With all of this talk about puzzles in the Zelda games and how great a Link to the Past was I feel compelled to chime in my two cents on the matter. I never got into Zelda or games like Final Fantasy when I was growing up. I’m not so sure why, maybe my sensibilities weren’t inline with the Japanese tastes for girly cartoony aesthetics, maybe the emphasis on large chucks of unimportant dialog were just too much for my tastes, or maybe my idea of fun was not doing things the way the game wants me to do them. Maybe it was a mix of all of them. I’m just not sure.
After about a decade of steering clear of both series I had a look at the the NES versions of them. Namely Zelda 1 & 2 and Final Fantasy 1. I found none of those qualities in them. For the first time I began to see why those series were so popular. I don’t know they just felt like how I thought games should be. But I thoroughly enjoy interacting with them, something that their SNES successors fail at on several levels.
I guess it’s important to note that I’m of the SNES generation. I had played Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES but my first game system was the SNES. I still to this day think Mario 3 is better than Mario World. Some might say it’s because I played 3 first but I just think it’s because World is just a poor-mans Mario 3. Everything about Mario 3 is more creative and varied than Mario World. Lately I’ve noticed just how intolerable Mario World levels are compared to the NES games. They are mostly just cheap memory based levels. And guess what? New Super Mario Bros. is even harder for me to stumach. In the same vein I would say the A Link to the Past is just a cheap imitation of the Zelda 1. So I’m expecting LttP2 be a cheap imitation of it’s SNES predecessor.
It’s a pattern I’ve noticed with Nintendo, every generation they get cheaper, crappier and lamer. I was turned on to this pattern in part by my experience with the Mario Kart games on the N64 and Gamecube. Mario Kart Double Dash infuriated me because it made me realize that all the underwhelming cheap kiddie crap on the N64 was not Nintendo getting used to the technology. That they would never be as good as they were in the NES and SNES days much less surpass themselves.
But even if LttP2 is just as good as the SNES one it still wont be close to good enough for me. Because I don’t like Link to the Past.You have to pick your battles. For example, I dislike Super Metroid when it came out because the game was such a disappointment compared to the original Metroid. The original Metroid kept you going for months and the game was bloody hard. Super Metroid could be beaten with a rental. The game lacked mystery. It had great atmosphere and music, but it didn’t connect the same way the original Metroid did (and Metroid II was well liked for as much as it could do on the limited Gameboy platform).
I’m not going to bang a drum about how much better Metroid was to Super Metroid. That’s not the argument. The argument is should Metroid be completely remade to become an anime graphic novel such as Metroid: Other M? I say no. Instead of saying, “Go back to NES Metroid,” I say: “Go back to oldschool Metroid such as Metroid or Super Metroid.”
You writing about not liking Link to the Past tells me you don’t see the forest for the trees. It is not tactically possible to argue for Nintendo to make another NES type Zelda because that is an extremely fractured audience. It is, however, tactically possible to argue that Nintendo should drop the Aonuma ‘philosophies’ for Zelda as that is when Zelda entered sales and franchise decline. The Zelda DS games were a disaster. Skyward Sword didn’t do its job as a premier first party title. This allows one to argue that Zelda should go back to the pre-Aonuma Era (Aonuma Zelda means Zelda is puzzle dungeons with an adventure game story. Classic Zelda means Zelda is a roaming overworld with RPG elements and arcade/action combat).
It’s like someone trying to argue that Nintendo should remake the original Super Mario Brothers back pre-2009 when Nintendo saw no distinction between 2d or 3d Mario. It was just Mario to them. Hence, I chose the argument of ‘2d Mario’ as opposed to a specific title of Mario. Now that there is are 2d Marios, we then say, “Go more like the original Super Mario Brothers and less like Super Mario World.” I was there when the SNES launched. Super Mario World was disappointing to Nintendo veterans at the time. Ditto the same with NSMB U. NSMB U is emulating the wrong Mario game. It is nostalgia inside Nintendo that thinks certain games are better than they are.
Should this 3DS Zelda be successful, then you would be able to argue that future iterations should be more like the first Zelda or second Zelda. We’re not at the point of arguing whether or not Link to the Past style is the better way because that is not the argument. The argument is a general one at this point. Does old school Zelda still have a place in the market? That must be answered first before we go back to the 8-bit Shangri-La.