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Discussion Zelda: A Link to the Past turns 32 years old today. What are your first memories of the game?

ReyVGM

ReyVGM

Game Endings Master
Today is the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past's birthday! The game was released on a day like today, 32 years ago.

What are your first memories of this amazing game?

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That rainy night… such an evocative start to a game. Inside the first two minutes you’re the last hope of the kingdom, taking up arms in place of your fallen uncle as darkness has literally descended. I’ll never forget it. Still my favourite game of all time.

Just not a scrap of bloat on it, something to do or find everywhere, and a perfectly built kingdom that opens up and reveals its secrets alongside your own growing armoury. You can tackle the dungeons in various different orders, don’t need to beat the boss in order to use the items for sequence breaking, and if you only find half of what’s hidden and want to stay on a signposted track, you can still beat the game. But even a few seconds of curiosity is often rewarded, or at least flags up ‘come back later, you’ve found something but can’t quite access it yet’. Wonderful stuff. Everything you can find is rewarding, none of this ‘here’s something you can use as 1/10th of the thing you need for a minor upgrade to this other thing you’ll abandon for a slightly better thing soon enough’.
 
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I think the GBA version may have been my first Zelda game? I don't think I finished it until years later, and I'm much more of an ALBW fan nowadays.

Last year I got into doing randomizer runs for a while though, and it's really impressive how well it works like that. I actually think it improves the game a lot because there isn't much story or atmosphere to disrupt by jumbling things up, but it makes much fuller use of all these different items and mechanics and areas that are just taken for granted or mostly pointless in a normal playthrough. I had no idea how important having the lamp was, because you get it in the first five seconds of the game normally. Ganon is hard as hell when you aren't guaranteed to have the red mail and golden sword plus a full suite of potions etc.
 
My family's Super Nintendo was in the basement and when I got this game IT TERRIFIED ME. I thought the pixel art was soooo pretty, but every time I had to go through a door it took me forever to do so, everything was so scary to me. I managed to get to the Dark World (which was even scarier!), but I never finished the Ice Palace. My tiny child brain couldn't figure it out.

Years later, I finally managed to beat it on my Game Boy Advance! I felt really accomplished lol.

I also learnt what "dungeon" meant thanks to this game. English is not my first language and I used to play with a dictionary next to me.
 
Funny thing is, my mom got this for me for my 9th birthday before I even had a Super Nintendo. There was a good month before I finally got the SNES. I remember obsessively reading the instruction manual over and over in the lead up to finally being able to play it. And then finally putting the cartridge in and playing my first 16 bit game and being absolutely astonished at how beautiful the game looked. The music to the title screen still gives me chills. 30+ years later and it remains one of my favorite games ever, and, what I believe to be... the best Zelda game ever.
 
I remember my parents renting it for me, and I was immediately hooked. It's still one of my top three games of all time. I got the game as a Christmas gift in '92 and because obsessed.

I've played the game at least once a year since then, and I never get tired of it. I love to speed through it in an afternoon, or fire up a run of the Super Metroid x ALttP randomizer.

Fun story: I was in first grade that year, and the house we lived in had a garage apartment. We rented it out to my first grade teacher, and one day she ditched school with me to go to Disneyland. We went on the People Mover, which at the time had a part where you went through a big video tunnel that had a ton of colors moving around in a very psychedelic manner. My teacher looked at me before that part and said "This is it, we're going inside Zelda." I don't think I'll ever forget that.
 
This was one of the first video games I ever played/watched someone play. I was a little too young to sink my teeth into it at the time, but I absolutely loved watching my brother and neighbors play the game. The map seemed huge and the sense of adventure was palpable. When I got old enough to play it on my own, it took several tries to stick with it, but I managed to finish it last year and made a thread about it:

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LTTP - A Link To The Past (yes that LTTP)

The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past. What can be said about it that hasn't been said over the last 3 decades and change? Let me try in this sort-of sequel to this thread: https://famiboards.com/threads/lttp-the-legend-of-zelda-not-that-lttp.5973/ Link To The Past was my very first Zelda...
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Back then we used to go to the local rental store. I think I got the game for Christmas or my birthday. It was a wonderful time...I was only 12 when it came out. Life is so relatively care-free at that age. It was for me anyway, thanks to the SNES... Now you're playing with power SUPER POWER 💜
 
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I alwaay remember this game because a close friend at the time lent it to me, and then he had to move to a different state and never had the chance the gave it back (and it seems he forgot about it). I still have it all these years
 
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I did play the game both on snes and gba, but never managed to beat the game until after it was released on virtual console. I remember back in the day my Zelda games were OoT and Link's Awakening.
What I recall from Alttp, was the rainy start. Such a great first impression. I don't remember how far I made it back in those days, but I think I was close to beat it once.
 
I just beat it for the first time this past February! Turns out it’s still really good!

I’ve messed around in LttP quite a few times over the years but never felt invested enough to move beyond the first few light world dungeons. Finally setting aside time to get the full experience opened my eyes to how well designed and satisfying the game is. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect (having to redo a huge chunk of Ganon’s tower because I took the wrong staircase after a mini boss and the door locked behind me was a big pain) and I do prefer the mechanics of Link Between Worlds, or the story and unique charm of Link’s Awakening(‘s remake), but for being only the third entry in a decade-spanning series, it’s truly impressive how well it holds up.
 
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Hands down my favorite game of all time. I was 13 years old when it came out. Stepping outside of the house into that thunderstorm for the first time was jaw-dropping. Charming visuals, music, dungeon design, items, characters, enemies, etc… A masterful package that stands the test of time. Nintendo’s prized gem in my book.
 
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The opening is perfection, honestly. It might actually be the best opening in any video game.
 
As a kid, because the game was in english, my cousin and I thought that the game ended when you got to the dark world and got transformed into a bunny.
 
Not my first memory of the game, but a favorite early gaming memory of mine:

Back in the days when I didn't have internet and didn't know of a way to figure anything out without just... figuring it out, and I was still in elementary school, I got stuck multiple times playing LTTP. But by far the longest was trying to get to Dungeon 6 (Misery Mire) in the Dark World - I had no idea how to get into the swamp. I tried everything I could think of and was convinced for a long time that you had to warp in from the light world somewhere to get on top of the cliffs, but I couldn't find a spot to make it work. Then I thought there had to be a cave somewhere that led inside - and I couldn't find one of those either.

So, I just explored the world and kept finding secrets and other things to do over the course of literal weeks, maybe months. I remember just playing the game after school for weeks without having any idea how to move on, but still having fun just wandering around and finding new stuff. When I finally figured out how to get the bird and just warp there, it was like I was the smartest person on the planet and I remember being so excited I told everyone at school about it the next day.
 
I remember letting a classmate borrow it in 92, and him insisting that there just wasn't any way to get into the castle in the beginning, despite me telling him to follow the path to the single, specially marked bush. To be fair, I didn't really understand the game he let me borrow, either: John Madden Football.

As for LttP itself, it was unbelievably epic. I don't think I've ever bought into the going-on-a-quest fantasy like I did with that game.
 
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SammyJ9 said:
Not my first memory of the game, but a favorite early gaming memory of mine:

Back in the days when I didn't have internet and didn't know of a way to figure anything out without just... figuring it out, and I was still in elementary school, I got stuck multiple times playing LTTP. But by far the longest was trying to get to Dungeon 6 (Misery Mire) in the Dark World - I had no idea how to get into the swamp. I tried everything I could think of and was convinced for a long time that you had to warp in from the light world somewhere to get on top of the cliffs, but I couldn't find a spot to make it work. Then I thought there had to be a cave somewhere that led inside - and I couldn't find one of those either.

So, I just explored the world and kept finding secrets and other things to do over the course of literal weeks, maybe months. I remember just playing the game after school for weeks without having any idea how to move on, but still having fun just wandering around and finding new stuff. When I finally figured out how to get the bird and just warp there, it was like I was the smartest person on the planet and I remember being so excited I told everyone at school about it the next day.
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Oh, you just reminded me of something else: the Players Guide I had for ALttP. It had some absolutely gorgeous illustrations that made my imagination run wild. I miss that guide dearly.
 
Nobutasu said:
I also learnt what "dungeon" meant thanks to this game. English is not my first language and I used to play with a dictionary next to me.
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This is me right there, I was nine years old when I played this game and damn was it an experience for me... the graphics, the audio, and everything in between was amazing too.

I played with a dictionary and thanks to this game, I started learning English, so I can beat other games as well.

Thank you LTTP
 
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The begining of the game, from the title screen to the opening sequence under the rain, was so incredible for me coming from the NES...
Then, when I understood that beating aghanim was just the start of the game... That game gave me chills I will never feel again.
 
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my first memory is strange because i’ve never owned it on the snes and my first zelda game was ocarina of time but when I first got my hands on a pc one of the first things I did as a child was watching videos of the older games I never played or finished and one of them was a link to the past, I still remember both listening to the amazing dark world theme (in a video called best video game music ever) and watching the final battle against ganon. It was one of those unobtainable games for me so it always felt a bit special, same thing with majora’s mask.
 
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The first i remember is that dope-ass commercial with the cosplaying dancers.

Man ... what an ad.
 
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Even though I had a snes growing up, I never quite got into this game. I remember borrowing it from my cousin for a bit, but I was very young, and I was into platformers like Aladdin, super mario world, donkey Kong country 2, and magical quest staring Mickey Mouse. I hadn’t really played something like Zelda before, and I could not for the life of me figure out where to go when I played it. I have been meaning to give this game another shot, I bought it on the Wii U virtual console and got about half way through it before I dropped it, I also started a bit of it on switch, and I bought it on 3ds vc as well. I want to play this game just to fill the gap in my gaming history.

Ironically enough, it’s indirect sequel/spiritual successor, a link between worlds, is one of my favorite games of all time
 
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I think I actually played through the whole game for the first time on the GBA, which I loved. I probably rented the SNES version but never beat it - I was more of a rental type of kid, and ALTTP is kind of hard to beat in two days when you're 7 or 8 or whatever.

Brilliant game - replayed it on NSO a couple of years ago. I would love a new 2D Zelda.

ALTTP is timeless, though. Pretty much everything about it holds up and it has no need for a remake, especially with modern versions having save states.
 
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