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

Some of the items that weren't in Zelda 1 are pretty useful. The hammer can hit darknuts through their shields, hookshot and fire boomerang stun wizzrobes, a certain ring makes you immune to bubbles. And yet some others are profoundly useless (so many boots).

So I reached level 9 in 4th quest. Promptly gave up. It has been expertly designed to make you want to stop playing. I never really thought much of level 9 in Zelda 1, but after playing so many of these custom quest final dungeons, Nintendo's early designs are looking like unbridled genius in comparison.

Yeah, it really is a shame that such a decent idea is crippled by the dude overwhelming it with his (or someone's) dungeon designs. I really wish he (or someone) would make a version that's just the two official quests and like half the items.

E: Actually, if you just remove the pieces of the hearts and have the heart containers be randomized with everything, and have the bosses drop items or heats, you might even be able to keep all of the crazy expanded items. Maybe lose the extra row of hearts, though.

Anyone who knows Zelda classic want to try to make that? With permission, of course.

After finding a few items (and being really worried at first that I would never find a fire source, a power bracelet, or a recorder), my run was shaping up to be pretty good. Then I found the level 4 sword and never died since. The level 5 sword was icing on the cake.

I didn't know that the level 3 boomerang or hookshot stunned wizzrobes (wait, no, I knew that second part). Nor did I know the hammer broke Darknuts. And there are two rings I still haven't identified, and can't because that shardstorm website doesn't want to load for me. But everything else was neat. I was especially enjoying the Magic Bomb Bag.

As for the X-9 dungeons, I certainly got lost in them a good bit, 4-9 especially so. But the aforementioned level 5 sword kinda took out all of the danger, so the only thing that impeded my progress was figuring out where the hell to go.

I'm doing a second run now, trying to find all 183 items in the game. I'm logging all of their locations, so after I'm done, I'll be glad to post it somewhere if anyone wants to see what they're missing.

Also, someone mentioned upthread that there was a place where a super bomb was needed to open something? Would that person care to say where? I couldn't find anywhere like that.

EDIT: I found it. I don't even.

So I couldn't sleep at all last night and wound up playing through the entirety of both the 3rd and 4th quests here (and I'm glad I kept a save file with a missing heart container backed up because both just kinda dead end, more of a branching point than skipping past 3).

The 3rd Quest is actually surprisingly solid throughout beyond how unforgiving it is when you're first getting started. Other than how much stuff I had to grab to survive level 1, the only time I was tempted to call BS was in level 9, which.. kinda has the excuse of being level 9. And I suppose those gohma rooms, but whatever, they die quick.

The 4th Quest I... really cannot say that about. There's the weird obsession with putting the max allowable enemy count in every room after the first couple dungeons, even when it makes no sense (wizrobes). Everything about level 6 is total BS (although thankfully the only thing that becomes a trend afterwards is ridiculous room-filling moldorms. Maps are too big (while somehow not really much of a challenge), and level 9's big gimmick is tricking you into wasting keys and needing to find a shop to buy new ones. Which just isn't cool. HP boosted Ganon is also slightly more terrible of an idea than every single other boss in the game. Because yes, we totally need to spend more time stabbing randomly at the air.

HP Boosted Ganon sounds like a terrible idea... does he still only need one arrow, or do you have to repeat the process?

I think the enemy editor only allows you to increase his stabbing HP, so I think he just still takes a single arrow to beat.

But yes, Super Ganon is a bad idea all around.

Still 1 arrow. After like... 15 stabs.

And to reach him you have to make your way past The Ultimate Moldorm, which seriously has like... 1000 HP? 25 wood sword/flame hits per segment and like 40 segments? On the upside, neither is in a room with 10 fireball statues.

That just means, for McClain's LP...

So it's like the questmaker tried to make Terraria's Eater of Worlds in Zelda Classic.

Eh. Could be a lot worse.

I want to find these people and punch them in the biscuits once for each extra HP they gave to a monster.

don't do it.

ganon is watching you.

Gonna record the next episode and stream it over at twitch soon-isn.

Thanks to everyone who joined in on the stream! That was a lot of fun. I'm definitely going to stream my recordings from now on.

Because reasons I'm having trouble editing down the over an hour of footage from tonight. And ... I'm really not sure how long it'll take. So, if you want to just see the raw footage in all its wondering-around-lost glory, here it is!



(I get somewhere new at about the 48-minute mark)

Edit:

Okay, I managed to crap out a half-way decent edited version (though I got AV issues again in this version, FML.)

For those of you without an hour to kill ...


In this episode, Ganon has an audience, gets lost for over an hour, and poorly edits the video for you folks. (still uploaded as of this posting)

I don't understand. Why would you expect the second Level 8 treasure to be anywhere else? It's too brokenly overpowered to be found any earlier, after all.

I'll just say now that you should save before entering level 9, and be prepared to hit "RETRY". It will be less tedious that way.

The HP boosted Ganon talk reminded me of a quest where Ganon took dozens of hits. With the best sword. The entire quest was hilariously bad like that.

I'd suggest McClain stream something made by CastChaos for a bit, mainly for the comedy value, if I didn't think it would literally destroy him.

I think the only time I've used Retry in Zelda was when I got trapped in a Leave Your Live or Money room without enough cash, dropped the heart and then killed myself. Let's just say I'm going to be irritated if Level 9 makes me feel compelled to retry. Even wasting medicine doesn't really bother me that much if I made map progress.

Retry is for suckers, unless the game sucks.

Tentatively planning on doing a stream/recording tomorrow (Sunday) early afternoon, like 1 or 2 Eastern. I'll post before I got live. Come watch me bang my head against Level 9 for a little while!

Yaaay!

Oh lord.

They're going to be making a fifth quest.

... In looking at that thread, I noticed something:

_L_, you got some splainin' to do!

Flee!

Look under your seat! Black Wizrobes for everyone!

You get a Black Wizrobe!

You get a Black Wizrobe!

YOU get a Black Wizrobe!

Oh man. I'm going to not play the FUCK out of that.

I bet Talking Time could make a better quest than most of the entries.

Based on what I've seen of the community's general mindset, that's a pretty low bar. Just don't try and make some kind of Badass Aquamentus or throw a dozen fireball spitting statues in every other room and tada.

I'd take a stab at it myself, except I'm too busy doing this other free webby 8-bit thing.

Plus the above-quoted rule is kind of a dealbreaker for me

It's a shame Zelda Classic is a terrible, terrible community project engine.

I bet if we made a 5th quest using the mindset we used with the STTB games we could make a game that flowed well.

If you guys ever did, and I ever had to reinstall ZC for some reason, I'd make sure to replace the prepackaged 5th.qst with Talking Time's version. I can say right now, without seeing either Talking Time's or ZC's quests, that the one here would be far better.

(quick someone who's willing to organize this put the suggestion in the creating subforum)

Okay kids, firing up the stream. Come play.

Ah ha ha ha that was amazing. I warned you about level 9s bro! It's possible to find a key and the red ring before the magic key, so you don't have to buy one outside the dungeon. Of course there's no hint for which door the one key is used on. I gave up shortly after finding the red ring for reasons you discovered yourself.

http://i.imgur.com/W0dcOyB.png?1