The Legend of Zelda: Mystery of Read / Write
I find it hard to travel back and play early 8-bit consoles like the Atari 2600 or Colecovision. Not their primitive graphics and sound fail to capture my attention, but rather are so dedicated to replicating the arcade experience. This isn’t entirely a bad thing, but it was a transient way to play games, as you weakened your quarter, played until you lost, and continued in the hope that your high score would mean something. To make matters worse, early home consoles generally reproduced the experience very poorly. I’m sure it was nice to be able to play Burger time home in 1983, but the Atari 2600 version looks and plays like a crashing garbage dump.
The idea of having the arcade experience at home continued to be a carrot hanging in front of developers throughout the ’90s. Indeed, Genesis liked to promote them Altered beast, while Super Nintendo beckoned you with its port of The final fight. But over the course of this, the true console experience began to take shape, and while the games were like Super Mario brothers. it set us off for this purpose, it would be The legend of Zelda, with its ability to save your progress, which would really mark the beginning of the transition.
A kind of. Like most things in the history of video games, it’s a little trickier than just saying, “Praise this game!”
Part of the reason I stayed with arcade ports on consoles for so long was that developers had to pay attention to the resilience of their audience. You were glued to a game until your game was over, making only short experiences practical. Even the longest games with clearly defined purposes, such as Super Mario brothers. (released just a few months before The legend of Zelda in Japan), could be completed in one sitting.
That would change with The legend of Zelda Launched in 1986 on the Famicom Disc System, one of the launch titles of the supplement. The Famicom disc system was an attachment to the Japanese equivalent of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which allowed games to be played on floppy disks; reading / writing support. The ability to save was one of the selling points of the attachment and was used in games such as Metroid, Child Icarus, and Castlevania.
Of course, this has been possible on home computers since their inception. They were already using read / write media such as floppy disks and cassettes, and saving was already possible in games such as last and Zorka almost half a decade earlier than The legend of Zelda. In a way, the Famicom disc system just allows that advantage on home consoles.
The Famicom disc system never reached outside of Japan, but Nintendo was still eager to get The legend of Zelda in Western hands. The problem they encountered was that it was impossible to save data to the ROM chips that were central to the cartridges. The solution that Nintendo had was to install a small battery in the cartridge to store the data saved in RAM.
Again, Zelda he was not the first to do so. A few games on the Epoch Super Cassette Vision allowed you to save your high score and create levels in RAM, but they were powered by the AA batteries you inserted into them. It was the same idea, but not necessarily the same execution. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the first time you’ve heard of Epoch Super Cassette Vision.
Meanwhile, the CR2032 in Zelda the cartridge still works today and I didn’t have to stick a new one. I guess 15 years of life is just a suggestion.
There were ways to need a battery to allow it to continue at a certain point. In North America, both Metroid and Child Icarus he replaced his rescue system with ridiculously long passwords. Also, Castlevania omitted the save altogether in its English version. The number of games that had a battery backup on the NES was quite small, but the number of games that were more based on progression than on high concentrated scores continued to grow.
What the Zelda presented was an adventure with an ultimate goal, rather than just challenge after challenge. It was much less level based than anything like that Super Mario brothers., tasking you to discover the next dungeon in an oversized world (at that time). Dive the dungeons, grab your gear, save the princess. On a good day, it can take about 6-8 hours to complete and it’s easy to get stuck and want to give up the game.
However, in particular, he omitted a grading system, which was still practically sacrilege at the time. It would take a long time to eliminate the need for one in the minds of developers and publishers, with it hanging as a vestigial feature for years to come. However, it was a necessary sacrifice, as we moved from endless cyclic game models to games with set goals.
Maybe it’s safe to assume that, even without Zelda’s influence, video games would have moved to a model based on progression in the end, especially when it was already emerging in the world of home computers. In any case, The legend of Zelda influence and popularity prepared the public and pushed developers towards this model, and its effects were felt almost immediately.
But the industry is often one that takes action for children. Even games with an end goal would be somewhat cyclical, like both Super Mario brothers. and The legend of Zelda it would start again on a harder difficulty after you have completed them. However, with the influence of the growing RPG genre – a genre born entirely for houses and not suitable for arcades – we would eventually find the freedom to pursue endlessly high scores and learn to film for a light head shot. from the role of credits.
I don’t miss the days when I watch high scores. While sometimes I like to try to make every effort Space Invaders and Mrs. Pac-Man, personal growth for her sake is boring for me. I gladly prefer the reward of kissing the princess after my friends and overcoming the evil of the unknown. I’m that simple.
Indeed, it was much more fun to sit and watch my father finish Ganon in his lair in Spectacle Rock than it would have been to watch him, I don’t know, drive down an endless road that cuts traffic in Spy hunter. It helps you capture your imagination and give yourself something to invest in emotionally, knowing that whether or not the hero reaches the end – and there is an end – is based on you. I’m not sure I would have solved it with video games if I had watched bigger numbers indefinitely.
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