It's a pretty darn bland franchise nowadays.

Bland as it may or may not be, the play of it is still unique in the industry. So unique and rare that when a game is a blatant clone of its light combat and dungeon puzzles (Darksiders), the game is refreshing.


Still, I hope someday that Nintendo try to go back to the game style of the first Zelda where the game is a combat and exploration focused dungeon crawler and overworld explorer. It will be a nice break from the sliding block, pulley and lever, and other puzzles that have dominated the past couple of games.

Also someone needs to tell them that "use hookshot with grapple point, repeat 40 times" is not a puzzle.

I think Miyamoto is getting hung up on the theme of the game too much here.  Yeah the general fantasy theme is pretty cliche but the gameplay itself was revolutionary.  The sheer scope and ambition of the original game at that time was huge.

To me this is like Paul McCartney describing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as bland because it's just a love song.  It didn't change music forever because of the lyrical content.  Zelda wasn't a groundbreaking game because it was a kid with a sword.

I still enjoy "I Want to Hold Your Hand", but the original Zelda is something I struggled with as an 8 year old and now as a 23 year old. Jonny said Metroid is badly design and unplayable, and I think the same can be said about the original Zelda.

also, this im assuming was originally a Japanese interview. I assume that something is left lacking in the translation.

Wut? really? I enjoyed Zelda as a child.
But Metroid.... I never got far in that game because for 1) I didn't own it and 2) I could never figure it out.
so I'm gonna have to agree with Jonny on the Metroid point and disagree with you on the Zelda one.

Even if you don't think Zelda holds up, you're talking about gameplay.  Miyamoto is talking about the theme and style of the game which I just think is a silly thing to get hung up on.  I agree with Perm that there is probably something lost in the translation here.

Hell, if we're going on theme, ALL of Miyamoto's games are bland.  The storyline and characters in his games come across as hastily thrown together at the last minute entirely so that there is some sort of story.

Story is optional in a video game.

Unless it's an RPG (ones where the game systems actually let your actions play a lasting role in the game world) and adventure games that require you to recall points in the story thus far (unless you just jam on the hint button).

For a lot of other games, I will agree with you.

This is kind of an odd thing for Miyamoto to say since he values and focuses on gameplay over all else. Of course the theme was bland, because he doesn't really care about it. I kind of wonder if he were trying to get a different point across... maybe he's talking about it in terms of direction, the later games tell you constantly where you need to go but the original just hands you a sword and you have to figure it all out on your own.

No, I think it's spot on that he's talking about the setting. Dude with sword defeats dragons and stuff to save princess is regular fantasy. Size-changing plumber jumping 10 meters high and stomping on angry mushroom people and using turtle shells as projectiles is just WTF.

well if you compare mario and zelda yeah...fucking mario is just original as it gets.

Yeah, but pretty much every Zelda game is like that. It sounds like he's saying only the first one was bland, not the whole series.

I think Miyamoto is honestly being self-deprecating as a setup for a joke. One of which none of you get.

At my Prime I could do the original Zelda start to Finish one sitting after school.  Though for some reason I never finished the Second quest.  Honestly would prefer that getting the 3DS treatment even if it made it look board gamish.  Also fix Zelda II so that it did what the original manual said, start you at the last castle you beat, and I be all for doing that one again as well.

I always saw the original Zelda like that.  But recently I got an NES and I've been checking out scanned manuals of NES games.  I don't know how it worked in Japan but in America the original Zelda came with a map that states outright where the first four dungeons are and puts question marks in the locations of the later ones.  It's really no different than how A Link to the Past marks the dungeons on your in-game map, except instead of putting it in the game they put it in the manual.  So it is not as obtuse as it appears when you only have the game itself at your disposal.

Nintendo even set up a hotline just for Zelda because they thought it would be so hard and/or confusing (eventually they expanded the hotline when people started calling in about other games).

From what I've heard, the original Japanese version also had a map in the manual as well to make sure players wouldn't get lost either.  This is why when I see some people talking about how Nintendo needs to make a Zelda like the original where you have no idea where your suppose to go and be lost the entire game, I laugh.  Unless someone got the original Zelda at a used videogame store or just never bothered to read the manual, Nintendo has always been giving players advice on what to do since day 1.

The map in the manual shows that Miyamoto has always intended for players to have help when playing Zelda games and as technology has increased, he's just been able to do more with it.  Now I can understand why some people don't like it, but when I see people say the original Zelda is the best and then point to the lack of help as a reason and demand the modern Zelda's stop helping people has always humored me since if the technology for the NES was better at the time of development, Miyamoto would have allowed players to access a giant map in game with the dungeon locations mark just like he would later do with Link to the Past.

"Reading the flipping manual" seems to be a dying trend in video games. Either the game is chock full of tutorials from the get-go, or the game and its manual are so vague and obtuse that you end up reading user-made guides.

I am not opposed to any hand-holding in video games, but I think it would be interesting if it were made to be more optional. It would be a big design challenge for a Zelda game, but I think it might be cool to be able to complete some dungeons out of the intended or easiest sequence. I would imagine the puzzles or traversal challenges would have to not rely on your tools as much as in recent Zelda games. That, or for there to be alternate paths. Hmm, now that I really think about it, things can get messy and confusing very quickly.

That's true, a lot of newer games have elements to them that used to be in the manual or some other insert, such as a game's story, maps, equipment information, etc. I had that map when I was younger too, but it's long gone now so I often forget about it. I also remember the equipment chart that came with Final Fantasy; buying equipment in that game is pretty much guesswork without it.

To be fair, the map is optional, whereas in the new games, you have no choice but to be told three times where you need to go next, no matter how many times you've played the game.

One thing that the old games did have that makes it a little less straightforward is that it's easier to sequence break.  Hell in the original game it isn't even "breaking" the gamel like Super Metroid's is.  If you want to tackel some of the dungeons in a different order, go for it.  A Link to the Past provided some flexibility with that as well.  There's the famous trick in the ice palace where you get the Cane of Somaria out-of-sequence and use it to bypass a huge puzzle in the dungeon.

The more modern games have all sorts of cutscenes and such that won't trigger if you try to sequence break.  A lot of older games gave you a little more freedom and if you were unprepared to take on a later dungeon without the right items or with a low amount of hearts, so be it.

And of course there is a big difference between saying "you must go to the temple of whatever and find this" and "do this, this, this, this and this to solve this".  In A Link to the Past I never felt like I was told exactly what to do, just that I had to obtain these three pennants and they were in these places on the map.  How do I get there?  What order do I do them in?  What exactly do I have to do to get there?  It doesn't hold my hand on those specifics.  What's wrong with being given a quest?  That isn't hand holding.  "Oh I want you to save the world somehow, so just fuck around and maybe you'll figure it out."

Weren't they numbered in A Link to the Past?

Yes, they were numbered in A Link to the Past (on the map).

They were also numbered in the original. Once you entered the dungeon it would say "LEVEL-1" at the top of the screen. But in the NES version, you had no idea what dungeon it would be until you entered it (unless you had the map from the instruction manual or some other external help). I'm pretty sure the instruction manual didn't help you out at all on the second quest, though.

In any case, both of these games allowed a great deal of flexibility as to how to beat the game, and I liked that.

I think Ocarina of Time... the last two dungeons could be done in any order, but I'm a little foggy on that.

Yeah Spirit and Shadow could be done whenever. The item you needed to gain access to both was the Lens of Truth.

Sort of, but not quite.  You still needed the Hover Boots from the Shadow Temple to get to the Spirit Temple, IIRC.

I know the dungeons in the dark world were but I thought the three in the light world were not.  I can't quite remember.

In the light world, they weren't numbered.

A blonde chick that wears pink dresses and can turn into a dude is anything but bland.