the first time i played zelda, i had no clue as to what the hell i was doing. getting older, i understood it more. it feels different and you appreciate it more. during my childhood years, i always searched for games that follows similar footsteps to zelda. often i ask friends or if friends recommend a game, i would ask if it was a zelda game. reading this post, it triggered a childhood memory of how when i was younger, i often categorized or described games as zelda games. when one would say, is it like a zelda game, that was a categorical description of a game that follows similar ideas to zelda. upto this day, i don’t really know what to call a zelda game and i still use that line, “it’s like a zelda game” to describe games similar to zelda. i love this comment, “back in the day, Zelda games were described as ZELDA GAMES. Zelda games were such quality that we had to invent a totally new genre just to put them in. They became the ‘Zelda genre’.”
mario 64 was a phenomenon. it was a must have title during the launch of the n64. there is no game that surpasses what mario 64 has done. every single time someone mentions a successor to mario 64 [and there has been from super mario sunshine to super mario galaxy], there will never exist such a thing. what i believe what makes mario 64 a phenomenon was that it was the first 3d mario we’ve seen. it was very unexpected that mario would have went from 2d to 3d in such a sudden time. now that 3d is easily capable, it isn’t really a big deal as it was with the n64 because back then, 3d was very limited and what nintendo have done with the n64 and mario into 3d, it was amazing. but today, there is no magic for this idea of mario being 3d. i guess you can say it was the idea of interacting/exploring mario in a 3d world/environment, though limited on what you can and can’t do. i actually got rid of super mario sunshine and soon mario galaxy and have no regrets. heck, i don’t even care about mario galaxy 2.
zelda has become lost. i haven’t really cared much for most of the recent ones that have been released lately. i owned most of the recent zelda games, beat them all but never really revisited them often. i have barely played spirit tracks and it wasn’t because of reading what you’ve said about it. i look at it and tinker with it but i don’t really care. it’s like there’s no magic. it’s as you’ve said, it’s about the content and lately the content by many game developers is quite lacking. i’ve actually been playing a lot of old games on pc and consoles and have been getting bored lately. recently, i’ve got my hands on a new gameboy sp [the backlit one] and have started looking into some old gameboy games. i’ve actually got my hands on zelda dx for gameboy color and surprisingly, it’s almost like zelda three.
There has to have been some sort of massive change in the developers or in the development process for the current games to not match the latter ones.
Right now, I am blaming the ‘Cult of Creativity’, or the ‘Arthouse’ as another emailer put it.
They are no longer interested in making fun video games. They are interested in ‘expressing their creativity’. How else to explain the demand for a new game like Super Metroid and we get ‘maternal instincts’ Metroid that explores Samus Aran’s ‘mommy issues’ involving a space jellyfish. Or we want a fun portable Zelda for our DS and we get Zelda with trains instead.