. everyone else is just kinda there.
dungeons were great tho, and i guess thats where it counts
but it definitely feels much less comfy than LA or the oracles games imo

>>7885342
yea
it didnt have a good equivalent to OoT
but it had a ton of other good shit that the N64 literally couldnt even

>>7885350
I agree with you 100% but keep in mind that LA was made after ALttP. I haven't played it in years but I remember being okay with minish cap.

>>7885387
they were both released within like a year from each other
not that that really means anything
but considering that LA was such a smaller ROM, on an 8-bit handheld as opposed to a 16-bit home console, i gotta give credit where its due. games got a lot of charm, and i honestly think that the pacing was much better in LA than LttP too

>>7885175
Based Brazil mom.

Playing it for the first time? Confusing. 100th time? Sublime.

>>7885387
Minish Cap I adored as a kid but now think the text, pacing and general gameflow are far too slow.

OoS is my favorite topdown Zelda. Just really solid all around. Funnily enough OoA might be my least liked.

>>7885350
Totally agree on LttP. The map is cool to navigate but I never felt immersed in its world. Could never really figure out why.

>>7885353
There is not a single thing or benefit other than more detailed but pixellated and warped textures that the PS1 could do the N64 couldn't.

>>7882949
It was only the first time if you had never played a computer game before it.

However, what WAS new was the fact that it used an uninterrupted world map, which was fucking nuts in the late 80s.

In general it was just a really cool game. People didn't really call them "open worlds" back then.

>>7885432
yea maybe if they werent dense enough to restrict their games to a fucking cartridge
thats what held the N64 back. it had some good software, and some decent enough hardware.
but nope, nintendo just HAD to make sure they were the ones manufacturing the games. and they were too slow to adapt to the CD world at that point, what with their plans with phillips and sony falling through

the tragic irony is they wouldve had an insanely better profit margin had they not forced themselves to have to manufacture carts
good thing they fixed it with the gamecu...
oh yea...
ill admit, the mini-disks are pretty cool with their constant reading speed anywhere on the disk. kept loading down to practically cartridge levels. but goddamn those things are puny storage-wise

>>7885232
The C64 could perform self modifying codes, draw the background with the really fast char data instead of tile data, and use other tricks to achieve fast scrolling, not only VSP. Those tricks would be impossible or require extra hardware to be performed on the NES. I'm sure the VSP was used before 1992 too.

>>7885456
Mini discs don't load faster than DVDs, they're just space efficient and load less data.

>>7885508
of course the C64, Atari 8-bit, and Amiga also had scanline IRQs which the NES didn't have (not until expensive late period mappers anyway). actually even many arcade games didn't have those. it's a lot easier to do mid-line screen changes when you have a stable IRQ instead of polling for it.

and even the Atari 2600 can do some things the NES can't due to its scanline-based graphics (one example would be Activision's Crackpots).

>>7885416
>The map is cool to navigate but I never felt immersed in its world. Could never really figure out why.
I think it has to do partly with the layout of the map, especially the first overworld, and partly just the small size. ALTTP is, broadly speaking, segmented into 9 big areas in a loose 3x3 grid. There are huge chunks of that map that you only visit a couple of times in the whole game, like Hyrule Castle and the Eastern Ruins. You do have the Dark World, which is better, but still you have the same general issue that the map seems small because it's divided into these big areas and there's only a handful of things to do in each area. The overworld for Link's awakening is much denser, with more of a 4x4 design instead of 3x3, which makes it feel bigger.

ALTTP would have been a lot better if the overworld was a little bigger and with a bit more of an organic feel to the layout.

>>7885508
>>7885551
>>7885136
None of that is relevant since none of the games on those systems at the time had fast scrolling with punchy sound effects and music like the NES games that were actually fun to play.

>>7885568
You bought a computer for sit-down strategy games like Defender of the Crown or Wasteland, it wasn't necessarily trying to do the same thing as the NES.

>>7884676
>The other thing people often dont mention, is most of those CRPGs were turn based or had action that was, putting it lightly, clunky.
Ys, another Hydlide clone besides Zelda, wasnt clunky. Also, Zelda 1 is clunky, you can't even move diagonally or progress the game without reading the guide because some dungeons were hidden in places that couldn't be found without bombing and burning every inch of the game's world. It has no NPC interaction, the NPCs were the clunkiest I've ever seen in a game. You cant deny Zelda 1 was a jankfest, especially in the design department.
>PCs only competition with Super Mario Bros was Commander Keen, which came out way later and wasnt close to as fluid.
Not PC, but in the same year there was a side scrolling platformer on the C64 that was just as fluid as SMB, Thing on a Spring. The two games played differently, but Thing on a Spring did things SMB couldn't such as left and right scrolling.
>PC comparisons to Zelda 1 were nearly all turn based
Zelda was the contemporary of Hydlide, Ys, Xanadu, Sorcerian, Rambo, and other japanese PC88 games. In the west there were Sundog Frozen Legacy, Autoduel, The Seven Cities of Gold, Pirates, and a very zelda-like game that came out 4 years before zelda, Gateway to Apshai. They're all real time open world games. Those PC88 games were more popular and influential than the zelda games in japan. Xanadu and Ys sold millions of copies. The importance of zelda games in the video game industry is vastly overstated.
>If a more informed anon can shed light on what real time action was like for CRPGs in 98, I’d be interested to hear it.
Zelda is not an RPG game. Outcast (1999) on PC is a great Zelda-like open world game with a bigger world to explore and more open ended design.

>>7885568
C64's sound hardware is leaps and bounds better than the NES, and it's had fast scrolling games since at least 1984.

>>7885612
Forgot to mention King Kong 2 on the MSX. That game is so Zelda like it's uncanny. Also War of the Dead, it's like Zelda II.

>>7882949
>what it was like to see such a large world contained in a video game for the first time

I played Zelda 1 as a little kid and can say that it didn't feel that way. By which I mean I didn't think "what a big world" the way people compare sizes of open-world games now. A lot of NES games seemed huge to me! I had Mario 3 at the same time and that game felt huge in its own way. So at least for me, the size wasn't that impressive on its own.

But what I can say is that Zelda 1's map had several locations that felt odd, lonely, and out-of-the-way, and I felt a sense of mystery and... comfort, almost. Like having a really good hiding spot. One location that comes to mind is the absolute upper-right corner of the map where there's a single cave up a long ladder and you can hear the ocean. (It's where you get the letter from the old man.)

>>7882990
Hyrule Field didn't impress me (I had played Daggerfall on PC so a big open area was not a new thing) but I was impressed by all the interactivity in OoT like chopping signs and different items and stuff.

turned 42 this year, i rented thisbgame countless times as a kid and i remember spending all night playing it not making much progress by myself, but the fun part was playing the savefiles on the cart that belonged to other people renting it, it felt like a co pletwly different thing from anythung ive played before since i grew up playing Nesapong and Atari 2600 before making the jump to Nes in 1988.
Never beat it because i was a poorfag and i only could afford 2 games a year and i always chose Mario, Megaman or Castlevania. I beat it years atfer around 1995 when i was i highscool in an emulator and funnlily enough i beat ir after Link to the Past .

Then in 1998 i remember i got Ocarina of Time on day 1, rainy morning trip to the mall to buy it and skipped school to play all day, it blew my head i couldnt think about anything else until i beat the game, it gave me the same experience the oeiginal Zelda did years before but now as i was older and more fluent in English i could beat it in about a week, im not a native English speaker obviously.

TLDR good times, but as a kid you pretty much didnt know what the fuck to do since every game at the time was a platformer, you had to be the right age to truly appreciate the complexity of it and make progress. Maybe people who grew playing adventure games on PC were tbe target demographic instead of kids like me who grew up playing Moon Patrol and Megaman.

>>7885620
To be fair most of them weren't at the level of SMB3 or Mega Man 2, although that may be less hardware than having top-tier developers with big bucks and strict quality control standards.

>>7885612
>but Thing on a Spring did things SMB couldn't such as left and right scrolling.
The main reason SMB only scrolls one direction was the lack of sufficient memory to keep track of destroyed blocks. SMB3 has extra cartridge RAM to get around this limitation.

>>7885612
Just on the Famicom, the Dragon Quest series was far bigger than Zelda, those games were the console's "killer app" much like FF7 was for the PS1.

>>7882949
I was pretty young at the time, so it's not like I had many points of reference. It was awesome, of course. All these secrets. Roaming around to find stuff. The only guide a half-finished map included in the box. It felt like a world to explore, with endless possibilities, stories to be made up in the seams.

I suppose it was a good sort of experience. I never had to feel a sensation of limitation, it just let me think there was always more, and these games could always be something different, especially when you had something like this, then Super Mario Brothers, then Duck Hunt, then TMNT, then Kung Fu, then Karate Champ. It was like there was always more to see.

I guess I miss that feeling. When eventually I had a SNES at my Mom's and a Genesis at my Dad's, those still felt very much like video games of old, but prettier. Rocket Knight Adventures and A Link to the Past are absolutely amazing, of course, but they are refinements on lessons learned from the exploratory era of the NES.

I guess I wouldn't have that same feeling until the N64 came out with Mario 64 and OoT. Those felt different, and games everywhere changed after that, and felt new again, not just on the N64, but on PS1, Dreamcast, etc.

I could really use that feeling again.

>>7885684
Thing on a Spring had destructible blocks too, coincidentally. And yes, they had no problem with left scrolling because the whole game is stored in the RAM.

>>7885687
True, it was extremely more successful than zelda, and it's still a bigger franchise than zelda to this day. But it's turn based, and that's why I didn't mention it.

>>7885432
I love them both, but the PS1 was a lot better, and even the things you dismiss are better.
>Significantly better audio, both in sample and CDDA quality
>Video output could actually be crystal clear RGB without any blur
>Textures could be much higher resolution, and weren't always pixelated or warped, but even then I would personally take that over how muddy most textures were in the majority of 64 games
>People shit on PS1 for dithering, but N64 needed dithering to solve for banding in many cases, even while applying awful filters over the whole image and textures.
>Many PS1 games can run at more stable framerates, and very few N64 games even hit a target of 30.
>There's also way more PS1 games, and a greater variety.

Although I would probably still only want to play the same amount of games in either, it's hard not to appreciate the benefits of the PS1, especially today. The N64 just has trouble holding up.

>>7885739
>and it's still a bigger franchise than zelda to this day
By what metric? Global sales would suggest Zelda is the winner.

>>7885753
I'm talking about the Japanese market.

>>7885684
Also LOZ doesn't have free scrolling maps for the same reason--not enough memory. Yes it has cartridge RAM but most of that is used for the save game data and to copy certain game routines in so they will always be available when bank switching.

>>7882949
Probably similar to playing GTAIII when that got released.

>>7885342
>>7885353
>>7885741
All I'm sayin is the only dudes I remember owning, and enjoying, the PSX were cock wranglers. I'm talkin razer scooter types. Kid's that lived with their grandparents or dad's and shit.

The PSX was the shit pickler's choice. "muh madden"

If you had an N64 at the house, you probably had friends, a dad, and you weren't a faggot.

>>7886231
>If you had an N64 at the house, you probably had friends, a dad, and you weren't a faggot.
Agreed.
> "muh madden"
Stop saying "muh" though. Even though you're imitating someone else, everyone thinks you sound like a faggot.

>>7882949
the power gap between the pc and console was huge in the early 90s

you would be walking around 3d areas shooting shit while on console you would be running though 2d side scrollers,owning a pc in the early 90s was like a glimpse into the future

>>7885342
>>7885353
>>7885741
There are of course exceptions to the rule. >>7886236 wore a shirt in the pool and got caught trying to suck his own dick in highschool. It happens. Usually not in the N64 community, but it happens.

>>7886238
>you would be walking around 3d areas shooting shit
I wasn't.

>>7886238
you're a fucking idiot
>>7886253
based hugo chad

>>7886250
Wow what a cocksucker, I literally agreed with you, just told you to stop typing in a way that would make people hate you so people will be persuaded by your (correct) arguments. Go fuck yourself, faggot.

>>7886253
lmao sure buddy,you had duke 3d,outlawz,quake and tex murphy games on the fuckin snes

POOR DETECTED

>>7886257
no you are the fucking idiot and you outed yourself as a filthy poor,there was loads of 3d games back in the early 90s that the consoles would NEVER be able to run,IE terminal velocity

>>7886490
?

>>7886490
None of those games except Quake are actually 3D you shitstain

>>7886493
sure buddy,system shock wasnt 3d either lmaoooo

you was playing your bing bing wahoo 1up while pc chads was playing in the future

stop coping and take the L its cringe to continue.

just admit you dont know what the fuck you are talking about and are a poor who missed out on early 90s gaming

you see son i remember that era,so i KNOW you are either a retarded zoomer or just a poor who didnt even know what the pc could do even back then.

>>7886504
You unironically don't even know what 3D is

>>7886505
lmao imagine getting so rekt you have to argue over semantics over the build engine

literally every normie would agree its 3d,if you can move forward backward side to side and look up and down its 3d

and it was superior to whatever cart trash you had,stay mad

>>7886504
Why don't you put spaces after commas?

>>7884993
hydlide actually does suck big balls
go play it and prove me wrong
you won't

>>7884998
you have to be 18 to post here

>>7886231
Dunno man you might be right, I was 17 when the N64 came out and didn't have a beat on what kids were doing.

>muh madden
N64 had Madden and in fact for my experience, the N64 was the system you'd be most likely find at the frat house where a bunch of guys would sit in a mess of beer cans on Saturday and Sunday mornings playing Madden tournaments or Goldeneye with their bros. None of them cared about Ocarina of Time. They'd probably have a PSX to which they'd use to play Resident Evil or Gran Turismo or whatever other sports games they wanted to play weren't on the N64.

The games I personally had for Playstation were Final Fantasy VII and Tactics, Bushido Blade, Xenogears, World Cup 98, and Twisted Metal 1+2. I rented an N64 a couple of times to try out Mario and Zelda. Mario 64 I really liked but Zelda I found a bit disappointing given that LoZ1 and ALTTP were two of my favorite games of all time.

And of course PC games I had that came out during this period were Baldur's Gate, X-Wing Alliance, and Everquest. (And other PC games still worth playing from the mid-90s included Warcraft II and Master of Magic).

>>7885175
Which Zelda was that Brazanon? /

>>7885612
>Not PC, but in the same year there was a side scrolling platformer on the C64 that was just as fluid as SMB, Thing on a Spring. The two games played differently, but Thing on a Spring did things SMB couldn't such as left and right scrolling.
What SMB did that Thing on a Spring couldn't is get kids to instantly want to play it the moment they saw it. Running fast through vivid environments, jumping around with great-feeling physics, smashing blocks with satisfying crunch, squishing goombas, and so on. Thing on a Spring looks like your generic early 80s static-screen platformer, with scrolling and faster sprites. SMB looked like an Arcade-quality game in your living room. Of course people noticed that you couldn't go backwards, but that was a minor detail.

There were a lot of good games you could only play on home computers like Pool of Radiance, but the best games in the most popular action genres were all on consoles.

It's common to have a situation where you can logically identify technical graphical advantages in a game that ultimately doesn't look better and often just looks worse. Consider Operation Wolf on NES vs C64. The C64 version has more animations and more frames per animation, more objects on the screen and no flickering. But the NES version just looks better overall. The NES version gets the important stuff right and cuts corners on less-important details. The NES helicopter looks shiny and 3-dimensional even though it doesn't animate like the C64 version. The tanks have a gritty metal look. The buildings in the background are plain gray but have a few key details like reflections on the windows that make them look like real glass. The C64 buildings have more colors but just look very blocky and pixelated with no reflective detail on the windows. The fonts and icons are all tasteful on NES vs the huge ugly blocky computer fonts and icons that look like something a high school kid made in QBASIC, on the C64.

>>7886789
then again you should compare 1942 and Commando on the two systems if you want a laugh. the NES versions suck balls.

>>7886789
No shit the NES OW was better, it was made by the original developer and has 256k of ROM. The C64 port was made by Ocean likely without the arcade assets and it's only about 40k in size.

>>7886789
>>7885739
>>7885232
Thing on a Spring gets some pretty fast scrolling going because it has the graphics attributes set up so it doesn't have to shift color RAM. That saves you a lot of CPU time.

>>7886835
I'm not sure but the NES port might also tack on some additional content not in the arcade game as they often did.

>>7886835
Point is that's a pattern you'll see over and over.
>>7886809
>1942 or Commando
Still just ports that were intended for and superior in the arcade anyway. Even then, for 1942, a non-shump autist who isn't looking closely at the gameplay will probably prefer the NES version of 1942 at first glance. It has the textured water, better-looking islands and shooting graphics, and sprites that look more like the arcade version. Meanwhile you could put the arcade port of Super Mario Brothers in an arcade and it was viable. It was nearly identical to the NES version apart for some difficulty tweaks.

Also, 1985 was basically peak C64, it was mature and cheaper with a large library of games and more common than the Nintendo. The NES was just getting off the ground with SMB as the showcase, and a bunch of mostly-forgotten games. But within a couple of years, by the time Legend of Zelda was out in North America, the NES and its supposedly inferior hardware left the C64 in the dust as far as the quality of its game library (outside of games that were always better on the computer like RPGs).

>>7886514
you went from making a statement to getting DEBOOONKED and wound up resorting to grammar nazism instead of just taking it on the chin and skulking away and letting the thread die and all forget.

absolutely pathetic anon

>muh PCs
Back when Zelda came out nobody had a PC. You went and played one at school. So you either had the riveting excitement of Oregon Trail, Odell Lake, and Number Munchers, or you went home and played on a real console or to an arcade for REAL games.

>>7886961
>>7886809
You've never played the NES 1942, I take it. It was made by Micronics since Capcom didn't do in-house ports in the beginning and since it was made by Micronics, you pretty much get what you paid for.

Fuck you Kazuo Yagi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bupAR6Rbn3I

>>7886961
>the NES and its supposedly inferior hardware left the C64 in the dust as far as the quality of its game library (outside of games that were always better on the computer like RPGs)

That is some major goalpost shifting.

>the games were inferior except the ones that were actually good

>>7886961
>Also, 1985 was basically peak C64
in the US maybe, peak in PAL regions was closer to end of the decade

>>7886986
Well, LOZ came out in the US in 87 and there were quite a few major C64 titles in 87-88 including Pirates!, Ultima V, Might and Magic 2, Wasteland, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and Neuromancer.

By 89 game developers were shifting to PCs, but then again that was also when the Mega Drive launched in North America and the NES became definitely a dinosaur.

>>7886975
>Back when Zelda came out nobody had a PC. You went and played one at school. So you
excluding all the millions of kids who had a C64, Spectrum, Amiga, ST, Amstrad?

>>7887023
In America, I mean. It was well known that until well into the 90s you likely only had a computer at home if your dad worked in IT. I mean the average blue collar family didn't have a computer back then.

Incidentally, the role of arcades is one of biggest things zoomers don't understand when they ask questions like "what was it like to play <some home console game> for the first time, did it blow your mind?"

Until the early 90s, video game standards and expectations were primarily established by arcades. Home computers did have more depth and length (thanks to save files on writable disk) when it came to text-oriented games like Ultima, Wizardry, Oregon Trail, Carmen San Diego, and so on, but were always much more limited when it came to dramatic graphics and sound effects. They definitely felt that way even at the time. Games like Legend of Zelda, Contra, and Mega Man 2 were loved for being fun to play and for having great aesthetics within the limitations. All you had to do to see superior spectacle was to visit an arcade with recent games.

>>7887023
Just because the fat PC owning nerd is living with his parents doesn't make him a kid.

>>7887038
>Home computers did have more depth and length (thanks to save files on writable disk) when it came to text-oriented games like Ultima, Wizardry, Oregon Trail, Carmen San Diego, and so on, but were always much more limited when it came to dramatic graphics and sound effects. They definitely felt that way even at the time.

That's not so much a computer vs console thing as the fact that most of the console stuff was Japanese and they had a better feel for cinematic presentation (Americans are not good at that).

>>7887041
LucasArts were always one of the best American devs at cinematic presentation. I don't think anyone ever claimed Microprose or Accolade were good at that.

Most JRPGs have really simplistic combat and game mechanics, the emphasis is more on the cinematic feel and storytelling. Computer RPGs like M&M and Wizard's Crown had much more elaborate gameplay than any console RPG yet also drier and less normie-friendly.

>>7882949
It wasn't 87, but probably closer to 1990. I remember my older Brother had it and enjoyed it. Even though he's not really known for being a gamer. I really liked the game, but I thought it was too hard to beat at the time. I didn't get the whole connection between games, magazines, and word of mouth community. I was slow at connecting the dots for those kinds of things when I was six or seven years old.

>>7887069
so big deal. JPCs also had tons of dry nerdy computer-style RPGs and adventures if you wanted that shit.

>>7887082
You're not wrong but they still had a level of presentation that American games lacked.

>>7886986
What are the goalposts, faggot? I've made numerous different points in this thread. Fending off aggro from C64 hardware autists and NES hate from eurofags was just something I was doing on the side. So sorry if my points didn't line up exactly with your warped expectations.

The thread started with Legend of Zelda, and the general theme of being wowed and impressed by a game. I picked Operation Wolf as a comparison because it was a game out around the same time, at which point I had to respond to you kneejerking spergs. So that's the context. Bringing up 1942 and Commando shifts the goalposts to 1985 when the NES didn't have much of a library (YET).

>>7887013
>Pirates!
Strategy
> Ultima V, Might and Magic 2, Wasteland
RPG
> Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and Neuromancer
Adventure games.

In other words, all low-action games with lots of static text and images. Zelda was an action game with smooth, dynamic arcade-style gameplay that also had battery backup and was designed as one long quest with elements of exploration and adventure. It wasn't like any of those C64 games you listed.

>>7886989
I suppose I mean in the context of competition with to the NES. 1985 and maybe some 1986 is when you're likely to find the best matchups between the C64 and NES on similar games. After that, action games are far more likely to be high-quality and fun on the NES, while the NES (mostly) didn't bother with slower-paced text-oriented games.

>>7887041
It's less a matter of "having a feel for it" so much as making it a budget priority.

lol the NES Space Harrier couldn't even do the camera pan up and down and its framerate was like 35 fps while the ZX Spectrum port manages a full 50 fps

>>7887035
Nah, that's only for the more expensive computers (my Dad had a Mac that was like $3,000 or something, which we never would have bought on our own). But lots of people had commodores and some even had Apple ][s. But once Nintendos started showing up, that's what everyone wanted to play. I'll bet you could have found dusty C64s at garage sales in the late 80s for $50.

>>7887167
>I'll bet you could have found dusty C64s at garage sales in the late 80s for $50
Late 80s, no. People who had 8-bit computers generally upgraded to a PC in the early 90s. Computer hardware was expensive so you'd typically hold onto it for years.

>>7885563
>The overworld for Link's awakening is much denser
I just beat LA and im playing LTTP right now and that was the first thing that I noticed. LTTP has huge stretches of nothingness, just empty space or scenery. Theres no golden shells so theres no reason to destroy every little thing looking for one.... does LTTP even have a shovel? I hope not cause shoveling everything in LTTP sucked.

Almost every single square of map had something in LTTP. Either a secret, a cool scenery, a sign, or something. Going to LTTP it feels like theres nothing to do.

HOWEVER, I will say that LTTP is a lot more navigatable. I can get from point A to point B without having to take side detours or switch items every few seconds.

>>7887165
What does that matter? The NES Space Harrier wasn't even released in the West and nobody here played it until emulation.

>>7886253
As an 8 year old I had no idea how the fuck to play those hugo games. I couldnt solve shit. I just wanted to explore but I couldnt because they limit you to 1 or 2 areas as you solve puzzles

>>7887095
I also think there's the factor of JPCs having higher screen resolution than Western computers due to the need to display kanji. However they were also rather poor at action games compared to consoles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaOBz96fPFA

Agent USA. A very simple 1984 game that the NES can't do as it makes use of scanline IRQs and the keyboard.

>>7887180
did you tell him the Spectrum had Street Fighter while Crapcom didn't put it on the NES because they didn't think they could do it?

>>7887104
those all had far more complex mechanics. Zelda was a more simplified game with the focus shifted to arcade action over intricate game mechanics because the NES was good at moving stuff around the screen but lacking in memory or processing power.

>>7887035
IDK, it's just...my dad did work in IT and he bought his first computer (an Atari 800) in 1981. I played PC games before I played console ones and from a purely personal standpoint I've never been able to relate to the idea of your dad being a plumber or something and he didn't own a PC until around 9/11 when he realized it could provide access to porn.

>>7887176
>does LTTP even have a shovel
Yes but there's only one field where you need use it and the item you find there permanently replaces the shovel. There's also a minigame you can play any time but in that case the shovel is just automatically enabled for the duration of the game and disappears when time runs out.

>>7887214
Not fair. Making some shit on the Spectrum that only vaguely resembled Street Fighter was cheap and effortless to do while Capcom had to release games on very expensive cartridges so they weren't going to waste money if they didn't think it would be worth it.

reminder that the Spectrum and every other home conversion of Arkanoid got the intro sequence but the NES didn't because Taito couldn't be bothered to pay for a big enough ROM

>>7887274
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_aD7gfomQo

Actually the Amstrad version didn't but instead has a different intro with scrolling text and a star field. Also the music sounds a lot like Zelda II for some reason.

>>7887013
Neuromancer, lyl good luck doing that on the NES and see how much NOA would think of a game where you can sell body parts.

>>7887274
Taito's arcade ports were a really mixed bag, some of them were really lazy and low-effort. Operation Wolf was one they put a lot of money and effort into. They also outsourced the NES ports of The New Zealand Story and Rainbow Islands to UK devs and those weren't done in Japan.

>yet another NES vs C64 fight
Aint nobody gonna mention Quest for Thelda for the TRS-80? It's a nearly 1:1 replication of Zelda on a 1977 computer, and it's actually very playable.

>>7882981
LOZ used a 128k ROM. That was huge for console game standards at that time (remember that before then they were usually 4-16k)

>>7887313
>1977 computer
Excuse me? The CoCo 3 came out in 1986.

>>7887303
I'm not sure why Taito loved OW so much because IMO it's one of their least interesting arcade games.

>>7887313
>Nintendo with their reputation for being extremely trigger-happy with lawsuits didn't say anything about this game

>>7887180
>>7887165
Damn, we've argued this before. The Spectrum was a bit better at 3D than the NES due to its architecture.

Also LOZ is nothing special, the Speccy could have done that game.

>>7887225
>NES was good at moving stuff around the screen but lacking in memory or processing power.
Yeah that's exactly my point. The NES was optimized to run the most popular genres of the era and the best big-budget developers tended to target home consoles. The best action games were made for consoles (and arcades) and Zelda is predominantly an action game, mechanically (no matter how you classify it genre-wise).

There were other good games on home computer, but they tended to be lower-budget niche games lacking broad appeal. Meanwhile in 1998 if you're comparing Ocarina of Time to PC games, it's a different story. There were tons of PC games at that point with broad mass-market appeal even if it was still a marginally smaller market than consoles. That was especially true for 3D games, which was a key selling point for Ocarina.

>>7887313
Are you sure? It looks more like a NES vs ZX Spectrum fight to me.

>>7887375
But it didn't, and that's really what matters when we're talking about impressions and reactions to a game, which is what this thread is about. Theoretical, unrealized capabilities of a home computer have no bearing whatsoever on that.

>>7887375
It would look ugly as shit and run at 10 fps though

>>7885612
>Also, Zelda 1 is clunky, you can't even move diagonally or progress the game without reading the guide because some dungeons were hidden in places that couldn't be found without bombing and burning every inch of the game's world.
You're a retard who doesn't understand game design and shouldn't post about shit you know nothing about.

Well they managed free-form polys on the NES with Elite although it took a UK dev to pull it off anyway, nobody in Japan attempted that.

they did port Ultima and Bard's Tale to the NES but they were pretty bad anyway

>>7886975

Call me Nobody then. When Zelda came out we had 2 computers in the house and was about to get a third.

Must be your were a poor fucker who's mom had to suck dick to get you Zelda.

>>7887035
Wrong again kid. Grew up in a total blue collar family. And we had a PC at home since the Vic-20 came out.

ITT poor fucks who's parents couldn't stop buying crack. Put down the crackpipe and get your kids a PC.

And big deal, the Spectrum had RPGs if you were into Zelda kinds of shit both games made in its commercial lifespan like Dragonia, Bloodwych, and Kokotini Wilf and modern homebrews like Wanderers: Chained in the Dark and Viking Quest.

>>7887464
Spectrum RPGs were more often Spectrum 128 games since it was more suited to them than the 48k machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb-H_37od4g

Just FWIW here's Monster Truck Rally, developed by Realtime Associates, a studio founded by ex-Mattel guys. This is a quintessential example of American game design. Really dry presentation with no attempt at being cute or floofy and of course the exercise in rotoscoped sprites which was something American devs were really fond of in the 80s (a lot of C64 games do this).

>>7886986
In the /hbg/ thread we were working on porting an Atari 8-bit game to the NES. There's so much bullshit our code guy had to go through that he wouldn't have to on the C64 or other systems.

>>7887294
That's not a technical issue, it's Nintendo being faggots.

>2021
>there are still people who argue over shitty home system ports of arcade games when the real thing has been perfectly emulated on MAME for years
Back in 1988 you didn't really have a choice but why are we still arguing over this in the 21st century?

>>7887378
>Meanwhile in 1998 if you're comparing Ocarina of Time to PC games, it's a different story. There were tons of PC games at that point with broad mass-market appeal
Not that anon, but can you list some examples that are roughly similar to OoT? Something like Starcraft was obviously popular but is a totally different game. What immersive, real time 3D action fantasy games would’ve been on PC at the time? I’m curious how many of them would be as intuitive to pick up and play as OoT was.

>>7887115
>>7887104
>is not button masher so is not real game

>>7887115
>while the NES (mostly) didn't bother with slower-paced text-oriented games
There's actually quite a few of those though many of them stayed in Japan.

Once you get past the obvious stuff like first party titles and Mega Man, you'd be surprised how uninspired most of the NES's library is.

>>7887986
actually even Mega Man was good for only 2 games out of six total

>>7887013
it seems Americans give up on C64 market earlier while it was still going in Europe strongly as late as 1992

>>7888048
Commodore's European operations were far better funded and more competent than the North American division and the usual kinds of games the C64 had such as RPGs and war sims benefited from the move to PCs which had more storage capacity and screen resolution. The event of VGA on PCs was a major turning point in solidifying them as a gaming platform. Europeans for the most part dismissed the NES as not markedly better than the home computers they already had, only with the Mega Drive were they actually impressed.

>>7887935
I prefer texty games retard but it's not impressive or mindblowing to have a big world when you don't actually have to render any of it. The point is about what it felt like to play Zelda 1 in 1987 and whether the existence of games like Pirates! were at all relevant to that experience (protip: they weren't)

>>7888087
>I prefer texty games retard but it's not impressive or mindblowing to have a big world when you don't actually have to render any of it.
>Ultima had no graphics and was a text adventure
...

>>7888078
Nintendo were totally useless at marketing anything in Europe.

test

>>7888078
>Europeans for the most part dismissed the NES as not markedly better than the home computers they already had, only with the Mega Drive were they actually impressed

Lemme elaborate a little. It's not just consumers but also developers. European game devs mostly didn't consider the NES worth their time because A. It wasn't markedly better than any of the home computers from a technical POV and B. Its games were expensive and subject to Nintendo's strict regulations. Yes Sega had a lot of that too and it also cost a king's ransom to release games on the Mega Drive but its next-gen hardware was seen as worth it.

There's an American parallel with EA who didn't bother making anything for the NES at all, but just skipped to the Mega Drive. Same reasons applied. EA didn't really think the NES could give them anything the Apple II and C64 didn't already give them (especially since they were primarily making sit-down PC kinds of games and not arcade stuff) and of course they didn't want to deal with Nintendo's rules. The Mega Drive impressed them enough, so much that they literally pulled some Jedi mind tricks on Sega to get the right to manufacture their own cartridges.

>>7888121
Rare did. They were very insistent how they considered NES games above the usual standard of computer games in the UK at that time so much that they focused the efforts entirely on it.

>hey anon, come hang out with me! My parents got me Mario!
>but you don't even own a Nintendo how do you have Mario?
>it's on the computer! look!

>>7888128
Rare were in a somewhat unique situation since they had imported and reverse engineered a Famicom in 1986 or something. Also anyway most of their NES output was generic European shovelware shit like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Digger T. Rock and not very memorable.

>>7886231
>All I'm sayin is the only dudes I remember owning, and enjoying, the PSX were cock wranglers
stop hanging around with cock wranglers, you fucking cock wrangler.
>The PSX was the shit pickler's choice. "muh madden"
you know there were *other* games on psx other than madden, right?
>If you had an N64 at the house, you probably had friends, a dad, and you weren't a faggot.
no, i knew plenty of faggots that owned an n64.

>>7888094
Not my fault you can't into subtext you overly literal autistic dumbass. Ultima doesn't have any action and minimal dynamic content and relies heavily on text to convey detail. In LoZ that is all included in the gameplay.

LOL bing bing wahoo fags are so cute.

>>7887842
>can you list some examples that are roughly similar to OoT
There aren't many that tick EVERY box right down to the last detail, but there are a lot that come close on multiple dimensions.

- Everquest: Came out 4 months after OoT. It's a 3D MMORPG with huge open world, lots to explore and discover. EQ was the primary influence on Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft. Asheron's Call also came out by late 1999)
- Numerous FPS games, many beginning to blend narrative and adventure elements to the gameplay (Half-Life, Unreal, Star Wars Dark Forces II, Hexen II)
- Tomb Raider I+II (PC port was fine)
- Might and Magic VI
- Prince of Persia 3D came out later in 1999. (About a year after Ocarina)

Most of these did not have both the weapon combat and 3D puzzles, which were a big part of Ocarina, but those are also very much matters of taste. Lots of people weren't that into puzzles anyway and the combat content in Ocarina was a bit disappointing tbf.

>I’m curious how many of them would be as intuitive to pick up and play as OoT was
I'm not denying that OoT was a highly-polished, accessible game. The N64's analog stick was a game-changer and neither the PSX (at the time) or PC had anything quite like it. But there were lots of games with open 3D worlds to explore that were much bigger and had more interesting NPCs, quests and combat/danger than Ocarina of Time. It wasn't like 1987 where your alternative bigger worlds was something like an SSI gold box D&D game that required you have a manual handy to reference text to read because there was too much to include with the game itself.

>>7886789
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ypYxyUFI0

>>7886506
>I'm so rich and old but I type like I'm 12 and poor, and my arguments are straight up retarded
good going anon, I'm very impressed

>/vr/ turns an innocent "what was it like?" question into an argument over which game did X first

It's all so tiresome. I like vidya history and timelines and milestones but that wasn't the point of this thread.

>>7886262
Relax Kemosabe, I was just busting your balls.

>>7888194
Meat gazer? Maybe. Pre-mature ejaculator? Guilty as charged. Cock wrangler? No Sir.

>>7888292
Thanks anon, I mean that genuinely.

That list pretty much confirms my suspicion that OoT wasnt a landmark title due to tech or size, but because its specific mix of design elements appealed to people. Everything you listed is pretty different from it.

>>7887986
But that's still better than 80% of the ZX Spectrum's library being totally unplayable.

>>7886789
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-0WGRf1gEw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMzyUrmmARs

It's a matter of subjective preference which you prefer IMO and the arcade game wasn't particularly good to begin with.

>>7885663
Portuguese?

>>7888602
I think the biggest complaint about the C64 port is the collision detection.

>>7886961
>The NES and its supposedly inferior hardware left the C64 in the dust as far as the quality of its game library
By that point you had the Amiga and soon Mega Drive, so...

>>7886982
Commando was in-house, but it was the first NES game Capcom made and they had no clue what they were doing.

>>7887104
>Zelda was an action game with smooth, dynamic arcade-style gameplay that also had battery backup and was designed as one long quest with elements of exploration and adventure. It wasn't like any of those C64 games you listed.
I guess Druid would be like that?

>>7885432
I can play Syphon Filter on the PS1. I can't play Syphon Filter on the N64.

Deathlord. Ultra-hardcore RPG with seven huge continents and perma death (die and it writes it to your save file so you have to start over from the beginning). Only on the Apple II and C64 and you can't play it on the NES.

>>7888608
Amiga also had shit games that only graphics autists care about.

>>7886961
>>7887104
Americans made low action games but most of the C64's PAL library was dynamic arcade games.

>>7888696
it seems like Americans in general forgot how to do arcade games between the video game crash and the 4th gen, by 1992-ish you start seeing a resurgence in action games developed on consoles.

>>7888542
>but because its specific mix of design elements appealed to people.
Sure just realize that my point is that the game is massively overrated for the same reason. People routinely give the game heaps of unwarranted praise.

It was certainly a landmark game in the sense that it consolidated all the elements of experimental 3D games from the era into a polished experience. It made the simple process of navigating a 3D world into a game. It used a variety of clever tricks to make the world seem much more interactive than it really was. For a simple example: there are no fundamental gameplay rules governing the interaction of materials with fire. There's a specific rule coded to allow specific spider webs to be burnt with your torch. The game is guessing where the developers have implemented this specific rule, in a way that "feels" like you're discovering something in an interactive environment. It's a clever trick and blows the mind of a 10-year-old. For people who have played lots of games and see the trick for what it is, the effect is not so profound.

The truly impressive part of Ocarina is the way Nintendo was able to keep those tricks going for an entire game's worth of content.

And again, my goal isn't to dispute Ocarina as a landmark game (whatever that really means) but to validate the perspectives of the many people who legitimately just didn't like it when it came out, because it lacked things people wanted (like action, excitement, combat and danger, a deeper and more mature world) that other games were quite capable of delivering.

The last thing I'll note is that I've never been into puzzle games, so whatever alternatives to Ocarina there were as far as puzzle-focused games go, I am not familiar with them.

>>7888696
For a few examples?

>>7888642
no one wants to play it

>>7889065
I know, too hard and babby is filtered by it.

>>7889085
i wouldn't know.

>>7888530
>Relax Kemosabe, I was just busting your balls.
Sometimes you don't sound like you're kidding, you know, there's a lotta people around.

>>7889085
>>7888642
but c'mon, maaan. games like this and SMB2j are just there to torture you. a video game is supposed to fun not a demented Skinner box.

Here is Creatures 2. The giant bird boss is not a big issue to create with the C64's sprites. On the NES you would have to use background tiles and blank the background for this.

On the NES this is the best you can do.

i hate you Euro demosceners, i really do

>>7889058
That’s all fair.

One thing OoT does deserve credit for is refining Tomb Raider’s targeting with the ztargeting camera system - that’s the format basically every third person action game copied from then until...now, pretty much. God Hand and Ninja Gaiden are the only offhand examples I can think of that dont use it. Not talking about FPS or rail shooters or whatever here, just specifically third person action games.

And I agree OoT’s action is underwhelming at best. But that specific method of targeting deserves due credit.

Not that that’s really what this thread is about. People dont gush about OoT’s targeting system the way they gush about its one open empty field.

it was cool enough to have your mom call Nintendo and pay $2 a minute in 90s dollars to get unstuck after like a week of playing

My dad didn't work at nintendo :(

>>7888649
yeah yeah SOTB we know

>>7891569
SOTB doesn't even have good graphics I had in mind something more like Batman

>>7891627
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGHLLh3iZwU

This game was like the Christmas present in the UK that year. Commodore UK offered it as a pack-in with the A500 and cut prices of the computer, instant runaway hit.

>>7886231
Coming from a long line of shit picklers, I can confirm that the PSX was my system of choice. The sole reason being that it was $100 cheaper than the N64 at Wal-Mart in my backwoods county.

>>7882949
I was more impressed by the bad ass music you got if you waited at the title screen desu

>>7885612
in Sweden back then nobody had a NES, it was expensive and its games were expensive. parents bought a C64 for their children and you could get games cheaply on cassette tape, it was considered better more sensible investment.

why does Euro argument for shit like the ZX Spectrum always boil down to "hrrph it was better because it was cheap"

>>7895264
Bait
But it's cope and sour grapes from people who didn't have access to Nintendo games.
But it's usually not about being chep there's also the fact that it's the actual games that always matter in the end not the technical specs of the system or the features required. Nobody other than these autists care how much RAM a game actually requires. If the result is a worse game than the options available on the underpowered NES, the NES game is going to win every time.

>>7895361
>If the result is a worse game than the options available on the underpowered NES, the NES game is going to win every time
now who really thinks the NES had better games than the 4th gen consoles?

>>7895459
It's subjective. I mean, I guess the NES is a bit better if you like straight hardcore arcade action but the 4th gen consoles are better at depth, large game worlds, and more complex gameplay.

>>7895264
I grant you Spectrum games could be interesting and imaginative in a way NES stuff could not, in fact most NES games were very formulaic.

>>7895475
they're still not as formulaic as 4th gen console games. those had a lot less variance in their design than the NES even.

>>7895361
>But it's cope and sour grapes from people who didn't have access to Nintendo games.

Nintendo had no serious interest in Europe, this is a well-established fact.

>>7882954
>some esoteric bullshit did it more boring years before!
Why do CRPGfags always pull this? Zelda 1 may be cryptic, but it is much more fun and inherently requires far less autism than gay ass Ultima. Hydlide also sucks dick in comparison to Zelda btw.

>>7885432
None of the platformers on PS1 control as good as Super Mario 64, which is no surprise considering the system didn't even originally have an analog stick

>>7885456
The N64 also had a pathetically abysmal texture cache of 4KB. Rare originally developed Goldeneye with an 8KB texture cache in mind from development units, then had to crunch the textures down for the final game.

look at the fucking brainless retard that compared oot's 3d world to some fucking "ultima" boring ass nerdy, dnd fucking virgin nerd shit game that looks like shit, has shit graphics and plays like a half-witted port of the maze 3d cellphone game for autistic people

>>7888265
Cool graphics faggot, now is it fun or is it some obtuse shit for autists?

>>7895561
While it would be foolhardy to try to argue that any of those 90s 3D RPGs are as fun, fluid, complete packages overall as Ocarina of Time, it's easy to see a game like Daggerfall as having a more impressive open world. I mean, it's still one of the largest worlds in a video game ever, it's bustling with towns, and it's full of choice and a variety of methods of interactivity.

>>7888265
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvzM9dIOawc

>>7895563
FWIW Elite also had an NES port, albeit a little simplified one (controls adapted for the game pad instead of a keyboard, etc) and I think it didn't have the procedurally generated worlds as you can't do that on a ROM cartridge. It was a technical feat that they were able to pull off free-form 3D graphics primitives as the NES hardware is not friendly to that kind of thing.

>>7882949
I was only 7 when I played it, and my only other exposure to the fantasy genre at the time was The Neverending Story. I was genuinely apprehensive about being in watery/swampy areas in this game, because of the scenes that happened in the swampy area in The Neverending Story which also freaked me out. Some combined sensation with the game's music and the fuzzy, blurry image on the small Zenith television I had, made for a weirdly immersive sensation, along with daydreaming from looking at the manual's artwork which further piqued my curiosity and imagination.

>>7895509
It's weird, I am French and the NES definitely had a pretty big presence in France. Yet all I hear in this thread is how PCs were more popular "in Europe". I am guessing they mean Germany and the UK more than Europe in general.
I remember Nintendo marketed it a lot back then too. Probably explains why Nintendo does better in France than in the rest of Europe to this day.

>>7888292
>>7888542
oot had a proper targeting system that revolusionized 3rd person combat

>how could ocarina of time be revolutionary when all these RPGs had giga massive open worlds on PC?
This is what action/adventure games looked like in 1998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1aD4x2zJsg&t=706s

>>7895509
Nintendo didn't have a european branch during the NES era, but instead relied on local distributors for each country. Some did a great, some did poorly.

>>7896132
Nintendo of Europe was founded in 1990. The SNES came out in 1992 in Europe.

>>7883982
>Ultima
>20 obscure key combinations

There are no "key combinations" you fucking zoomie faggot. One key does one thing.

Oh sorry, in Ultima V ctrl-k shows your karma and ctrl-e exits. That's fucking it. Everything else is a single key you nigger

>>7896007
>This is what 3D action/adventure games looked like in 1998
fixed. Plenty of 2D action/adventure games are more fun than Ocarina.

>Action/adventure is the only genre in gaming
I've never played Redguard and don't exactly trust Bethesda to make good games especially one I've never heard of meaning it's probably some side project shat out by a B team. But that actually looks pretty fucking cool. Not as smooth control-wise obviously but Flute of Faggotry doesn't even attempt anything as cool as swashbuckling combat on the open sea.

Besides I've already admitted that Ocarina does deserve some credit. Just not all the credit that manchildren who never played anything non-Nintendo heap on it. And the point of all the various examples of other great other-genre games doing things in 3D is to suggest that the idea of someone else tying it all together without Nintendo isn't as far-fetched as some seem to imagine. The only real unknown is how long it would have someone else to discover the utility of the analog stick.

>>7895680
3D Fighting games already had automatic targeting. In Bushido Blade (1997) you can fully detach from the target, run around the 3D environment, and even do un-targeted running attacks. Nobody had adapted it to an action-adventure yet or refined it to the point of being able to easily toggle between multiple targets, but the rest of the key mechanics were all present.

Nintendo kids didn't know that because there were no fighting games worth playing on the N64 by the time Ocarina came out.

>>7896548
>Action/adventure is the only genre in gaming
It's the only genre relevant for comparison with OOT. RPGs of the era were inherently obtuse by design and look and play like shit compared to OOT in many ways, but in return they offered degrees of interactivity and customization that OOT didn't have, the difference being that you often had to use your imagination somewhat for those concepts to have much worth whereas OOT could directly physically represent all its ideas for the player. Comparing it to a 3D fighting game to downplay its significance would also be absurd, as the two overall emphases in gameplay are so radically different that you'd just look like a desperate butthurt fool trying to say that OOT's lock-on targeting is comparatively insignificant because a 3D fighting game--a genre that would unplayable without a targeting system--has one. Oh wait:
>>7896578

>>7897036
As has been mentioned before, console RPGs have much simpler game mechanics due to limited controls and memory capacity. The emphasis is more on cinematic presentation and storytelling than mechanics.

>>7897041
I was talking about PC RPGs of the time. Even PC RPGs like Morrowind that came afterward have movement and combat that are so much clunkier than Ocarina of Time. This is because good feeling movement and combat are not as crucial to what makes those games work.

>>7882954
I can tell by this post that there's no reason to venture any further into this thread. If only this board wasn't populated by zoomers doing their best to pretend like they're 40 years old with this tryhard shit.

>>7895662
France was also a major Amstrad and Atari market and Commodore was pretty irrelevant there.

>>7897036
>It's the only genre relevant for comparison with OOT.
No it isn't. At least pretend like you can follow a thread and understand points that are more subtle than a 2x4 to the face.
>Comparing it to a 3D fighting game to downplay its significance would also be absurd
No. You are an idiot too stupid to follow a discussion. Different genres adapt ideas from each other all the time. Look at how many basic mechanics are shared between Warcraft (1995, RTS) and Baldur's Gate (1998, RPG).

I'm not disputing that Ocarina of Wasting Time on boring puzzles and babbys first RPG story was the first polished 3D action-adventure game. I'm disputing that it was anything much beyond that as far as the 3D gaming revolution went. Do you really expect me to believe that Grand Theft Auto series, the most popular 3D action-adventure of 6th gen, wouldn't have figured out automatic targeting if Zelda hadn't done it first? Please.

>>7897217
>Do you really expect me to believe that Grand Theft Auto series, the most popular 3D action-adventure of 6th gen, wouldn't have figured out automatic targeting if Zelda hadn't done it first?
Let's ask the GTA guys themselves
>Anyone who makes 3-D games who says they’ve not borrowed something from Mario or Zelda is lying — from the games on Nintendo 64, not necessarily the ones from today.

>>7897401
Figures, your post doesn't answer my question. Once again you show a total lack of reading comprehension. Figures that you never moved beyond a toddler game like Ocarina of Time.

>>7898179
Not the anon you're coping to but damn, that's just embarrassing.

Akshully Virtual On had lock on targeting first.

>>7897083
keep seething 17 year old nintoddlers

>>7897401
>Anyone who makes 3-D games who says they’ve not borrowed something from Mario or Zelda is lying
omg this game has third person view and a sword! it's an oot clone!!

>>7896007
Redguard was built using an aging XnGine software Bethesda had been using since like 1993. Redguard was a janky mess but they made a better game 3 years earlier with the same engine, Terminator Future Shock and Skynet, which were huge and played great.

The pinnacle of open world, or semi open world in 1997- 1998 would be Novalgic games. Delta Force, Comanche 3, Armored Fist 2, etc. They boasted massive open levels, incredible draw distance, destructible environment, procedurally generated voxel terrain, and realistic projectile trajectory calculations.

>>7899032
>Terminator Future Shock and Skynet
extremely well made for the time and were really fun to play, still are. damn now i want to play some skynet.

>>7895264
It was cheap AND it worked. It had a lot of janky games, but with a great dev environment and a library consisting of over 10k games, there are good games to choose from for each and every genre you want. In some ways it was also technically superior to the NES too. It's got bitmap graphics and a faster CPU that's not bogged down by complicated graphics architecture, it's so powerful people have made Wolfenstein 3D clones for it.

>>7896352
seethe.

>>7898907
Not sure how esle to respond to someone too stupid to follow logic. Quotes from developers in interviews where they blow smoke up someone's ass for various reasons both social and professional should never be taken seriously anyway. Doing that is embarrassing and it happens on /vr/ a lot.

>>7895459
A lot of people think NES had better 2d platformers on the whole. 4th gen has a few notable games but on the whole they were more casual and flashy.

I agree the Spectrum is more flexible than the NES in some ways especially in how you can manipulate the graphics and the lack of h/w sprites/scrolling is partially compensated by CPU muscle. Honestly the 6502's main asset was always cost and it's no surprise that most 6502-based retro machines need custom chips to do anything.

>>7884668
> lower-budget niche affair like Might and Magic VI

This is simply false. MM6 is neither low-budget nor niche. It was in active development for 3+ years beginning in 1994. Experienced and well-funded studio at the time. It was released at the time when HoMM 2 was wildly popular far ourtside of MM 1-5 audience.

>>7895620
The entire 3D graphics were built from hundreds of tiles that are assembled like puzzles to form 3D shapes from white lines. Yes it was a technical feat, and the reason the NES had almost no other 3D game. Unlike the NES, Atari 7800 was the most dev friendly console for 3D games thanks to the console's interesting ability to fill up the entire screen with vertical lines of all lengths. Not sure how Elite would work on the 7800, but LucasArts made an impressive port of Ballblazer for it and they were also working on a Rescue on Fractalus port.

>>7899629
Compare it to the budgets for Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Zelda

>>7899384
Seethe harder faggot. He pwned your bitch ass.

>>7899920
No he didn't

C64 was kind of eh at 3D as well, which is why Stunt Car Racer was a really impressive technical feat.

>>7899983
Also I should add the Amiga was not as good as the Atari ST at 3D.

>>7899663
They put Ballblazer on the C64 and a (Japan only) NES port. Both of them sucked dick.

>>7899967

>>7899504
not that the weebs on this board will admit it but most JPCs were quite close to the Spectrum design-wise, they were generally Z80 machines with bitmap graphics and I don't think they ever made anything like the C64 with custom sound and graphics processors.

There was also the Fujitsu FM-7 which was 6809-based, think of it as Japan's TRS-80 CoCo.

>>7883216
>It only had one town.

>Kokiri Forest
>Kakoriko Village
>Zora's Domain
>Goron City
>Hyrule in Young Link timeline

You have no idea what you're talking about.

>>7900758
If it was a fallout game, those "towns" would be called settlements.

>>7900646
Say it outright like a man with balls not a pussy with none:
"GTA devs would not have come up with auto targeting if it wasn't for Zelda"
That's your position. You actually believe that. But you are too much of a nancyboy to make a real argument.

>>7901815
Dudelet, I'm not the faggot you lost the argument with. I'm just some random dude laughing at how bad you got owned and how desperate your cope is.

>>7901815
>"GTA devs would not have come up with auto targeting if it wasn't for Zelda"
Actually that would be a good thing. PC ports of every GTA game control much better than their console counterparts.

>>7901829
You agree with him. I stated what you agree with. If you have a problem with that, maybe you ought to reconsider your interpretation of what happened and your ability to not make retarded posts.

>>7901834
>i coped i coped i coped
Dudelet. Even your mom is gonna cringe at that cope. Quit while you're behind.

>>7882949
I sort of had an idea the kind of moment to moment gameplay from the commercial I saw: https://youtu.be/E-qBkWerZDg

After getting the game from those cases with the glass front (with arm holes to physically touch) from K-mart, I recall loving the artwork in the manual. They also included a map which showed most of the map, leaving out some parts for mystery so it was not a surprise. The original game is still my favorite maybe because it was my introduction to the series, but I do find it fun and engaging. Ocarina was nice, but not impressive to me as I somehow kind of expected it at the time. I do like Ocarina's cute female characters.

>>7904358
Thank you anon for your genuine answer in an otherwise derailed thread!

>>7904453
It's only "derailed" because OP made a stupid assertion.

>>7882981
Why do we give a shit, tranny?

>>7883195
OoT sucks. You have gay/tranny taste. Truth hurts.

>>7883519
Good game, but Zelda II is [vastly] superior.

>>7884970
Hydlide sucks so bad though...

>>7885342
This. Nintendo 64 sucks 15 inch nigger penii.

>>7882949
It was the hardest game ever made, and still is. Nobody liked it, it was terrible. Game full of impossible to kill ultra boss monsters called octoroks, and they are on every screen in the game. Zelda was huge failure until amazing genius man made Wind Waker. That's the best Zelda, you should play that one.

>>7886231
Enjoy those black cocks now, dontcha?

>>7905390
It's primitive, but innovative.

>>7883695
Same here.
When I first saw Super Mario 64 it was basically my 1st time seeing a 3D game. My mouth was on the floor. Same for OoT.

>>7883026
Nigga you forget most families didn’t own a home computer back then, let alone would let their kids monopolize it.

Why are so many people lying about being boomers in this thread

>>7882949
No one really gave a shit. We all heard it was a great adventure/rpg. Most of us neighborhood kids already had an NES by then so those of us who got the game passed it around. I enjoyed it but we were more into arcade type games back then.

>>7905727
Being 30 yo gamer is a character flaw.

>>7905720
You must have been poor. The average family had at least a C64 or some other 8-bit computer.

>>7883568
>>7883695
>>7905715
There are people who unironically only consume nintendo products???

>>7905363
There was nothing incorrect with assuming that a fair amount of people on a retro board would have been children in the late 80s and Zelda would have been there first major exposure to a large video game world. But clearly he underestimated the number of 50-year old CRPG fags/zoomers pretending to be them.

>>7895521
>ultima
>esoteric
Ultima is literally the reason why games like Zelda exist.
It was insanely popular in Japan.

>>7905720
I'm pretty sure the point is accepted that kids who never had anything but a Nintendo had their minds blown by Ocarina, and that there were a lot of those kids. But that plenty of others had been playing 3D games for years, especially by 1998.

For the record, in the summer of 1996(same summer as Quake), Mario 64 really stood out as a promising launch title for the Nintendo 64. It was clearly ahead of the standard for console games at the time in terms of smooth and intuitive gameplay in a fully 3D game. But it took 2 more years for Nintendo to finally deliver Zelda and during that time there'd been a shit-ton of great 3D games released for other platforms and hype for more on the way. This is not to say Ocarina isn't one of the best games of the generation. But the only people having their minds blown by it were Nintendo-only kids.

>>7905727
Plenty of legit replies. This guy clearly was there: >>7905767

>>7905854
> There was nothing incorrect with assuming that a fair amount of people on a retro board would have been children in the late 80s and Zelda would have been there first major exposure to a large video game world.
Right but the flaw here is the assumption that kids were really thinking about it in terms of "size of the world." I wrote about it here: >>7884041. The world didn't feel huge because there was no frame of reference. For what it's worth, ALTTP feels a little small after playing LoZ1, because those games are similar enough that you can use the original as a frame of reference. I loved CRPGs and played a number of them, but just doesn't make sense to compare them to Zelda. Playing old school CRPGs involves an entirely different mindset.
> But clearly he underestimated the number of 50-year old CRPG fags/zoomers pretending to be them.
Maybe, though again those people are making the same mistaken assumption that people playing Zelda were thinking in terms of world size. This mindset comes from the post-3D revolution when there's a fundamentally consistent way to evaluate game worlds built on a standard walking simulator engine. You have environments, models, textures, and a baseline of realistic physics to govern the interactions of all the objects in the world. It's typically real-time and the game is tuned so that the speed you move through the environment aims for realism. There's a "wow factor" from simply experiencing a well-rendered 3D world with a huge scale and scope, that doesn't apply to the kind of abstract 2D games common in the late 80s and early 90s.

>>7906164
>The world didn't feel huge because there was no frame of reference.
I see your point given that there were not that many adventure games like it on the NES at the time of release. I always thought that since it was the first console game to have a save game option, this would have made it seem more vast compared to all of the earlier NES games that you had to beat in a single sitting. But I could see how that might not have occurred to that many kids at the time who just thought, "Wow, this game is awesome, I'm going to play the shit out of it!" without being too conscious of world size.

>>7906225
>I always thought that since it was the first console game to have a save game option, this would have made it seem more vast
The persistence was a huge deal for a console game. The persistence of the world and growth of your character was very rare in NES games at the time (I think the only other NES games I had with a save battery were Final Fantasy and Tecmo Super Bowl and they both came out much later). And of course arcade games were not designed around letting you save your progress. But again, the thinking is way too oriented around thinking about "vast size of the game world" as the important part. As far as consoles were concerned, in North America in 1987 Zelda was the only game with a persistent world at all. It was as close as you could get to an RPG on a console in 1987, without it being an RPG. But it wasn't an RPG and even then it looked weird and wrong when game journos would try to call it one.

>>7883026
Going from LTTP to OOT was a big deal. In hindsight I think LTTP is more enjoyable, but OOT is and was a hallmark in game design with its targeting system for a 3D space. Still I remember playing the demo at Toys r Us and being floored.

>>7882949
I remember playing it in the 80s and honestly i wasnt that impressed. The giant sprites in Tysons punch out were way more impressive

>>7882949
I played this last year, not even knowing how it looks. I’ve known the characters only as 3d, or cartoony look, and I legit had a blast getting lost. First dungeon I finished was the 3rd and I had explored most of the map. I even skipped the intro text and had no clue what I was supposed to do.

First half of the game is 10/10, but when the bosses start to repeat, it kinda loses steam/uniqueness. And fuck the reliance on guides and outside sources required to finish it.

>>7907619
Zelda was pretty universally regarded as a B-tier franchise before OoT, and you know how well that aged lmao

>>7882949
Overwheming. Same with Zelda 2, Metroid, and Simon's Quest.

>>7908496
Except Zelda, Zelda 2 and LttP were some of the best selling, best regarded games of all time.

>>7909587
Metroid has more genuinely questionable design elements though. Backtracking through some of those areas is way more tedious than roaming the Zelda overworld.