Peter James Mann
It’s been 29 years…
There are two games that make me feel like I’m soaked in nostalgia: Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Luckily for me, two things happened last week:
1) It was the 29th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
2) My son finally caved to watching me play a game in 16-bit graphics. Which, I imagine, is the equivalent of my father not letting me watch him play Myst (yeah, riveting…), but just a text RPG in DOS. So, like, I get it.
Since the little guy likes me to do so many voices when I read to him, I found myself naturally doing them. Each character was a new, silly voice. Except, of course, for Link. He doesn’t get lines in this title. To be fair, he never speaks. He does, however, have sick pink hair. Super in right now; it’s 1992 all over again.
When this game came out, I was four-years-old. So I forgive myself for not having fully grasped the story at the time. But I was so happy I was able to now, especially with my son in tow. Right from the 1st line, Carter was all about this adventure.
“Please. Help me,” I said in my best Zelda voice. Carter gasped.
“Zelda?!”
“I am in the dungeon of the castle.”
“Daddy, Daddy Bear! Zelda is in the dungeon!”
“Wait, what?!”
“Yeah! Me and you and Link have to help Zelda together!”
“Okay, Bubs.”
“Baby bear.”
“Baby bear, sorry. You have so many names, though.”
“Yeah. It’s silly.”
This is where the NES / SNES apps on Nintendo Switch shine with some of these high profile titles. Not only does it allow me to access the generation of original titles I never had a chance to play, I get to show these games I grew up with to my kids. I also get to see them with modern eyes. A secret might be telegraphed in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, for example, by a distinctly shaped feature on the map or an ancient set of stairs the hill has half swallowed. In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, it can be as obvious as a cracked wall to blow up with a bomb, to the way a path ends with a bush that covers a hole to a nearby dungeon. There’s even shapes of arrows in the grass sometimes to point you in the right direction.
As I said in the beginning, these are 16-bit graphics, and they brought me back hard. I loved seeing how the light lines were drawn to create the diffusion of light from a flickering torch. There’s a little orange spark that travels down the length of Link’s sword before turning blue at the tip, showing you have maximum power for your spin attack. It felt so good to bat arrows away with a swing and watch it bounce away. And even though it’s limited in graphics, there were still little tricks to defeating enemies using the environment, like knocking a guard of the ledge in a dungeon.
Kayley, my stepdaughter, initially thought this was Stardew Valley before she saw the Zelda-themed items and heard the music. She even started to hum along to the overworld music as we made our way to the Eastern Temple (Da, na, da-da, na-na-na!). But she was able to see and hear those visual cues from a game that wouldn’t come out for another 25 years. That’s a testament to Ninento’s handling of their properties.
After a bit, the kids took over. Carter cackled and shouted when he realized he could throw pots and bushes. Kayley squealed when she defeated her first enemy. It didn’t matter how many times they got the dreaded game over screen, where Link falls face first into a red screen fading to black. They just kept adventuring. And I got to sit there and just watch.
It was cool.
