The Legend of Zelda in Three and a Half Hours

Having some spare time can be a good thing now and then. And despite the usual amount of chores that need to be accomplished on a daily basis in life, something inside my inner sanctum compelled me to dive into the original "Legend of Zelda" head first. For no apparent reason I just decided to play (or perhaps I thought it would look pleasantly peachy emulated on my 65 inch LCD and oh yes, it did). And play I did, at a frenzied pace! Granted I came nowhere near the thirty four minutes and four seconds record of the insane person on "Speed Demos Archive" but damn, I was proud of myself. The dude in question calls himself  "Tom 'rdrunner' Votava." Tom, all I can say is, my GOD man! Total Super Nova bro!

My experience with Zelda? I haven't really touched the game "seriously" in 20 years. Other than to test it out on various NES emulators to make sure they worked properly. That being said, what else can one say about this game? There are probably more websites and game write ups devoted to it than hairs on my legs (the hair on my legs is at least as thick as the hair on Robin Williams back, remember the Fisher King? Blind I tell you, BLIND!). So why not just talk about the feelings this game evoked from me instead? I hope that would be less boring. For writing and reading.

It made me feel young, angry, joyous, hungry, jaded, happy, hurtful, sad, insane and smarter, I think. It's a great game, honestly, it is. Even in 2013. I never finished this game all those years ago. I just, couldn't. That last dungeon got me every time. Just a maze of blurbbbbbbling ghosts and shield eating pancake stacks. Oh yeah, and those happy decapitated hopping rabbit heads. What the hell man? What WERE those things? And even with the best sword they still took like 4 or 5 hits a piece! Technically they took as many or more hits than Gannon himself. And they were so much happier...

 But let me tell you, when it comes to final dungeons with insanely difficult mazes (Revenge of Shinobi, I'm looking at you) it generally takes me 20 years to beat them. Or at least the advent of the internet with some of those leg hair websites I was talking about. You know, the ones with more insane people that screen cap entire games. But I'm glad to say I did not use a single GameFAQ for this game. The leg hair websites with the maps though... man... thank you. For all the people like me who value 25 year old games over normal things like you know, cats, your maps get us a piece of our childhood back. Minus the frustration of bombing three sides of every room and burning every bush that looks like it's a little strange, and pushing every rock that's conspicuously off by itself in the middle of a forest, and last but not least, hitting the exact SPOT with a bomb where you could have sworn that cave was 20 years ago... Dude, I swear it's right there! Oh fuck it just pull up the screen caps from Zelda Wiki already...