An Ode To Link

...The Legend Of Zelda, unbeknownst to me at the time, was the first RPG I had ever played. It was the first game I can ever recall having save points in mid-game, a much needed feature if one was going to complete the entirety. It was also the first game I can recall (for consoles anyway) that featured leveling that was permanent. While rudimentary in just that it gave you more slots for life points, it would come to be needed as you faced more challenging foes. Most people from any generation knows and recognizes this as basic fact when it comes to the birth of RPG's on a console.

I was fortunate enough to grow up during the dawn of console gaming. Pre-kindergaten, my father had brought home a used Pong system. It was a bare bones machine that featured one game and two paddles. Drab as it is by even late 1980's standards, we once played it into oblivion. Around the age of 5 or 6, my brother and I got an Atari 2600 for Christmas. I would like to state that he and I both played it feverishly, but it was completely normal to wake up at 4:30 a.m. during any week to find my father on the couch mumbling curse words as he blew himself up in River Raid.

Friends of mine who had parents with more money were also getting Intellivision or Colecovision. I wasn't aware at the time, but this period represented a severe drought in console gaming. After the then-blistering success of the Atari 2600, console gaming was looking to be on life support. Regardless, I would often find myself drooling at the Service Merchandise catalog wanting an Atari 5200 or 7800. Still in single digits age-wise, I wanted every new gaming device that I knew had existed, whetting my appetite with by-then dull 2600 retreads and dribs and drabs of early PC sims at various friends' homes. Then came the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Unlike the Atari 5200 or Coleco, Nintendo was the first system to come close to or exactly replicate arcade graphics at home. It took almost no time for those friends with money to start getting one and I would jump at any chance to go to any of their homes to marvel at Pro Wrestling, Castlevania or Super Mario Bros. Begging begat pleading which also may have begat some whining. My brother and I needed the NES to survive. Our very social lives depended on it.

Christmas arrived and low and behold, the NES was under the tree. We never bothered to ask how and I am certain there were fists thrown at times over who or what and who's turn it was to play Contra. Point is that we were now in the club of gamers who were being introduced to strategy guides, cheat codes and monthly magazines that let us know what was coming down the pike. The Legend Of Zelda, with it's shimmering golden plastic cartridge, was at the top of everyone's list and not to be left hanging, one of us got it for a birthday or some random holiday.

Like obsessed drones, all three of us; myself, my brother and my father, each had games going and were lapping one another in completion percentage. My dad would log 45 minutes before work while we were still asleep. My brother would take advantage of my being at baseball practice and I would do the same when he had practice. Eventually, all three of us had conquered our respective quests. In the future as my father was beating Final Fantast VII multiple times, I was getting every quest item in the guide for The Legend Of Dragoon and my brother was devoting hours and hours to finishing Chrone Cross, it was The Legend Of Zelda that had laid the groundwork. Friends would attest to the same initial fixation that powered them through days and weeks of Elder Scrolls, Fable and World Of Warcraft. The Legend Of Zelda was The Beatles of console RPG's.

At this past weekend's E3 conference, Nintendo unveiled early footage of their upcoming open world Zelda game. As is to be expected, this game looks incredible. Every inch of Hyrule can be explored and touched in a sense. In the same manner as Grand Theft Auto, you decide how you want to tackle quests and any enemy AI can drop in at any time. Essentially, The Legend Of Zelda is being reinvented to evolve alongside those of us who grew up worshipping at the altar of Link.

Naturally, the few minutes of footage had me highly intrigued. I have not even dabbled into a Zelda title since Gamecube and haven't completed a Zelda game since the original sequel. I never bothered to buy a Wii because after buying a Gamecube, it collected dust as the controller was hardly intuitive and the game library was aimed mostly at 10 year olds. Not that a game necessarily needs gore and violence to appeal to me, but the majority of games tailored for an older audience were usually downgraded ports of PS2 games. Basically, Nintendo has not had some like me in their target demo for decades.

The Legend Of Zelda for Wii U is about a year or more away. The plan seems to be to go huge and if it succeeds, the Wii U might finally take off and be capable of competing with Sony and Microsoft. No one yet knows if this game will be good enough to get older gamers to spend the money on another console just for one game. But Slayer knows that I want to play it very badly right now. The nostalgia and memories of the original are still fresh in my mind and nothing would make me happier than having the forthcoming game engender them in a whole new way.