I've been continuing my leisurely jaunt through Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series for the last few days, and have finished A Link to the Past and started on Link's Awakening. The degree to which I'm enjoying these games suggests to me that this is something I should have probably done quite some time ago, but no matter; the nice thing about the Zelda games, I'm discovering, is that despite their technical limitations in their older incarnations, they are mostly pretty timeless experiences that stand up very well today.
The other thing I've discovered is that the oft-mentioned criticism that "every Zelda game is the same", at least with regards to plot — a criticism that I have myself leveled at the series in the past — is actually complete bollocks. Don't believe me? Let's take stock.
The Legend of Zelda: Ganon kidnaps Zelda. Link has to save her and defeat Ganon. This is the wafer-thin plot that everyone assumes is the same in every subsequent Zelda.
The Adventure of Link: The Link from the first game seeks to awaken a Zelda who is not the Zelda from the first game by taking magic crystals to palaces. Meanwhile, Ganon's followers seek to resurrect their pig-faced twat of a master by sprinkling Link's blood on Ganon's ashes.
A Link to the Past: A Link from several eras prior to the first two Zelda games follows his uncle into battle having received a telepathic message from yet another Zelda, who is a descendant of seven wise men who sealed away the Demon King Ganon. Ganon is trapped in the Dark World, which was once the Golden Land, where the Triforce lay. Link takes up the Master Sword to strike down Ganon and return the Dark World to its former status as the Golden Land, and to undo the damage Ganon's machinations have done to the Light World.
Link's Awakening: The Link from A Link to the Past washes up on a mysterious island and is not immediately beset by requests for help from anyone called Zelda, instead finding himself meeting a cast of weird and wonderful characters and given the inevitable quest to clear out a bunch of dungeons, this time to "wake the Wind Fish" and escape the island.
Ocarina of Time: A Link from several eras before A Link to the Past and even more eras prior to The Legend of Zelda becomes aware that there is something special about him after a somewhat humble beginning in his forest village. He witnesses how Ganondorf, leader of thieves, becomes Ganon the Demon King, and through somewhat convoluted means involving time-travel, gives Ganon a right good kicking. Possibly. If he doesn't, A Link to the Past happens. If he does, Majora's Mask might happen, or Wind Waker might happen. It all gets a bit complicated here.
Majora's Mask: The young Link from Ocarina of Time finds himself drawn into a strange other land called Termina, which is set to be destroyed in a horrible cataclysm in three days' time thanks to the machinations of the peculiar Skull Kid, who has decided it would be a really good idea to call the moon down from the sky to blow everything up. Link, being a pro at this time-travel thing by now, repeatedly cheats death for everyone in Termina by rewinding time to the beginning of this three-day period until he can finally prevent the disaster from occurring. (It's a tad more complicated than this.)
I could go on, since there are a lot more Zelda games than these six, but I won't for now. Suffice to say, the assumption that "all Zelda games are about rescuing Zelda and killing Ganon" is completely mistaken, with the series actually having a rather complex and fascinating timeline if you care to explore it in detail. The nice thing about it, though, is that if you don't care to explore it in detail, each game stands perfectly well by itself without requiring any prior knowledge of its prequels, sequels or parallel timeline tales that the series has exploded into over the years.
Whether this complexity was entirely intentional or more of an "oh shit!" response to the folks at Nintendo realising they'd fucked up their own canon repeatedly isn't entirely clear. But it works for me, and the more I explore the Zelda series this time around, the more I'm glad I'm coming to it when its hype is at a somewhat more temperate level. It means I can explore — or revisit, in some cases — these games with relative "beginner's mind", and make up my own mind up about what I'm playing.
So far, I'm enjoying the experience a lot. Whether I'll make it through all of the Zelda games released to date — all of the good ones, anyway; I doubt I'll touch those CD-i monstrosities — remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful about my progress so far.
Now, back to Link's Awakening…
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On what format are you playing these? I'd be really interested in playing A link to the last again, but don't know how I'd go about it.
Mostly Virtual Console on Wii U and 3DS. Will play the HD remake of Wind Waker when I get there, and haven't decided if I'm going to play the Virtual Console or 3DS native versions of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask yet.
Link to the Past is still genuinely brilliant.
Unless you don't already own a 3DS, I'd definitely play the 3DS versions of OoT and MM. They're the definitive versions, all others are ports of the original N64 releases. Better colors, better framerate, touch screen for map and fast inventory switching (which is a big deal for these games), and you can even use the gyroscope for aiming too, which makes some of the shooting challenges a lot less stressful.
They're very well done ports, not a quick cash in on a game from yesteryear. Check out some comparison videos on youtube also.
I'm no huge fan of Zelda. I'm sure we've had this discussion before. I don't actively dislike them, I'm just not as gaga over the franchise as many other folks seem to be. I'm usually excited to play the newest iterations, but I burn out on them pretty fast, and I don't actually think I've ever seen one through to the credits.
That being said, the Zelda series' approach to narrative has always been one of my favorite things about the games. As you and I have often discussed, the loudest critics of such things are often the least educated about the topic at hand. Those who obsess about the "timeline" and stories of each individual title and/or how they fit together are largely missing the forest for the trees. It's the sameness and the shared elements, and the clever way that each entry plays with those elements, that makes each Zelda tale compelling. It's like games of chess – always the same pieces, but the moves differ each time. Indeed "The Legend of Zelda" is about just that – Legend. Zelda delights in the playing with the characteristics of oral tradition – trading heavily on archetypes and the natural variation that comes from a tale constantly retold as time goes on. It just takes a more mature understanding of the art and structure of storytelling – vs the type of mentality that obsesses with surprise and frets over spoilers – to really grasp what Zelda's approach to narrative is all about.
Oddly, I didn't think I was a big fan of Zelda prior to this recent binge, but I might be changing my tune. It may be coming to the series with more mature eyes that's done it, I don't know. Whatever the reason, I'm enjoying them all a lot more than I have done in the past, and I'm excited to try the ones I've never even touched before.