It's Dangerous To Go AT ALL: Let's Play Zelda Classic

Nodal, you're a monster

Probably not a full LP for a while. Classes start back for me in a few weeks and I can't see myself spending much time on gaming at all, let alone LPs. But I'll probably still do the random stream and some races.

Congrats on the LP McClain! Thanks for the entertainment!

After this? Alcohol, drugs, therapy.

I actually saw the last fifteen minutes of the stream and just saw the end of the game starting with the last fight against the black worm. Seeing it again was even better knowing how terrible it was to get there!

I want to see Zelda Random. I've tried playing it a few times 'cause it's kind of neat in theory, but I always end up just completing the first two dungeons and then wandering around aimlessly wondering where the hell else I can go that won't kick my ass. Because there's a dungeon entrance hidden on practically every other screen, the vast majority of which are stupidly stupid.

What I think Zelda Random needs:

1) Only one overworld. If you're hiding a secret on every screen, then one is enough.
2) An overworld compass that lets you know whether or not you've gotten the thing(s) from each overworld screen. (Showing discovered stores and medicine ladies would be nice too. Seriously, there are way too many caves to keep track of just in your head.)
3) A rough difficulty indicator that lets you know the approximate perversity level of the dungeons you haven't completed yet.


Edit:
Also, congratulations McClain on beating the fourth quest!

4) Small dungeons only. When there are 45 total in the game, none of them should be a patience straining labyrinth. 1-1 and 1-2 are really kind of neat to just blitz through to grab whatever the heck random items they have, and the Goriya rooms are pretty reasonable max-difficulty challenges for beginning of the game dungeons.

Good news! On my stream yesterday I ended up playing a couple hours of Zelda Randomizer, and we spend a lot of time unpacking its strengths and weaknesses. I'll post it up ... eventually.

It already has that. Multiply the dungeon's two level numbers to get the length of its middle finger in centimeters. 1-1 only has a 1 cm finger, but level 4-8 has a 32 cm finger. It's almost entirely accurate!

The best way to play Randomizer is to blitz through all the easy stuff, like the light overworld and first quest dungeons, in the hopes that you get something overpowered. The game might dick you and shower you with scrolls of dubious usefulness, but that's part of the fun.

As promised, here's a couple of bonus videos from my last stream.

First, my brief look at the Third Quest



And then we played Zelda Randomizer for a couple of hours.



And that's pretty much it!

Thanks again for watching, commenting, and suffering along with me.

Thanks for bringing me out of lurk mode for awhile. And I will send you that TT shirt, lemme know what size. Not that JP has emailed about that yet, but, hey.

10/10 LP, we will all sorely miss your Zelda Prowesstm

Wow, you really were traumatized by that thing, weren't you.

If you ever gain the strength of will to try again, here is a "map" of the overworld for the 3rd quest, so you don't have to again endure the horrible agony of not having the arbitrary places to burn bushes and bomb walls you have committed to memory not help you.

You can totally get the blue ring, magic shield, and white sword before entering a dungeon. There's no weird homebrew monsters. There's no master keys. There's no BS with fireball statues (until I think level 8 where there's 6 in every room). It's a safe place where the icky black worm can't hurt you. Or, as safe as the 2nd Quest is anyway.

Also I was all set to check out that randomizer but WOW is it ugly looking!

I'm sure I could get through the third quest, and might even enjoy it, especially compared to the fourth quest. But for playing on a stream and right after the fourth quest i really just didn't want to fool with it, hahaha.

Do a palette cleanser. Find a game you really enjoy, something not Zelda 1, and LP it. For fun.

No, I totally get you there. That's why I said if you ever gain the strength of will to try again. I don't want to touch anything Zelda-like with the taste of the 4th quest still in my mouth either.

That's because he's playing the "Modern" randomizer, which is the objectively wrong choice. The other randomizer does away with 80% of the bullshit (but is, admittedly, a little less novel for it). Things that the modern randomizer adds:
-Ugly tile sets
-Bad music
-That silly jewel projectile
-Boss keys
-Crazy enemies like 4-way Moblins and starburst Wizrobes

Also note that the things that McClain says about the other randomizer in the video are wrong: you can move diagonally, and you can assign items to both slots. The only notable missing thing is the little chest counter that tells you how many things you've found.

Oh, huh. I guess I read the description completely wrong and didn't know what the hell I was talking about! Though I still would probably prefer a version that has fewer items and just the 18 original dungeons.

Booo! That sort of progress indicator is practically required for a game like this. Big mistake leaving that one out.

Still, next time I get the urge to play this I'll have to go try the classic flavor.

I can say that your suspicions about the treasure counter were correct. The L-2 Cross is what adds that "/X" part.

So I tried the randomizer classic for a little bit, and I don't know. It doesn't feel different enough from the "modern" one for me to understand why there's two versions. "Classic" still uses the updated movement, inventory, music, etc. The main things that "modern" added was new text for the old men, some ugly tiles, and the item counter (which desperately needs to be in both versions).

Personally, I think he should have a "classic" version that's literally just the original 18 dungeons, items, tiles, music, etc, and make Modern really modern with the BS Zelda tiles, improved item tracking (the item in the triforce location isn't counted, WTF?), etc. But even then I'm not sure if I want to play 45 dungeons ...

You could always make your own, couldn't you?

HAHAHAHA, no, ZQuest is terrible and I have no desire to put my money where my mouth is.

It really is. I've looked around in it, and you'd think that they'd make it self-explanatory to add warps from one room to another. About all I can figure out is the overworld.

And that's really the problem with ZC. It's totally insular, in no small part because of the programming. Things ZC people thinks is a good idea is based on impressing other ZC people.

ZQuest was originally designed to streamline the process of making NES quests in a DOS environment, and that's probably why it's so horrible at anything more complex. You could do your vision of an Nth Quest with very little effort, assuming you have a good idea of what to put where.
In fact, AGN is still organizing the Official 5th Quest Contest, so there's no better time to kick the ZC community's ass at its own game.

This LP makes me want to organize an official collab thread here at Talking Time, just so we can crash their contest with a balanced, accessible quest the way we schooled RMN for breaking Brickroad.
THIS IS WHAT WE THINK OF YOUR WORM, QUESTWIZARD

And I am totally up for testing or even LPing anything you guys put together! But right now I don't have the time for much of any serious game design with classes starting in a week.

"No Red, you can't make a rafting hell segment with a Manhandla boss."

Dawwwww....

Zelda Classic is really hard to use, or at least I was never really able to figure it out. If we all put our heads together, maybe we could pull it off?

Alphadawg (of 3rd quest fame) is the one that taught me the old version of Z-Quest. His tutorial is still here.

oh sweet god that site is almost as old as Zelda Classic! Was this on geocities?