10
votes
Using randomizers to play Zelda like it's 1987
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- Title
- Why the original Legend of Zelda is Unplayable in 2024
- Authors
- The Retro Sofa
- Duration
- 17:14
- Published
- Sep 16 2024
I would have loved to skip the meandering leadup, since it was painfully obvious where he was headed with this, and just say it was all the fault of GameFAQs and move on to the next bit.
Perhaps, yeah. That would have been a stellar experience, actually. But while my family did have a NES (because my brother saved up and bought one), I don't remember ever talking about the games with friends or kids at the playground or what-have-you. I'm betting a not-insignificant number of people had the same experience as me, which is that you had so few games at the time that you explored the hell out of the ones you did have.
I agree. I vaguely remember the Universal Hint System (rather small and eclectic collection there, but a good percentage are oldschool adventure games and text adventures, which are exactly the kinds of games you need these sorts of hints for), which let you gradually reveal hints for each puzzle so that you could get just a push to help you solve it on your own. For some reason I remember it being packaged inside a text adventure game I was playing, but apparently the UHS was created two years after the game was released. It's possible I was playing some modified version of the game; I definitely played it quite some time after release, and I don't know how the copy was acquired.
Anyway, I wish something like that would have taken off, but I didn't know until I looked it up just now that it was meant to be paid software (with, apparently, volunteer contributors creating most of the hint files?). Not that I don't believe someone should be paid for their work, and I can see the thinking in the 80s when it was created, but after almost three decades of using free guides on the internet, it definitely feels odd to me.
I have a great deal of enthusiasm for randomizers, and the two he mentioned are my favorites as well. I don't actually play them (though I've played both the originals many times), but I've watched community races (they use ROMs generated from the same seed) and somehow it's just always riveting. Although it helps a lot to know the games, there are usually hosts who commentate the races and visual item trackers to help the audience out as well. I think those two games hit the sweet spot for randomizers. I've tried watching a few others and either the items (and areas/puzzles unlocked by said items) are sparse, or the world map is too big with too much traveling from place to place. I had the latter problem with trying to watch Ocarina of Time randomizers (not to mention the speediest movement in game is done by continuously hopping backward because this is faster than running forward, which is tedious to watch IMO, though logically it's impressive for a runner to pull off).
The origin of the Link to the Past/Super Metroid combo (usually acronymed as SMZ3, and amusingly hosted at https://samus.link) is actually something of an interesting story. I'm repeating what I heard without fully understanding it myself, so I may get some of this wrong, but: By sheer happenstance, most of the memory on the respective ROMs was used in sectors that didn't conflict with where it was used in the other game, and so they were able to be combined into one ROM. Amazingly crazy coincidence. Incidentally, there is also a "multiworld" version of the randomizer, in which people can play linked copies of the game and find items either for their game or someone else's, and so it becomes a group effort -- sometimes massive -- for everyone to complete their runs. Shit's bonkers. I recommend checking out https://speedgaming.org for rando races -- it looks like they just got done with a large tournament, so there are VODs to check out like this one. (Edit: That was just a random VOD I pulled from the tournament, but this may be a better video for people new to watching SMZ3, as it's the first showcase of that randomizer and so the commentators seem like they're explaining things a little more carefully.)
If you've never played either Link to the Past or Super Metroid, I do highly recommend playing the originals first. I don't believe you'll need a guide other than for the most obscure puzzles, but you may want to take some notes here and there. I admit I've known both games for a long time now, so perhaps I don't have the clearest view, but I think with both titles you can very much get the thrill and satisfaction of the exploration lauded by this video without having to constantly look up tips. Super Metroid, in particular, is a master class in gently guiding the player to the next area while making it seem totally organic (although if you get stuck a fair way into the game, you may need to
Click to expand spoiler.
do something in the glass tube).I also heavily recommend people check out the list of supported games at https://archipelago.gg and give multiworld a shot with some friends. It's easy enough to set up by following the tutorials and futzing with a setting or two. The first one can be rough figuring out how to set it up and balancing just the right amount of difficulty for everyone, and some games aren't always an even experience since the beginning or end can be harder. But you don't have to be a total wizard at a game to enjoy it randomized. I typically thought myself to be the kind of person who never plays games more than once or twice, but it made me realize just how much fun Sonic Adventure 2 is when the wonky physics allow you to glitch around obstacles or missing items. I've played SA2 like three times through randomized now. It also kicked me off my ass to beat Super Metroid, I've learned how to do Ganon's Tower Skip in OoT, and I even discovered that the fun multiplier for Adventure on the Atari is how fast you multiply the speed of the
duckdragon.Unrelated to the thread,
I played Super Metroid, Metroid Dread, Metroid Prime, and Hollow Knight right up against each other - I still don't get why Super Metroid does it better, unless there's nicotine laced in the map, but it does. It's just so natural.
Thanks for adding the multiworlds link! That's awesome that it's inspired you to new heights with old games.
I remember reading a long writeup in the internet of old about just how ingenious Super Metroid's map design was, and I wish I could read it again. I hope it's not lost forever, but I've never been able to find it nowadays.
Having played Tunic, I thought it was going to basically repeat it's core message (that the manual is a core part of the game experience, and that playing the original Zelda on the emulator without the manual will suck). Still tedious and longwinded though.
PS: I highly recommend playing Tunic.
There are manual projects that are out there that have preserved old game manuals, and there are even some stored on Nintendo's servers if you search for the links to them. I thought they included manuals with the Nintendo Switch Online emulators, but searching around online I can only find people complaining that they didn't and it's been a while since I had a NSO membership so I can't check whether they got added later. It's possible I was only thinking of retro games on Nintendo's previous consoles (sounds like they rather dropped the ball for the games included with NSO, because it was definitely a thing at one point).
It's true that it's definitely unlikely that someone will know to search for the manual and to know that they'll need it. It's not impossible, however, and it seemed like he was taking a really hard stance on this "impossible" thing, so I figured he was going with the angle that guides were too readily available.
Tunic is definitely on my radar! I've only heard good things about it and I'd love to check it out sometime.
I know this is a little tangential to the video as it doesn't really go into detail about it, but how do randomizers typically work given that the source code is nonexistent? I know this is a 80s-90s game so it's not like you're decompiling, rather you're disassembling (as the original game was written in assembly) - does the randomizer just edit the rom and then quickly compile it?
How close is disassembled code to what the programmers would have written when they were developing the game? Minus comments, of course.