Zelda 1 Critique - 35 Years of Adventure

Thank you all so much for watching! With the advent of a community tab, you'll be able to hear about future updates to the channel directly from YouTube. Stay tuned for more and tell me what games you'd want me to cover! I'd also be willing to talk about more Zelda games if that suits your fancy.

A big thing to remember about information scarcity in Zelda 1, is that the design assumes that you've read the manual. Doing so makes things, if not clear, at least significantly less obtuse.

One thing that you're overlooking in this analysis is that this game is from back in the days when instruction booklets were considered vital to playing a game. Most games' stories existed almost entirely within the instruction booklet, (this game being one of the few exceptions that had some minor story within the game itself) PC games of the time were still using the instruction manuals for old school DRM, and not that long ago, in the Atari era, game design was often so limited that you needed the instructions to even have some clue how to play at all, never mind beat the game. There was also no used game market to speak of, so developers never imagined that somebody might own a copy of the game WITHOUT the instruction manual. If you had the manual, you would know very well that Ganon's fortress was in Death Mountain, and you would have a map of the overworld, for example, addressing a couple of the complaints you bring up.

23:00 The arrow one-shots Pols Voice, which are everywhere in this dungeon

Funny, but I love the Spectacle Rock clue. Giving the player the opportunity to realize, "Oh, those two big rocks look like a pair of spectacles!" is basically giving them an opportunity to feel like a real adventurer/explorer using their wits to find the path. Indiana Jones type stuff, really.

“Too ambiguous if you aren’t familiar with the Zelda series” I reckon not too many players were familiar with the Zelda series when Zelda 1 came out 😅

I share a birthday with this game and I think that's really neat.

Watching this video is really making me realize how heavily The Binding of Isaac is inspired by this game. The rooms with the two fires next to the guy in the center, the ladder and boomerang items, having bombs and keys (with bombs being able to blast open doors), the enemies largely being designed around avoidance and movement, being cryptic as all hell, the general control scheme and level design (I think it undoubtedly has rooms that are copies of rooms from this game), etc. It's basically just a roguelike version of this game with more items and no overworld, just dungeon after dungeon.

My first video was also a review of this game; in fact, it was only uploaded a month before yours! And I must say, I can't understand for the life of me how it has just as many views as yours does. Your production quality and flow just blow mine out of the water, and while you didn't go as in depth into the dungeon designs as I would have liked, everything else about this review was completely on point. I especially loved your section on combat - you covered the way it works so comprehensively and in a way that manages to discredit much of the surface level complaints I've seen thrown at it from other YouTubers. I like Scott the Woz, but his "review" was so bare bones and uncaring that it's frankly laughable how many views it has compared to this video - I hope the algorithm picks this video up and gives it the attention it deserves. I hope you keep making great reviews like this one.

A lot of your dificulties with the tips the games give you can be solved if you read the manual. At that time, games came with manuals that in some cases were almost vital to the understanding of the games. It would tell you a lot of secrets, better tips to reach the final dungeons, where the Spectacle Rocks and Death Mountain are, that there's an item food and that the Goriya blocking your passage is hungry, etc. Manuals are gone now because the devs simply make ingame tutorials.

There's an overworld map in the manual, and in a fold-out poster that comes in the box.

What a great review! Had to play it again to show my wife who loved playing this game with our son. Brought back great memories!

The production value is so high man

One of the things that you may not be aware of is that there were a whole series of documents that were given to you when you bought the game. There was a manual, a map that gave you some clues about locations of the first few dungeons..:it left a lot of the exploration to you and give you ways to document it so you look back to it later.

The game is alright, but damn, bombing every tile of rock or having to burn every bush.... one bush at a time before leaving the screen and walking back... we could have done with out that nonsense.

Happy to see a review that wasn't 4 hours long.....

saving this for later and leaving a comment to help out a little since your content is sick, im excited to watch this when i get the time!

zelda 1 is my 2nd favorite zelda game. it just feels like the quintessential fantasy game. the beginning of it all, so much is left to the imagination

J.basham I grew up playing this game . Now I 43 years I still love to play. One of the best games of all time . I hope over the Generations games like this will not be forgotten. 🤔😁

I’ve been watching through your videos and this has gotta be my favourite. It’s a great analysis, and your editing really captures that Zelda feeling of adventure. Keep it up!