Ranting About Zelda

by Gregory Gietzen

1987. 3rd grade. The year of the Great Gold Box. A lure so strong, it seemed like none of us could resist it. If you're too young to remember the release year, or just weren't in on the action, think of the Red Rider BB gun from A Christmas Story, and then imagine it spread out over an entire planet's worth of children.

I remember standing in Kmart with my father - in the freshly minted "Video Games" section. I proudly showed him The Golden Box - containing, I knew, The Golden Cartridge. As much as I cared, it may have been the Ark of the Covenant. I turned the box over and pointed to the pictures on the back, saying, "Look at the graphics!" Impressed though he was (we had a Commodore 128), I couldn't yet persuade him to buy the game.

I remember the first time I saw the commercial. A man in a black jumpsuit. He runs all over, looking left and right, onscreen and off, all the while yelling, "Zelda!" I advanced a theory to the lucky friends of mine who had the game: "Maybe if you go in the directions the guy in the commercial goes, you'll find her," (exact wording, I swear). They wasted no time in disillusioning me of this notion.

Zelda was all we could talk about. What would the next dungeon look like? What was the next treasure? What would Zelda look like when we finally met her? And, of course, the great unknown quantity: Ganon. Just uttering his name instilled wild speculation into our minds. We always said his name with a sort of reverence, a mixture of awe and contempt, half whisper and half sneer. Ganon. We couldn't wait to stare this Prince of Darkness in the face and put him to the sword.

Our conversation grew peppered with words completely incomprehensible to outsiders. Octorocks. Tektites. Darknuts (how we hated the Darknuts). Goriyas. It was our secret code, and the outside world be damned. Dinner had to wait. Playing outside became a thing of the past. When we went outside for recess, "we happy few, we band of brothers," merely stood in a circle and talked about Zelda.

Zelda even had the power to change lives, if only for an instant.

You see, a lesser known package for the NES didn't come with any games. Instead, it came with a Nintendo player's guide. A guide to the various early releases, Metroid, Kid Icarus, and, you guessed it, Zelda.

Andrew was this big beanpole of a guy who got his ya-yas out by bullying me. He was good at intimidation, but lousy at video games. And me, I'm sitting pretty with a strategy guide, complete with dungeon maps. Suddenly, I'm dictating the terms. And when he came back, returning my guide, guess what? We talked about Zelda. As equals. Sad postscript to that story: Andrew shortly resumed his ways after that moment, but it was nice while it lasted.

I was an only child, so whenever I played Zelda, I was by myself. But not really, because I had the acute sensation of being in Hyrule, fighting side-by-side with Link. Every afternoon, I became his liegeman, sworn to protect his life with my own. We hacked our way through Moblin-infested forests. We fought our way to the source of the river, and I watched with pride as Link presented the Old Man with 250 rupees to purchase a blue ring. We fought epic battles, last-ditch stands against a room full of blue Darknuts, accompanied by the beeping sound to let us know how perilous the situation really was.

This was more than a mere video game. This was an adventure to rival anything in Arthurian lore, with stakes so high as to put Beowulf to shame.

Fast-forward more than a decade, to the year 2000. I'm in college now, and home for the weekend, hanging out with my two best friends - Brian and Dan. We sit in Dan's basement, taking a temporary break from our Zelda-fest to glut ourselves on pizza and pop. As we eat, we begin to swap war stories.

Dan tells us that all the kids in his neighborhood were obsessed with Zelda, save one. Dan and his friends had been trying for days to defeat Ganon. They'd stab him, get him to turn that awful shade of brownish-red and then. nothing. They'd do this for hours on end, waiting for the fiend to die, all to no avail. One day, though, purely by luck, that other guy picked up the game and happened to fire a silver arrow into Ganon. Problem solved.

I speak of my "controlled burn" of Hyrule: the day I went through the game and burned every tree I could reach, just so I could be the one kid to find something the programmers had hidden and no one, not even Nintendo Power, had found.

Dan, it must be explained, is either an idiot or a savant, depending on which day you catch him. In column a, he went swimming with the automatic starter to his parent's brand new Bravada in his pants pocket. In column b, he can play almost any song on the piano, after hearing it just once.

Anyway, Dan at this point pulls out a pen and paper. He quickly diagrams the system of tunnels that runs beneath Hyrule, a premise I never understood. He also tries to explain to us how the Old Lady's "test your luck" game works. I nod sagely and hope he doesn't expect me to apply this knowledge later.

Brian, in the meanwhile, isn't talking. He's taking it all in, nodding thoughtfully. Spread out before him is his latest triumph: a screen-captured map of the entire Overworld. It's a thing of beauty. Looking at it brings all those fond memories rushing back. I wish I could have that thing laminated and mounted on my wall. Or maybe folded up and put in my glove compartment, so I could delude myself into thinking I'm going to Hyrule for vacation.

Dan and I continue to swap stories, but ultimately, whenever we discuss Zelda, he holds the trump card. You see, the game has a second quest. The second quest adds three new enemies, swaps the locations of almost everything in the game, and adds illusory walls, both one- and two-way. You normally get this quest by completing the first. Or you can take the short route and enter "Zelda" as your name at the beginning of the game.

Dan didn't know this second fact. Dan, in youthful innocence, entered "Zeldaman." The NES felt that was close enough. So while all Dan's friends were trying to help him through the game, it didn't do any good, since he was stumbling around blindly in the second quest.

Conversation dies down for a moment, and we resume eating. By now, I think, we have become the modern equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon warriors. We stay up late into the night, feasting and regaling ourselves with tales of glorious victory over our enemies, but always with a cautionary tale to balance the scale.

We've learned things about each other over this tag-team game of Zelda as well. I'm a finesse player. I dodge and weave, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I never stick around in one place for very long. My auxiliary weapon of choice is an unusual one: I like the wand and book. It's good for keeping people at a distance.

Brian's a slasher. He doesn't have a backup weapon, since his main tactic is to run up to things and pound them with his sword. He doesn't do this all the time, of course, since some creatures cannot be killed that way, but it seems to be his preferred mode of attack. I suspect he thinks I take to long to kill things - I sort of think his way is sloppy.

Dan's somewhere in between. But I promise you, you've never seen such fine handiwork with a magic boomerang. I'm not talking about the simple diagonal shots, here. No, he's mastered the art of aiming things specifically for the return throw, and then he'll move, forcing the boomerang to catch up to him, driving it into another enemy. It's a pretty impressive show.

We're on level eight, "The Lion." Dan approaches a door, glances at the dwindling row of hearts (down to three), and wordlessly hands the controller off to me.

Suddenly, I'm in the dungeon again, standing right next to Link. "Again," might be the wrong word, because part of me, I think, never left. Still, we move through the door. The shutters slam closed behind us as a horde of rampaging Darknuts take over the room. Yup. Darknuts. Blue ones.

Link and I work together as well as ever. We don't miss a step and soon the entire room is clear without Link so much as stubbing his toe. I hand the controller back to Dan, who fights the rest of the way to Gleeka, the level's boss. He hands the controller over to Brian who runs up and starts hacking away at the multiheaded dragon.

Dan and I admire the quality of the map while Brian fights the monster. Eventually, he announces that he's procured the last piece of the Triforce, and asks where we're going next.

The question is a rhetorical one. We know the answer. We've always known the answer. One of us picks up a pen and points, in the manner of a military commander giving a briefing. Spectacle Rock. Death Mountain.

We know what awaits us there. The same dark force that's been taunting us from the shadows since childhood. He's always been there, hidden away behind level after level of fiendish mazes. He's made us hunt for keys, demolish walls, feed hungry Goriyas, cross rivers on a stepladder, plumb the depths of a graveyard, and deal with crazy old men who consider a tree their "front door." We've had to dodge falling rocks, fight teleporting wizards, mobile statues, bats, jellies, and mummies. And his darkest magic of all? Addicting us to the quest.

So, in that instant, Dan, Brian, and I know what we have to do. Make the climb to Death Mountain. Find the fiend in his lair, and kill him. Soon thereafter, he will rise again, and we will each separately (at least until our next Zelda party) guide Link into battle, to repeat the entire process.

And there's only one sorcerer capable of such malevolence. His name? Say it with me.

Ganon.