I finished the first Legend of Zelda game almost two weeks ago. This is the first ever Zelda, for the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I first mentioned playing it here. (As an aside, I was feeling sick at the time, and needed a feel-good activity. I'm much better now, but still playing video games.) Here are a few screenshots of the end of the game. This is your formal Spoiler Alert, just in case you have yet to finish this ancient game, such as I.
I defeated Ganon! He's the big boss of the game, and actually the big boss of just about every Zelda game. Just check out his bloody ashes. Yow!
Holy crap-a-roley, it's Zelda! Hey, girl, did you know there's a legend about you?
"This ends the story," huh? How many sequels to this game are there again?
I had this idea of playing through all the older Zelda games (none of which I'd ever played), at least up to and including the Nintendo 64 games. I'm not sure if a GameCube emulator would work on this computer. However, something got me thinking of another game I'd played and really enjoyed, yet never finished. I'm talking about the one and only Dungeon Master.
Hoo boy. I had first played this game back in `90 or `91, on my Amiga 2000 computer. Some of you may not be aware the the Amiga computers had a somewhat sizable market back in the late `80's to early `90's. It suffered some heavy competition from the IBM computers and compatibles (aka clones), and the Mac. Technically, the Amiga was the best computer at the time. It had unparalleled sound and music capabilities, and as far as graphics, the ability ti display over 4,000 colors on the screen at once. Macs were still working in a black-and-white environment, and IBMs were still making blooping and bleeping sounds, and limited to 256 on a VGA card, which was the highest resolution available back then. Also, while I'm going full-steam here, Microsoft did not invent Windows. Macs and Amigas had a graphical user interface (GUI) way before Bill Gates came into power. There were icons for files and folders, a customizable desktop (at least for the Amiga), and even a Trashcan (now referred to as the more environmentally-conscious "Recycle Bin").
But I digress. Dungeon Master scared the hell out of me. I had my Amiga hooked up to my stereo, and I would crank it up, turn off the lights, and get the living hell scared out of me. This is a dungeon simulation. There's no music at all, which makes the game even more real. All you here are the swinging of your weapons, the clanking of doors, and the footsteps of various monsters, bumping around... somewhere. You could even figure out what direction the footsteps were coming from - the game being in stereo sound - and around the corner... a mummy! The mummy shrieked with malevolence, and I shrieked in fear. Outstanding.
This game had a lot of people crying out, mainly because it was a new experience. All RPG games had, up until this point, merely beeped at you and showed static images and topdown views of your heroes, all rather limited in realism and artistic ability. They were also turn-based, meaning that the game pauses to allow you to make a move. It was kind of like playing chess.
"The skeleton swings it's sword. You suffer 10 points of damage!" Player reaction: Hmmm... drink a healing potion, or just hit it back?
Dungeon Master is in real time. Even as you look through your inventory, baddies are running up to you and attacking. Now you see the action.
You see a skeleton. You hear it swing it's sword. One of your adventurers go, "Uh!" Player reaction: FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! GET THAT FIREBALL LOADED! OOPS! RUN RUN RUN!
Back in the 1990's, there wasn't much in the way of the internet. There were no maps or YouTube walkthroughs. I mapped out the levels on graph paper, which was hard because there was always something to attack you while yo're scraling walls and doors on a grid. I was on my own when it came to figuring out the devious puzzles and traps that this game throws at you. I got stuck somewhere on level five, if I remember correctly.
I'm playing level five now. I'm using an Amiga emulator called WinUAE. Even though there are versions for the Atari ST, PC, and even Super Nintendo. the Amiga version is by far the best for graphics and sound.
Above is the inventory screen of my lead character, Phoenix Deathseeker. Any resemblance to myself is purely coincidental. Ahemcoughcough. I included the window border so you could see that it's running in WinUAE and that the game is paused. The characters' inventories can be brought up by clicking on their spot at the top of the screen. The bars next to the character's two hands (or portrait if selected at the moment) are health, stamina and mana (magic points). The eye icon in the inventory can be used to look at an item more closely, or display more stats. The mouth icon is used to feed your character. Yes, you can die of thirst or hunger in this game!
The upper right hand corner shows the order of your party. The box under that is for entering archaic symbols to cast magical spells. Under that are buttons for using weapons, and under that are the movement arrows. As far as the inventory itself, there is a paper doll system for throwing on armor, footwear, etc. The bottom left is pocketed items, and on the other side of the legs and feet is what's stored inside a quiver. As you can see, the backpack is completely full. What it's holding now is a bunch of edible remnants of former foes, as well as few blue potions (health and some others), a rabbit's foot (gives you a luck bonus), a flask of poison, and two chests containing even more items. Storage space and collected weight are often an issue in this game.
Here are a few more screenshots.
The ubiquitous Screamers. They hurt you by shrieking at you. They're among the easiest monsters in the game.
When you kill them, they leave behind "Screamer slices," which are edible. I think they taste like lime. Yum!
There's a plethora of items just laying around on the dungeon's floors. I suppose they were dropped by former adventurers who just didn't make it. Here's a large shield!
This is a Swamp Slime. It spits poison at you. How lovely...
This is what's known as a Couatl, which is similar to an Aztec god known as Quetzalcoatl, aka 'The Feathered Snake.' They're supposed to be intelligent and devoted to good. The Couatls in this game are decidedly neither. Oh, that reddish-yellowish ball nearby is the fireball that I just cast. ;)
Boom. One dead Couatl. That'll teach it to defy the ways of good.
Level five... out of fourteen. Whoa.
My daughters like watching me play the game and seeing what kind of monsters I'll run into next. I've always loved RPG computer and console games, and this is one of my all-time favorites. It's no Baldur's Gate, but Dungeon Master rocks my world.
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