Dialogue
Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins an exclusive Edge T-shirt
Something changed
I’ve been gaming from a very early age, receiving a ZX Spectrum 48K to share with my siblings aged four, then moving on to an Atari ST. It was several years later, though, visiting my auntie and uncle who had just purchased a new videogame console, that I truly discovered the love of gaming that continues to this day. ‘What’s this?’ I thought. ‘Can’t be as good as a computer.’ Connect to the TV, slot in a cartridge, turn on the power, and bam: instant gaming.
It was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and I was about to discover the magic and magnificence of Nintendo. Super Mario World, Super Tennis, Super Mario Kart, F-Zero. Instant playability,creativity and ingenuity. Then,slightly later, Yoshi’s Island and Donkey Kong Country. All before eventually deciding to try an RPG, which was something new to me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was about to discover the greatest videogame franchise of all time, The Legend Of Zelda. It was like nothing I’d ever played before: thought provoking, not just reflex testing. Light worlds. Dark worlds. Dungeons, and so on.
From then on I stuck with Nintendo, ignoring the massive hype of PlayStation and later Xbox. I knew where the most playable, creative games were. I moved on to the N64, with Super Mario 64, Ocarina Of Time, GoldenEye 007, Wave Race, etc. Again, all breaking new ground with graphics, content and playability.
As I got older, got married and had kids, my time to play games and control of the big screen waned. For many years my only real gaming was Football Manager on a laptop. But I still managed to justify the purchase of a console in the shape of a Wii, with Wii Fit and WarioWare for family time, plus the two series I always purchased – Mario and Zelda, of course – for those occasional opportunities for solitary gaming.
As the years passed, my wife and I went our separate ways and suddenly I had the time to rediscover the things I loved: live sport, ’90s indie bands, and, of course, Nintendo – specifically Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.
Both were undoubtedly great games, with Zelda in particular once again showing Nintendo’s ability to break new ground and constantly come up with new ways to play. Both, though, followed the usual format. Princess Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser; Mario saves the day. Hyrule gets overpowered by Ganon as Zelda fights him somewhere unknown, while waiting for Link to awaken and become powerful enough to save the kingdom. After completing these, I was a little lost for something else to play on Switch. I was approaching 40,
