Happy Birthday 35, Zelda legend

On February 21, 1986, the original The Legend of Zelda released on the Famicom in Japan. It did okay, Nintendo did a little more Zelda games, and we’ve all been at good times ever since.

It’s easy to turn these posts into a general review, a checklist looking back at some of the biggest and most important video games in the history of the medium, but for that sort of thing you can just scan this list written by Jason which is already doing much of that heavy lifting.

Instead I think I would like to take this opportunity thank you the series, and one game in particular.

I grew up in Australia in the 80s and 90s, and by doing so I was not as fascinated by Nintendo stuff as most American children of the same age. Sega was unequivocally more successful Down Under in the 8-bit era, and I spent much of my time on Commodore 64 and PC, so in addition to a few games of Mario here and there, some Street Fighter II and Super Star Wars a little later on SNES friend then some Control on N64 I got it done all the way to being an adult without getting much Nintendo experience.

That changed in my early 20s when I moved in with my buddy Kevin, who was much more familiar with Nintendo than I was and at the time had just caught up with both the modern Nintendo GameCube and a copy of the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

As a grizzled PC gamer (and an unstable asshole about it, to be honest), initially excited at the idea of ​​playing a Nintendo game, I quickly discovered that I had never seen anything similar to. This game was live, a perfect marriage of timeless art design and rhythmic fighting action, and I loved more than anything I had played before or since. Of course I was so in love that I was often just happy to sit and watch other people play it.

So was Kev, and so did we have another friend, Geez, so what suddenly happened when we sat and watched each other play was that we worked out way to play through this very cooperative single-player gameplay. We didn’t use clocks or timers or anything so detailed, we just played it cool and got a feel when it was time to bypass the controller. Maybe it was after a death in a crater, maybe after a little sailing, maybe after you got involved in a puzzle, maybe because you had to shake. Whatever!

This was before the age of YouTube recommendation videos, so every time we ran into any of the countless obstacles at this game, instead of looting on their own or coming up to GameFAQs, we would just shoot at the shakes and cooperate, put our heads together to try and think outside of the puzzles of the game, and when one’s toes failed player they were, we could make a team and see which one of us could beat Wind waker more active challenges as well.

It’s a magical game, but by playing it together it made something even more. I know this feels silly to you, normal guy, who was probably playing through and enjoying this game on his own, but Wind waker– not designed for this at all – it’s still my favorite co-op experience ever.

By the time we finished it, I was in tears at the grandeur of everything, something I have written about here before. I still think, to this day, that Wind waker my favorite game of all time, and most of all when asked why I give such plausible answers: that it’s the game’s visuals, or its post-apocalyptic setting, or the dangerous fight its undervalue, or that it is just the largest vibey beach game all done.

But honestly, deep down, while I love it for those reasons, I probably like it too because the time I spent playing was so memorable. That’s for thinking Wind waker now, as a married man with children and a mortgage, putting me back in time, to when the most important concern of my life was getting together with friends, ordering pizza, drinking beer and go on one hell of an adventure.

Memories like those are the best we can hope to have and be involved in this increasingly shy world, so today is so good to gin for thanks Zelda—Agus Wind waker especially – for me.