The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Retro Blast Podcast.

4:59

I am your host, Patrick Brickhouse, and joining me today is a first time, very special guest, and I'm going to let her introduce herself right now.

Hello, everyone, I'm Rachael Camui. I feel like I have been a fan and a friend of this podcast for years now. But yeah, just to let everybody know a little bit about me, I'm a producer.

I work in voiceover and localization, which means I work on a lot of anime and video games that you guys have seen. And that's what I do every day. But I'm also a opera singer.

I was a professional opera singer for 10 years. And honestly, the most important identifier I have is I am a lifelong gamer. I've been playing video games since I was three years old.

And now I stream on Twitch and pretty much play video games every single day.

Yeah, and that's why you're here.

Yes, that is 100% why I'm here.

Well, there are many reasons. But yeah, I would like to just welcome you. I really appreciate you coming on.

I know we had talked about doing an episode for this particular game a while back. And I'm glad we could finally make that happen. And I know that we're both very excited to talk about this one.

But Rachael, for those who, maybe they didn't read the title of this episode, maybe they just jumped right in because they're superfans. They don't care. So they're in the episode, and they don't know what game we're talking about today.

Rachael, what game are we discussing today?

Oh, we're gonna talk about The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past.

Oh, this one is a long time coming. This needed to happen. I have been so excited to finally get to this game.

The first episode of this podcast was Ocarina of Time. Yeah, so this has been kind of like, it's been in the background for a long time. It's something that I just needed to get to the point where I was ready to dive into it.

And I feel like you are the perfect guest to have on for this because we've had discussions about this in the past. Like every time you and I have been playing a game together or something like that, this has come up and we just gush, right?

So it's something that now is the time for us to be able to kind of put that out there and celebrate this game with everybody, all the listeners who are going to be tuning in.

So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and jump into a quick intro here.

And then as soon as we're done with that, I'm going to bring us back and we're going to jump into our memories of A Link to the Past and maybe a little bit about Zelda overall. Does that sound good to you, Rachael?

That sounds awesome.

All right, here we go. The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past is a 1991 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

It is the third game in the Legend of Zelda series following Zelda II The Adventure of Link from 1987. It was released in Japan in 1991 and in North America and Europe in 1992.

The story is set many years before the events of the first two Zelda games. The player controls Link as he journeys to save Hyrule, defeat the demon king Ganon, and rescue the descendants of the Seven Sages.

It returns to a top-down perspective similar to the original The Legend of Zelda dropping the side-scrolling gameplay of The Adventure of Link. It also introduced series staples such as parallel worlds and items including the Master Sword.

A Link to the Past is considered among the greatest video games ever made with particular praise for its presentation and innovative gameplay.

It was ported to the Game Boy Advance as A Link to the Past and Four Swords in 2002 and had sold 6.5 million copies across both platforms by 2004.

It was subsequently re-released on the Wii, Wii U, and New Nintendo 3DS via the Virtual console, the Nintendo Switch via the Nintendo Classic service, and the Super NES Classic Edition.

A sequel, A Link Between Worlds, was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013. All right. Man, it's almost like hard to even just like figure out where to start.

But luckily, we know exactly where to start because this show runs on our memories and our nostalgia. And that's where we're gonna kick it off. And Rachael, as the esteemed guest, you get to kick us off.

So what I wanna do before we kind of specifically get into A Link to the Past, I wanna hand it over to you. And I'd like to know a little bit about your memories of Zelda in general.

Your first exposure to it, how that kind of played into your childhood, other Zelda media, anything like that. But tell me your story, your beginnings with Zelda.

10:29

Oh man, this is like a core, Zelda is like a core memory for me.

In my intro, I said I've been gaming since I was three years old. And to be honest, one of my first memories is playing Zelda. Um, and I, you know, we had a NES, which, you know, I grew up in the 80s.

So we had an NES. We had a few different games for the NES. But one of them was The Legend of Zelda.

And I have so many memories of my dad playing The Legend of Zelda and me and my sister just sitting with him while he would play the game. And it was like a whole group activity, you know?

Like a family time. That's awesome.

Yes, it was like family time. We had notes, like we had like notes that my dad had written about like how to solve different puzzles and like where different things were.

We had the map, but I don't know if you remember this in the original NES, it's only a partial map that they give you, right? So what we had done is we had drawn out the other quadrants on the map.

Oh, I love that so much. Yes.

And we would like lay it out in the living room, and me and my sister would be like, dad, go here, dad, go over there. And we have, I just, I don't know, it was a really nice-

That takes me back. That was a thing. That was something that my family did too, like that kind of thing where we would keep notes and have like, you know, we would write everything down.

So when it came to games, so that's, I love hearing that. So your dad, did your dad play it first? And then you, so you and your sister kind of watched him play.

And that was your first like kind of exposure to it.

Yeah, yeah. 100%. I mean, I was only three years old.

So I'm sure I held the controller at certain times, but I don't know if I was really playing it in a way that was-

Like unplugged the controller, like, here you go, Rachael.

Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't know if I was really making any progress. But like, yeah, one of my core memories is just playing Zelda with my dad.

And, you know, we would play a little bit. I do remember, you know, around that time playing other Nintendo games. So I would play it, but I don't even have a memory of like beating the game at that time.

You know, it really was just like that experience of, you know, my dad coming home from work, sitting there, and we would just play Zelda like week after week, you know.

And I think from there, like, I just, I credit Zelda with like why I became such a gamer, you know, because that memory and that time, I think was just so formative, you know, that it's like, I, it helped me, like, I love video games now, you know,

and I think it's really because of my time with the original Zelda.

Now, real quick, was Zelda technically like your first video game that you experienced?

Do you remember the first game you played? Was it on NES?

I think, I think it was Zelda. I might have also been playing, like, Super Mario at the same time, Duck Hunt, you know, but like, the one, the one that really sticks out in my brain is Zelda. So they were pretty concurrent at the same time.

But yeah, that whole era of, like, NES gaming. And I don't know, I mean, you probably felt this, like, back then it was like, I think we had, like, three or four games. Yeah, you would get very few.

Because they were so expensive. Like, so it's not like I have this huge collection, but then I also remember, like, going to friends' houses and playing their games.

You know, like, oh, they have Mario, like, I remember my cousin actually had Mario 2 and being like, oh my God, I get to play Mario 2.

Which was so different from the first one, right?

Yes, exactly. And then, like, same thing with, like, Zelda 2. Like, I never owned Zelda 2, but I remember, like, going to a friend's house and seeing them playing it and being like, wow, this is so different than the Zelda that I'm used to.

Yeah, Zelda 2, we didn't have it either.

We had the original. We didn't have Zelda 2, but my uncle had it and I remember playing it. And yeah, it is drastically different, but I was obsessed with it.

It was one of those things where he was like, it's Zelda. Like, I want it.

Yes.

But yeah, I'm in the same boat because we would have, like, we didn't get games that often. You probably remember this too. You even mentioned like your dad playing it, but like my parents didn't really play video games.

That was not a thing. But like I was around the same age when we got one because the NES, for those who weren't there or weren't kids when the NES was a thing, you talk about like the Wii, like being that console that everybody had in their house.

So that was the NES. Like the NES was a console that families were just buying. Like they were, it was becoming like a huge, huge like cultural phenomenon back then.

And like I didn't even know.

I feel like it, yeah, it didn't even really matter. Like there wasn't really this concept back then of like being a gamer or like being a nerd or something like that.

Like maybe arcade gamer maybe, but that was probably it.

Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't like owning an NES made you a nerd. In the way that I think towards like going into the 90s, maybe that identity started forming more.

Like in the 80s, I completely agree with you. It was really just like families had it. It was just like one of those devices like a VCR that you just had.

It was like the hot toy or like the hot new piece of equipment.

And so everybody was buying them. And so it just became this staple really. I mean, I can only speak for North America, but like in North America, the NES was a big deal.

And it formed, I mean, my love for video games came from it, too. Like without the NES, it wouldn't, probably wouldn't have happened the same way that it did. Cause I was also about, I think I was about three years old when I first started playing.

And mine was Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt.

And so yeah, that's definitely, it's just, it's wild to talk about it too, because we even know, you and I know people who are in our group of friends and everything, who their first console was like maybe a PlayStation or something like that, which

is great. But the NES was just a different beast. It really was. I do have to ask this before I put it back over.

Did you have a Nintendo Power subscription?

I did not, but I had some friends who did. And I remember, actually, I can kind of give into that, but I remember like pouring over Nintendo Power like at recess at school.

Oh, yeah. We had the first run. We had the first issue.

Oh, that's so cool.

Which, sadly, I don't have anymore because it got torn up, but it got all messed up over time, but I really wish I did.

But, okay, so your first experience was playing kind of like as a family with it. And you said you remember kind of playing it a little bit and you don't remember beating it. So you have memories of like that experience.

What do you think it was about Zelda that really kind of, I guess, drew you in? Was it kind of like a mesmerizing thing for you to like experience?

Because your first video game, I always kind of recollect seeing Super Mario Brothers for the first time and just being so young, being like, oh, this isn't a TV show. This is a TV show, but I can play it? Like I can move it.

Do you remember kind of how you experienced that at the time or kind of what that felt like?

Yeah, gosh, that's such an interesting question. I feel like there was something very epic about the scale of that original Zelda, where even at the time, there just wasn't another game like it.

The game just felt so massive and I really loved the puzzle aspect of it, the uncovering of new information or solving a puzzle or solving a problem. I remember with my dad even being like, dad, you have to use the bomb on that wall.

You have to burn this bush.

Yeah, exactly. There was a certain amount of puzzle solving to it, but I think is what really stuck with me. Now as an adult, it's one of my favorite things is I love puzzle games.

I love puzzles in general. I do crossword puzzles all the time. I love logic puzzles.

I think even as a kid, I was really into those kinds of logic-based games. I'm sure my mom was giving them to me so that I would just learn better, but I really liked that type of gameplay. I found it super engaging and I always loved this idea.

I remember a few years later when the Game Boy came out, I played a lot of Tetris and I just always loved this type of game where you're puzzle-solving.

I think that was one of the things that really stuck out to me about Zelda was just this idea that you could progress by solving a puzzle or solving a problem.

Whereas stuff like Mario and all the side-scrollers, that's fun, but it wasn't quite as puzzle-based.

It's more just like you're jumping, avoiding obstacles or dealing with difficulty of enemies and stuff, but it was just a different way of engaging with the video game that I had never experienced before.

It was an open world.

Even before we had the Skyrims and stuff like that, that we have now, it was a living, breathing world, whereas you had Mario or Mega Man or whatever, or Metroid, which Metroid is similar in some ways, because it is the world that you're moving

through, but you're dropped into it, and you can just start going and exploring. That sense of exploration was there, which Mario had secrets and stuff. You could go down this pipe and be in an underground lair, but again, they're just levels, right?

Yeah, and you're going in a linear fashion in those games. Zelda was like, you could go anywhere.

You could go anywhere, sky's the limit, but I can't get past this, so I have to come back later, or I have to figure out what to do. It was really good at building that mystery. I think you probably agree, but as a kid, that awakened that part of me.

I also love puzzles. I really love solving puzzles. I like puzzles and games, even Resident Evil.

Resident Evil is one of my favorite series. I love that there are still puzzles in Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I'm always drawn to that because I love to figure that stuff out.

That gives me that sense of accomplishment that I really love. A lot of the games that were popular back then, which we grew up with were side-scrollers and platformers. That was the most popular.

Real quick, while we're on that note, were there any other games that obviously starting from your appreciation for Zelda and getting into those types of games, fantasy, RPG type adventure games?

What other games do you remember playing on NES that you really liked?

Man, I definitely played all the Mario's. I remember that. I feel like my NES exposure at the time was pretty limited.

I never really played Final Fantasy. I never played Metroid back then. I found all those games later on.

But I think it was just like Zelda by itself. That was the one. No other game is like this.

I remember playing Top Gun with my family.

That's great.

I love it. I'm trying to remember what other NES games we had. I think I played DuckTales, which was hard.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, that was a great game.

I had a lot of kids.

It was a lot of kid games, so that was a lot of my experience. I didn't really... Yeah, I never experienced any other game that was so open like how Zelda was, so it just sticks out in my memory.

And honestly, through the rest of my childhood, I mostly... I wasn't really into... I never played an RPG until I was a teenager.

Well, that's not true, actually a little bit. I think I played like Fantasy Star and Shining Force on my Genesis, but I didn't really grow up playing Final Fantasy or all these JRPGs that now are probably one of my favorite genres of games.

But it was always Zelda. Zelda was like that action RPG, I think that I was just really... I just loved the format of the game and I grew up playing Zelda.

Like over and over and over again.

It sounds too... I mean, and you may have eluded to this in a way anyway, but it sounds like Zelda legitimately made you the gamer you are today. It really is.

It really is.

It formed that love for that medium for you.

Yes.

I only have three tattoos and one of them is a Zelda tattoo.

And I have two Zelda tattoos. It's like, yeah, I can't get enough.

I literally feel that way. I feel like without Zelda, I probably wouldn't be a gamer at all.

Yeah. I completely understand. And I think it was a very formative game for me for the same reason.

And I'll just kind of real briefly. I know that I've talked about Zelda on this show a lot. It always comes up.

But for me, I was pretty young. Like I said, I think I was maybe three or four and Mario Brothers again was the first game. But we had Zelda pretty early on.

And the first thing that really stands out to me was that gold cartridge and just how shiny it is and how beautiful it is.

And we had a few gray carts and you knew where Zelda was because it was a bright, shiny gold cart, which I love that they did that. And my mom is really like, she likes puzzles as well. She really likes puzzle games and she really wanted Zelda.

I think when we got the NES, she wanted to kind of get into it. And one of the games she got was Zelda and she got Ultima Exodus.

I don't know if you've played that or heard of it, but Ultima Exodus was technically the first RPG game I played that, not like Zelda, which is like an adventure RPG, but similar to like Final Fantasy before I played Final Fantasy, which has like the

turn-based, which I didn't understand how to play it because it didn't make sense to my little kid brain, right? I was like, what am I doing? Like, why can't I just move and attack? Why am I doing this?

Why are the enemies, why are we going in turns? That kind of thing. And so my mom had it.

She played it a little bit. My sisters played it. And I played it, but I got lost a lot.

And I would get confused because again, I was so young. I didn't really know quite how to process it. But as I got a little bit older, I'd return to it.

And then I looked at like the map that we had, and I looked at the notes that we had, and I looked at what my mom did. And I tried to follow that. And like, oh, like you said, bomb this wall.

And then you have to go here. And this is how you get through this dungeon. And so I was captivated by it.

And Zelda became something that I was very interested in quite a bit. And I actually have to bring this up.

26:22

Did you watch the Zelda cartoon show?

Oh, you know I did.

So let's talk. Can we talk about it just real quick? Sure.

I feel like we can't just, we can't skip this. It's super important. So one of my memories when my mom, so my dad would work during the day.

And when I was very young, my mom would take me with her wherever she had to go. Like if she had to go run errands or do stuff, she would take me wherever.

And a lot of times she would end up at like the drug store, like Eckerd, we had an Eckerd Drugs.

Oh my god, I remember Eckerd.

Yeah, so winding it back here. Eckerd Drugs, she'd take me in there. And Eckerd would often have like video cassette tapes that you could purchase, like there.

And I was walking around with her and I looked on like one of their end racks. There were videotapes for the Super Mario Brothers Super Show and The Legend of Zelda. And I looked and I was, mom, mom, there's a Zelda cartoon.

And she looked and she was like, oh yeah, there is. And I grabbed it and I was like, please, please, please, please. Like, can I have it?

And she relented and let me have it, right? So took it home, watched it, and that formed, that show formed my opinion of what Link, what, like who he was. So the Link in that show, well, Rachael, you remember.

He, how do we describe, what's the best way to describe him? Um, he's...

Well, it's very different than the game.

He's very different than the game. First of all, he talks, so there's that. But he talks like a quintessential, like late 80s, early 90s, like surfer dude.

Surfer, yeah, I was like, he had like the weird surfers.

He had that cult, which was huge in the 90s, like the 80s, 90s, was that surfer culture, the California like surfer culture.

And everybody was saying dude and rad and awesome and Ninja Turtles and everything like it. That was like, that was the thing back then. And that's how he talked.

And it was super weird. Even Princess Zelda was very like, she was like sassy and like all that. Like there was this interesting way that they kind of produced that show.

Do you have any particular memories of it? Do you remember like really enjoying that show?

I don't have like strong memories of it, but I remember watching it. So I don't have anything like that where like, I remember seeing like the videotapes or something. I just, it was on TV.

I think I just saw it on TV organically. So I wouldn't really say, you know, I watched it in any sort of through put coherent way.

Cause you know how things were like back in the era of cable, it was like, you would just catch an episode and then you would move on with your life. It wasn't necessarily like you were sitting down watching every episode in a row.

So I don't really know if there was a plot that I remember, but I just remember thinking it was really cool. And I watched the Super Mario Brothers. I mean, you remember like the movie.

Yes.

Yes. I remember going to see the movie.

Yes. I just remember this era. And just thinking that stuff was really cool.

Like, oh, it's also, you know, on TV. It's not just a game. But I remember his voice.

I do remember the surfer aesthetic.

Excuse me.

Yeah. And I honestly, though, my impression at the time was just like, wow. Like, I was so in awe that there was also a Zelda TV show.

That's probably my biggest takeaway was just like, this is so amazing. It's so cool. And like, so rad.

Yeah.

Like, that was really my vibe at the time, you know?

And it was honestly, I'm surprised that it existed.

It's weird to look back at it now. Like, it almost feels like a fever dream.

Like, if you go to someone, like, if I were to go to, like, my nephew who's played, like, newer Zelda games or whatever and be like, hey, if you like Zelda, why don't you check out the, have you seen the animated show?

He would look at me, like he would watch it and be like, what is wrong with you? Like, why are you showing me this?

But it does kind of, I guess it kind of also goes back to what we were saying about Nintendo was not just the NES, but Nintendo was just like a widely known brand at that point.

Yes.

And everything that they had was becoming like, I mean, we had Nintendo cereal, right? You remember the Nintendo cereal system? It was half Mario and half Zelda.

I do remember that.

I never had it, but I remember it.

Oh, yeah. We had a few boxes of that. But I remember that.

I remember they had obviously the games, we had the cartoon shows. Eventually, we got the Mario movie, which is also a fever dream. I love that movie, but not because it's a good movie, but just because it's insane.

Yes.

But we didn't have like, it's again, from a time where we didn't really have like an established idea of like who Mario is, who Link is.

So they were just kind of doing what they wanted. So if you go back and watch that stuff now, it's like, well, why is Link like that? Well, it's before Nintendo decided, okay, this is how Mario behaves.

This is how he is.

Right.

Right. So it's like they just did stuff. And it was very indicative of the time.

There was another show, Rachael, that I feel like you might remember called Captain N, The Game Master. Do you remember that?

Oh, I never saw that. I never saw that.

So there was a really popular animated show. It was called Captain N, The Game Master. And it opens up with a guy, like a live action guy.

And he's playing Nintendo in his bedroom with his dog. And he gets sucked into the TV.

Oh my God.

And he becomes animated and he ends up in Nintendo World. And he hangs out. This is, oh my God.

I'm so glad that you've actually never seen this because when you check it out, it's going to blow your mind.

You're explaining this to me and I'm just like, this is so...

It's insane.

You keep circling around this, but it's just so indicative of the time because it's this exact concept of the stuff that was happening.

Yeah.

It was like, oh yeah, you're being transported into the game world. We're in the game. Yeah, exactly.

And he, it's kind of the same thing where he hangs.

So there's a princess who's there and the main characters that hang out with him. Are you ready for this?

I'm ready.

So he has a Nintendo zapper on a, like a holster, like a gun holster on his belt. Yes. So he has a zapper and his zapper in the, in Nintendo world actually can shoot things.

He's very much like typical team, like letter jacket dude, right? The characters that he hangs out with are Kid Icarus, Simon Belmont, Mega Man, and the, the evil villain of the show, the main evil villain is Mother Brain from, from Metroid.

Holy crap.

Who talks like, I don't, how do I describe this? Mother Brain in that show talks like this. She talks like Little Shop of Horrors.

It's insane. Simon Belmont is an idiot. He talks like, he's like, how do I, I don't even know how to describe this, but he's got like slick back hair.

He's like super into himself and egotistical and he's dumb. Mega Man talks like this. It's really weird, Rachael.

If you've never seen it, I would say as soon as you can, go to YouTube and look up Captain and the Game Master and just watch the intro and just. Oh my God. It is burned into my memory because I remember watching it.

It's like I've never, I've never seen it, but there's something like as you're describing it where I'm just like, yes, this was the type of thing that was on TV.

It was available. I remember reading books where it was like you got transported into a video game. I remember, gosh, we're really going on a tangent here, but I remember this.

It was a Nickelodeon show. God, I can't remember what it was called. Yes, Nick Arcade.

I wanted to be on that show so bad because I was like, oh my God, you get transported into the game. Now, looking back, it was literally just like a green screen. As a kid, I was just like, how does this happen?

This is so amazing.

It's actually kind of crazy, actually. At the time, that was wild that they did that.

I don't know, all this stuff was happening back then.

I feel like video games were so new that I think seeing those characters in another space, like whether it was like Nintendo Power, like you said, reading it in a magazine or seeing it on TV or something, it was just, there was something that was so

novel about it at the time that I think is just different now when you hear about things like, oh, the Mario movie or whatever. It's so part of the culture now that it feels almost expected.

But back then, it was just like, whoa, this is also a TV show? This is also, I can get a magazine and read about this? There was something very interesting novel and new about it at the time.

Which is great that we got to experience that because what you just said makes a lot of sense because even now, it's like with the Mario movie, everybody who's waiting for that Mario movie, like the new ones, they have an expectation.

They're like, well, Mario better sound like this and Luigi better sound like I think Luigi's supposed to sound like Bowser better be like this. Back then, you never knew what was going to happen.

You never knew how these characters were going to be represented because there wasn't a basis. There wasn't a template that we looked at. So nobody was mad.

Nobody was like, when they went to go see the Super Mario Brothers movie, I remember going to the theater and being, just accepting the fact that Yoshi was a small velociraptor.

Yes.

Looked like he was at a Jurassic Park. And I was just like, okay, you don't think about it. Because you're just like, I guess that's Yoshi.

But if that came out today, people would be like, what is this? And I think there was some degree of that anyway. But I just, I loved it.

I loved that movie when it first came out. Because I was just like, it's Mario. Of course I loved it.

So we got to kind of be around when they were figuring all that stuff out. And I kind of wish they still did stuff like that. I kind of wish that it all wasn't so like branded.

And like we got to stick with exactly how the brand's supposed to be. Instead of doing like fun, weird stuff. Like I wish there was more of that now.

But I'm glad that we got to experience it. But anyway, I will kind of circle back here. Let's talk about, you said you did play or you experienced Zelda 2.

So you got to kind of see that as well. Now, and you mentioned you had a Genesis. Were, did you have a Super Nintendo?

Or did you have a friend who had one? When did you first encounter Link to the Past?

37:42

So this is such a good story.

I'm so thrilled I got to share this.

I'm excited and I know the listeners are too.

So, you know, I think at some point we had sold our Nintendo. I think, you know, maybe around like 1990, 1991, it was becoming old. It was like irrelevant.

I don't want to say, I don't want to say it was irrelevant, but it was, you know, it was fading. And so I think my parents had decided to sell it at some point. And so I didn't really have a gaming system for maybe a year or two.

Okay.

And I, so when I was a kid, I moved a lot.

I have moved over 30 times in my life. I stopped counting because it's just, it just reached a point where I was like, I don't even know.

But, you know, I moved a lot as a kid and it, you know, I would say growing up, my childhood was pretty volatile and unpredictable and a little chaotic. And I remember when my parents, we moved from Florida to New York. So pretty big move.

I was in, I was about to start third grade. And we were getting set up in our house, you know, the movers were coming in and like literally bringing the boxes into the house.

And I remember my dad had gone to the mall and just sort of like, impulse bought a Super Nintendo. Okay. And he gave it to me and my sister.

And I think this was my dad's way of like, just go do this while we're getting the house set up.

Oh, right. Like this will occupy you. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So my dad had bought a Super Nintendo for us. And at the time the Super Nintendo came with Super Mario World.

And then also, I think I had the version that came with Super Mario World and it came with Super Mario All Stars as well. Or maybe it was separate. I don't know, but I definitely had a version that came with a Mario.

There was one that came with it and there was one that had like a voucher where you could get it too.

Yeah, exactly.

So we got the two Super Marios, but then my dad also had bought Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past. And I think he had bought it because of all the time we had spent playing the original Zelda. And I just remember freaking out.

Like my sister and I were just freaking out, like, oh my god, we got the new Zelda. It had to be, it was like summer 1993, I think, when this happened.

And I remember my dad like setting it up in the basement and then us starting to play, my sister and I. And my sister's younger than me, but she always fought me and would always hold the controller.

So a lot of my memories as a kid playing games, especially single player games, are my sister actually playing the game and me watching. But we had such a good system going on because, you know, like I was a little older than her.

So again, I would kind of like tell her what to do, you know, like I would help her solve the puzzles and I would be like, go here, do that. But my sister just wanted to jump in right away and start playing.

So anyway, that is a core memory for me, is like my dad bringing the SNES Link to the Past, like, fuck Mario, I don't know if I can curse. I can bleep, it's fine. I was just like, oh my god, we have Zelda, like I'll play Mario, you know?

Yeah, that was where your focus was.

Oh my god.

And we just started playing it immediately. And I think we wandered around that beginning part where you're in the rain and you're just hearing Zelda over and over say like, please help me. Such a good opening.

I think we did that like for at least a week, being like, where do we go? What did we do?

I love it.

Because like we couldn't figure it out, you know? And then she would just keep telling you over and over. And we kept being like, where are we supposed to go?

I mean, eventually, I mean, we figured out that it was a bush that you were supposed to cut down and drop in a hole. But I mean, that was like a week of my life, was trying to figure out where, you know, where you were supposed to go.

Because even that opening section, there's like, you know, several map tiles that you can explore at that point. And I remember us running all around. I don't know, the game just, the game just felt so massive.

It was that same kind of exploration, you know, feeling again. And I just remember just being immediately captivated like as soon as we were in.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is, and I'm sure you talk about this a lot on your podcast, is the manuals.

Yeah. Oh my God. Yes.

Yes.

So I missed this era of gaming like so much where there was always a manual that came with your game. And I am like a voracious reader, right?

And so I just remember even the original Legend of Zelda, just reading that manual over and over and over again. And I remember what we were just talking about with the cartoon. It was like seeing those drawings in the book come to life.

The illustrations. The illustrations that were in there were just so cool. And it kind of helped set the tone for the game that you were playing.

Definitely. It would give your mind more stuff to imagine. I think in the world or what the enemies actually could look like and things like that.

And I just remember, especially Link to the Past, I read that manual. It used to sit on my bedside table and I would just read it over and over and over again until literally I think the cover fell off. Like it started falling apart.

But I bring this up because I even remember that first day, my sister was always that person who would just jump into the game. She didn't care about reading the manual or something like that. So she immediately starts playing.

I remember just laying on the floor next to her, just reading this manual, cover to cover. Then she'd be confused and I would be like, well, it says here in the manual.

If you'd read the manual, you'd know.

Yeah. So that was just, I don't know, for me also like a core memory was just reading those over and over and over again.

Every night before I would go to bed, I would just look at and then I would look at the screenshots of the game that they would have in there. And sometimes there would be like little hints.

There were, yeah. Absolutely.

And anyway, I mean, I just, I feel like Link to the Past, it is probably my favorite game of all time, but a lot of it is just because of the core, the core memories and like when it hit me in my life.

It was a time where I had just moved to a new town. I didn't really have a lot of friends, and it was so unexpected that we even got it. And I just, it really was like life-changing in a way.

I love that, and that's, so I'm so glad that you brought up the manuals.

That's something that I, yeah, I do bring it up a lot. We talk about it a lot on the show, but I really kind of, I really miss it. I miss it, the older I get, the more I miss it, right?

Because it was a lot of that discovery and kind of fleshing out what that world looked like and those manuals, I mean, they had so much. It wasn't just like, here's how you power on the game and here's whatever. All that was great.

That was all there too. But the illustrations, they went all in on those illustrations. They're so good.

Even going back and looking at them now, I love that version of Link and that design from that era so much. I like the Ocarina art. I like the Majora art.

I like the later titles, the different art styles. But there's something special about Link to the Past and how it looked.

And even to a degree, the original Zelda 2, the illustrations that they had in there, because it felt so much like very much the fantasy aspect. Link has pointy ears. Is he an elf?

Like, oh, he's got this style. There's all this stuff where you're just kind of like making correlations in your head with what this world is, what Hyrule is, right? Where Hyrule would be, what the time period is.

There's all these little hints in there. And not just Zelda, but all games had so much in those instruction manuals. And I was the same way, Rachael.

I would take the manual and the box. And when I was having cereal in the morning, I would just read the manual and read the box. And at night, I would read the manual.

And if I was really lucky and got, you know, another issue of Nintendo Power, I would read those cover to cover. And I would want to see everything in there because I just wanted to eat it up. Like I wanted so, I wanted all of it.

And we couldn't go online. It's not like we could go online and look at screenshots. We couldn't read walkthroughs or anything like that.

Everything, it's like what you're talking about with the game starting and you spending a week on that. Like that's awesome. Like yeah, you were lost for a week, but who cares?

Like that's amazing that you got to kind of like figure it out. And you got to get to where, oh, now the world's opening up. Now I've got that sense of accomplishment again from like just figuring out, okay, here's where I need to go.

And the game's telling you something there like, hey, what you just figured out, you're gonna have to do this more.

Like it's gonna be more stuff like this where you're gonna have to do some trial and error to figure out where you're gonna have to go.

So it's again, that just learning by doing instead of it being like when you approach a bush, press the Y button, nothing like that. It's just, here it is.

No, you were completely lost in a way and like you just had to figure it out or you were just stuck forever.

But it got your gears going.

And I feel like, do you think that playing video games, I mean, obviously A Link to the Past being a primary one for you, but playing video games at that age, even aside from the fact that you had an appreciation and enjoyed puzzles, did it also kind

of help you feel like, I always felt like video games, like it really improved my motor skills. And also, but also my ability to problem solve in a way that engaged me as someone.

So I had like, as someone who has ADHD, like I struggled a lot with like figuring things out or like understanding or improving that part of my brain, I guess.

And so playing games gave me an engaging way to do that, to where I could go, oh, I enjoy solving problems. I enjoy figuring out the answer to this.

And so that was something where I feel like if I hadn't had that, it sounds crazy, but it could have legitimately like, you know, maybe stifled my development, like mentally.

I know that's crazy, but I think so, because it really gave me a way to like exercise those muscles in my mind. Did you kind of feel like you had a similar experience?

Do you think it kind of gave you that kind of enhancement, so to speak, when it came to like problem solving and things like that?

49:26

Yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, I was always a smart cookie as a kid. So I just, I was really into solving problems. And I think absolutely it helped, like develop that muscle even more.

And I think it would help me in a way kind of reframe stuff like school, you know, because I would think about like doing a test or homework or something as almost like solving a problem or solving a puzzle or something like that.

And it made it more, I don't want to say it was enjoyable, but it just, it helped like make it not so daunting, you know, in a way where I was like, oh, I can do this. Like I already know how to do this in other, you know, contexts.

So, you know, doing this in school, when there's a teacher grading your work is less scary in a way. I think it definitely helped just make me more comfortable with doing that kind of thing.

And again, I used to get, I still do, I get a lot of enjoyment out of problem solving. I think that's why I do the work I do now. But it's like, you know, I, again, I think it was something where it was like, oh, I'm good at this.

I like it. I feel capable doing it. So it was really just kind of influencing me in that way of like, yes, this is some, this is something you're good at.

This is something you could do. And yeah, it kind of, in a way, I guess, like helped develop my confidence.

Interesting.

In my ability to solve problems. Interesting.

Okay.

Yeah.

I like that.

Yeah, I was, there was something you said that kind of made me, I was thinking about, oh, you know what it was?

I was gonna say the other thing that I just thought was so special about that pre-internet era of gaming is like, these days when you are stuck in a game, you can just Google the response, right?

And you could just research it and you can just get the answer. But at the time, I feel like the way we solve those types of issues was actually connecting with other people.

That's true.

I remember I would be stuck in A Link to the Past and then my cousin, who was four years older than me, would come over and he'd be like, oh, let's just do this. And then we would solve it together.

And it was actually encouraging me to talk to other people about the game, to spend time with them solving the problems together.

Or I remember I had this friend in fourth grade and we would talk at recess about the different problems and puzzles in the game and be like, oh, what did you do for this? Or he had Nintendo Power.

So he was getting some of the secrets and the tips and stuff like that. And I remember he became my friend because we could talk about Link to the Past.

That's also, yes, that is a thing.

That was the thing, the recess time. That was how you would figure things out was actually through this sense of community, more so than now you just Google an answer. You just look something up.

And I think we've kind of lost that sort of shared, I don't know, there was really like a shared community around like, oh, I went to my friend's house and then we figured this out together.

We got past this boss together or something, whatever it was.

It's a good memory to have.

Yeah. And I just, I feel like that aspect of gaming has gotten a little muted in the modern era.

It's pretty much muted. I'm trying to think like how that would play out now. And I feel like a kid going out to recess now to another kid and being like, oh, you know, I love this game, but I'm stuck on this part and they just Google it.

Exactly.

They just Google it.

They just Google it together.

You can't, I have to kind of say this too while we're on it, but one of the things that I remember was that, and I know you probably experience this, but if you would talk to other kids at school about video games, there was always going to be a kid

at some point who would just tell you like, oh yeah, all you have to do is this or this, and they would just make it up, and they would just completely lie, or they'd be like, yeah, there's a cheat. You can get infinite whatever if you do this, and

they would just make up stuff, and you would believe it because there was no way to verify it. So I can't tell you how many times somebody would be like, yeah, if you do this in this game, you'll get infinite lives, and they would just write it down,

and you go home and you keep trying it, and it wouldn't work, and you're just like, why doesn't this work? Because you couldn't go and verify that, right?

Yes, there was a lot of word of mouth, and there was a lot of false information in that word of mouth. Or like you said, people just making stuff up.

People would make, you remember the Tomb Raider nude code thing.

Oh my God, I do remember that being a thing.

Everybody at school swore, there was always a kid, at some point he was like, yeah, it works, trust me. And all the guys were like, what is the code? They wanted to know, like right now.

And so like that was, people would just make stuff up all the time. But you would also buy the same token, you'd have someone who'd be like, oh, by the way, hey, I'm playing Contra and it's really hard, which it is.

And you got someone that says like, hey, well, if you press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, you know, is it A, B, start or B, A? B, A, start, you get 30 lives or whatever. And you're like, really?

And you do it and it happens and it's beautiful. It's like one of those things where you would share that stuff. And it's, yeah, that is gone.

It is gone now. It has kind of, we've lost that, that type of in-person community sharing of that experience. That's gone, I think.

So, which I'm thankful. I'm really thankful that I got to do that and that I got to have that time because those are core memories for me, is going back and remembering having those conversations.

And actually, my first experience with Link to the Past, real quick, is basically, obviously, Zelda was a big thing in my household.

And I was really into everything about, excuse me, I was into everything about the original game, was really wanted to know everything about it.

And I got a Super Nintendo in, I think it was, by the time I got one, it had been out for maybe almost a year. I think I got mine in like maybe mid to late 1992. So, that's around the time we got it.

It was with the Super Mario World. I already told the story on this show, but just like a quick recap. My parents had bought me a Super Nintendo.

I had wanted one for a year. They bought me one and tried, my dad, I guess, forgot to hide it from me. And I walked down into the garage and it was sitting on his workbench.

And because I was going to get on my bike to ride, you know, ride around the neighborhood and maybe go to a friend's house. And I go down there and I see it and I just froze. And I just see the box on his workbench.

And this is important. It sounds like a weird detail, but I'm going to mention it because it's important to the story. But there was a watermelon.

There was a watermelon next to it. And the watermelon had maybe been there for a couple of days and it had kind of maybe rotted a little bit and was leaking. There's a reason I'm mentioning it.

But I go back inside and I'm freaking out. And I go tell him, I'm like, mom, dad, like not putting it together that maybe they purchased it. It was just there.

And I was like, there's a Super Nintendo. It's in the garage. And they just look at each other and they're just like, oh, okay.

And they're like, hold on, we'll be right back. And then they leave. They come back out and my dad goes down into the garage and he comes back up and he goes and talks to my mom.

And then they go and they talk a little bit more. And I'm sitting there just going like, why is there a Super Nintendo? Like, is it mine?

Like, whose is it? And they come out and they're like, hey, so that's not for you. They're like, that's not for you.

That's for, god, this sounds so bad. I think they were trying to think on the fly. They were like, that's for a less fortunate child.

We're donating that to someone. And I was like, oh, oh, okay. And I was, I deflated, you know, I was like completely deflated.

And I was like, so sad. And they walked off again and they come back. And my dad goes, hey, Pat, it's like, come here, I want to talk to you.

And he sits me down and he's like, look, he's like, your mom and I talked about it.

And, you know, I realized, we realized that, you know, there was a watermelon that your grandfather had left here and it had rotted and some of the juice from the watermelon got on the box. And it's all over the box, which is true.

There was like a whole section on the bottom of the box that had been covered in like watermelon juice. And so, like, literally, he looks at me and he goes, so, you know, we don't really want to give that to someone else.

Like, the box is ruined, right? So we're not going to give that away. So we just decided we're going to let you have it.

And I just, I didn't question that. I was like, oh my God, you know, like, amazing. So it took me years later to realize that, yes, they had probably gotten it for me for either my birth, it was probably for my birthday.

And my dad just forgot to put it up. So I saw it. They made up a story about giving it to a poor child.

And then watermelon juice saved the day. And that's how I got a Super Nintendo.

That is such a funny story.

It's literally how it happened.

It sounds like parents really being like, oh no.

Like, what do we do? He's a child. He's dumb.

Let's just make something up, you know? And, but yeah, so I got it then. It had the Super Mario World bundle in it, or bundled in and didn't have Zelda yet.

So Zelda, I think, I did look this up to make sure, but while it was released in 1991 in Japan, we didn't get it in North America till April, 1992. But again, it didn't come with the system that I had.

My first exposure to Link to the Past was one of my neighbors who lived down the street. His name was Jordan and I went to his house and he had it. And so he and his brother were playing it.

And I remember seeing it for the first time, because I'd seen the commercials. Like I'd seen the commercials on TV and I was completely mesmerized and I knew that I wanted that game. Makes no question and watch them play it.

And I was just mesmerized by it. I did not, I couldn't believe how good it looked. The graphics, the colors, like the Super Nintendo was just, that's another thing too.

The jump from the NES to the Super Nintendo was insane. Like it was insane at the time.

And it still is like even looking at them now, but at the time, the difference was just, it's hard to even say like how crazy it was, especially as a kid, seeing how much more there was and how much the sound and the graphics and the colors and the

controller was so cool. And so everything about it was just on another level. It really felt like super, like it was a super version of the Nintendo and...

No, it really did. It really did feel that way. I remember being completely in awe of the graphics and the music, like the sound of it too.

And it was amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

But you had a Genesis too, right?

Well, I got a Genesis maybe a year or two after the Super Nintendo, maybe a year later, which is such an interesting story.

So my dad used to work for the cable company and we got a Genesis because at the time, I think this literally was like 1994, there was this system that was being developed in the US called the Sega Channel, which is this little note.

I mean, nobody had it, right? I think I've met one other person that had it and it's Paul.

Because we talked about it on the show. Yeah.

Yeah. And ironically, his mom and my dad worked for the same cable company. So that's why we had it.

And it was sort of like a, it was like a demo where they were just, they were just like giving it out to their employees or something. They were just like, yeah, you can have Sega Channel.

So then I remember my dad bringing home a Genesis or maybe he bought it. I don't know. But it seemed like it was related to his work.

So it was like his work gave him a Genesis. He gave, we got Sega Channel and it was basically streaming games, like through the cable system. Way, like honestly, way before its time.

It was incredible. And I played so many Genesis games because of the Sega Channel. But it was a thing where like every month or every three months, I can't remember the cadence, but like they would change up the library of games.

Right. And also if you think about how all those old games worked, they didn't really have a good, like there wasn't memory cards then either. So it was like when the game went away, you just like lost your progress.

So like I remember playing games, but it was very challenging to like get through them if they went away the next month, you know? And the order or like the offering was just always changing.

And I remember my sister and I just getting so excited when like certain games that we were playing would be like back on the lineup. We were like, oh my God, Beyond Oasis is back. Like we love Beyond Oasis.

Oh my God. That's like another core memory for me.

I don't think we've ever mentioned that game on this show yet.

Oh my God. I love Beyond Oasis. Well, if you want to do a part two, we can talk about Beyond Oasis.

Yeah, that's a good one.

That's a good one.

Okay.

And again, it was another like action RPG.

I was just like super into it. See, I tied it back to Zelda. So like I was just super into this type of game.

And that's where I think I really played like my first JRPGs too, because I played Shining Force, I played Phantasy Star, three or four, can't remember, and just a ton of Genesis games.

So honestly, like we were saying before with like the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo, I think Super Nintendo, I only had like six games, but like Genesis, I played like probably 100 games.

Oh yeah, because of that.

Just because I had the Sega Channel. Just because I had the Sega Channel and everything was like on there. It was really cool.

It went and defunct like a year or two after it came out.

You and Paul are like the only people I know that had one.

It was just such a cool thing to be able to experience so many games. Then I feel like until maybe like Game Pass, like we hadn't really figured out how to do that well until more recently.

Because I know like even Google was trying to do like streaming games and stuff like that. I just didn't go anywhere. Game Pass, I think, is the closest thing we have to what the same channel was.

I even forgot all about the, what was the Google one called again?

Exactly. Right? I don't remember either because it sucked.

Isn't it? I'm glad it failed. No, I don't feel bad about it.

Yeah.

I'm glad it failed.

So with that being said, when I eventually did get to actually play, I did play it at his house a little bit, right? But his mom was also playing it. I remember I had to wait a while before I could actually pick it up and feel it.

That was actually, I remember holding the Super Nintendo controller for the first time and I think it was at a store, at one of the kiosks and just being like, oh my God, there's so many buttons.

We came from just A, B, the D-pad, start, select, and then we had all these buttons.

I also remember this moment. I remember being like, wait, there's four buttons now and there's the triggers. Yeah, it was a lot for my little eight year old brain.

I was like, oh my God.

Broke our brains, right? Until they broke it again with the N64 controller, which I love, but yeah.

Nintendo definitely did some interesting stuff back then, but the Super Nintendo was just, I always say that the NES is the console that I credit for starting my appreciation for video games and really why I'm a gamer today.

But the Super Nintendo is what made me love video games. That's always what I say, because that's where the love started, I think.

That's a lot of how I would say the same thing.

Does it feel like that to you?

It does feel like that to me.

I think when I was playing the NES, I was very young, I was three to five years old, and it was just something that was fun and cool and novel, and I think getting that Super Nintendo at eight years old was like, oh my god.

Then I also was in a new city, so I just feel like playing the Super Nintendo and then secondarily the Genesis was just the thing that I could always come back to. Again, it was something I did a lot with my sister.

We would either play two-player games or we would play a one-player game and we would play it together. It was just like stability amongst the chaos.

I feel like when I was in that eight, nine, ten years old, I developed such a love and appreciation for what I was experiencing.

Whereas at the Nintendo era, I was just young enough that I don't think I was really experiencing it in any sort of deep meaningful way. It was just like fun and exciting.

The age plays a big factor because again, we were about the same age and so it's like, maybe that is like when that happens now, like when you really can start appreciating all of that in a different way.

So the Super Nintendo hit it like the perfect time for me and for you as well. So it's like the broader storytelling and the bigger worlds and everything being expanded and hey, you remember that game that you loved when you were really young?

Well, here it is, but on a new level that you couldn't comprehend. And so I was very much like, I could not wait to play A Link to the Past, like actually play it. And I ended up getting it for Christmas that year.

So for Christmas, I remember coming down and seeing it, I got A Link to the Past and Mario Paint. So-

Oh my gosh, Mario Paint.

I got Mario Paint, A Link to the Past, the same Christmas morning, and could not stop playing A Link to the Past. Like I love Mario Paint too. And we did play that a lot.

And even as a family, we sat down, because that was really cool at the time. And so we played a lot of that, but A Link to the Past just became like a staple.

And one of my favorite memories just around it too, is that A Link to the Past is the only Super Nintendo game. And really like the NES, my mom played like a little bit, she never played N64, she never played anything after that.

But she played A Link to the Past all the time. As a matter of fact, she loved it so much that I had to basically like, when I would come home from school, she would be sitting in there playing it and I would have to wait for her.

And she was blowing through it. My mom's a puzzle game person too. Her favorite games back then were Myst and Riven, right?

Oh, I remember those games, yeah.

And she had a full journal with all the puzzles, she would write everything down, like that was what she, that, and there was another game called Shivers, which was kind of like a horror mist, where you're lost in like a museum and there's ghosts in

different artifacts. Super cool.

I'd never heard of that.

It was a really cool game. Yeah, it was a Sierra game. But she loved that stuff.

And for some reason though, Zelda like really, Link to the Past specifically resonated with her. And she, I kind of could see as she was going through it, I was like, wait, why does he have a different color? Why is his tunic a different color?

Did you get something different? So she was getting all the stuff, like she was going through it. So I'd watch her play too.

And so I experienced a lot of it through watching my mom play it and then going back and then trying to like reach where she was. So I was like following her, right? And then after that, she didn't really play, she never played Super Nintendo again.

As far as I'm aware, never again. She got into MISS, she got into Riven, but she did stuff on the PC occasionally. That's where it kind of ended.

I remember that. But yeah, that started it all for me. I'm sure you've played through the game more times than you can probably count, right?

Over the years.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's one of my comfort games now and I've gotten it down to a science where I can basically beat it in three days.

There you go.

So you have it, you have it down, you know it like the back of your hand.

When you're looking back and thinking about all the times you've experienced it, even going back to the first time, do you remember much about your first full play through or getting to the end?

I do.

So let's look at that. Let's look at that. What is it, aside from what you've already mentioned, because that's a big part of it, which is it's a formative game for you.

It's one that is indicative of where you were, your age, life happenings, all that kind of stuff contributes to why it's really special to you, right? So a lot of it's around that.

But as the game itself, what do you remember most about playing that game? What were some of your favorite memories of the game in the game that stand out to you?

Whether that is a particular dungeon, or if it's a moment, or if it's something you figured out. What are your favorite aspects that you can remember from, not just the first time you played it, but overall?

Yeah.

So I think one of the things that really sticks with me about A Link to the Past and why, honestly, it's my favorite Zelda game of all time and probably one of my, I think it's my favorite game of all time, is just this idea of as I was playing the

game and as I was uncovering the game world, it just kept expanding. It just kept being more and more and more. For example, I remember, I think you have to imagine I'm eight years old, my sister is six years old.

So we're not like teenagers playing this game, we're kids trying to figure out a very complex puzzle with no hints, no help, no Google. And so it took us, I think, three years to beat A Link to the Past.

So this was like a three-year endeavor of us playing this game together and trying to figure everything out. And I mean, one of the moments that just sticks with me to this day is the first, and I guess this is slight spoilers.

Oh yeah, slight spoilers everyone, just in case.

But there's three dungeons in the light world, right? And I'm sitting here going like, this world is massive. The whole light world is the map of the original game.

It's the size of the original game. And so we do the three dungeons, we get the master sword. I remember us being so hyped.

I think I remember us running around the house screaming, like, we're gonna beat the game, dad, come, we're gonna beat the game.

Oh my god, I know where this is going. This is great.

And we go into Hyrule Castle, we're doing that dungeon, which is hard, by the way. It's not easy. And everything's dark, you can't see anything.

You know, and then we get through it and we're fighting, we're fighting what, I always said his name is like, I think I would always say like, Agahnim or something.

I don't know if like anyone really ever knows. Cause like, I still, I say Agahnim. I have no idea.

Everybody always had a different way of pronouncing these names.

But like, I always said Agahnim cause I saw the like G-A-H. I was like, okay, whatever. So anyway, you got to fight him and we beat him.

And I'm like, yes, the game is over. And he sucks you into the dark world. And I just remember this moment, like it is burned in my memory of me and my sister being like, what, there's a whole other game here.

There's a whole other world here. And it's just as big as the first part of the game, which was just as big as the original. Like, you know, I just remember this moment so clearly.

And then like the music in the dark world is like kind of creepy and weird. And like the look of everything is so different. The difficulty ratchets up like hugely, you know?

And I just remember this moment of being like, what?

Yes, it's mind blowing. Like, it's mind blowing.

Like, it really was mind blowing at the time. And then I remember going to the first dungeon in the dark world, which is the Dark Palace.

And that again, the puzzles were just like 10 times harder than what they had been in the first part of the game. And I think just experiencing that, to this day, I'm still like, I'm still like, how did they do this?

You know, and so I just, I don't know, that for me really, really, really stuck out as like a key moment and key memory of like why this game just was just, it was like a whole new experience for me.

I had never experienced a game like that, that just had this whole reveal of like a hidden world that you didn't know even existed.

Even thinking about that now is crazy because we don't really get that much now.

1:16:52

It's really hard for games these days to hide those surprises and somebody, like, you know, you run the risk every day getting online at having something spoiled or having something like having that moment taken from you to where you don't get to

have that particular moment. There was no indication whatsoever throughout playing Link to the Past, at least when you're in the light world and getting through those first three dungeons, that anything like that's going to happen.

And we would have thought coming from the NES, right, and playing games that were, yeah, Zelda was a longer game, but it wasn't that long, right? And having it feel like this, yeah, this is going to be the end of the game.

Like, this is logically where it should end, right? Because it can't be that long. Like, in your mind, you're not even thinking it, right?

They also, I feel like Nintendo was so smart because if you look at that manual and you look at the map that they give you, it's just the light world.

They don't indicate anything in the manual or any promotional materials for the game that there was anything but the light world.

So it really was just, I don't know, it was something that I never anticipated, I didn't expect and I just found it so exciting. Yeah, I remember that moment and it's funny.

I'm going to lightly plug my old YouTube channel because I actually made a video on this very topic of hidden worlds in video games.

I feel like Link to the Past was one of the first games that really did this thing where it was just like uncovering an entirely different world, that you just didn't even have any indication that it was in the game.

In that video, I also talked about stuff like the in Castlevania, Symphony of the Night, like the upside down castle, like all of this stuff where it's like, it seems like the game is going to end.

And it doesn't.

But then there's this whole other world where you're doing basically double the game. And there's not that many, like you said, there's not that many games that do that, especially now.

And even when they do something like that, it's hard to avoid those spoilers, given just the era we live in with the internet.

Yeah, it's harder to wow gamers now too. Like we don't have, like we kind of, I hate to say it, but it's almost like we kind of expect it sometimes, to where when something like that happens, you're just kind of like, oh, that's cool.

You know, it's really hard for them to get to a point where they surprise you on a level where you're like, oh my God. And when it does happen, it's amazing that they're able to do that, but it's rare that that happens.

And with all those factors working against you, yeah, sure, a kid at school could have come up to you and been like, yeah, but have you been to the dark world yet? Like that could happen, but it was still like not as much in your face as it is now.

Even you saying, Rachael, that you played it for three years, thinking about that right now, literally, I was just thinking about this the other day. I was getting online, I had just bought the new James Bond game, the 007 first light, which I loved.

I just finished it recently for the first main story. But I remember the day it came out, the next day someone posted like, and that's 007 Platinum, and I was like, what is going on, like how?

And I think about it and I'm like, is this, it's just where we are now, to where games are now to a lot of people, not everybody, but to a lot of people, it's just like, here's the next one, and we're just getting through it, and here's the next one,

and we're just getting through it. And I am really like about savoring it. I wanna play a game and savor that, and really kind of walk away from it with an appreciation.

And if it doesn't hold my intention, okay, maybe I'll come back to it, give it another chance. I don't just go like, yeah, that game sucks, I'm gonna uninstall it and never play it again.

I very rarely do that unless something really just isn't for me.

That idea, saying now, if someone came to you now, if it's not a game that's like an MMO or like something where you're competitive online type game where you play for years because that's what it is, not many people are gonna come online and say

like, yeah, I've been playing this single player game for three years. I haven't beaten it yet, I'm getting there because it's just not a thing. It's just not something that you see anymore.

1:21:22

But it makes perfect sense to me you telling me that because I'm like, yeah, of course it took that long. It was a huge game. We didn't have the Internet.

We didn't have all these resources. There were a lot of puzzles. There are a lot of things that are not just in your face.

Like you have to figure those things out. It's even fighting, fighting Agahnim, Meganim for the first time. Like you have to figure out that you have to hit back the energy.

They don't tell you how to beat him.

Like I remember even doing that fight, which actually I think we got through that fight fairly quickly. I think we did it the same day, but there was a period of like you would die, you would have to try again, you would have to figure it out.

These days, I feel like you go into a boss fight and it's like, oh, go over here and light the torch and it'll kill this person.

Here's the pattern.

You know what I mean? Like it's like spelled out. Obviously, there's certain games that kind of mimic this older style, which I think is why so many indie games and stuff like that are so popular.

Is it really, there is something really special about the game not handing you all of the information and making you have to figure out the boss pattern or figure out the puzzle or figure out even where to go.

I mean, there's no tutorial whatsoever in that game and I can remember, speaking of moments in the game, there are specific points in that game where I remember just being stuck.

Oh, yeah.

I just remember, I have no idea how to get past this point in the dungeon. I just don't know what to do. And then it's funny because I would just leave the dungeon.

My sister and I would just leave, we'd be like, okay, we don't know where to go. So let's go, let's just go somewhere else. We would do, this is so silly, but we would do our own little role playing or makeup stories too.

So we would run around and we would go in all the different houses, and we would look at the furniture, and we would pretend we were living in a house, and come up with all these little different stories that had nothing to do with just getting to

the finish line.

Your imagination, you could use a lot more imagination.

Yeah, it had nothing to do with giving to the finish line of being in the game.

You wanted to live in that world. Yeah, we were really experiencing a lot and everything that the game had to offer.

And I think in those kind of open world games like that, I always was drawn to that idea of like, oh, this part, I can't advance here. Well, I can go somewhere else.

And this is something that like, you know, to tie it back to games that are a little more modern, this is something I really love about the Souls games.

Like I feel like to me playing a Souls game, like obviously there's the difficulty factor, but I feel like Souls games are the closest thing we will get to that NES, SNES, open world action RPG experience, because it is like you're dropped in a

world. I mean, it feels like Zelda to me. When I play those games, I'm just like, you're dropped in a world with a very little explanation. You're just getting little lore snippets from the people in the world.

It's just organically in there.

Yeah, you're just living in the world and experiencing it by exploring.

And it's like if you find yourself hitting a wall because you can't beat a boss because it's too difficult or you're lost or something like that, you can go somewhere else.

And there's just this experience with the Souls games that I feel like just doesn't... There's not a lot of modern games that are trying to replicate that experience anymore.

And they do it so well. And I'm very much convinced. I think I've brought up Dark Souls.

Gosh, it's been several episodes since Dark Souls was brought up. I used to bring it up all the time because I agree with you. And I think that there is Zelda DNA in there.

I think there's Metroid DNA in there, 100% and Castlevania to some extent as well. So, there's a lot of that and there's a lot of, like you said, it doesn't hold your hand, right? It just, you're in this world, go figure it out.

Good luck. And then when you fail, you go somewhere else. Or you, yeah, you can level up, right?

You can increase your levels. You can find new items. But again, it's that sense of discovery that everybody talks about how difficult the Dark Souls and like Souls games are in general.

And that's true, which also harkens back to old school games we grew up with, but also that sense of discovery to where Dark Souls in no way, in no way, shape or form spells anything out for you at all. Like it literally just says, here it is.

And you have to figure it out. And you have to have those conversations with other people and say, hey, you know, so and so, like I'm here at this one. Oh yeah, well, if you do this, did you know that you can actually do this?

Because there's so much like to that, to where I do get that feeling.

Like that is the closest thing to that feeling of where, because there's so much, yeah, you could look up all this stuff online, but you're still going to message boards and you're going to, you know, maybe you're talking to some people online or

you're talking to people on Discord or whatever. And they're telling you, or you're playing co-op. And maybe they've played it and they're like, hey, follow me over here. I want to show you something.

So is another reason that I love those games so much, because that gave me that sense. And I'm guessing you felt the exact same way about them. So I think Miyazaki is absolutely like, he's a fan of the same kind of stuff that we grew up with.

And he's kind of baked that into those games. So they are very special for that reason, for sure. Do you think that, again, you talked about the dark world, like being that big moment, which is huge.

And you're right. That's like, you think it's the end of the game, it's really more like a third, right? Because the dark world is huge.

You could even argue that it's like a fourth, but like, it might be. I mean, there's a lot to the dark world. There's so much going on there.

You find items that can like bring you back to the light world. And so you're kind of, now you're going between the two and you're experiencing characters that are, again, we'll get into all of these because there's so much.

But like, aside from that moment, what are some other moments in the game? We'll just kind of keep it at moments, I guess, for the moment. But what stands out to you in addition to that?

Gosh, there's so much.

1:27:53

Okay. So I definitely remember in the kind of like first dungeon in the Eastern Palace, there are these, the boss, the boss fight in that dungeon is, I think they're called the Armos Knights.

Yes.

And I remember them, they do this kind of pattern where they're moving around, but they're also like jumping up and down. And you have to like shoot the bow at them, or you can slash them with your sword, but it's like less effective.

It's risky too, yeah.

Yeah. So, but this is just so, like so indicative, I think of just like, you know, the experience I think of just like being a child playing a video game.

Like, I just remember, not only was that like a cool boss fight design at the time that I remember being like, whoa, these bosses are really cool, but like, I just remember my sister and I like literally just like jumping around the room, like

imitating their jumping, like while we were like trying to fight them.

Cause you're so into it.

Like cause we were just, cause we were so into it.

And we were like so excited by like the, you know, the uniqueness of this boss fight. And I think that was really the only one we were actually like imitating its movement.

But like, I just remember us being like, again, we had to do it over and over and over again, because then at the end you get down to the last guy and he goes like berserk. And like, oh yeah, he turns red and goes insane. Yeah.

Yeah. And I feel like, you know, especially when you're a kid, like for me, I didn't, you know, I didn't play Metroid and these other types of games.

So this was the first time I was really experiencing like a boss having phases, you know, and, and I just remember like finding that kind of thing. So like, it was like a new challenge.

Like every time the boss would change, I'd be like, we die and we'd have to do it again. And then you would advance like that, that whole feeling of just like getting better and better at a boss fight and then finally accomplish it.

I mean, again, I'm going back to the souls, but it's like, it's that same feeling that I think souls captures of like really watching a boss, learning the pattern, like, and then getting better at it.

And then when you finally beat it, you're just like, oh my God, like that sense of accomplishment is just like huge.

Off the charts.

I'm trying to think too, I remember getting stuck in the ice palace. There is a place there where I think it's like, you're supposed to like push a block in like a very particular way or something.

And like, I just could not, we just could not figure it out. My sister and I, and I remember, see, this is the thing I also really liked about Zelda. We were so stuck.

We actually went and did the seventh dungeon, Misery Mire, and we beat that dungeon before we even beat the ice dungeon. Oh, okay, yeah.

Yeah, so because, and you know, I think there is like a preferred order to do the dungeons in because obviously you get certain items.

Yeah, certain items you have to have, but I think a couple you don't.

That you have, but a couple of them, you can just go ahead and do another dungeon out of order. And so, yeah, we actually beat the seventh dungeon before we beat the ice dungeon.

That's great.

And I remember, I think in Misery Mire, you have to get, it's the staff that makes the blocks, right? And I remember it creates a block that then you can put on a switch or something like that.

And I remember having that ability and going back into the ice palace, and then being able to solve a puzzle differently because I now had-

Was it the Cain of Samaria?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's the two Cains, right? There's like staff of Berna and the Cain of-

Samaria.

It's like Samaria or something.

Yeah, exactly.

And it was just, I don't know, it was just so cool to be able to, that same sense of like, okay, I'm stuck here, but I can go somewhere else and I could still play the game, and I could still advance and I can still, you know, and I'll come back and

then like, you have slightly different powers. That doesn't happen too much in that game, but there were spots where, like you said, like you could advance and go to another place.

1:32:20

Another thing that really sticks out to me in that game, and they were also in the first Zelda, and to this day, they still give me like nightmares. And it is the hands.

Oh my God.

The hand enemies, I think they have a name. I can't remember what it is.

It's so funny, because like the name is funny. Like Zelda, the names of Zelda enemies to me, like especially the older games are so funny, right? Like for example, the boss, was it the boss in the Ice Palace's Cold Stair?

You know, stuff like that. Like they have, let me look it up, because I need to know, because it, I still get nightmares.

I still get nightmares from the hands, and I remember them in, you know, the first Zelda, they kind of come out of the wall, or they like drop on you, and then they bring you back to the entrance.

And in, I remember in the third, the Lost Woods dungeon, that's in the, it's the third dungeon in the Dark World, they're there, and I remember walking in, and they start dropping on you, and I just remember being like, nope.

Yep. They were called Wall Master.

Wall Master. Okay, what a 1980s name.

Wall Master, yeah. I love it.

But yeah, for whatever reason, those hands terrify me, and to this day, if I see that enemy in a Zelda game, I'm just like, oh my God, like my eight-year-old self. Tears of the Kingdom.

Yeah, yeah, like my eight-year-old self is terrified that they're gonna grab me, and I just, I can't handle it. I start panicking when I see them.

You know they're coming, and they're gonna keep trying to get you. It's like being chased. I mean, you're kind of being chased.

It is like being chased.

You're being pursued.

And you can't really, I mean, you can kill them, but then they come back.

Yeah, they don't stop.

So there's no definitive, yes, I killed it, and I could move on and explore in peace.

They're always like, they're just like always creeping after you, you know?

I remember in the first Zelda, because of my age, like how young I was, they scared me like really bad. I remember being very scared of them and not wanting to go anywhere near where they were, because they just creeped me out so bad.

And that's before like the ReDeads and all that kind of thing.

But yes, no, 100%.

Yeah, I'm with you on that because I was thinking about it and I forgot, like, yeah, they are, I was like, are they in Link to the Past? And then I remembered, like, yes, they are.

They are. And I feel like the ReDeads and Arcade of Time are just like the leveled up version of that because those are also terrifying. For whatever reason, the grabbing is terrifying.

Zelda is interesting because it's so, Zelda strikes this interesting balance, I think, where it's a game that when you typically think of Zelda, you think of like, almost like wonder and like beautiful worlds and like interesting enemies and all this

kind of stuff. And then it'll randomly go really, really dark, like out of nowhere. And there's a few things that even in Arcade of Time, there were, aside from that, there were things where you're like, whoa, like this is kind of creepy.

Like this is a little bit, yes, a little bit. It's pushing it a little bit. And then Majora's Mask just said, hold my beer.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Majora's Mask is terrifying.

There's so much in that, which is why I love it so much. But like, Link to the Past, they all have that. They all have those moments where you're just kind of like, this is borderline like horror.

Like this is getting to where I'm feeling uncomfortable. And just what's funny is you're probably gonna laugh, but like while you were jumping around with your sister with the Armist Knights, I was terrified of them.

I was scared of them because the way they look, they just, the bosses were so imposing in this game, especially when you get to like the Dark World. But like the Armist Knights scared me so bad.

And they're actually, and we'll get to that, get to it in a minute, but there are a couple of other bosses, one in particular that made it to where I had to turn the game off because he scared me so bad.

Oh my God, I'm so curious.

I know, it's gonna be interesting. And it's maybe it's because of the age I was and how I remember it.

And I think I've brought this up in a previous episode, but I'll tell you, but of the bosses, even just while we're on it, is there one in particular that you like the best besides like maybe like Eganem and Ganon?

Yeah, I mean, well, I started thinking about like the moments I was scared playing Zelda and I was scared in the Dark Palace. I was definitely scared in the Dark Palace. The music was new, it was creepy, the puzzles were way harder.

There was a lot of like dark rooms in there. The monsters were creepier. And I remember that that boss at the end where you have to like hammer off its mask.

And I remember that being very scary for me, like this whole thing, because I feel like you have to get like so close to it.

Yeah, the Helmosaur King is terrifying.

Yeah, yeah. And I just, I remember that first dungeon. Again, I think just because it was so different than the first part of the game, I think it just really stuck with me as being really terrifying and particularly like horrifying.

Like I was kind of horrified the whole time I was playing the first dungeon. Gosh, I'm trying to think if there's another boss that like I really like didn't like.

The only one, like see I like them all. I guess I don't want to say like hate them. The one that obviously I think is the most annoying and I think is probably, most people will probably agree with this, is Moldorm from the Tower of Hera.

So the third dungeon in the Light World, because he knocks you off and you have to get all the way back up.

And then you have to start all over again.

And he's back to full health.

Yes, and I do remember that being particularly annoying. And even to this day, I would say that that boss fight is...

Yeah, because he's so unpredictable the way he moves.

Yes, and it is like a hard reset if he knocks you off and you got to get all the way back. And every now and then you fall down a hole that lines up with another hole and then you just keep falling.

Yes, you just keep falling and then you're like, all right, I'm going to come back another time. But you feel great when you beat him, but he is legitimately tough because you cannot, you can't follow his pattern.

He moves too erratically and then when he gets berserk, like they all do, he moves so fast, he'll sit there in circle and you're like, okay, is he stuck in a circle? And then immediately he'll beeline towards you out of nowhere.

He just doesn't follow a predictable pattern at all. And because you can follow, he's probably the most annoying boss.

Yeah, I think he, I would agree. I think he's the most annoying boss.

I remember actually one of the bosses I oddly like, but actually kind of sticks out in my mind and you'll have to tell me what the name is, is the, I like the Misery Mire dungeon a lot. I think I liked, like I liked the wizards.

I think they're called Wizrobes, like, you know, I, yeah, I think I liked just the design of that dungeon. I thought it was hard.

It was very hard, but it, there was something, I think by the time I got there, where I was like, I understand this, you know, like, and I understand what's going on here.

And the final boss in that dungeon is like this giant eye, like covered in like eyeballs or like jelly things, like little goo.

It's vitreous.

Yeah, and I just, I remember this boss sticking out in my mind because, you know, typically in Zelda, I think Link to the Past is kind of where they set this up, is this idea of you get this item in the dungeon, or like whatever the item is in the

dungeon, you kind of have to use to solve either a major puzzle or to deal with the final boss.

It's the cane, yeah.

Yeah, and so in this case, you get the cane from that dungeon, but actually the ideal way to beat this boss is to use the hook shot and pull everything off of it.

And I just remember being like, oh, I don't need to use the cane here. And like for whatever reason, this sticking out in my mind of like, oh, that's kind of unexpected.

And so this is a thing where, again, I think it always is interesting when a game sort of sets up a structure or a routine or something that you expect. And then suddenly they circumvent it, right?

Like they're like, oh, you thought that this is what you were supposed to do, but actually you're going to do the same thing.

But actually this doesn't work anymore.

Yeah. And I think something about this era of gaming is that, I can't sit here and claim that this was the first time that this ever happened in a game, but it was the first time I'd ever experienced it in a game.

This idea of like, oh yeah, every time I go into a dungeon, I'm going to get a weapon and then I'm going to use that.

That's what's going to work.

I'm going to kill the boss and that's what's going to work. And then suddenly here's a boss where, oh, this cane doesn't really affect this boss. And for me, that was very novel and interesting.

So just like I remember that boss fight being like, oh, I actually had to use a completely different item to deal with this.

And now this is something that you see all the time in games where I think sometimes to ramp up the difficulty or create a certain element of the narrative, they'll change mechanics or things like that.

But at the time, it was just like, this didn't happen very often. It was like, okay, you get your power up, you'd go in and do your new boss with the new power and then you move on.

But yeah, that definitely stuck out to me as something that was really interesting.

There's another one that to piggyback off that, I guess, when you talk about Vitrius and use the hookshot to get the eyeballs out. Same thing when you fight Eganim for the second time.

Because you have this understanding like, okay, I got this guy, no problem. Because you know what to do. You go in there and you're like, I'm going to use the master sword, and I'm just going to pop that stuff back.

No, instead, you use the bug catching net, right? And you would never think, like it's one of those like, the last item you would think, right? Of everything.

You'd be like, okay, wait a minute, so maybe I can try, maybe arrows, maybe do I do this, or do I do that? Why is none of this like doing what I needed to do? And it's the bug catching net.

So, you know, it's like kind of, that's so fun. Like I love that. Because the game is again showing you like, yeah, well, here's what you did before, but it's not going to work the same way that you think it is.

It's not just going to be a repeat. You're not going to be able to breeze through it. And you would be like, well, what do I do?

You know, this isn't working like it did before. So do you remember that? Like, do you remember how you figured that out?

Or did you have to have someone tell you? Because I'm pretty sure someone had to tell me.

I think I read it somewhere or I heard it somewhere. I think somebody told me. It was not something I arrived at on my own.

I think I just remember reading somewhere, like try the bug catching.

Yeah, because I think you can still use this word.

I don't know if it was like, I don't, yeah, but it's like not as effective or, yeah.

Because the net can spin without a charge up, so it's like more effective. And then he's also making clones, you know?

I think I'm trying to, because sometimes I get them, what he does mixed up between the two, but I know that he does like two clones or something like that.

Yeah, I think the clones is in the second, like, where-

Because he's definitely harder the second time.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you have to aim it at the real one.

You can't fight the clones, right? Like, if you try to hurt the clones, it just goes like right through them. But this is kind of reminding me, like, all of this stuff, you know?

Okay, let me just say maybe something that's kind of a hot take. Like, I think everybody loves Ocarina of Time, right? It is one of the most beloved games of all time.

And frankly, it's my second favorite Zelda. So I'm not trying to say, like, Ocarina of Time is not good or something like that.

But I think there was just so much in A Link to the Past that was, like, the first time these things that were being done in Ocarina of Time.

You know, like, and so when I played Ocarina of Time, it was sort of like a refinement of a lot of those things that I've experienced in A Link to the Past.

But I could also understand that, like, if Ocarina of Time was your first Zelda, you would have all of the same emotions and experiences that I had playing A Link to the Past. You know, like, oh my gosh, we're time traveling. What the heck?

Oh my gosh, these puzzles, these, like, using the weapons in novel ways.

The fabled sword, you know, all that.

Yeah, like, all of the stuff that I feel like makes Ocarina of Time such a great game. Like, there's just so much of that DNA already set up in A Link to the Past. And I think that's why, for me, it just, like, edges out a little bit more.

It's like, it's, I will say, it's definitely that nostalgia of, like, when I played it, I think, but also that, for me, it was my first time experiencing so much of that, so much of the things that make Zelda what it is.

Absolutely.

You know?

Absolutely. And I think that that's kind of, kind of where I am too. Like, I also, Ocarina was, like, I mean, it's mind-blowing.

It was mind-blowing. It was Zelda. Everything that I, the reason that I was so excited about Ocarina of Time and the reason that I went into Ocarina of Time already loving it is because of the love that Link to the Past set for me.

Like, it put me on that path to where everything that I had already had an affection for was now being given to me in a way that I'd never experienced it. Because, like, 3D games, like that, were not a thing. It was not like that.

Ocarina of Time did something like Super Mario 64 is one I bring up a lot. Because Super Mario 64 was literally a game changer. Like, there was nothing like it.

There was nothing like it, and it did it perfectly. And you take that, and we know after playing Super Mario 64, like, oh, Zelda 64 is next. Like, we can't wait for Zelda 64.

And there were, like, screenshots here and there. It was before it was called Ocarina of Time. It was just Zelda 64.

And every time I saw even a glimpse of it, I was just, my mind would just go crazy, because I was like, I can't wait to see what they're going to do. But yeah, when you play it now, there's so much of the Link to the Past DNA there.

Just literally, just right there. They're so, like, it's expanded to the nth degree. Like, it's huge.

But if you came from A Link to the Past, you're like, okay, I know this dance. I know the moves. I know kind of what's going on here.

There's some surprises, but still, you have that baseline there. But you're in a 3D world now. And now you're experiencing all these things you love in full 3D, and that open world becomes a bigger open world, and there's more to do.

So I just see it as kind of like an enhancement.

I feel the same way.

As much as Link to the Past was an enhancement of the original Zelda, which walked, right, so it could run, Link to the Past still did so much. Like, there's so much. That game is so dense, and the world is so big in so many ways.

Not just the size of it, but like... And we'll talk a little bit about this too. It may be a good segue, but like the characters, the world in there, the people that you meet, the little quests that you can stumble on that are just there.

It's not like, hey, here's a waypoint, go here, and you're gonna have a little side quest. The side quests are just organically there. You just do them, right?

So were there any of those, like the one that stands out to me the most that I really love and it's really kind of probably my favorite, one of my favorite moments in that game and something that I think is very somber for some reason and kind of

made me sad as a kid was the flute boy.

Oh my gosh.

You know what I'm talking about?

I know you know.

Yes, I do.

So yeah, I don't know why I'm asking you. Of course you know. But that whole, the way they do it in the game is subtle.

It doesn't go into this whole story. Like yeah, you get bits of like, you learn by talking to certain characters like why he's there, right? And you hear him playing the flute.

Like you just walk into that open area and all the little animals are there and he's just playing the flute and he's got all these little creatures around him and he just disappears, right? And you can't get close to him.

And then you go, I think it would, you have to correct me if I'm wrong, Rachael, make sure I don't remember this incorrectly, but I think you talk to his father. Don't you find his father somewhere?

Yes, I think you find his father in a house somewhere.

Yeah, and he talks about his son and how he never came home or something like that. I can't remember exactly, but. And then you go to the dark world and he is.

He's kind of like a little monster.

Yeah, because all the people from the light world that are in the dark world like change into different, it's what's in their heart, right?

I think is the whole thing. Where you've got the kids that were bullying each other, one of them is like a bouncy ball, like he's just kicking him around, which is hilarious, so you have all of that.

But then the part where you go there to where he is and you play the song, because he wants to hear it one last time, and you play it and then he turns into like a little tree, he like turns to wood.

Yeah, he turns to wood.

And it's so sad, like to me as a kid, I was like, oh, wait, what? I was sad, you know? It got emotions out of me, and it wasn't like a huge, there wasn't like swelling music or anything, nothing like that.

It just happens. And you're kind of, you're filling in the blanks here like, oh my God, like, is he dead? Did he just die?

Is this what happened? And yeah, kind of.

Yeah, and then you go back in the light world and that scene of him playing is just not there anymore.

He's at rest.

Yeah, no, that's a great moment.

That one is one of my favorites. That one has stuck with me.

And I think just oddly enough, and all of Zelda is one that sticks out to me the most because of the way that they present it and the way that you unravel that story just by through having little conversations with townspeople.

Yes.

You know, you'll go and talk to someone in their house and they'll just say something. And you're like, okay, and it might lead you to somewhere else. And maybe you'll figure out something by just listening to what they're saying.

But that one in particular, I remember just being like, wow, this is actually kind of sad. Like it's actually borderline making me want to tear up because it just worked perfectly. So how about you?

What other moments stick out?

Yeah. So actually, as you're talking about this, I was thinking of the, I had a very similar experience. For me, it was the old man on the mountain, on Death Mountain.

So, you know, like when you're going up Death Mountain for the first time and then you're in a cave and like this man just starts following you, right? And he's like, Oh, like, I'm looking for my son. Like, I'm lost.

Like, I'm just going to follow you. And then I think at some point, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm definitely going off memory here. But like, at some point, you actually see the dark world for the first time, right?

Where there's like a, like, you have to transition over there to like, I don't know.

Yeah, you have to like, this is where you get the best view. You have to use the mirror in like a certain spot. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And so like you go into that world and that's where you see, like, the monster people for the first time, right?

And I just remember this, you know, this little quest is like this very off-handed thing of like, you're just kind of like helping this guy get up to the top of the mountain. And then like, he's like, oh, thanks.

And then he like goes on his way, right? And then like, at the end of the game, again, spoilers, at the end of the game, the old man is there with his son on the top of the mountain.

And they never really like show you completely how it happens, but it's kind of like implied that like you saved the world, you brought him back from the dark world and like everything's right again. And I remember that moment, I teared up.

I was like, oh my God, like we saved the boy. The old man is with his son again. Like it's all like, oh my God, I just remember this moment.

And it was through sort of that, that world building storytelling of like, it wasn't like a full on quest that I saw all the way to the end.

It's just like the game just shows you and tells you that like through your actions, you impacted their lives or you changed their story.

And like, I don't know, for me, literally seeing that moment in the ending, like I was just like, oh my God, we helped to reunite them. Like it was so crazy.

And I remember, God, yeah, when you're talking about like the credits, because isn't he standing on like the bridge that's like...

Yes, he's standing on the bridge.

And his name is literally just The Lost Old Man. Like they don't, he doesn't have a name. He's just The Lost Old Man.

And the only thing that you can have the item that you need in order to not change into a rabbit, because Link changes into a rabbit, which is also kind of funny. I remember when that first happened, and I was like, why am I, why am I a rabbit?

Like, what am I supposed to do with this?

Yes.

So yeah, that, that is all like, again, that's a big part of that too, where you're like, okay, not only am I not Link, but I am a rabbit.

Yes.

And like it was part of the main quest, but then there's like, like we were saying, there's like these side characters or the side quests that are sort of like helping fill out the world, you know, that I just, I don't know, it was so, to me it was

just, I'd never experienced a game like that. I just remember that moment of him standing on the bridge, I guess it's with her, so not his son, so it's with her. And I just remember being like, oh my god, we saved them.

We fixed everything, everything's okay. And then even the bullies, like they're, he's still kicking them around, but they're, they're human again.

The little secrets too, like, if you get too curious and try to do certain things, something may happen, like obviously like the chickens, you know, where you can, you can mess around with the chickens too much, you will get, you will get murdered.

They get, they start, you will die. Like I, I have definitely experienced that.

I love that too. Like it's like a swarm of chickens that you cannot get away from.

Another big moment for me was early on before the Dark World and it's actually the build up to the Master Sword because the Master Sword to me and probably to you being a Zelda fan is just, it's iconic.

 

It's, it is part of Zelda's DNA to me, as well as the Triforce. I'm a Triforce boy, okay? I, the one thing that I wish was like a part of the story in the newer Zelda games, like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom was the Triforce.

Because I feel like that is Zelda to me. Zelda is Link, Zelda, Ganon, the Triforce, and then, you know, the Master Shield, or excuse me, the Master Sword came later, and then the Hylian Shield. Like those are, that's Zelda.

And I feel like the lore with the Triforce has always been interesting to me. I love the idea that Ganondorf or Ganon, right?

It wasn't Ganondorf yet, but like the Ganon, Link and Zelda are each part of the Triforce, or like have a part of the Triforce. I always thought that was cool, because it's like Ganon, of course, has the Triforce of power.

Zelda has the Triforce of wisdom, and Link has the Triforce of courage. And so they're all linked together. And that's something that I've always loved about Zelda.

And when you carry forward, you know, it's like Ganon and Zelda and Link are meshed. Like, they have this, they're each part of the Triforce, and I love that. And I kind of wish that there was more going on with that now.

Like, the symbol is there. It's part of, like, Hylian architecture in the newer games. You see it all over the place.

It's on the Hylian shield.

But the lore of the Triforce, which I think they explain in the newer games, and say that it was like a legend that people just kind of forgot about, I don't know if that's exactly how they do it, but they kind of explain it that way.

I want them to kind of bring that back because I really like it. I know it's simple, but...

No, to me, it's very Zelda, like it's a part of Zelda, you know? And I mean, even that first game, really, it's the...

I mean, I think they've kind of retrofitted this, but it really is like the Triforce of Power split up into eight parts, and then you're finding all of that. But yeah, to me, the Triforce is iconic for Zelda.

I mean, you know, I talked about my tattoo. My tattoo is the Triforce.

Yeah, exactly. The Triforce is in the DNA. It's there.

I'm glad they're still putting it in, like, all the imagery. But again, when it's there, I'm like, okay, well, why is it not a part of the story? Everything else is there, but that part isn't.

So maybe, you know, maybe we'll get that again at another time. But that's something that I think is lacking from the newer ones. And it's a simple thing, but to me, it's pretty big because I love the storytelling of it.

I love that part. So other than that, I also really enjoy, in this game, the difficulty, we talked a little bit about that, about how difficult it gets in the dark, because the game is hard. It gets a hard game.

The first time you play it, for those out there listening, if you've never played this game, if you started with the 3D games, or maybe for many of you, maybe Breath of the Wild was your first game, right? Was your first Zelda game.

Because I know that a lot of my audience is not just people like us, Rachael, in our age group, but I have a lot of listeners who are younger and who are interested in retro gaming and interested in these older titles.

If you haven't played A Link to the Past, just be prepared. I do recommend playing it without a guide, unless you absolutely need it just for that discovery. But it is a pretty difficult game.

And I know because we grew up with it and we played it so many times, it still has its difficulty spikes. But it's hard to put myself in the mindset of playing it for the first time now and how difficult it actually might be.

I know, like, you know, it's hard for me to say because I was young when I was playing it.

But like I said, it took me three years with my sister and the help of other people, you know, like sometimes I would talk to my cousins or like friends or something. And I didn't have a Nintendo Power, so I wasn't getting all the tips.

But like, you know, I'm sure you remember they had the like, the number you could call.

It was like three or $4 a minute or something like that.

Yeah, you could get like free hints. And I remember at one point being like, being like stuck and asking my mom, like, could we call this number? And she was like, no.

Can we call the Nintendo Pro? She like wouldn't let us. So it was like, I don't know.

Like I said, I was young, but I just remember that game taking hours of my life to figure out. And I did not figure it all out myself. Like I had to rely on other people to get past certain spots in the game.

But yeah, I mean, I would definitely recommend people, if they have never played this game, go in without a guide and see what you can accomplish.

Because again, I think that's part of the experience of that game play is like trying to figure it out yourself and experiencing the failure or dying or getting stuck.

That is something I feel like modern games, we just have no patience for that anymore.

They're training us to not have any patience anymore. There's too many games. I know I say it all the time as a joke, but there are too many video games.

No possible way. There are. Whenever someone's like, whatever someone like, when people get salty about remakes and they're like, I want new games.

And I'm like, do you pay attention at all? There are so many games that you could play right now.

There's so many games.

Literally, a remake is not, I'm sorry you get one less game because they're doing a remake. You literally have thousands of games that you could play. There are too many to play, you will die before you get close.

Anyway, we are spoiled. We're talking about having a couple of games when we were kids at a time. We only had a few in the house.

I know.

And you were probably like me, you played those games over and over.

You would just keep, because it's what you had. And that's another reason they become like muscle memory and they become very special to you because you played them so much over and over and over.

And that's why Mega Man X, which I always bring up as one of my favorite games ever, because I loved Mega Man and I love the whole Mega Man thing in general.

But Mega Man X was really special to me too, because of the Super Nintendo and how it took Mega Man and made it the same way. It blew it up into this huge thing where it was expanded. And the graphics and the sound and the music was incredible.

And I've played that game, I can't even tell you how many times, but I love it because it was one of the games I had. We rented it like three or four times before I got it.

And by the time I had it, I wasn't bored with it and I'd beaten it several times. And I just kept beating it because I loved it so much because it's what I had. I couldn't just get another game.

I couldn't log on to Steam and get a sale, get a game for $6. It was like you had to save up your money, your allowance or wait for your birthday or wait for the holidays. And maybe you would get a game, right?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. If it wasn't the game you wanted, they're like, well, learn to love it.

You know, like maybe it'll be good. So it was just a different landscape. So luckily, this game was amazing.

And so there wasn't ever a sense of like, whenever I would play it, you know, I always forget things. Whenever I play a game like this, I forget details and stuff like that. And I forget certain ways to go.

No, 100%.

I love rediscovering it and doing it again.

And so I always love to go back and play this. And I do think that it is quite challenging. It is very much there.

There are moments where you really will be like, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do here. I don't know where to go. But again, I do think that you get a sense of accomplishment that is beyond a lot of what you get now.

Oh, 100%.

Yes, 100%.

And that makes it quite special. I will tell you, I'll tell you what, we'll make it fun.

One of the bosses in this game, I know I mentioned a couple that creeped me out, but one of them in particular is very enumerable for me because it really creeped me out and made me feel uncomfortable in a way that is really hard for me to describe.

And there's a reason for that. But if you had to guess, so we've got, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, technically 12. We're not going to count Eganim twice.

So including Ganon, Eganim once, we have 12 bosses. If you had to think, maybe, which one might have made me feel a little uneasy.

The one that always creeped me out was the guy that's kind of like the mini Ganon, but he's like, you have to like put him in the sun.

That's the one.

You have to like get him to transform. Is that the one that creeped you out? Because that one creeped me out too.

Yes.

Tell me your story, because that boss is very creepy.

I'm so glad that you agree, because there's something about that whole thing that just unsettles me.

Everyone knows, if you know me, if you listen to the show, I love horror in every form and I really love it in games. I love movies.

Yes.

I love horror films, but I really also like it in games. This is another one of those things that while yes, it creeped me out, I loved it and I love it now.

It's just kind of almost feels like it's separate in a way, because Blind is so different from all the other bosses, because he's the only other character that we know of that had a light world counterpart.

So he was an actual person who led the Thieves, like the Guild of Thieves or whatever. He was the leader and he was corrupted, the dark world that corrupts him.

But the reason that this thing creeps me out, the reason that it creeps me out the most, is that every dungeon that you go to before this, you find one of the maidens, right? At the end, when you beat the boss...

How did I know this is what you were going to bring up?

Yeah, so there's the maiden and the crystal, right? And you're conditioned to go like, okay, I get another maiden, every time I beat a boss, there's the crystal and there's the maiden. I rescued the maiden, great, got it, good.

Then you get to Thieves Town and you're just doing your thing, you're in the dungeon and there's lore, like there's a little bit of lore before that that kind of talks about blind. And his whole thing was that he hated the light.

And so he hated being in the light, so he stayed in the darkness. You're going through the dungeon, doing your thing.

And suddenly you get to like an area where there's a maiden and she's just standing there and she's in a room and you're like, oh, okay. And she talks to you. And like at first, the first tip, you're kind of like, okay, this is weird.

Like normally this isn't what happens. So what's going on here? And then she's like, oh, help me, you can lead me out, I'll tell you where to go.

And the thing that really sticks out to me is when you're leading her around and she's with you, she stays right behind you. And you go to this area where throughout that dungeon, there's areas where there's light shining in through the windows.

And you get close, you're walking through this corridor and there's light coming in and she stops you. And she says, no, not that way. And you're like, huh, that's weird.

And then you kind of start to put it together, maybe in the back of your head, like, this is weird. Okay. And then you get to where you take her in a room where there's light shining down and you walk her into it.

And she goes, and like she transforms into Blind the Thief, who is like a demon. He's like a red demon with fangs and like, with like a white cloak.

And I don't know why Rachael, but like that idea that this monster was following me pretending to be a maiden, just creep me out.

Oh yeah. I mean, it's creepy. It is creepy.

It is creepy. And you know, as you're telling this whole story, this is like exactly what I was talking about before with like, this is the first time I really experienced a game that would kind of like circumvent your expectations.

Because like here it is, like, like you said, every dungeon you just expected to meet the maiden in the crystal at the end, and then you saved them. And then this one, it's like the mage is just chilling. And you're like, wait, okay, huh.

She's just there. And you're like, wait, okay, oh, well, this is easy. And then she's talking to you.

And then there's something very unsettling about it though, because the game has already set up this expectation where you go like, wait, this is different.

What's going on?

And then there's, yeah, exactly. Something's off. And then I think it is creepy.

Like, you know, I didn't have the same kind of like, maybe intense reaction to it, but there is something very creepy about this whole segment.

And then, again, this idea of, yeah, like this person was just like following you and trying to trick you the entire time.

Yeah, it just feels like wrong. I think there's something about the idea of like an imposter, like someone who is like pretending to be someone, and it's like, it's a very sinister thing.

And when you realize that you're kind of like, ooh, it gives me the chills, because it's like they were with me this whole time. And as a child.

Yeah, and they were deceiving you.

As a child, it feels-

Yeah, they were like deceiving you and trying to gain your trust.

And then I love the hint, though, when you go in that room where they set up the light, and she's like, no, don't go that way. I love that. That's such a little detail that makes that whole moment so much better.

It's just looking back and going like, I guess I know why she didn't want me to walk through the light, because blind doesn't want to be in the light, and so there you go. So that's the one that really sticks out to me.

I love all the bosses, like Mothula, I always thought was really cool. Trynex.

Oh yeah, very cool.

There's great bosses in this game. Some of them have really great designs, but I do want to, before we get into the patron section here, Rachael, I feel like this is something really important. We'll kind of touch on this briefly.

Obviously, another, I guess, enormous part of Zelda's DNA, which is a little, it's not separate, but it kind of is. It's a whole other category, is the music. Zelda, we have, obviously, you and I both are huge Final Fantasy fans.

Nobuo Uematsu is godlike, you know, like some of the best music I've ever heard in video games ever. But Zelda, in my opinion, while it is a different vibe, right? They're both fantasy type games.

They've fantasy type worlds and things like that. There's something about Zelda that has like a different feeling for me.

And if I were to go to a concert, excuse me, if I were to go to a concert and hear the, you know, the Final Fantasy IV theme, which is my favorite, right? If I were to hear that, I would get a little emotional. Like I would feel that.

I would feel very moved by that. If I were to go and hear the Zelda theme, that would make me cry because there's something about it that is so, that's been there since the beginning, right?

And to be fair, the original Final Fantasy had the prelude, right? So it's all there. But for me, Zelda was something that I've carried it with me since I was three, right?

And as we get older and now we're looking back very far now, that's where we were at that age. Like those mean I think a lot more now and they hit a lot harder now.

So when it comes to Zelda, and I know that music is incredibly important to you in general, also in games and in something that resonates with you. Obviously, Zelda being this game being your favorite. But overall, how do you feel about Zelda music?

Like the music from these games, the themes, all those things, like where do those sit for you? How important and special are they to you?

I mean, they're the most special, to be honest. I mean, when I hear Zelda music, it does bring me to tears. I mean, I'm lucky enough that I've seen the Zelda Symphony when it was traveling twice.

Both of those times were incredibly emotional and moving for me. I've been to numerous Zelda concerts. Like I've been to some Zelda piano.

I think even honestly, there's like a clip of me watching the Zelda. There was like an orchestra concert maybe a year or two ago that I was streaming while watching and I'm just in tears on my stream, like watching.

Because the music to me, it is, there's something so deeply moving about it. I mean, again, it's been with me. Like you said, we've been looking, now looking back.

I mean, it's been a part of my life for, you know, nearly 40 years. And so there's just something that is, I don't know, it takes you back.

Like this is one of the things I really like about music is like, if I hear that Dark World theme, I'm just like instantly transported to the moment. Yeah.

It'll never leave me.

I'm instantly transported to the moment that I discovered that world and experienced that whole like awe of seeing this whole new space. Yeah. So, I mean, like that's one of the things I really love about the themes of, in the music for this series.

And, you know, they keep bringing them back. And obviously Koji Kondo, who did a lot of the music for this, is just a genius composer. I mean, some of the melodies are so simple, but they're so impactful.

Exactly. Like, so, I mean, for me, Zelda music is one of the most like special things I've ever experienced.

Yeah, I agree with you. Koji Kondo, I feel like should be brought up as much as Nobuo Uematsu.

Because of just how early on he was doing this created this theme that has just stood the test of time and is still, I don't know, it's just, it is part of that identity. And I don't know if you had this same feeling.

But when I was playing Breath of the Wild for the first time, and you go through that game for a while and you hear all kinds of really great music, and the music is fantastic in those games.

But there was one moment where I was just riding on a horseback through a field, and you just hear it kind of organically that theme just weave itself into the music, and it just starts up, and you hear it.

And it was like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I just was like, oh my god, I think I put my controller down and just kind of was like, oh.

And just like experience it.

It just made me smile. It just made me feel happy. And I was like, this is why I love Zelda.

Like these kinds of moments that while yes, the games are incredible and there's so much to love there, there's more to it for me because it's about being a kid and about having those experiences and remembering watching my mom and remembering

talking to other kids. All these things we're talking about, it takes me back. And again, why I do this show is to revisit that and to really grab a hold of it and just remember like this is why we love games.

These are why games are so special to us and there's so much about them that we hold onto. And that is a big part of why Zelda is so special to me is because of all of it has just been there since the beginning. It's still there.

They expand on it. They do all kinds of new stuff, but it's still there. And I think Link to the Past, while it has incredible music like the Dark World thing we're talking about, but all of it, I can hear that entire soundtrack in my head right now.

Like I can hear all of it. You say, hey, what does it sound like in this dungeon? I hear the music.

Like it's there and it just, it fits perfectly. It fits the mood. The Dark World sounds right.

Like it just sounds like the Dark World. The Light World, yeah, you got the nice heroic theme playing. There you go.

And the dungeon, same thing. And some of them are creepy and ominous. There's just this really, like you said, brilliant way that he just kind of figures out, this is how this mood is.

This is how it's gonna sound in here. And he just made it work perfectly. It's one of my favorite soundtracks.

I love Ocarina, but like, this is one of my favorite soundtracks in the entire series.

No, I feel the same way. It's one of my favorites as well. And I feel like each Zelda soundtrack just kind of builds.

You know, like it builds on...

They stand on each other, like the shoulders of the next one. Like it's, they keep propping up. So all of those like Epona's song and Zelda's lullaby and the song of time, everything.

It's just, they can weave them back in and you're like, ah, and you just feels like Zelda. It feels right. Just as much as the Prelude feels right in Final Fantasy.

You know, it's part of it. So I wanted to touch on that. But is there one particular song that you like the most?

In Link to the Past, is there one that you love the most?

Oh, that's so hard. I think it's not so basic, but I think it, because we keep talking about it, but I think it is the Dark World theme. Yeah.

I think that it just, again, there was something so sinister and weird and novel about it. It just really stuck in my mind. I mean, I like all the heroic tracks and stuff like that.

They sound like Zelda and they sound like the Zelda I was expecting. Then it was like the Dark World and the Dark World, the dungeon theme in the Dark World also is very, to me, it was very unexpected. It was like the evil ratcheted up.

Yeah.

It's way more sinister. It's way more sinister, yeah.

Yeah. I was really into the sounds of the Dark World overall. It's interesting because I think my favorite song in the original Zelda is also the dungeon theme.

I really like the minor soundscape and it's very sinister and evil, and you feel the tension of being in a dungeon. I think that's something that Zelda has always done well, is the dungeon music in particular.

I think even with the Dark World theme too, there is almost an undertone of hope in there somehow. For me, it almost feels like while it's supposed to be hopeless, the music gives you this idea that you're trying to rise above it.

I don't know how to explain that, but there are certain parts of the melody where I'm like, it's like the hero is trying to break through here and the music is trying to do it too.

So there's like a, I don't know, I've always gotten that sense that there's a little bit of hope in there, just barely in certain parts of the song. So, and that's, of course, that's art, right?

It's just how we interpret it, but like that's how I always did. Yes. But yeah, special soundtrack.

Wanted to touch on that with you. But now, as we wind down, we've had a lot of great things to talk about and we could talk about this forever, I'm sure.

2:17:14

But I want to jump into the patron comments and questions to cap this off. And I do want to go ahead and thank all of the patrons who, obviously all of you in general, who support what I do. I appreciate it so much more than I could ever tell you.

But also thank you to everyone who responded to the posted question for Link to the Past. And that question, Rachael and I will briefly just acknowledge or discuss whether it was a comment or question.

So the question that I asked, there were two that you could choose from. What are your personal memories of A Link to the Past and why is it special to you? And or what's your favorite Retro Zelda game ever and why?

So let's start with the first one. This is from Drew Fice the Wote. Drew Fice, thank you so much again for writing in.

He said, oh wow, A Link to the Past was probably the first game that made me feel like I was in a living, breathing world. Came out reasonably early and was a tough act to follow.

In the much beloved 16-bit era, when it released, everybody with a SNES knew that Nintendo wasn't playing around. And yeah, I would agree with you. And I know we kind of alluded to that too.

I would 100% agree. 100% agree. We were like, okay, Super Nintendo is not messing around.

So absolutely agree. Yeah, that living, breathing world, as we've talked about, like that's, I feel like that's going to be a theme here. Thanks for that, Drew Fice.

I appreciate it. Shepard Levin, he says, What is my favorite Retro Zelda? Hands down, that would have to be Link's Awakening.

It was the perfect road trip game. When I used to travel to see my family in North Carolina every summer as a kid, when I play that game, it takes me back to time with my grandparents. That's really sweet.

Link's Awakening is a great game.

It is a fantastic game.

You have those memories of going to your grandparents' house. Again, I can remember playing certain games on my Game Boy on the road, and unfortunately never had Link's Awakening for my Game Boy to get to play it till much later.

But that's a great memory. Thanks for sharing that, Shepard. Retro Jonesy, Craig Jones.

He said, This is without a doubt one of my all-time favorite games and my favorite Zelda game. I remember playing this back when I was younger and it absolutely blew me away with how beautiful it was.

Everything about the game felt epic and just so huge compared to other games I'd played. I still play it at least once a year and still love every second of it.

I have become so familiar with the game that I often play randomizers on it, which mixes up items, enemies and even entrances. I highly recommend trying this as it's so much fun and I can test your knowledge of the game.

Keep up the amazing work, Patrick. Love the show. Thank you, Retro Jonesy.

I really appreciate that. I have never tried a randomizer for this game, but maybe I should.

Me neither.

Maybe that's the cue.

Yeah, people have recommended that to me before. I think it would be an interesting way to like, you know, like I said, I can beat this game in three days now. So I think it would help with that problem.

Yeah, this would be you back at three years.

I'd be like, how are you doing on that? Well, one year down and I just got to the dark world. So yeah, but maybe, yeah, great.

Honestly, maybe I might have to do that actually. And that sounds awesome. And I'm glad that you love this game just as much as we do.

Thanks for that. Ira Bell, she says, I love A Link to the Past. It's my favorite video game of all time.

My earliest memory of it is watching my dad play it. Hey, you got a kindred spirit there. When I eventually played it myself, I was hooked.

I remember playing it in my mother's bedroom with one of those small TVs. I've played it so much and so early in life. I cannot exactly recall when I beat it for the first time.

It's a game I revisit every so often and every time I do, it's a wonderful and fun experience. As far as I'm concerned, this is one of those games that is as close to perfection as can be. Rachael, would you agree with that?

I felt like I was reading my own writing.

You're reading your own thoughts right there.

You're like, wait a second, did I comment here?

I know. I kind of was like, yep, that sounds like me.

This is overwhelming love for this too. Link to the Past just has, it's so nice to see this. Thank you for that, Ira.

Next, we have JC. Denden. He says, while the usual suspects like Mario and Street Fighter 2 were available to play at friends who were fortunate enough to have one of those fancy consoles, they all existed on a 2D plane.

When I was allowed to play A Link to the Past, I was able to walk into every direction for the first time in a video game.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I enjoyed that sense of freedom and even managed to get to the cells and somehow button mash my way through the guard. My friend was impressed. My friend was impressed.

I only realized many years later how insane that was for an 8 year old with hardly any gaming experience.

When I got to Game Boy and Link's Awakening became the first Zelda game in my possession not much later, it quickly became and remained one of my favorite games of all time.

That same sense of freedom I had only tasted before now in the palm of my hands, yeah not much to explain there.

It's still my favorite Zelda game, only Wind Waker truly came close to that experience, which is funny because it took the blueprint of its predecessors like Link's Awakening did and refined it to something weird and unique.

And I'd agree, I love Wind Waker. I think Wind Waker is incredible.

I do too, I do too. I mean, I do feel like there's a large portion of that game you spend on a boat, but the gameplay and the dungeons I think are really solid.

And I mean, I'm sure you remember at the time that game just got so much grief and I don't think it really deserves.

That's why we have Twilight Princess, literally, because they were like, the reaction was so crazy at the time. They were like, well, I guess we got to make it darker, which I liked Twilight Princess too. But I mean, Wind Waker was amazing.

The art style was charming. I love it. Great game.

Okay, Materia Keeper. He says, my first Zelda experience was with the GameCube collector's disc that was bundled with the system. For a long time, my favorite Zelda game was Ocarina of Time.

However, upon my second playthrough of Majora's Mask, ah, Materia Keeper, you're speaking my language, I came to recognize that game as my favorite.

I love the atmosphere, the dark subtext and the way the world and characters react according to what day it is. It was a master class in showing, not telling world building.

I didn't play Link to the Past until the We Shop Channel release, but it is still aged well and I need to replay it one day.

And I just want to point out that the Hyrule Castle theme is the most amazing piece of work that Koji Kondo has ever written and I want to hear it played by a live symphony one day. I love that. Ah, I love that too.

That's a great comment. And yes, Majora's Mask is up there for me. Materia Keeper, that is one of my favorite Zelda games too.

It's a great, great call. Okay, Glover Aaron, when I was in high school, I got my Super Nintendo with Link to the Past from a local swap meet. When we got it home and hooked up, I realized to my dismay that the cartridge save battery didn't work.

Undeterred, I sneakily left the system powered on for weeks in my bedroom.

Oh my God.

Praying the whole while that my parents wouldn't notice and turn it off. I did eventually beat it, but finally turning off the power afterward was such a bittersweet moment.

Knowing the entire adventure was about to vanish in everything but my memory. Oh my God. That is wild to think about.

And God, what a somber note to end on. Holy shit.

I know. I've never, I mean, I've heard of that happening that like if the battery dies, then it doesn't, you can't save. But I've never heard of it actually happening to somebody.

Yeah.

And like you can, like I have to replace them now in some of my cartridges. Like occasionally you have to. But they last a long time.

But like that, leaving your Super Nintendo on for weeks. Like I can't imagine the fact is that I bet you that Super Nintendo still works. Which is another thing.

Glover Errod, thank you so much for that comment. That is hysterical and I love that memory. But I love how he also said like when he turned it off, he knew everything he did was going to go away forever.

That's kind of like wild. Okay, a couple more here. Cody Noel, it's Saturday morning around 11 AM in the early 90s.

The good cartoons are all over. So time to turn on the Super Nintendo. Did I leave the TV adapter on channel three or four?

Yeah, three, I always forget. Slide the purple bar forward and the digital harp starts cascading. I spam the start button as fast as I can so I can get going.

Once I had my save loaded, I was launched into a world of wonder, excitement and adventure. A Link to the Past was my first exposure to an RPG style game.

And I spent hours upon hours just living in that wonderful world as the Legendary Zelda theme is amplifying my heroic adventure. Now, it's the late 20s.

I've got my chair pulled in front of the big screen, headset on, and I am storming Hyrule Castle to make my final push to save Princess Zelda from the clutches of Calamity Ganon. A bombastic chorus paints a sense of doom and dread as I approach.

When out of nowhere, the classic Zelda theme rises from the darkness. In that moment, I'm transported back in time to the all of my youth playing A Link to the Past. Cody, you read my mind, man.

Very few things in life. I know, he said, very few things in life are able to excite me the way that the main Zelda theme song does. And it will forever be strongly tied to being teleported to the land of Hyrule for the very first time.

Such an incredible experience that I will always cherish. Yeah, he read my mind. Cody, Cody's a friend of mine from Korea.

He's a buddy of mine, yeah. So Cody, that obviously beautifully written, but yeah, I am with you 100 percent. That is exactly what I just said a little while ago.

Like that is something that hits me every time I hear it. So thank you for that. And I know you agree with that too, Rachael.

I know you feel the same way.

I do. I do.

Okay, Lionheart Will, welcome to the show, Rachael. I may be the odd one out here, but Zelda 2, the adventure of Link will always be my favorite, which is also one of the hardest ones ever.

It was the first Zelda game that I played on NES at the age of 7, and I think it may have been my first action RPG as Link gains experience points and levels up in the game.

Zelda 2 truly hits my nostalgia to its core with the music, sound and its challenging gameplay. Also, it's considered by many to be the black sheep of the Zelda franchise. What do you both think?

Do you have any nostalgic memories of it? Thanks, Will.

Um, it's not my favorite, to be honest.

It is kind of a black sheep, it is.

I think it is a black sheep. I do think that that is, and I think the people that love it, they really love it. I think for me, maybe it is just because my first experience with Zelda was that like top down, open world kind of exploration.

Like that for me is the preferred format for Zelda. I don't think Zelda 2 is a bad game.

It's very different and it's very hard.

Yes. Yeah. I think for like my childhood brain, it was too hard.

So I didn't really do too much with it until later when I actually played the whole thing. But yeah, I mean, I can understand why people like it.

I get it too. It's got some good stuff in it. I do like it.

It is a black sheep, but it still is one of the hardest Zelda games, period. It is. It's just, it's so hard.

Going back now, it's ridiculous. But yeah, Lionheart, I totally understand why it would be your favorite too. Like, I get it.

Thanks for that comment. Last one, Terrible HN. He says, I'ma be honest.

I didn't enjoy these games until I gave Ocarina of Time a chance. Ocarina gave me a better understanding of this world. After that, I got to play this again on GBA, and it was amazing.

2D Zelda games deserve more love than they already have. I like that because Ocarina getting you into it, right? Your gaming sensibilities are more like, I don't want to play the old stuff.

I want to play the 3D stuff. I want to play the cool stuff. Then going back and realizing why these games are still as good as they are.

I guess we can kind of, Terrible, we'll turn it into the end here, which is this game holds up. Absolutely has aged well. It's perfectly good and it's perfectly playable.

I think that it's held up as still one of the best Zelda games. I feel like you probably are on the same wavelength there.

I definitely agree. I love the last comment too because I think it just shows that sometimes we're not in the right headspace to experience a game. But then there are other times where it's just like the game just hits.

I'm so sorry.

Oh, you're fine. He's part of the episode. I'll give him a credit.

Sherman also loves Zelda and he's speaking very passionately about it.

Yes. But I just think there's something so iconic about A Link to the Past in terms of it established so many things that I think we take for granted about Zelda today.

The things that people love about Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild, a lot of that is in A Link to the Past.

A hundred percent.

It's one of those things where it's like the DNA is just there.

I think because I experienced it when I did as such a young kid, I just think that it just made such an impact on me that now whenever I play a Zelda game it almost takes me back to that moment of playing A Link to the Past.

It says something for both of us where we both appreciate the original Zelda because it was our first foray into all this. It's where it started. While I do love that game and it will always be special to me, I go back to Link to the Past first.

That's where my mind goes because that's the one that I loved, really loved. It's really hard for me because there are several Zelda games that I love so much, but if I had to choose one, it would be Link to the Past.

The only ones that come close are going to be Ocarina and probably Majora's Mask could probably be up there.

Yeah. For me, it's Ocarina and Twilight Princess.

Yeah.

I love Twilight Princess because I love the dark aspect of it. I also understand why so many people love Majora's Mask because it's the same thing. It's kind of like this dark sinister mask on the side.

Majora's Mask is wild, but I do love it.

Yeah, everybody has, and I think the other underlying thing here is that I love most of them. I can't think of one that I dislike that much, especially in the main line. Link's Awakening is great.

Even stuff like Minish Cap is great. There's a lot of great other side games in there, but in the main through line, I think I love all of them. I don't think there's one that I don't like.

I feel the same way.

Even the ones I like less, I still like them. I don't think there's a Zelda I don't like.

It's hard. Yeah, they're hard to dislike. There's just so much there.

Anyway, thank you to everybody for writing in. I really appreciate it. Of course, next time we have an exciting new way of doing comments with call-ins with voicemails.

So that's going to be fun. Yeah, that's going to be interesting. Just got a new feature on the website.

So that'll be coming up next, guys. So what that means is, guys and girls, and everyone, you'll be able to go to the website and record a voice message to be actually discussed on the show.

So just make sure you check out the Patreon so you see where you'll be able to do that. Now, with that being said, Rachael, let's wind it down. I do want to give it to you real quick here before you head out.

Please tell everybody anything else that you want to mention. If you do want to say anything else about Zelda, please do. Otherwise, let them know where they can find you and anything else you want to share about you and what you do.

I mean, I am just thrilled that we have yapped about Zelda for hours.

And I will always come back and do this. I mean, I'm a huge retro gamer. I've really enjoyed your podcast, Pat.

I mean, I think you're just like everything you're doing here. I understand. I get it, obviously.

It's like I think we had so many shared experiences growing up. So yeah, I guess if you want to find me and talk more about games, I'm Rachael Camui everywhere. So that's R-A-C-H-A-E-L.

The A always throws people. And then Camui, C-A-M-U-I. And I am the same handle everywhere.

I'm on Twitch. I'm on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram. I'm even on YouTube, although I never post there.

So yeah, just if you want to talk games, come find me. That's pretty much what I do online is talk games or yeah, a hundred percent. So yeah, this has been a blast.

Has it been a retro blast?

Yeah, okay, there it was. I was waiting for that. Okay, see, you get it.

You've now come full circle. That was your moment of Zen. Take it in.

So yes, this is, I appreciate that. This is why I do this. It's all, this isn't a show meant for just yapping about a game to just talk about why we hate it and what's wrong with it.

This is a show about why we love them and why they're special, right? And why we need to hold on to them and why we need to share why they mean so much.

So I truly appreciate you coming on and sharing your memories and sharing why this game is special to you. And I would love to have you back and talk about maybe another Zelda, but maybe a Final Fantasy we'll have to put in there.

We'll have to figure it out because I know you and I have a couple that, back from the old school days, that I'm sure would probably be worth talking about. So, but yeah, thank you again.

It's been a pleasure and so happy that I finally got to talk about this a little bit more. It could have been a five hour long episode, but I hope everybody out there enjoyed hearing us gush about it for the past few hours.

But Rachael, with that being said, we're gonna let everybody go until next time. Thank you for being here and we will see you soon. Okay, so you love playing retro games, but did you ever wonder how they were created in the first place?

retrogaminggeek.com is a website that dives into the stories behind the games we know and love.

Hear how Raptor, Call of the Shadows was created in the site's exclusive interview with its creator, Scott Host, or you could even read about how Alter Beast, Golden Axe, and Die Hard Arcade are all related.

Every story is filled with interesting information, and you can check out the ones about your favorite games. Maybe hop into some developer deep dives, and there's even a section dedicated entirely to nostalgia.

At retrogaminggeek.com, every game has a story. Hey, listen, do you like The Legend of Zelda? Then you should check out Chad of the Wild, a Legend of Zelda play along podcast that breaks down each entry in Nintendo's legendary series.

Just this year, we are launching the new and improved Chad of the Wild DX to return to these amazing games with a fresh new look from co-host Celeste Roberts, Pete Deaver, and myself, Jeremy Harvey.

You can find Chad of the Wild on your favorite podcast player of choice, as well as in video format on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple podcasts.

Looking for a show with a miner from Down Under, an action figure small enough to be carried off by a kestrel, a Zelda vinyl obsessive, and a Deadlifting Bulbasaur fan?

Along with a variety of uninformed topics, come join Gravity Core's NerdPod as we talk about everything, Nintendo to anime, vinyl to lifting, and kestrels to the great Emu War.

Find us on Bluesky and everywhere you listen to podcasts, you'll be happy you came.