A Missing Link from the Past

I didn't played any Zelda games before my twenties. A lack of a Nintendo console and the fact that Zelda and Nintendo was never as popular in Brazil as in other countries was the factor that made me discover this series so late in my life. So, when opportunity happened, I tried to play the game to see why there is so many people who likes this game.

And I don't understand till this day how Zelda is so popular.

After playing for a few hours, I completely failed to see why people are so in love for those games. I played it not expecting things like voice acting and great graphics, remembering that I was playing an SNES game. But it was not the technical aspects that put me aside. It is a pretty good SNES game in the technical department. But I couldn't hook up with it.

The gameplay was not fun to me. The story was not interesting. The characters were hard to connect with. I didn't like the game. And I am not sure why. Maybe, and that may be a reason why so many people can't understand why certain old games receive so much praise, it is because I was not in the right mental age to play the game.

Certain games, like certain cartoons and movies, only work when you are very young. Captain Planet, for example, is a very cheesy cartoon. But when I was a kid watching it, it was an awesome superhero show. If I try to watch it today, I will probably laugh on how bad it is.

The fact is that certain things only work when you are either too young to know better or old enough to get all the nuances you didn't care or understood when young. Games like The Legend of Zelda don't work on me today. I can't see the marvelous games people who played it when the SNES was the best console can see.

That is why many new gamers have hard time to understand how old gamers liked certain games and veteran players cannot understand how kids today can like some games. Gamers have changed. We change as we get older and or tastes, experiences and perceptions changes. Today I just can't play old games if I wasn't a fan when a kid because I fail to connect with them.

Many gamers may have similar experiences. Games who were the best of a generation that they fail to see why. It is we who have changed. So, next time someone talk about a game from the past they loved, remember that they and you are very different today.

What worked in the past may not work as well today.