What do you consider to be "classic" Zelda? Obviously

Believe it or not, there were people in 1998 who hated Ocarina Of Time because it was so different.

I got bored halfway through Ocarina (while messing with the Big Sword quest) and quit

I give 2D and 3D their own classic and modern categories.

LttP feels like the start of modern zelda
It set the standard for zelda puzzle-dungeons
I liked LttP and LA a lot at the time but these days I prefer the first two games

>>3833032
I judge modern by whether today's younger crowd can go back and still connect with it. That's generally not so for LttP. Modern vidya players find it something of a chore and may feel a duty to experience it rather than a passion. I think players who start out on 3D games find it tougher for cruder 2D graphics to evoke a rich mental 3D representation of the game to obsess over during the hours of anticipation to play the game again.
With Ocarina, you have the modern Zelda formula intact, with all the newer gameplay aspects of the walls and ceilings being fully realized and playing important gameplay roles, such as all the climbing, and the extra immersion from being able to look up and see Volvagia up there bashing rocks free, rather than just seeing a round shadow sprite moving along the floor like they would have had to do on SNES. However, brand new players still tend to find the OoT experience threadbare when stacked up to modern adventure games, and become bored with it. So on scope, because the expansiveness and richness of the world has to be filled in a bit with the player's own imagination, I say that is where OoT has retro elements. In general, retro games make mo apology for implying that there is more to the world than is actually programmed into the game for the player to experience directly. LttP did this the most out of any Zelda game, because of all the lore in the booklet and dialogue in-game about the history of the golden realm, and all the people who had sought the Triforce in the past. The art in the booklet served to stimulate the imagination as well.

To be honest, back in the day when i first layed my hands on the n64 i was a bit dissapointed, I saw the evolution of 2d games from nes to snes and thought the next console will bring even more awesome 2d gaes since they are starting to prefect them, and suddenly 95% of all games were washed up polygon games... I didn't like the look of them at all. Of course I got used to it and even enjoyed them, but up to this day I am not on the hype train for the n64. They had something eerie for me, the chunky characters, that empty feel of the environment... I don't know, it always put me a bit off. I knew that this wasn't only a in between stp to the actual 3d gaming experience and it was at the beginning again until it can be perfected.
I was pretty happy when mischief maker came out for n64, my '2d itch' got satisfied. I also liked playing snes rpg games like bof or soe, and n64 didn't again deliver except friggin quest 64, another empty and underdeveloped game. I think this all tainted the experience with that generation games and in a further extend, i couldn't enjoy Oot as much as other people. It's still a great game, I think I can appreciate it more today than back then.

But to finally get to the point (sorry for the rant), I think the real classic zelda games are the ones for the nes, the are just so raw that if you didn't grow up with them you have problems getting into them, whereas alttp at least has more handholding, diversity and a more fleshed out "dungeon-item-chain" situation going for itself.

So, if you define classic as in 'the roots', the nes Zelda, if you are talking about establishing the columns for the rest of the franchise, then alttp and Oot (Oot to a lesser extend since the 3d really makes it feel more modern).

>TL;DR
>N64 is a bit eerie, zelda is cool, mischief maker makes me horny
>shake shake

>>3833149
Felt the same way. I tried to follow new 2D games which had been relegated to handheld, but I didn't get very far for some reason and mostly went back to play older games on emulators instead.

>>3833149
> didn't like the look of them at all. Of course I got used to it and even enjoyed them, but up to this day I am not on the hype train for the n64.
I remember seeing shadows of the empire for the first time and thought it just looked OK after being a big X-Wing fan. My balls weren't blown by 3D graphics until I played Gran Turismo 3

Majora's Mask is objectively the first "modern" Zelda game as it was the first in which Aonuma was given creative control.

OoT was made by the same people who made LttP and it still feels like it despite the shift to 3D.

>>3833013
Definitely. I recall Nintendo Power printing a letter from someone who though the game was total garbage because it wasn't a top-down, 2D experience. He wrote this cringeworthy story about how much Zelda used to mean to him. I recall it being very obvious that this guy was an oldfag.

I think the lesson here is that the only members of a fandom who stubbornly resist change are oldfags who only want nostalgia pandering.

The first two games, and maybe LttP. Link's Awakening is definitely different thematically, but LttP is in this grey area where it was starting to move away from the minimum-context adventuring that defined the first two games, so I could see arguments for it belonging to either.

>>3833008
Most if not all 3d Zelda's are Link to the Past remade with a new coat of paint and some new gimmicks
introducing a formula
3 small dungeons -> master sword -> 7 big dungeons (usually saving a sage) -> 'Final dungeon' -> 'fake boss' -> REAL final dungeon -> Gannon(dorf)

not to say the games are bad, I enjoyed OoT and Twilight Princess. but i'm hoping that BotW is not gonna follow that formula and be more like the first 2

that said, LttP is still my favorite game as of right now

>>3833008
You know, I never noticed that the sword on the logo looks like a rapier. That bothers me.

>>3833008
Zelda 1, 2, Link's Awakening, A Link to the Past, MAYBE OoT, but not Majaro's Mask.

I'm partial to Oracle of Ages/Seasons but I don't consider them classic.

>>3833458
Which is crazy, because now Zelda games are shat on if they aren't pandering to OoT fans enough.

True Classic
>Zelda 1
>Zelda 2
>LttP
>Awakening

Modern Zelda Prototype
>OoT

Classic Revivalist
>Oracle of Ages/Seasons

Majora's Mask is basically everything they wanted to do in the original N64DD version of OoT, so it's basically an expansion pack to OoT and not its own game.

I prefer to divide them in to two different categories. 'Good' and 'shit'.

Good: Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask, Oracle of Ages.

Shit: Everything else.

>>3834135
Aside from being in 3D, I don't find OoT significantly distinguished from LttP to warrant a separate category.

It's really MM that began the modern Zelda trends, thanks to being directed by a particular guy who also directed all of the post-OoT games.

Also MM was never intended to be OoT's 64DD expansion pack. That was Master Quest, the one we actually got was of course gimped compared to what they promised.

>>3834154
Master Quest is simply OoT's version of Second Quest from Zelda 1. Master Quest BEING on the 64DD version to play after you beat the game WAS an idea, but it wasn't what Zelda 64DD was suppose to be.

Some of the ideas of the 64DD was based around time (certain dungeons were suppose to open up only a certain days, saving money in a bank, things you do permanently effect the game world, ect.) and MM has far more in common with the expansion packs of PC games of the day to even consider it a separate game.

Like >>3834124 said; OoT is the yardstick by which all Zelda games after it were measured by.

>>3834169
>MM has far more in common with the expansion packs of PC games of the day

Errr...like what? Aside from recycling the engine and the assets (in order to speed up development time) the games are pretty different.

>>3834174
As in, all it really is is just 5 new dungeons, and a handful of new items.

It was, at one point, just called Zelda Gaiden. It doesn't do enough to stand on its own as a separate Zelda game. Honestly, the problems of OoT's "Just go back to everywhere you went before; there's just now a new dungeon there" would have been greatly resolved with the addition of everything that they had to sweep into MM.

>>3834184
I think you're falling into the same trap of people who say that TP is a OoT remake but WW isn't - simply on the basis of their graphics.

MM is thematically very different to OoT. It has a larger puzzle solving focus and more NPC interaction. Unlike OoT there are 5 masks which transform your character into something different. There's a time limit system with distinguished days.

>It was, at one point, just called Zelda Gaiden
Yes, but Gaiden doesn't have to mean expansion pack. What it meant in the case of MM is that it involved a story that wasn't about the traditional Zelda conflicts of Triforce and Ganon.

>>3833008
Classic Zelda is Zelda 1, 2, LttP and Link's Awakening

Ocarina of Time onwards is 3D Zelda

Any 2D games after that are Neo-Classic Zelda.

>>3834230
this man speaks the truth. LttP is still my fav one.

>>3834230
Best post.

>>3833032

As much as some might feel compelled to call LTTP modernistic for retro street cred, I'd say OoT was really the beginning of modern zelda even if it did take cues from LTTP. Everything all the way up to the 4th gen is clearly retro, even if less cryptic than the 3rd gen. The 5 gen is the obvious fomenting of modern vidya because its the first 3D gen.

>>3833458

>oldfag

The guy was a 4chan vet? Weird that he would mention it in a Nintendo Power letter.

>oldfag = 4chan vet, opposite of newfag = 4chan noob
>you're looking for grog vs sprog

>>3834549
I remember when the infamous Sequalitis episode came out and someone pointed out that Skyward Sword just took everything that people liked about OoT and just turbo-charged it to the point of stupidity.

>>3834618

OoT had stuff that people didn't mind, and then Nintendo got the brilliant idea that that stuff was what people wanted the most and built their whole series around following directions.

Navi and the owl were funny jokes because they were kind of annoying, but not game breaking. Then Nintendo thought we wanted some virtual waifu following us fucking everywhere.

Ocarina Of Time marks a significant shift in the Zelda franchise. It doesn't come from the fact that Ocarina Of Time is in 3D, but from the story. There's nothing wrong with having a story, and Ocarina Of Time isn't the first Zelda game with a story, but it's the first game with an intrusive story. It's the first time gameplay and exploration took a backseat to the story. It's the first Zelda game to rely heavily on scripted events and triggers. For example, X event triggers Y event. This format has been used in every 3D Zelda since.

>>3833458
weird, i thought it was bad because you're constantly being dragged from setpiece to setpiece by that dumb fairy instead of exploring the world and discovering shit on your own, it's actually kind of a relief to know i'm actually just an oldfag who only wanted nostalgia pandering

>>3834776
>it's the first game with an intrusive story
But the story is almost identical to LttP

>t's the first Zelda game to rely heavily on scripted events and triggers. For example, X event triggers Y event
So does LttP, though OoT took it to the next level, sure.

>>3833008
top down view only