Do we know this? We all admittedly don't have much to go on besides our memories and what remains of the press of the day, but I've seen little to suggest that there was much of anything other than a widespread consensus of the game's excellence. I remember Zelda II being the talk of the...
Related to/ elaborating on the above: it wasn't universally taken for granted that Zelda II was a departure from the first, but rather an extension or progression, sort of like going from 2D to 3D. I know for me I looked at it as the first Zelda but 'zoomed out' to capture the scope of the world...
Timelessness is exceptional and admirable! It's just not a fair requirement. Times are always changing besides, who can say that things won't shift in some wild new future direction and suddenly SMB3 isn't as modern friendly as Zelda II?
There's a deeper notion we're poking at here and it's...
It's entirely fair to note when a piece of work is dated and doesn't meet popular contemporary demands, but if we're going to try to be serious about it at all we'd at least try to critique it by the demands and expectations it was trying to meet, since it wasn't made for people thirty years in...
This is easily the biggest misconception. The Adventure of Link was both a commercial smash and was highly acclaimed. Even when some people preferred the first game, that's about as deep as the criticism went, the praise was universal. Its status as a "black sheep" was mostly informed by people...