“Happy Birthday” was the words that preceded the gift of my new Nintendo game system. It was the new Super Nintendo and I couldn’t wait to play it. I had played on the Atari 2600 system and loved it. I remember having “gamer thumb” and of course that is when you have pressed the red “shoot” button so many times in a row that your thumb stopped working and you either had to take a break (not!) or use another digit. The Super Nintendo was the system to have at the time because of the graphics and game play choices. Little did I know that I was going to be hooked for life because of that system and because of one game, The Legend of Zelda.
I had loved the books that you chose the path to go. The Zork books series written by S. Eric Meretzky where my favorite. In these books you decided to go or do certain things. If you chose to go through the doorway you turned to page 30 but if not you turned to page 27. I loved the fact that I could control what steps I did or did not do. So here I am with my new Nintendo and this Zelda game of which I hadn’t heard of. I remember that I started to get excited right away because of the story line and how it was presented. The next step was the most amazing and mind blowing part.
“What do I do now?” I asked my younger sister to which gave me a blank stare back. This is when it happened. This is when I realized that I was on my own in the game. I could walk anywhere or talk to anybody and even kill creatures on my own without being promoted to. I started to understand that this game wasn’t a game that kept you in a screen and had bad guys attack you but rather you went out and found them! Then came the part that made me a gamer for life.
Choices, the Judi Bola game was full of choices. The storyline demanded that you made choices. You could chose to search for weapon upgrades, you could chose to earn more hearts or buy potions instead or do both. Then came the puzzles and clues to solve where princess Zelda was. All the different places to go gave you a sense of freedom that I had never felt before in a game. I could go into a cave or a hole in the ground or a castle with ghosts the possibilities seemed endless.
It has been a little over 25 years since then and I still love to play video games. The fun for me is that the Zelda franchise is still coming out with more games. I think it is pretty neat to sit down and play Zelda with my daughter and reminisce about past adventures I have had saving princess Zelda. www.zelda.com
