Your first Zelda experience

[Vanessa28]

Nope, not asking what got you into this franchise. My question is this: did your very first Zelda game leave you with a bad impression like gameplay (being stuck or it being too easy), storywise, graphics etc that your first thought was to never ever return to this franchise? And if yes, what made you stay?

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

It's a weird starting place, but I'm pretty sure the first Legend of Zelda thing I sunk any significant time into was the Wind Waker demo on the collector's edition. I never owned the original cartridges, so that disc was my first exposure to LoZ, Zelda 2, OoT, and MM. I spent a fair bit of time seeing just how far I could make it within that 20 minute time limit.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

I suppose? I do remember being stuck on the orca tutorial in WW (young mind couldn't comprehend the whole control stick, no control stick bit), though I was never frustrated to the point of quitting, eventually I was able to press on

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

I remember playing Ocarina of Time as a really young kid, but I can't pinpoint exactly what age I was when we got it.

I played it a ton, but being a small child I was never able to get very far in it myself. Mostly I just ran around playing the minigames and doing the Deku Tree over and over lol. I obviously loved it though, because it remains one of the most nostalgic games for me. I did find it scary at times, I always refused to run around Hyrule Field at night because the Stalchildren scared me lol.

 

[Jinjo]

My first Zelda game I was not left with a bad impression. I first watched my sister play Ocarina of Time and I enjoyed watching her play. My sister was always getting stuck not knowing what to do or where to go and it took her 2 years to beat the game. After watching her beat the game I started my own file and I was able to remember a little bit on where to go. Whenever I did get stuck or lost I would ask my sister for help on directions.

 

[Ashley the Witch]

My first experience with Zelda is when my mom purchased Wind Waker. I didn't know anything about Zelda when she first bought it, but I immediately fell in love with the series. Though Wind Waker was the first Zelda game I ever played, I never truly got into really engrossing myself in the game. Though, I had already fell in love with the series, the moment she booted up the game the first time. It's just a series that I knew I was destined to enjoy, despite not knowing anything about it.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

I have the faintest impressions left of memories of playing zelda 2 as a child and just thinking it was fun to play a game (I had no taste)

I had an equivalent amount of fun playing wind waker and never leaving outset island

I suppose me, my dad, and my siblings all agreed silently that we were a zelda household without ever considering how good any of the games might have been on their own

My memories are all very jumbled by now because this was obviously a long time ago. For most of my childhood I didn't even think of beating a game as something that I could do. That was what my dad did. I did end up beating pokemon emerald and phantom hourglass in the same time frame as when I got them, so like when I was 7-9? Anything before that I probably wasn't very capable of beating and just had fun running around cutting grass

 

[TheGreatCthulhu]

FS and FSA.

I stayed because I tend to ignore those and forget that they exist.

 

[A Link In Time]

I had a ton of fun with Ocarina of Time as a kid, and I think that's what makes Kokiri Forest still feel so magical all these years later.

Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out that you had to cut the spider web to get down to the basement of Inside the Deku Tree so that's as far as I got.

I took a short hiatus from the franchise but got back into Zelda with Twilight Princess and have loved the franchise ever since.

 

[King Link]

Got into Zelda with Botw and loved it ever since. Botw will forever hold a special place in my heart.

 

[Daku Rinku]

My first experiance was playing Zelda 1 on NES, shooting those swords and learning from my brother how to complete dungeons and find secrets. Yea, my first Zelda experience was in the First Zelda game. I distinctly remember when A Link To A Past came out. So yeah, my fandom goes way back.

 

[Krazy4Krash]

I don't remember if I played Ocarina of Time or Phantom Hourglass first, but I recall a lot more about my initial playthrough of OoT. I never really got stuck because I was playing through it for the first time alongside my brother, as well as a third friend who I was very close to at the time. The two moments in particular that personally gave me trouble were how to get Epona and the Fire Arrows.

We were figuring out the game together in our own separated playthroughs, and all loved the story & style of the game, which really motivated ourselves to keep going. I knew pretty early on that I'd want to keep trying out more games in the series.

 

[Turo602]

Zelda 1 on NES and it was hard. I don't remember ever getting past the 2nd dungeon. I still enjoyed playing it any chance I could. We didn't have many games growing up, so I wasn't exposed to much of the series after that until The Wind Waker/Ocarina of Time Master Quest pre-order bonus.

I do remember seeing a bunch of characters on the N64 box, among them being Link, and I was always curious about what a modern Zelda game was like but for some reason, my brother just had no interest in it at the time.

I didn't really play either game much until I was able to purchase them myself, but I do remember playing Wind Waker but never being able to finish it, because I either kept getting stuck or just couldn't play anymore since it was my brother's Gamecube.

My first proper Zelda game however was The Minish Cap on the GBA and I didn't get to beat it until much later. But by then, I was already a fan of the series through my brother. The first console Zelda game I would own and beat was Twilight Princess, though and immediately after that one, I jumped into Ocarina of Time and beat that, too.

 

[RickKTish]

I think my first Zelda was OoT and I got really frustrated because I kept getting lost in Kokiri village. I was probably 4 or 5 at the time, and my dad refused to help me find my way out TT_TT I kept just going back and getting lost all over again. My second Zelda was Majora's Mask, but my dad and his brothers were holding all the save files hostage so I didn't actually get to play it, just wander around in their games. My third was Wind Waker and I got really upset because I was scared of the bokoblins and my little brother (3 to my 6 years old) wasn't, but I could read and he couldn't, so I got back at him for getting further than me by stopping reading to him after he got to the forbidden fortress. Joke was on me, though; he taught himself to read within about a month of me refusing him, and then I was both too scared of the bokoblins to progress in my save file and not as good at reading as the 3 y o lol.
The only reason I kept playing any of those three at the time was because I loved the LoZ cartoon; my grandma had a VHS tape that had two or three episodes on it, and I would watch it every single time we went to her house. That lasted me long enough to survive until my dad bought Twilight Princess for the Wii, and from there I fell in love and have never looked back since.

 

[Goddess Athenaeum]

The very first video game I ever played was A Link to the Past, and I played it with my grandma. She was trying to stop smoking so she got an SNES to try and play instead of smoking, and she ended up giving it to me

I have wonderful memories of us playing together trying to collect all the items.