We all know the big-name ones: Dune, 1984, The Martian Chronicles, etc.

What are some sci-fi books that you loved that you never hear about or that won't be making those top-of-all-time lists?

Why do they stand out to you?
What do they do well?
Why do you think they didn't get wider appreciation?

Introduction

The Legend of Zelda series celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, and A Link to the Past will have its 35th later this year.

So cast your mind back and let me set the mood. Picture this: the year is 1992 and you're a middle school kid who has saved up enough chore and birthday money to finally get your first new game for the SNES (the one you worked so many chores to save up for when your parents finally allowed you to have a console like the other kids you were so envious of.) You've beaten the Super Mario World game your SNES came with and you're definitely ready for something else.

You're sitting in the back seat of the car as your mother drives you home from the store, holding the box for A Link to the Past in your little hands. You open it up and find a cartridge (of course!). You carefully set that aside.

Next up, there's a detailed manual, because of course nearly all games back then came with some kind of little manual of some kind, or at the very least an instruction pamphlet. You read it cover to cover, because you're that kind of kid.

In the box you also find a little hint pamphlet sealed shut with a bit of adhesive. Tempting, but you want to challenge yourself to get as far as you can before peeking. (You give in a few days later.)

Finally, the ride back from the mall is done and you race downstairs to the den, pop the cartridge into the top of your SNES, and turn everything on. You're greeted with a Triforce in 3D that spins and assembles itself (3D on a console? Witchcraft!), while a short harp arpeggio plays:

Doodloodlooodloodloodloodloodloodl do do do do do Do!

Then the title screen, a sword drop, and a pictaresque castle, moat, and mountains behind them while a fanfare plays:

Bumpa deeee! duhduhdudludlut deeee! duhduhdudludlut deeee! Dee DEE DELAAAAH!!

A moment later, the intro prologue begins giving the back story as tense chords play. Then, the now-famous fairy fountain theme plays as you name your game save ("Link", of course!) and so the game begins. The mood is set as you step outside your house into a storm with a layer of splashing rain, flickering lightning (Wow! Amazing graphics!), crashing thunder and a reprise of the tense music. You binge through the first dungeon or two that day.

It's nearly summer, but school isn't done yet. So each day as soon as you get home from middle school, you can't wait to race down to the shade and the cool relief of the basement den to conquer the next dungeon, get the cool new piece of equipment and see what new areas of the game it opens. (Homework? Homework can wait!) That's the rhythm: one day, one dungeon, just an hour or two a day, until you get to the end.

That's how I first played it and why this game is so special to me. :-)

For First Time Players

Don't be afraid to check the manual and hint book that I linked above. Yes, they spoil things a bit, especially the hint book. But the game shipped with them and they were part of the original experience. And if you pace yourself to one dungeon a day, you should easily get through the game by mid-month. It's not a terribly long game, all told.

I think you're in for a treat, and I look forward to hearing your experience with the game, as seen fresh through 2026 eyes.

For Experienced Players

There's a popular randomizer for the game, complete with a Reddit community.. I've never tried it before, but as I've played the vanilla game many times, CGA seems like a fun excuse to finally try the randomizer.

I'll be using this seed if you'd like to join me on it. It uses the "Beginner" preset which seems a good place to start with the randomizer, but with the "Hints" turned on (which I understand means that the telepathic tiles in the dungeons are changed to tell you where some things are). I'm eager to see what insanity the chaos produces.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Versions:

• Super NES (1991/1992): The original!
• Game Boy Advance (2002): A rerelease as part of the The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Four Swords. I've never played this version, but there's a list of differences here.

Platforms: Super NES, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Wii U, New 3DS, Switch, Super NES Classic Edition

Genre(s): Action-adventure, RPG, Puzzle

Links: Mobygames, Wikipedia

Stores: Free under the Nintendo Classics library if you have a Nintendo Switch Online or Nintendo Switch 2 Online subscription.

Game Setup

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

• Share which version of the game you're playing
• Share what hardware you're playing it on
• Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
• Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
• Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

• Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
• What about its system or era?
• What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
• What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
• What are you expecting from this game in particular?

Finally, this topic is the beginning discussion for people starting to play it:

• Post updates sharing your thoughts as you play.
• Ask for help if you get stuck.
• Offer help to others.

It is recommended that you reply to your own posts if you are making consecutive updates so that they are in the same thread.

Important

• Any links to the game should be legal distributions of the game only. Please do NOT link to any unauthorized copies.

• Put any spoilers in a dropdown block. Copy/paste the block below if needed.

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

FAQ

For most of the history of Tildes, if someone came across the site and decided they wanted to join, but didn't know anyone already on, they could email Deimos with an invite request. However, with the rise of LLMs, the noise-to-signal ratio has become so high this is no longer a way to join Tildes - explanation by Deimos: https://tildes.net/~tildes/1vl3/is_there_any_interest_in_building_a_tildes_successor#comment-if6r

I've read the recent discussions on Tildes being maintained as is and not actively grown, but I think most of us believe the community is up for many more years of enjoying each other's company, and would like to pick up a few more members along the way if they seek us out. That just requesting to join isn't possible anymore makes me a little sad.

I had the thought that larger sites are able to invest more resources into spam account filtering, many of us have active accounts on other social media sites (or other types of sites with community interactions), and I speculate that almost everyone who finds tildes and is interested in joining has already been active in some other online community. Some of us Tilderinos could post here our handles in other communities, and offer to consider sharing one of our invite requests to Tildes if DM'd in our other community. We'd have to reject requests from new accounts, and use some judgement on established ones, but I am thinking having people go through the filtering process those other communities use would reduce the spam requests enough to make it workable.

What do you guys think?

I love Tildes. I am not the most active member here, but I do make an effort to contribute. This site fills a hole for me not even close to be filled by other sites. It has that small local pub feel. All names are familiar, even if I haven't interacted with people directly and there is a general sense of people being aligned with wanting to be part of a 'better' community.

I know there has been a lot of discussion about missing features here and that ultimately leading to some users wanting to leave, because they can't block the content they don't want to see.

With Deimos's announcement that the site is being sunset, it immediately made we ask: Can we build a successor?

That has to be immediately followed with acknowledgment that it would be extremely hard (both in building the software and building the community) and very unlikely to succeed.

With that out of the way, is there any interest?

If there is, I'd like to here from you in this topic with your thoughts on how it should be run, must have features missing from Tildes, any features of Tildes not needed in an MVP (minimum viable product) and really any thoughts you have on the subject. What would be a deal-breaker?

I am especially interested to hear on thoughts of how it should be administrated. Do we like the benevolent dictator model? Would a committee be better? Are there other examples of systems that work well?

Tildes isn't going anywhere for a long while by the sounds of it, which I'm really grateful of. Please don't read this as any kind of descent, mutiny or call to leave. I mostly just want to make sure that if there's desire for this community to NOT be sunset, there's at least an option.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2022) which has reached end of life and no longer receives updates. I was wondering if it was possible to revive it using one of these alternate Android versions, but I was very frustrated to see that LineageOS (the one I've seen mentioned the most besides Graphene) supports both the 2020 and the 2024 model of this tablet, but not mine.

I wanted to hear from fellow Tildes users if installing one of these OSes would be worth it to get continued security updates for an old tablet like this, which OSes are out there (I've only heard the names of a few of them), which ones to avoid (maybe it's abandoned or there's some drama around a particular OS for whatever reason), and if anyone knows of one that specifically supports my model.

I'm also curious if S-Pen stylus support would work on any of these other OSes.