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Month: January 2020

A Link to Zelda’s Past

It had been nearly nine years since I had played a Zelda game for the first time (in the intervening time, I beat the DSiWare title Four Swords Anniversary Edition, but that doesn’t really count), and I was finally ready for more. As my first “core” Zelda was, well, the first Zelda, for the second, I skipped the sidescrolling second title, The Adventure of Link on NES, in favor of the more traditional third, A Link to the Past. It also helped matters that I had A Link to the Past‘s 3DS sequel, A Link Between Worlds, in my backlog.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was originally released for the SNES in 1992 and has what might be the most misleading title in the entire Zelda franchise. Much to my surprise, especially given the plots of certain later entries in the franchise, there is no time travel in this game. As I learned later on, the title is a reference to the Zelda timeline; this story takes place before the events of the first two games. However, there’s no mention of this in either the game itself or the manual, so perhaps you can understand my confusion.

Link begins his journey on a rainy night. Image from Zelda Dungeon (zeldadungeon.net).As with many other 16-bit RPGs when compared to their 8-bit predecessors, the plot in A Link to the Past is much more involved than in The Legend of Zelda, though still relatively simple at its core. Long ago, a Golden Land had to be sealed away by seven wise men due to the presence of evil. In the game’s present day, the wise men’s descendants are being kidnapped by the wizard Agahnim in a plot to undo the seal to the Golden Land, now called the Dark World. One night, Link receives a telepathic message from Princess Zelda, which is where his adventure begins. During its course, Link will collect three pendants, the Master Sword, and a certain pair of items which allow him to safely travel between the Dark World and his home dimension, the Light World. From that point, his quest shifts to the recovery of seven crystals, each tied to a wise man’s descendant (all of whom happen to be maidens) and the defeat of Ganon, the source of the evil which transformed the Golden Land.

Gaming Selections of the Decade

Since every other site has been posting their “Best Games of the Decade” lists this season, why shouldn’t I? As this blog continues to celebrate its tenth anniversary, it’s only apt to look back upon my past ten years of gaming, particularly when it comes to games that were contemporary at the time. However, instead of doing the usual list followed by my top three games, this post will only focus on said three.

I hadn’t planned it that way. The original draft of this post contained a whopping twenty-five games, including the top three. There were even genre and aspect-specific awards, such as FPS of the Decade and Soundtrack of the Decade. However, even though there were some games I felt strongly enough about to merit their inclusion, the list as a whole felt imperfect (not to mention a lot of work) outside of the top three. Those I had settled on pretty quickly.

So, let’s talk about those three, and only those three, each of which was first released between 2010 and 2019. Please note that there may be some minor spoilers.

2019 Gaming Selections

By the time 2019 was about halfway done, I wasn’t feeling too hot on the games I’d been playing. There’d been one or two standouts, but even more mediocrity and disappointment. Fortunately, things picked up again in the months to come, and once again, I found myself shuffling a few titles around to come up with this list.

Of the disappointments, I found myself underwhelmed by two much-loved sequels: Bayonetta 2 and SteamWorld Dig 2. Both were well-made and answered important mysteries presented by their predecessors, but neither of them had that special something to truly make them stand out from what came before.

As usual, every game here is one I’ve beaten during the past year, regardless of release date. For each game in the top ten, the title, developer/author, platform(s) I played it on, and the release date for said platform in my region has been included, along with the usual blurb about why I found this game so memorable.