Legends of Gaming
1988 found me in Omaha, Nebraska. I was finally moving under my own power again. The heel-cord surgery, from the autumn before, had healed. It was the first and only time I went to my friend’s apartment he shared with his mother. That was a seismic event for seven-year-old me. My parents lived together and were happy. His were divorced, and to see a different family dynamic play out was eye-opening. He was obviously subject to a parental tug-of-war. He had his own Color TV in his room. Beside it was a Nintendo, complete with a Robo and a dozen games. He decided to showcase Excitebike to me and our other friends from Cub Scouts. Sure, it was funny to watch the dirt-bike-guy crash on our custom-made death trap courses, but something else captured my attention. Amongst the plastic gray game cartridges sat a gold one. When I was able to get a word in the constant chatter of the socially adjusted boys, I asked about it.
“It’s dumb and boring,” my friend said.
Not wanting to be more uncool than I already was, I didn’t bring it up again, but it didn’t leave my mind. Why was the cartridge gold instead of gray? If it was so dumb and boring, why was it in gold?
It would be a year before I had a Nintendo of my own. My parents unloaded our Atari onto my cousins for some cash, and the rest of the cost came out of my birthday fund. I only had Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt, but that was okay. I was in Toledo, Ohio for another month or so. Then we moved to Cookeville, Tennessee. I made a friend quickly. It was a girl, and she had a Nintendo as well. In her collection of games, she had a gold cartridge. Unlike the kid from Omaha, it was her favorite game, and I was introduced to the Legend of Zelda.
She and her parents let me borrow it, and I crashed head first into Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. In no time at all, I was in love with the game play and story. It was the sort of game that would become a part of the standard I used to measure all games. My mom also caught Zelda fever, which guaranteed I got my own copy at Christmas that year. Before long, it was the first game I beat. Then came a real-world quest, to find Zelda 1.
Finding it took the better part of six months in 1990. There wasn’t anything like GameStop stores at the time. Despite the growing popularity of video games, they were still considered too niche. Rental stores hadn’t opened their shelves to games much either. It was luck I came across it in a small Mom & Pop electronics store. It took some convincing, and probably more prodding from Mom, but Dad bought it. I didn’t know who was more eager, me or her. I popped the gold cartridge in my N.E.S. and quickly learned that the kid from Omaha was full of it. The Legend of Zelda was perfect.
Mom and I took turns playing it. We carved our way across Hyrule, sharing our discoveries. For me, it wasn’t just 8-bit trees and rocks, but a breathing world where my handicap didn’t matter. I could walk through forests without fears of my right foot getting ensnared by an exposed root. Exploring rocky areas didn’t have the risk of losing my precarious balance. The game was a haven for me.
Mom and I reached Dungeon Seven about the same time. “Grumble, Grumble” the moblin went, but neither of us could figure it out. There weren’t YouTube and GameFAQ back then. All we had were each other bouncing back ideas, and one time Dad happened to overhear.
“Sounds like the guy is hungry,” he said.
“No way,” I said.
“Oh, son of a bitch,” Mom complained.
It was only a week or so before when Mom and I debated what the point of the meat item was. Dad sat there more than a little smug when I arrived at Mr. Grumble and fed him the meat. Mr. Grumble vanished and the deeper recesses of the dungeon were open.
“Of course, you’d figure it out, Doug,” Mom said, laughing. “You always thinking with your stomach.”
Before long we had beaten Ganon. Then came the Second Quest, followed by speed runs. Mom and I completed for best times, but we didn’t concern ourselves with 100% completions. She hated that the magic book made the wand spit fire so she stopped picking it up. (Mainly because she’d walk right into the fire not thinking.) If I remember right, our best times were up in the range of about an hour to an hour and a half. We were never going to beat world records, but we had fun.
In May of 1992, my Nintendo Power magazine arrived in Laurinburg, North Carolina. Zelda fever had me down the count once again as I awaited the release of new game on the S.N.E.S. I read everything I could on it. That meant my issue of Nintendo Power featuring the game was falling part, and my finger prints were all over any game magazine at the grocery store. Money was always tight. It went without saying when you had a two-and-half year old. It was my birthday weekend, and I got to choose where we would have dinner. I decided on Captain D’s. It was the closest substitute to Long John Silver’s we found in the south. As the cashier bagged up our order to go, Dad requested an extra box. I thought nothing of it. At home, we divvied out the food. I always ordered fried shrimp with my meal. So, it was no surprise when I was passed a small food box. It almost slipped my notice that I couldn’t feel the shrimp rattling around or that the weight was off. My parents grew impatient and told me to open it. Inside was The Legend of Zelda – A Link to the Past. My soon-to-be favorite game of the franchise with my favorite meal, it was one of my best birthdays I had remaining with my dad.
A Link to the Past became my go-to game. Whenever I grew bored or frustrated with other titles, A Link to the Past was there. My best time was around two hours forty-five minutes. My mom’s was closer to three. Even though Final Fantasy VI (III on the S.N.E.S.) was my comfort game when 1995 happened, when I fired up A Link to the Past, nothing else mattered. I stopped naming my save files as RBS<whatever my age was> and went with “Link”. On the follow-up play through, the character was named “Link Jr”. When the third came around, the 16-bit sprite was named “Zelda”, and she was absolutely a girl in my head. I made up their back stories and played it all out in my mind. A generational saga repeated out; I was ahead of the curve when it came to the future official time-line. Soon, it was 1998 and time for the next installment.
Ocarina of Time came at a point in my life where everything was going haywire. It was my senior year of high school. My first serious relationship fell apart. That fall was one shit storm after another until it became a tumult I wasn’t remotely mature enough to handle. I needed escape and Ocarina of Time was there to provide.
I had the Nintendo 64 for the better part of two years. I sucked at Super Mario 64 and the clumsy controller for the console didn’t win it any favors. Yet, while my mom and our extended family made their plans for a big Thanksgiving Day dinner, I poured my grief, anxieties, and frustrations into the first 3-D representation of Hyrule. Worse yet, I was taking the journey alone. The new graphics and my mom’s worsening seizures didn’t mix well at all. My brother hadn’t been bit as hard by the Zelda bug yet either. It was just me.
Perhaps all those sad moments and changes were the reason I only ventured into that version of Hyrule a few times. It is hard to separate the waves of melancholic nostalgia from the enjoyment and healing Ocarina of Time gave me. It was such a transformative time. My world was changing, expanding. The knowledge that actions had lasting consequences started to dawn on me. In some ways, Link and I had similar burdens. Like Link, I was being poked and prodded into adulthood without a good explanation or warning. Unlike Link though, I couldn’t turn back the clock.
My next turn in the world of Hyrule wasn’t Majora’s Mask, though I did play it a little on release. Instead, it was The Wind Waker. Like many, I was put off by the cartoonish graphics, but quickly fell in love with the game’s quirks. I was 23, happily married, and the upbeat world of the Great Sea was perfect. Wind Waker was the first game to push a constructive mythology– basing its lore on Ocarina of Time. The history and mythology nerd in me cheered. Even though I was well into my MMO addiction by this time, my Game Cube logged many hours of play time. By far, I enjoyed Wind Waker way more than Ocarina of Time
Twilight Princess was next, though I never beat it. The dark and foreboding realism of Twilight Princess had a side effect that I didn’t expect and still struggle with to this day. I am highly arachnophobic. It is so bad that any depiction of those eight-legged monstrosities freaks me out. It took an unbelievable amount of effort to play World of Warcraft and for several years I avoided places like Duskwood and Duskwallow Marches over my phobia. To say that Twilight Princess was a struggle is an understatement. The Forest Temple held no mercy for me but I got through it. Then I learned of the Temple of Time’s final boss and it broke me. Midna will always be the best helper/companion. The graphics are bar none the greatest for its time and the story was beautifully executed, but those damn creepy crawlies freak me out way too much.
Skyward Sword was supposed to be my triumphant return to Zelda games. I awaited the release with bated breath. The game play looked fantastic. The story was Nintendo’s most ambitious yet. I got my copy as a Christmas present. There was only one problem. I couldn’t play it. My disability always added an extra challenge to gaming, but this time there was no overcoming the issue. To play Skyward Sword, I needed two fully functioning hands.
My disability, cerebral palsy, is mild compared to others I have met over the years. I toe-walk on my right foot and I don’t have fine motor control of my right arm and hand. Not being able to keep up with the ever-changing world of gaming was something I knew was a real possibility. Even my other loves like Final Fantasy were drifting into new territories with their combat systems. Was this new direction by Nintendo going to be a permanent one? I had no clue. There I was thirty-one years old and feeling like a child again being excluded from something because I wasn’t like other the kids. After twenty years, I felt Zelda games were lost to me, and for the next seven years, I didn’t have hope to play another Zelda game again.
By now, you’ve noticed I left out a few Zelda titles. All of them belonging to the hand-held consoles. There is a reason for this. Save for the original Gameboy, the rest of them are hard for me to hold because of my disability. My right hand (or Righty as it’s known in around my head) doesn’t like to hold onto anything thinner than a half-an-inch. My right shoulder and elbow don’t like staying certain positions for very long either. Last, and the principle reason why I can’t play Skyward Sword on the Switch is because my right thumb doesn’t like small buttons and cannot perform tight and precise movements. All these factors kept me from playing the hand-held titles. Thankfully with the Switch’s virtual consoles that may change. There is one exception though, and that is A Link Between Worlds. Righty, the elbow, and shoulder hated me for weeks on end, but I played and beat that one.
By 2017, I had become a full-time PC gamer. As far I saw, the Switch was just another console I wouldn’t be able to enjoy. My brother-in-law had bought a Wii U at some point. Trying to use the hand-held strained my right shoulder when we and our wives played a few rounds of Mario Kart. The Switch seemed just more of the same with its joi-cons or combined unit as a hand-held. It should go without saying that the pending release of Breath of the Wild went under my radar. I read about it post-release, but didn’t get too excited. Then in early January, 2018, I learned about the Pro-Controller, and that Breath of the Wild’s controller scheme was exactly the way I needed it to be. This was also in the same time frame when my anxieties drove me to a breaking point.
What ultimately tipped me into taking a risk on the Switch and Breath of the Wild was my wife. She wanted one since the Mario games (her gaming passion) looked incredible. So, I agreed. We decided to clean house while we were at it. We had a shit ton of old N.E.S., S.N.E.S., and N64 games we never played or we had on our Wii. My wife’s office was a few doors down from a Game Stop and we hatched a plan. We’d sell off what we had and use the money to put toward a Switch and games. We knew Game Stop wasn’t going to pay well, but it was easier than eBay.
I had made arrangements with the store manager beforehand. I wasn’t going to be a rude asshole and drop by unannounced with forty or so titles to sort through. Has happenstance would have it, I still ended up causing some inconvenience. They only had one computer working up front and my transaction held it up for three hours, but that wasn’t the best part of the tonight. There were a few other guys there when I arrived. They were all collectors with money to burn. All said and done, we had about $500 left after we bought a Switch, two pro-controllers, and three games.
Breath of the Wild sat in its case for a good month or two before I was relaxed enough to play it. Also, the TV I was using was about eleven years old and sucked keeping up with the graphics. I ended up discovering my laptop at the time had an HDMI-in port and everything changed. Like Link, I opened my eyes at Zelda’s call and fell in love with the series all over again. By May 2018, I was getting treatment for my anxiety and other issues. While the medication started its work, Breath of the Wild brought a healing all its own.
I was thirty-seven years old. My life was being turned inside out and I was beginning the adventure of entering the publishing world. (I really hope that was my “mid-life crisis” because fuck, I hate to see what is in store for me if it wasn’t.) I thought the world of consoles had passed me by. Yet, there I was walking through the ruins of the Temple of Time. My brain came alive with speculation. Soon, I was discovering shrines, and dying alot because I was rushing into battles. I got lost on the way to Kakariko Village and climbed over a mountain somehow entered the village on the graveyard side. I blame the bokoblins on horseback. Eventually, I started getting my bearings (and maps!). I learned how to deflect a Guardian’s laser and was successful about a third of time. Mostly, I explored, and somewhere in between it all I found something more important than those last few shrines. I rediscovered who I was again.
Before Final Fantasy, Mega Man, Metroid, Warcraft, and other franchises, I was a Zelda nerd. The Legend of Zelda is a thread woven into my life’s tapestry that connects so much of my life together. If I wasn’t playing it, I was trying to piece the story and lore together. When I did play it (whether I was thirteen or forty-three) I was filling in the gaps of the various Links’ lives with elaborate fan fiction and head canon. It is my perfect escapism. Entering Hyrule, in whatever form it takes, is like coming home to me and I can only hope that as I grow older, I can still keep making that journey. So to close, I can think of one thing that says all that I feel about the game and my never ending excitement when I hear about it:
“May the way of the Hero lead to the Triforce.”
Feature image used under CC licensing.
Art by: Loganschillmix