Inception

My NES and games arrived yesterday!  A pleasant surprise considering they were supposed to have arrived on Friday.

Setup was pretty simple.  My receiver has RCA connections for L and R audio, plus video.  Weirdly, the NES only has one audio-out channel, so I'm only getting sound out of one speaker.  Not exactly 7.1 surround sound here, but it will do the job.

I popped in LoZ and was greeted with an image I had not seen in a long time:

Fig. 1 - OMFG

Man, when that music started playing it was like hearing the siren song of an old friend who was really bad at similes.  I almost cried and/or ejaculated (like I usually do during sex).  Check out that waterfall.  That is some 8-bit graphical mastery there.  And what is with the hexagonal columnar rock features?  Is this Giant's Causeway?  Hyrule has everything.

Just in case you forgot the plot, Fig. 2 explains all in some classically bad translated English.

Fig. 2 - WTF?

I'm not entirely sure what any of this means, but I think I'm supposed to fight Prince Darkness Gannon, who either stole a Triforce with power; or stole, with power, a Triforce.  And why are there quotes around the 8s?  Is that not a real number?  So much left unexplained.  But whatever.  I created a new game instance (Fig. 3) and got to work saving Princess Zelda and discovering the "8" pieces of the Triforce With Wisdom (or, with wisdom, discovering the "8" pieces of the Triforce).

Fig. 3 - I had to delete someone's saved games from my used copy of LoZ.  Can you imagine, in this day and age, the potential repercussions of leaving your game data on a second-hand item you just sold?  It's like someone just sent me Hillary Clinton's email server via USPS.

I have to say, LoZ is hard.  I must have died "20" times trying to find the level "1" dungeon.  The NES controllers are terribly unresponsive and the ones I acquired have the sensitivity of Donald Trump at a Ramadan party (bipartisan jokes, you guys).  By the end of my first LoZ session, I started getting a little better at anticipating monster movement and sword thrusts, but it didn't help much.  Running around Hyrule with only "3" heart containers, a wooden sword, and a shield made of gumption is a surefire way to get killed.

Guns don't kill people.  Tektites kill people.

In any case, I was surprised by how much I remembered regarding secrets within the game after "30" years.  For example, after earning the requisite "60" rupees (yes, that is the name of the currency in Hyrule, because in "1986" no one knew what an "India" was) to buy the blue candle, I found a bush I remembered having to burn in order to get to a secret room.  I knew there would be good reason to hold on to that fact forever!  My ineptitude prevented me from reaching some other hidden things, but that's probably for the best.  I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

What I couldn't remember was the location of the first dungeon, which I stumbled upon only after getting my elven ass handed to me a dozen times by a Zola (J'accuse, son!).  More on my misadventures in the first dungeon in my next post.