One of my Christmas gifts was a port where I could hook up to my Wii and connect NES controllers in it. These NES controllers are the same ones I got back around twenty five years ago. (And they still work flawlessly!)
So I decided to take a game through the NES controller’s paces. I thought Zelda II would be good for that.
I’ve played and replayed Zelda II many times. One thing I had done before was to farm the first palace for experience points to level up fast. And then I’d get bored somewhere later on in the game because it’d be so easy.
What I did this time was to enforce ‘no cheese’. I would not try to ‘farm’ anywhere. I’ll just see how far I can get as 1-1-1 Link. As you can imagine, the game became MUCH harder when you are at a lower level.
To give an idea of how RPG games have evolved, did you know that if you lose all your lives in Zelda 2, you lose all your experience points? Ouch.
What happened to me is that the game became very interesting and exciting because based on the leveling progression and me not farming, the difficulty curve always kept re-adjusting to my skill level. For example, I lost all my lives going through Death Mountain. But when I did it again, I leveled up along the way and became stronger. And this was barely the push I needed to ‘squeeze by’ and pass it. The experience was exciting because the game was neither too easy nor too hard. The difficulty level readjusted itself around me. That is the beauty of the RPG and ‘open world’ system.
This is why I’ve always been puzzled why anyone could say a game like Zelda I or Zelda II (or any game with an RPG or ‘open world’ system) could be ‘too hard’ or ‘too easy’. The game’s difficulty re-adjusts itself depending entirely on your level or items (or heart containers). In other words, the purpose of heart containers is not so players can go on a ‘scavenger hunt’. The purpose of the heart containers is to re-adjust the difficulty of the game. If the player is finding things too difficult, they need to spend more time getting heart containers. In every RPG, if the boss is too difficult, then you walk around in circles trying to ‘level up’. RPGs don’t need difficulty settings because the leveling re-adjusts it.
So I ask for when you’re playing these older RPGish type games, don’t try to cheese it. Go ahead normally. You’ll be shocked at the times you get your butt handed to you. But then you’ll get excited. A challenge. Since farming is boring, you’ll level up only what is minimally required which adjusts the challenge perfectly to your skill level. This is brilliant game design.
As for the NES controller, I found it was not uncomfortable at all. The only buttons I did not like were the start and select… too mushy. What I love to do is hold the controller with the tips of my fingers, fingers holding it from either side, and can rapidly click on an action button. You can’t do that with modern controllers because they have too much mass.
Using a NES controller does increase the enjoyment factor much more with playing NES games. “Because of nostalgia!” screams a reader. No. But it is because the games were designed with the NES controller in mind. Try playing Mega Man 2 on VC with an NES controller versus Mega Man 2 on the Gamecube Mega Man Anniversary Collection and you’ll see what I mean.
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