This is episode 300 of the Retroist Podcast, which feels strange to say out loud. Three hundred is a lot of hours talking into a microphone. So it seemed right to finally sit down and talk about The Legend of Zelda.
If you were around in the mid eighties and had a Nintendo, you probably remember the first time you saw that gold cartridge. It did not look like the other games. It felt important before you even turned the system on. I remember holding it for a second longer than usual before sliding it into the NES, like I was about to try something I might not fully understand.
And then the music started.
What struck me was not just that it was fun, although it was. It was that it felt bigger than the television screen. You could walk in any direction. You could get lost. In fact you were expected to get lost. There was no helpful voice telling you where to go. You just wandered, burned bushes, pushed rocks, bombed walls, and hoped you were onto something. Sometimes you were. Sometimes you were just wasting bombs. That was part of it.
Nintendo was already a big deal by then, but this felt different from the arcade style games that filled the early NES library. Shigeru Miyamoto has said he drew from childhood memories of exploring caves and fields near his home, and you can feel that in the design. Takashi Tezuka helped shape that world, and Koji Kondo gave it a sound that still lives in my head decades later.
The save battery alone felt like science fiction at the time. You did not have to leave the console on overnight. You did not need a notebook full of passwords. You could stop. Turn it off. Come back the next day. That was not normal then.
And then there was the quiet storytelling. Link, Zelda, Ganon, the Triforce. The game barely explained any of it, which somehow made it feel larger. You filled in the gaps yourself. The instruction manual helped, sure, but most of it lived in your imagination. That is a powerful thing when you are a kid.
I have tried to cover this game before and it never quite landed the way I wanted. Maybe that is because it is tangled up with being a kid, with sitting too close to the television, with that feeling of not knowing what was going to happen next.
So for episode 300, I am not trying to make some big statement about it. I just wanted to spend time with it again. Think about how strange it felt to be dropped into a world with almost no explanation and told to figure it out. I did not know where I was going most of the time. I just kept walking (and loved it).
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Production Notes
Welcome back to the 300th episode of the Retroist Podcast! It's also the 2nd episode of our new season, and I'm thrilled to be diving into one of my all-time favorite games, The Legend of Zelda.
Amazing that I have made it to 300 episodes. Thanks to everyone who has continued to listen to the show and has shown support over the years by reviewing, contributing, liking and supporting over at Patreon. Getting to share my memories and things I love with people really keeps me going.
I am slowed down some years, but I keep coming back to the pop culture that I love, and sometimes I think I could do it forever.
Another episode I have recorded a few times and was not happy with. This game means a lot to me, so I hope I did it justice. At the end, I have a tiny bit of audio from a previously recorded episode.
I am not great at pronouncing names, so I hope I did a decent job. I tried listening to recordings online to get it right.
I had a lot more audio in this episode, but cut it down. It slowed things down. I especially wanted to include some commercials from Japan, but they are often very visual, or at least those are the best parts.
If you are listening on YouTube, I needed to take out the music that can be found in the downloadable podcast. Sorry about that.
Since I have tried recording the show multiple times, it has been amazing how many games they keep making in the franchise. I have enjoyed a few of them, but I always come back to the original and best.
Each console I have ever owned has one game that I will go back to time and again. If I had to have one game locked into that console, that would be the one. For the NES, it is The Legend of Zelda.
Music on the show is, as always, by Peachy.
Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.
