Why the original Legend of Zelda is Unplayable in 2024

The Legend of Zelda was, and still is, a great game. But the experience you have with it now won't be the one we had when it was released. Why's that and what can we do about it?

00:00 Intro
03:00 The Legend of Zelda: Exploration and Discovery
10:01 Randomisers!

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[chrismanzoni]

You did NOT seriously flashback to Gutenberg inventing the printing press, omg. NO. You're doing YouTube WRONG.

[chrisviglietta]

9 year old me bombed every wall and burned every tree. No friend help or guide. My friends played sports titles.

[Aikidouka]

100% beat that game in the late 80s. No guide, no Nintendo Power, and no friends that played it. I didn't get a lot of games when I was a kid, so I played it over and over. To this day, I can sit down and 100% it in a single sitting from memory.

[benjaminolson]

I thought this was going to be about how the save function no longer works on old cartridges without a battery replacement.

[pjpleiss]

Nowadays, 10 minutes BEFORE a new open world game is released, dataminers have already posted every single obscure hidden secret you could possibly find.

[DOSStorm]

The problem you're describing isn't really an issue with Zelda, but with gaming in the age of information in general. For instance, does anyone organically discover all the crafting recipes in Minecraft? It also comes down to the amount of gaming options available these days. When I was a kid new games were a rare occurrence and I extracted every last drop of gameplay from any game I had even if it sucked. Today there are so many games(and free games) that if someone loses patience they either look at a guide or move on to something else.

[peacefrog]

They put the Zelda map in Nintendo Power magazine in 1988. That’s how I beat it.

[KeyAndrew]

I justed played this game for the first time in 2024 with no help, guides or discussion with anyone in 2024. Its very possible for people like me who never ever ever look at guides for anything.

[CelticWarlord]

"Back in MY day, we had friends".... 😢 Well, aren't we Mr. Braggity Brag now....

[pigs]

The kid on the playground who spoiled everything was just as much a part of the experience as the internet is today. In fact, game designers counted on it in the early days when there wasn't much room in the code for exposition and hand holding. When games came to the US they had to come up with a way to give rural American kids the same experience and Nintendo Power and the Nintendo Hotline were born.

[stevenwilliams]

My dad bought this for me when I was in 1st grade, 1991, thinking only that its cartridge stood out.

Little did we both know how this series would evolve over the years, but still something so integral to our relationship over the last 30-years.

Thanks, dad.

[ModernDayRenaissanceMan]

A Link to the Past is the greatest game ever. I didn't know randomizers existed. Now you've given me a new reason to master it again.

[my-king]

You earned a sub. As a 42 year old you made perfect sense

[AkimboWasTaken]

I still don't understand this argument. I finished this game in the early 90s as an 8 year old with no Nintendo Power, no guides, and no friends to discuss this with. The only things remotely difficult are the "grumble grumble" moment and the final dungeon being outright labyrinthine.

[TheKrangled]

Your point about Assassin's Creed is spot on. Open world games that don't understand why they're open world are universally the worst.

[KBXband]

It's very playable. But its mystery is only intact if the player makes an intentional choice not to look at a guide. With one, the mystery is just a "game mechanic", like using the flute at the dry fairy fountain for a dungeon to appear, or blowing open a wall and having to pay a repair fee. Which, if I'm being honest, is the most random thing to encounter in any game.

[randylivengood]

You are spot on! 7 year old me loved this game, and I had indeed never completed level 9 without guidance. But here’s my rebuttal:
43 year old me is starting to forget things! So I have had to roam around again and try to remember where things are. And boom! The magic had returned! I just started a new game 3 days ago, and I’m yet again lost in death mountain!

[mazzvidz]

I had LoZ in “87… I was eleven years old. My uncle who was a few years older than me and myself, played it literally every day for months until we beat it.

None of my school friends had it and we didn’t have any guides or anything like that … kids that would talk about it were mostly making things up… but my uncle did play a lot of D&D back in the early 80’s so I’m assuming that gave him an advantage.

Long story short is this, Having played that game so intently in my formative years left such a lasting impression on me… that I still remember every item location, dungeon and burned bush to this day.

Every 5 or so years I pop it in and can run through it in a few hours.

[PackersEvar]

I hate it when people say a game is unplayable. If we could play it back then, why can't a new generation play it now? I beat it for the first time in 2024, which the title of this video suggests is impossible. I'd argue that with the Internet today, Zelda is even more playable than it was back then

[ayufever]

i was 8 years old in christmas 1987 then we got the NES.
my dad and i finished zelda together, but it took a few months.
no guidebooks, no youtube, etc. not many people in small town alabama had the NES at that time, so we were on our own.
we brute forced the game- we burned every bush, pushed every block, and bombed every wall.

when we finished the game we noticed at the save file selection that link was holding a sword.
we selected the game to just do another runthrough just for fun, and the majority of the world was different!
the second quest was significantly harder, and after several weeks we conquered that too.

to this day, i still remember the location of each and every single item and all puzzle solutions.