Confession #1: I never owned a Super Nintendo (SNES) growing up. For whatever reason, I owned a Sega Genesis instead. As I've grown older, I realized the number of incredible titles I missed and I've made an effort to play as many as I can. Lucky for me, my high-school girlfriend (and now my wife) owned one of the greatest gaming systems of all-time. She also had a decent collection of games to go with it.
Confession #2: I've never beaten
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I've played it on a few different occasions, but never all the way through. Coincidentally, I've recently discovered
Neogaf's buy/sell/trade thread, which is an excellent place to find old-school games for a respectable price. So whenever I came across a copy of
Link to the Past for $20, I had to pull the trigger.
The first thing to strike me is how beautiful the game still looks. It's really amazing how the SNES has aged so well. Original Nintendo titles don't hold up nearly as well as the 16-bit SNES generation. The colors in
Link to the Past really pop and the art style is exactly what we've come to expect from the Zelda series. I'm still very early in the game, but I hope to make
Throwback Thursdays a recurring segment here on
Retro Raconteur. Perhaps I will revisit my experience with
Link to the Past in the coming months.
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| Still looks beautiful today. |
I've also unearthed an original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that belongs to my brother-in-law. Regrettably, I sold my system long ago. His system also came with a wide array of titles and he even had many of the original boxes. Upon finding these two legacy systems, I'm getting an itch to start collecting old systems and games. I'm already off to a good start with the aforementioned SNES and NES.
It really is amazing to look back on the history of gaming to see how the industry has changed. Even still, you can also see how much has stayed the same. Nintendo has taken Mario, Metroid, and Zelda from 2d to 3d, they've added new control schemes, new weapons, and new worlds to explore, yet that core experience of each title is rock solid. It's part of the reason Nintendo's titles still resonate with so many gamers across the globe.
8 comments:
Wow. You never owned a SNES? I broke down and sold a bunch of my SNES/NES/Zelda stuff a few months back and made some killer money off of it, cleared up some relics, and managed to pay a house payment in a particularly difficult time.
I had a SNES in its original box still with a WalMart price tag stuck on it. I sold it to a guy for $100. Then I listed almost all of my Zelda games as individual auctions on ebay, each one of them tenderly cared for and preserved in original packaging. These included the rare GameBoy Color games--Oracle of Ages & Seasons--as well as pretty much every Zelda game out at the time. I also had some unopened Nintendo Power limited edition action figures.
The grand total was around $600 or so I believe. It pained me (not as much as I thought it would) to get rid of my stuff, but honestly it just stayed in a shoebox untouched for years.
My copy of A Link to the Past sold in its original box with all original materials for quite a bit if I remember.
Enjoy the game, dude.
I know Logan! It's hard to believe I didn't own one.
That's pretty awesome about selling those items. The Link to the Past I bought is the cartridge only so that's probably why I got it cheaper.
I'm thinking about doing a blog post on the elusive Gamecube component cable. It's insane what they go for on eBay.
I bet you are glad your awesome wife was so cool as a kid!!!
Holy Cow, the Gamecube component cable is insane. I had no idea. A post would be interesting if you could figure out anything about why it's so rare or something. Wow. Crazy.
Lauren- You earned major points the first time I walked in your room and saw the SNES, haha.
Logan- It's pretty crazy. They are super rare. Nintendo only made a limited supply and no 3rd party ever made them.
I would give anything to still have all my old systems and games! We also need to have some more Live 95 3 point shoot outs soon!
Haha! I agree Tyler. We also need to see what game is on that custom NES cart I gave you.
Please tell me you've since beaten A Link To The Past?!??! I loved the 3D Zelda's, specifically OoT, but for my moneys worth, A Link to the Past & A Link Between Worlds are by far my favorite Zelda's. 2D Zelda FTW!!
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