First Time in the Golden Land

by ~genoboost

Link to the Past. The first Zelda game I ever defeated. I can go on and on about how influential this game was for me. In fact, I think I will.

It was my seventh grade school year. Like most children my age, I hated school. I went to a particularly terrible one at that, so anything closing in on intellectual stimulation was sparse. The lack of quality in late nineties Los Angeles public schools is another topic though. Needless to say, I tossed aside all thoughts of school the moment I walked through my door and tossed my backpack aside.

Clearly I didn't need the excuse, but every day for two weeks I left the pages of my homework alone and unanswered, instead basking in the puzzles and story of this incredible game. My math skills have suffered ever since.

Now, before the story can begin proper, I should mention that the very first time I actually played LttP was many years before this Although I had no idea at the time. If I recall correctly, I must have been at or near the wide-eyed and innocent age of seven and living in my own desert wasteland known as Albuquerque, New Mexico. At the time, my mother was a janitor, and on many occasions I would be brought along to the various houses and offices she would be tasked with cleaning.

Each house was of a quality far higher than the one we lived in. Such a thing is obvious to me now, considering my mom was the janitor, and these folks were the type that could afford janitors. Anyway, there was one house in particular that I used to love going to. This spacious suburban home belonged to a well off family with a single son. A young teenager who lived the pampered life of an only child, a lifestyle I could only imagine. I never did meet the guy, nor anyone from the family for that matter, since my mother only cleaned these houses when the dwellers were out. I simply assumed that he was the happiest and least bored kid to ever live.

It wasn't hard to learn much about this kids life though, or at least the parts I cared about, which were all connected to the television in the living room. Underneath the large TV were multiple consoles. There was a Sega Genesis. There was a Super Nintendo. There was even an Atari Jaguar connected to the thing. There were more games on the shelves than I knew existed at the time. To a young kid like myself this was essentially heaven. The time passed by quickly as I tried game after game I had never heard of, and had no idea how to play.

Eventually, (after turning off that incomprehensible Jaguar in frustration) I put in a game that was as alien as the dozen others before it. "The Legend of Zelda Link to the Past" I fired it up and quickly rocketed past all the boring introduction screens. Finally, I reached the game proper, and found myself staring down at a game that had no objective, and a  sprite that couldn't jump, instead it looked like he had been flattened against the floor like a pancake. His ridiculous clothing of reds and pinks and blues clashed against the golden pyramid he stood upon. I stared at the screen for a moment, without a clue as to what was going on in any way.

See, my gaming life before that was very sheltered. As far as I knew, the world was made up of nothing more than lovable platforming games, with the occasional arcade puzzler like Tetris or Burger Time, with a dash of racing games such as RC Pro Am and Super Mario Kart. This whatever Zelda was could not be classified in any way by my simple mind. I hit one button and the character's sword sliced through the air with a quick swipe. Not bad so far. I pushed another button and I dropped a bomb which promptly exploded in my face. Not so good now. I then fell into the floor at the top of the golden pyramid and I am quickly and unforgivably assaulted by the king of evil himself. I can't say I had a good experience with the game, but this series of random events became forever branded into my young memories.