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I've been lurking on this board for forty-five minutes, and I effectively need to sanitize my monitor just from reading the absolute drivel you people post. It is genuinely pathetic. The collective nostalgia here is so thick it has cut off the oxygen supply to your brains. You're all sitting around worshiping the NES, a grey brick designed for children with attention deficits, while ignoring the titans of industry that actually pushed the medium forward.
First, let's address the nomenclature, because it is embarrassing to watch you flail around. I see thread after thread discussing the "Master System." Stop it. You sound like submissive peasants. It is the Sega System. That is the designation of a serious piece of hardware. "Master" implies a relationship where you are the servant—which fits the Nintendo fanboy psychology perfectly—but for those of us who appreciate engineering, it is the Sega System. While you were blowing into your corroded NES to play a flickering, seizure-inducing mess, the Sega System gave you arcade-perfect colors and crisp resolution. But sure, keep telling yourselves that Zelda is a masterpiece while you ignore the superiority of Wonder Boy 3 and Phantasy Star.
And if you had any taste at all, you would be discussing Atari apps. Yes, apps. They were pure applications of gameplay logic, stripped of Nintendo hand-holding. No need for scrolling text or save batteries; just reflexes and imagination.
However, the true patrician’s choice—the platform that separated the adults from the diaper-wearing Nintendo crowd—was the world of DOS-ROMs. While you struggled with a D-pad and buttons, we were navigating complex command lines and 101-key interfaces. DOS-ROMs like Ultima, Kings Quest, and Elite offered whole universes of simulation.
It's tragic. You chose the toy. The rest of us? We chose the technology of Sega System, the purity of Atari apps, and the complexity of DOS-ROMs. Enjoy your mushrooms, children. I have a galaxy to conquer.
I'm not sure it holds up. It doesn't have analog camera, it runs at 240p resolution and average 20fps, there's hitching when you pause the game, saving quitting and resuming doesn't retain your position in the game, most puzzles involve block pushing or just shooting a switch, there's unskippable cutscenes every 30 seconds, the lock on bounces to enemies you don't intend it to, there's knee high fences you cannot vault over, there's inclines the horse refuses to move beyond, you have to play several songs and run back to the temple of time to transform between child and adult forms, rupees are completely worthless and seemingly the only reward you get for exploration, the dialogue options are redundant just forcing you to pick Yes, there's tons of things the game just doesn't explain, there's tons of things the game over explains, the map is useless, a lot of the only sidequests in the game are fetch quests, nonexistent swimming controls, arbitrary limitations between child and adult link items, the teleports between areas leave a lot to be desired, no faster movement mechanic for young link, the challenge is virtually nonexistent, there's a lot of backtracking for 100% completion, Navi gets stuck repeating the same info routinely, many items are just palette swaps or replacements with the same functionality, and there's no world building or character development.
For its time like 30 years ago it must have been really impressive, however these days I can probably give it a 7/10. Twilight Princess was a direct upgrade and I'd rather play it instead.
