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. It’s not that their primitive graphics and sound do not grab my attention, but rather that they’s so dedicated to the version of the arcade experience. It’s not quite a bad thing, but it was a short-lived way to play games, as you would play your quarterback, play until you lost, and keep hoping that your high score would mean something. To make matters worse, early home consoles generally portrayed the experience very poorly. I’m sure it was nice to be able to play Civil time home in 1983, but the Atari 2600 version looks and plays like a trash can walking on the beach.
The idea of having the arcade experience at home was still a root that hung in the face of developers through the 1990s. Indeed, Genesis likes to call it Altered Beast, while the Super Nintendo beckoned you with its port of Final battle. But all the while, the real console experience began to formulate, and while games like Super Mario Bros. had we started to achieve that goal, it would be The legend of Zelda, with its ability to save your progress, this would be the beginning of the transition.
Kind of. Like most things in the history of video games, it’s a little more complicated than just saying, “Praise this game!”
Part of the reason we got stuck in arcade gates on consoles for so long was that developers had to be mindful of their endurance of their audience. You were stuck to a game until your game was over, which only made brief experiences practical. Even the longest games with clearly defined endings, such as Super Mario Bros. (Released a few months ago The legend of Zelda in Japan), can be completed in one meeting.
That would change with The Legend of Zelda’s 1986 version on the Famicom Disk System, one of the launch titles of the add-on. 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; read / write media. The ability to save was one of the selling points of the appendix and is used in games such as Metroid, Kid Icarus, en Castlevania.
This, of course, has been something possible on home computers since their inception. They already use read / write media such as floppy disks and cassettes, and in games like saving it was already possible Ultima and Zork almost half a decade earlier than The legend of Zelda. In a way, the Famicom disk system only allowed the benefit on home console.
The Famicom disk system never made it outside of Japan, but Nintendo still wanted to get it The legend of Zelda in western hands. The problem they encountered was that it was impossible to store data in the ROM chips that were central to the patterns. The solution Nintendo had was to install a small battery in the cartridge that kept the savings data alive in the RAM.
Again, Zelda was not the first to do so. A few games on the Epoch Super Cassette Vision have allowed you to save your high score and create levels in the RAM, but it is powered by AA batteries that you have built-in yourself. It was the same idea, but not necessarily the same execution. I also would not be surprised if this is the first time you hear of the Epoch Super Cassette Vision.
Meanwhile, the CR2032 in me Zelda pattern still works to this day, and I do not need to insert a solder yet. I assume that the lifespan of 15 years is just a suggestion.
There were ways to need a battery to proceed from a certain point. In North America, both Metroid and Kid Icarus replaced their storage system with ridiculously long passwords. Just like that, Castlevania save completely omitted in its English version. The number of games that had a battery backup on the NES was quite small, but the number of games based more on progression than on a high score continued to grow.
What Zelda presented was an adventure with an end goal rather than just being challenge after challenge. It was much less level based than something like Super Mario Bros.to discover the next pit in a (then) gigantic world. Launch the dungeons, grab your equipment, 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 suppress the game.
Most importantly, however, it omitted a points system, which at the time was virtually sacred. It will take a long time to flush the need for one out of the heads of developers and publishers, while still clinging for years as an overarching feature. However, it was a necessary sacrifice as we transitioned from endless cyclical game models to set goal games.
It may be safe to adopt, even without Zelda’s influenced, video games would eventually have moved to a progression-based model, especially if it was already in the home computer world at the beginning. But, The Legend of Zelda’s audiences have influenced and become popular and driven developers to this model, and the consequences have been felt almost immediately.
But the industry is often one that takes baby steps. Even games with an end goal would be somehow cyclical, as both Super Mario Bros. and The legend of Zelda will start again in a more difficult issue after you complete it. With the influence of the growing RPG genre – a genre completely born for homes and not suitable for arcades – we will finally find freedom to finish endless points and learn to shoot for the soft head of the credit roll.
I do not miss the days of chasing high scores. Although I sometimes want to try my best in Space Invaders and Me. Pac-Man, personal growth for the sake of it is boring to me. I prefer the reward of being kissed by the princess after my friends have defeated the unknowable evil. I’m simply like that.
It was indeed much nicer to sit around and watch my dad Ganon finish in his lair inside Spectacle Rock than it would have been to watch him, I do not know, drive down an endless road to mow the traffic Spy Hunter. It helps to capture the imagination and gives you something to invest in emotionally, knowing that whether the hero reaches the end – and there is an end – depends on you. I’m not sure if I would have stuck it with video games if I had just raced endlessly to higher numbers.
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