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The Legend of Zelda: Mystery of Read / Write
I’m having a hard time going back and playing on the early 8-bit consoles like the Atari 2600 or Colecovision. It’s not that their primitive graphics and sound fail to capture my attention, but rather, they’re so dedicated to replicating the arcade experience. It’s not all a bad thing, but it was a fleeting way of playing games, because you would do your quarterback, play until you lost and hope your high score meant something. To make matters worse, early home consoles generally did not reproduce the experience very well. I’m sure it was nice to be able to play Burger time home in 1983, but the Atari 2600 version looks and plays like a beached trash barge.
The idea of having the arcade experience at home continued to be a carrot in the face of developers throughout the ’90s. Indeed, the Genesis loved to brag about its Modified beast, while the Super Nintendo beckoned you with its port of Final fight. But all along the way the true console experience began to form, and as games like Super Mario Bros. started us towards this goal, it would be THE Legend of Zelda, with its ability to record your progress, this would really mark the start of the transition.
Kind of. Like most things in video game history, it’s a bit trickier than just saying, “Praise this game!”
Part of the reason we’ve been stuck with arcade ports on consoles for so long was that developers had to be aware of their audience’s stamina. You have been glued to a game until your game is over, which only makes for short experiments handy. Even the longest games with clearly defined endings, like Super Mario Bros. (released a few months before THE Legend of Zelda in Japan), could be completed in one sitting.
That would change with The legend of Zelda 1986 release on Famicom Disk System, one of the add-on launch titles. The Famicom Disk System was an attachment for the Japanese equivalent of the Nintendo Entertainment System which allowed games to be played on floppy disks; read / write support. The ability to save was one of the selling points of the attachment and was used in games like Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Castlevania.
Of course, this has been possible on personal computers since their inception. They were already using read / write media such as floppy disks and cassettes, and backup was already possible in games like latest and Zork almost half a decade earlier than THE Legend of Zelda. In a way, the Famicom Disk System allowed just that advantage over home consoles.
The Famicom Disk System never made it out of Japan, but Nintendo was still keen to get THE Legend of Zelda in Western hands. The problem they encountered was that it was impossible to save data to the ROM chips that were the core of the cartridges. Nintendo’s solution was to install a small battery in the cartridge that kept the save data alive in RAM.
Again, Zelda was not the first to do this. A few games on Epoch Super Cassette Vision allowed you to save your high score and build levels in RAM, but they were powered by AA batteries which you inserted yourself. It was the same idea, but not necessarily the same execution. Plus, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first time you’ve heard of the Epoch Super Cassette Vision.
Meanwhile, the CR2032 in my Zelda the cartridge still works to this day, and i did not have to solder a new one. I guess its 15 year lifespan is just a suggestion.
There were ways around the need for a battery to keep going from a certain point. In North America, both Metroid and Kid Icarus replaced their backup system with ridiculously long passwords. Likewise, Castlevania failed to completely save in its English version. The number of games with battery backup on the NES was pretty low, but the number of games that were based more on progression than high scores continued to grow.
What Zelda presented was an adventure with an end goal rather than just challenge after challenge. It was much less level based than something like Super Mario Bros., instructing you to discover the next dungeon on your own in a gigantic overworld (at the time). Probe the dungeons, grab your gear, save the princess. On a good day, it can take around 6-8 hours, and it’s easy to get stuck and wanting to stop gambling.
Most notably, however, he omitted a scoring system, which was still practically sacrilegious at the time. It would take a long time to remove the need for one from the minds of developers and publishers, with it as a residual feature for years to come. It was a necessary sacrifice, however, as we shifted from endless cyclical play patterns to games with set goals.
It is perhaps safe to assume that even without Zelda influence, video games would eventually have moved to a progression-based model, especially when one was already budding in the home computing world. However, The Legend of Zelda influence and popularity primed audiences and pushed developers towards this model, and its effects were felt almost immediately.
But the sector is often the one that takes small steps. Even games with an end goal would be somewhat cyclical, as both Super Mario Bros. and THE Legend of Zelda would start over on a harder difficulty after completing them. However, with the influence of the growing RPG genre – a genre born entirely for homes and not suitable for arcades – we would eventually find the freedom to endlessly chase high scores and learn how to shoot for the sweet. type in the head of the credits.
I don’t miss the days of chasing the best scores. Although I sometimes like to try to do my best Space invaders and Mrs. Pac-Man, personal growth for fun is boring to me. I happily prefer the reward of being kissed by the princess after my friends and I have conquered the unknowable evil. I am that simple.
Indeed, it was a lot more fun sitting down and watching my dad finish Ganon in his lair within Spectacle Rock than watching him, dunno, driving on an endless road mowing through traffic in Spy hunter. It helps capture the imagination and gives you something to invest in emotionally, knowing that whether or not the hero reaches the end – and whether there is an end – is up to you. I’m not sure I would have stuck with video games if I kept looking for higher numbers.
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