We’re continuing our analysis of spatial vectors in opening screens of NES videogames with four more titles dated between 1987 and 1990. The first is the ‘sequel’ to Super Mario Bros.

Dropped into Subcon

Title: Super Mario Bros. 2
Genre: Platformer
Release Date: July ’87 (FDS) / Oct. ’88 (NES)
Carrier: Center, near top of screen
Carrier vector(s): Down (strong)
Beacon(s): Door (deferred)
Threat vector(s): ‘Pit’ (false)

As most Nintendo fans/historians now realize, Super Mario Bros. 2 is the black sheep of the series because it was not the true sequel to the original, but a re-skinned/re-worked version of a Famicom Disk System game called Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic. The Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 was a more challenging version of the original with tweaked graphic tiles, new levels, and a number of interesting new mechanics (e.g., wind, harmful power-ups, gameplay differences between Mario and Luigi, warps backwards, etc.). The Famicom version did not appear stateside until it was revamped for the SNES as a part of Super Mario All-Stars. (And in a peculiar twist, the U.S. version was later ported back to the Famicom as Super Mario USA).

The difference in gameplay between SMB and SMB2 is drastic: the screen scrolls horizontally and vertically; there are four playable characters with varying jump heights and pulling strengths; enemies can be ridden and thrown rather than hopped upon; health can be upgraded; players start in their taller (powered-up) state; and the enemies and setting reflect the Arabian Nights-flavored influence of Yume Kojo. Mario and crew have entered a dreamworld called Subcon, a setting at times more surreal than the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s a weird game, but also a great one.

To introduce the sequel’s total disavowal of SMB’s conventions, players are literally dropped into Subcon from a great height. The carrier (here Mario) emerges from a red door floating in space. Gravity serves as the strong carrier vector—though the player may press left or right as Mario falls, there is no way to escape the descent (and crossing the horizontal border simply wraps to the opposite side). Consider how this introduction reads to the player who has only played Donkey Kong or Super Mario Bros.: in the former, falls beyond a certain height kill Jumpman instantly; in the latter, falling into a void is equally deadly. So Mario plummets into a black void marked only by two egg-shaped clouds, his health lozenges, and that damn red door that is impossible to return to. Thus the threat vector is that looming pit into which you are inescapably cast.

Thankfully, the threat is a red herring meant to introduce the carrier’s ability to scroll the game vertically, and if the player chooses to accept the fall without directing Mario’s descent, she finds that Mario lands safely on a narrow green terrace.

Slim safety

The player harrowingly learns that the carrier can fall from any height without damage. In fact, if they scramble to press Mario left or right while falling and end up missing the first terrace, they’ll still land safely on the third screen, where they find the first impossible beacon (the upper red door) mirrored below, resting safely on the ground. If, on the other hand, the player lands on the high terrace, the next leap of faith is not so daunting, since she knows the fall will not harm her.

This opening setup is a smart reversal of SMB’s: instead of a stretch of runway beckoning the player to sprint right along a horizontal vector, there is a gaping spatial void forcibly pulling Mario to ground along a vertical vector.

Title: Mega Man
Genre: Platformer / Shooter
Release Date: Dec. ’87 (FC/NES)
Carrier: Slightly below center, facing right
Carrier vector(s): Right (weak), left (strong), up (strong)
Beacon(s): None
Threat vector(s): None

Mega Man has no definitive opening screen since the player can choose to tackle the robot masters in any order. However, Cutman is the likely first choice since this is where the cursor naturally falls after pressing Start (and Cutman’s weapon ends up being a good first choice for further progression).

Cutman’s opening screen is interesting because it immediately blocks Mega Man’s progress. Though the carrier faces right and the short ladder is tantalizingly exposed by a 16-pixel passage, Mega Man cannot squeeze through. The stronger vector is left, but here too the carrier faces an invisible barrier (cleverly abutted by a cell-like barred window) signaling that the convention of scrolling right is still in play. But to do so, the carrier must follow the vertical vector along the ladder, whose burnt umber palette reads well against the grey metallic ‘cell.’

Once Mega Man ascends the ladder, the player can now jump the barrier block (plausibly displaced from the three identical blocks below). With the right vector now unimpeded, the rightmost ladder’s vestigial function is exposed, since descending it leads to the same impassible gap.

The elegance of Mega Man’s modular design is that visiting this stage after Gutsman’s completely reconfigures the vector arrangement.

Unimpeded

Equipped with the Gutsman power-up, Mega Man can now lift the brick blocks. Pressing him against the barrier triggers the block’s palette change from lime/umber to cream/black, indicating that the block may be lifted. Clearing the blocks creates an unimpeded vector to the right, and what was once a barrier is now a weapon.

Title: Final Fantasy
Genre: RPG
Release Date: Dec. ’87 (FC) / July ’90 (NES)
Carrier: Left of center, facing right
Carrier vector(s): Up (strong), right (weak), down (strong), left (strong)
Beacon(s): Town (strong), port (weak)
Threat vector(s): None

Final Fantasy borrows much of its overworld structure from Dragon Quest, but opts not to present the player’s ultimate goal from the opening screen. Instead, the design offers the carrier four possible vectors of varying strength. I label the right vector ‘weak’ because of the hard shoreline barrier. To the left, the border is more ambiguous—it is likely the shoreline continues upward, forming a peninsula, but until the player moves, its true shape is concealed. The downward vector is strong due to the beacon below, but players will likely recognize the structure as a port and quickly surmise that they have no vessel for sailing. Nonetheless, this is an aspirational vector that promises future seafaring—a mode of travel absent in Dragon Quest.

The strongest vector is north since the landscape is dominated by Coneria Castle and its surrounding township. Coneria is an unmissable beacon: the shape of its city walls, mirrored in triplicate by the shape of the surrounding woods, peninsula, and port, compels the player to enter.

Title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Genre: Action platformer
Release Date: Dec. ’90 (FC) / June ’89 (NES)
Carrier: Right of center, facing down
Carrier vector(s): Left (strong), up (weak), right (weak), down (strong)
Beacon(s): Sewer (strong), door (weak)
Threat vector(s): None

TMNT’s opening screen is peculiar. While the majority of gameplay operates in the standard side-scrolling action-platformer mode, play begins in this RPG-style overhead view. Unlike most Dragon Quest-inspired RPGs, combat is possible in ‘walkabout’ mode, since you can still swing your weapon, but it is generally unadvisable due to your limited striking range and the roving Foot Clan vehicles that can kill your turtle with a single collision.

The carrier vectors are weak to the right and above for the same reason as Final Fantasy’s: impassable water borders either edge. A weak beacon signals from below, but it’s easy to miss on first play and requires navigating around the building below. Doing so immediately reveals enemies, notably the aforementioned turtle-crushing vehicle.

The strongest vector is almost impossible to miss; taking a single step left drops the carrier into the exposed manhole. In other words, one must deliberately avoid this entrance if they want to trek around the building. A less obvious ‘paratextual vector’ is also at play here—if the player is familiar with the TMNT comics, toys, or cartoon (and why wouldn’t they be if they bought the game?), they will immediately understand that the turtle’s rightful place is the sewer.

This article concludes the spatial vectors series, and though we’ve only covered a handful of NES games, I hope they illustrate the wide variety of inventive design choices developers made to guide new players through their two-dimensional spaces, especially in the absence of in-game tutorials, the Internet, or even developed genre vocabularies. NES developers had to teach using space and structure rather than text and menus, and all of these games offer lessons that are just as relevant to game design now as they were twenty-five years ago.

Now that we’ve established a formal vocabulary, let’s take a look at a series of Famicom/NES games that present interesting variations of the patterns seen in Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. I’ve arranged these chronologically by their Japanese release date to show how quickly conventions changed between 1985 and 1990. Each game has an annotated image, a summary of those annotations, and any additional notes.

Dragon Quest / Dragon Warrior

Title: Dragon Quest / Dragon Warrior
Genre: RPG
Release Date: Dec. ’85 (FC) / Aug. ’89 (NES)
Carrier: Center screen, facing up
Carrier vector(s): Deferred
Beacon(s): King (strong), staircase (deferred), chests (weak)
Threat vector(s): None

Dragon Quest is one of the first Japanese RPGs. It molded the genre’s conventions and established many of the ‘rules’ for RPG game design. DQ’s opening screen is peculiar compared to our prior platforming examples precisely because the carrier is not permitted to move until the king delivers his opening monologue. There is no button prompt—the king simply initiates his speech after the player presses any button. Once he concludes, the player is free to explore the room.

The obvious beacon is the stairwell in the lower right, but this is blocked by the door. This actually serves as a brilliant little tutorial for the game’s menu system, since the player must scavenge the chests for a key, some gold (for supplies), and a torch (for dungeoneering). Optionally, if the player talks to the guards, the game’s subquest (rescue the princess) is revealed.

The opening throne room also serves as a microcosm of the first screen the player sees after exiting the castle:

This is the player’s introduction to ‘walkabout mode,’ wherein they are free to explore the larger world. Though the carrier remains the same size, the world ‘shrinks’ into an abstracted overworld map view. What’s remarkable is that the game’s designers reveal the game’s final area—the castle to the lower right—at the beginning of the game. It is, of course, completely inaccessible without circling the entire map, but the predominantly white sprite pops against the surrounding swamplands and that single tile of desert similarly draws the player’s eye.

The more immediate beacon is the town directly northeast, while a weaker beacon lies in the mountains further on. But from his position at center screen, the carrier is free to travel in any cardinal direction. It’s smart aspirational design: the end is spatially near, but temporally distant.

Take any road you like

Title: The Legend of Zelda
Genre: Adventure
Release Date: Feb. ’86 (FDS) / July ’87 (NES)
Carrier: Near center, facing up
Carrier vector(s): Up, left, right
Beacon(s): Cave entrance
Threat vector(s): None

I’ve talked at length about Zelda’s opening screen, but a few other notes are worth mentioning.

First, the structure of the green cliffs and the carrier’s starting position subtly funnel the player north. Note how the northern passage is two Links wide, while the narrower paths on either side are merely one. Funneling the carrier vector upward will also pass by the strong beacon on the upper left. The empty void puncturing the cliff face screams for attention and rightly so—venturing forward without the sword is not recommended for beginners. It is, after all, dangerous to go alone.

Second, the vector structure is mirrored and expanded in the minimap seen at the upper left side of the status bar. The small green dot is a subtle link to the carrier’s position that the player will hopefully recognize along with their current screen’s position within the larger world.

Finally, the empty boxes labeled ‘B’ and ‘A’ (to match the controller’s configuration) serve as weak signals that there are items to be found. Following the first beacon reveals how the system works—Link’s sword occupies one slot, so there must be other similar items to find. If the designers simply provided the sword from the outset, this lesson would be lost.

Title: Metroid
Genre: Adventure
Release Date: Aug. ’86 (FDS) / Aug. ’87 (NES)
Carrier: Lower center, facing player
Carrier vector(s): Left (strong), right (weak)
Beacon(s): None
Threat vector(s): Down (strong), left (weak)

Less than a year after Super Mario Bros., Metroid was already breaking side-scrolling conventions. Jeremy Parish has written about Metroid’s opening screen in his Anatomy of Metroid series, and he notes that the player’s first impulse is to move right. Indeed, the carrier’s opening position is ambivalent—Samus directly faces the player as if to say, ‘You decide.’

Meanwhile, I’d argue that a series of subtle clues are actually guiding the player left, despite what Mario might have taught her. While Samus does straddle the exact horizontal center, note how she is positioned relative to the platform and the floating architecture above. She stands slightly left of center, placing her in the direct path of the game’s first threat vector, carried by the spiny foe that crawls clockwise around the blue hanging column.

The trick here is that remaining motionless allows the enemy to pass by Samus harmlessly, since their hitboxes do not overlap. But for new players, the impetus is to move out of the way. However, pushing right risks a collision with the rightmost enemy. In fact, the shapes of the floating columns time the movements of the enemies so that just as the leftmost creature is descending to Samus’ position, the rightmost enemy is rounding its column’s lower right edge. The path right is more treacherous, but left provides an easy escape. And as soon as the player heads in that direction, a new structure scrolls into view, signaling that Samus’ path can branch either way.

The left vector is clear

With the lack of any beacons, the designers chose to let the simple interplay of enemy paths and architectural structure guide the player against convention. It’s masterful design work.

Title: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Genre: Adventure
Release Date: Jan. ’87 (FDS) / Dec. ’88 (NES)
Carrier: Center, facing left
Carrier vector(s): left (strong), right (weak)
Beacon(s): Princess Zelda (weak)
Threat vector(s): None

Zelda II’s opening screen absorbs the lessons of its predecessor while picking up cues from Dragon Quest and Metroid. Zelda, held in magical slumber atop a three-tiered pedestal, serves as the deferred beacon. Link begins in front of his ultimate goal (which we see repeated in Shadow of the Colossus), but hours of adventuring await him before he can return. Link also faces left, compelling the player to, once again, push against convention, though this time without any architectural or combatant cues. Zelda’s resting place is perfectly symmetrical, so only Link’s body compels the player toward a specific direction.

Finally, there is a weak signal in the upper right corner, where ‘NEXT’ designates the game’s leveling mechanic. This text, combined with a numeric counter and the 1′s labeling the sword icon and LIFE/MAGIC bars, tells the player that progression is possible.

In Part IV, I’ll conclude the series with a look at four more NES titles.

Joystick 'vector' illustration

The image above is from Joystick, an innovative but short-lived magazine that, as far as I can tell, ran ten issues between September 1982 and December 1983. Their subtitle was, ‘How to Win at Home, Computer, & Arcade Games,’ so they featured a lot of strategy guides for the hits of the era, such as Berzerk, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Pitfall, Yar’s Revenge, and, of course, Donkey Kong. Archives of Joystick are available online, and I’d recommend hunting them down—the graphic design alone is worth your time. Joystick’s designers absolutely fetishized the CRT monitor; meaty scanlines, exaggerated pixels, and extreme phosphor blooms abound.

An excerpt from a Joystick feature on Demon Attack

The Donkey Kong illustration is representative of Joystick’s strategy write-ups. In addition to text descriptions and screenshots, they’d feature ‘patterns’ that mapped the best routes through a game’s levels. In the era when most games were single-screen, this made a lot of sense—players needed to know how to traverse the space more than they needed maps. In other words, Pac-Man’s screen arrangement was static, but Pac-Man certainly wasn’t. The strategy was in the patterns. Compare this to the coverage perfected by Nintendo Power in the age of console platformers, where stitched screens became the predominant mode of spatial mapping. There the characters were typically erased from the screen; panoptic views of space (and its hidden secrets) were the norm.

Here Joystick has plotted Jumpman’s optimum path in the opening ‘girders’ level, annotating key stops with capital letters: take the ladder at ‘A’, grab the hammer at ‘C’, and so on. Besides being a beautiful illustration in its own right, Joystick’s patterns got me thinking a lot about how players are compelled to move through space and how the game teaches them to do so. In other words, how do these patterns map to other videogames?

Since we are already looking at Donkey Kong, let’s break down its opening gameplay screen, this time using the NES version:

NES Donkey Kong's vector layout

As in Super Mario Bros., Jumpman/Mario is the primary carrier vector, though note that he is viewed in proper profile, rather than the strange neck-twisted pose he strikes in the later game. And unlike Mario, Jumpman’s immediate vector is deferred—the ultimate goal is the top of the girder structure (blue arrow), but he must make a series of lateral moves (blue dotted line) to reach that goal. For new players, two important beacons convey this information: Pauline, who perches atop the penultimate girder, and the thirteen ladders presumably keeping the girders suspended above the void. Note how these are among the lightest elements on the screen. Pauline is the only sprite garbed in bright pink and the ladders are a peculiar aquamarine. Beacons are meant to signal the players movement, and palette choice is one of the primary means to do so. Also note that the suspended hammers are weak beacons painted with a harder-to-discern brown/light brown palette. The hammers give Jumpman a limited invincibility, but they also momentarily negate the goal vector by stealing his jump ability. And considering jump is part of his name, that’s a pretty significant tradeoff.

In the event that these beacons fail, several threat vectors get Jumpman moving. The strongest of these is the barrel Donkey Kong drops immediately after the opening fanfare plays. The lesson is decisive: move right or die. The second threat vector teaches the player vertical movement—if Jumpman lingers too long on the first girder, a firefox emerges from the oil barrel and pushes him (hopefully) up the first ladder. And note the cunning design trick to Jumpman’s immediate right: the first ladder is broken, so the player must traverse the entire bottom girder before they can continue upward. It’s a devious but important lesson.

At this point, the remaining threat vectors have not deployed. I’ve noted this by boxing the barrel stack in a dotted yellow line. The brilliant part of Donkey Kong’s design (and single-screen arcade games in general) is the ability to mobilize threat vectors dynamically. Barrels spawn at regular intervals during Jumpman’s ascent, and semi-random algorithms dictate whether they’ll slide down a ladder or fall off a girder’s edge. The cascade of barrels combined with the player’s chosen path creates an oscillating rhythm of give-and-take where Jumpman must move laterally, backtrack, climb ladders, and jump to reach his goal.

In the upper right blue box, there is a strong temporal vector in the guise of a BONUS counter, which ticks down the bonus score to 0 (causing both the bonus and Jumpman to expire). As in Super Mario Bros., quicker times result in higher bonus scores, but here the design foregrounds the incentive rather than the threat.

Finally, there is a weak incentive vector in the form of a score counter. Its presence illustrates the way an incentive vector can shift from weak to strong depending on the player’s relationship with the game. Beginner players likely don’t care about their score—their goal is survival first, the completion of the three-screen ‘narrative’ second, and score last. Master players reverse the incentive structure since they’ve absorbed the game’s objectives and mechanics. Survival becomes a function of score accumulation.

Clearly, even in ‘simple’ one-screen games like Donkey Kong, there are multiple competing vectors at work. In Part III, I’ll take a look at several more (scrolling) NES games and how they built on the design lessons of their forbears.

The Famicom arose amidst the (waning) arcade era, so most of its early design cues stemmed from arcade games—quite literally, since most early Famicom games were direct ports of Nintendo’s arcade stable: Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Popeye, Donkey Kong Jr., etc. Arcade games sometimes had short instructional texts printed on the cabinet, but most players didn’t want to read at the arcade. The less friction between quarter drops the better, so visual instruction was key. Attract screens served both as advertisement and tutorial, giving players a rudimentary glimpse at the game’s basic mechanics. But even the slowest player could likely pick up on the basics of Donkey Kong, since it only had a joystick and a single button labeled ‘jump.’

What’s remarkable about so many NES games is how much instruction they manage to convey in their opening screens. This was certainly another inheritance of arcade games, where single-screen gameplay was king, but Nintendo’s developers were pioneering new genres—platformers, adventures, RPGs—that demanded longterm, multi-session play that arcade fare could not (economically) support. The Legend of Zelda had no attract screen, no demonstration of play. Hyrule was meant to be explored for many hours, and it had disk/battery saves to encourage such exploration. But how did it teach the player to do so without an in-game dialogue box that proclaimed, ‘Press UP on the D-PAD to walk forward’?

I talked about Zelda’s opening in my prior Cold Run series. In the series’ inaugural post, I compared the first gameplay screens of Zelda and Super Mario Bros.:

Mario is positioned just beyond the left screen edge, facing right. A long stretch of unimpeded runway extends to the right edge of the screen, set against a vibrant blue sky. Naturally, the player’s compulsion is to go right—a compulsion that will carry the player through the entire game.

What does Link’s position communicate? Choice. There are no signposts directing the player toward the ‘correct’ path. I’m sure many players who skipped or overlooked the cave took a while to figure out they were supposed to have a sword. (Some players have made swordless play a viable option.) That’s a remarkable bit of trust in the game’s design, a confidence that even Nintendo fails to reproduce in their modern versions of NES games.

I’m not the first to make these observations, nor likely the hundredth. Jeremy Parish, for one, has an excellent ongoing series called Anatomy of a Game, wherein he discusses level design as he replays vintage (so far, NES-era) games. Regarding Zelda opening, he writes:

From the very beginning, you have the freedom to travel any direction (except south) and go anywhere. You’re free to discover, to die, to progress, to fail, to stumble about in confusion. You can complete the dungeons out of order, skip collecting health upgrades, grind for cash: Whatever you like.

SMB’s World 1-1 is even more exhaustively researched. One of my recent favorites is Anna Anthropy’s ‘level design lesson: to the right, hold on tight’, from which I likely unconsciously cribbed my own description. She writes:

let’s take the very first screen: the left half of the image, just mario under an open sky, a flat landscape beneath his feet. this is the first thing a player sees on starting the game. so what does it teach her? the first and highest concept in the game: that mario’s goal is to the right!

how does it teach this? mario is at the left side of the screen, facing right. the ground is laid out like a little path, an unobstructed horizontal surface crossing the screen from left to right. the big open space – there’s nothing in the sky, yet, to take the focus from the ground – invites mario to explore it.

This is a lovely description that I’d like to reinforce and expand. First, let’s look at the screen in question (captured from OS X NES emulator Macifom 0.16).

Mario's opening runway

First, note Mario’s peculiar posture; he faces both toward the player with his body and toward his destination with his head. Try mimicking this pose with your own body. Can you remember the last time you stood this way? Of course, this is partly explained by the limitations of tile-based graphics. Mario is built from four 8×8 sprite tiles, so there is only so much expressive quality one can wring from such constraints. But I also think this pose is intentional, both to signal the player that this is their onscreen avatar and to signal their intended movement vector.

The screen’s second notable feature is its palette. The Mushroom Kingdom has a vibrant, cartoon quality that frames Mario’s adventures in a meaningful way. What the blue sky, the distant hillside, the spare billowy cloud, the identically billowy bushes (actually just palette swaps of the clouds) all impart is a sense of expansiveness. This is a world worth running through. And while it may seem silly to think of the NES’s limited graphical quality in this way, remember that most games prior to SMB were set against black backgrounds, ideal for sci-fi shooters or the abstract spaces of games like Pong or Breakout, but also oppressive in their emptiness. The NES palette was well-stocked in blues, so skies like these were possible. And it’s notable that SMB reserved its blacks for diegetically appropriate times and spaces: at night and underground.

Finally, we have an unseen force at play behind Mario. As the player advances forward, she will soon find that she can no longer return to the left once it has scrolled out of view. The technical reason for why this happens is an article in itself, but the short explanation is that SMB’s engine was designed according to a very constrained ROM profile. And since Mario is capable of destroying bricks along his path, allocating RAM to those bricks that had and had not been shattered would have taken too much memory. That’s not the whole story, but it suffices to explain Mario as a largely unidirectional vector (simple checkpoints notwithstanding). You might backtrack briefly, but you’re compelled to continue right.

I like the term vector as a formal descriptor in both its mathematical sense as a directional spatial quantity and in its biological/etymological sense as a ‘carrier,’ i.e., Mario here being the vector of player input, the ‘host’ to our demands, as it were. Formalizing design patterns can help us abstract certain decisions out of particular games and look at general design trends across platforms, genres, developers, etc. To do so, I want to propose a few terms to help encapsulate these patterns so we can compare a number of NES opening screens and how each instructs the player of their goals, mechanics, etc.

Let’s abstract SMB’s opening screen into a more schematic form, as I’ve illustrated below:

There are four elements working to compel the player forward: Mario (the white box) is the primary carrier vector, the clock (yellow box) is a strong temporal vector, the screen’s left edge (red line) is a weak compulsion vector, and the coin/point counters (upper left box) are weak incentive vectors. The carrier is of course the primary actor since, without the player’s input, Mario goes nowhere. But note how the three other vectors are compulsory to relative degrees (what I call weak or strong), encouraging movement through enticement (accumulate points/lives), technical constraints, or a rigid rule structure (time limit).

Clearly time is the strongest governing vector, since no manner of gameplay finesse or mechanical mastery can circumvent it. If time runs out, Mario dies and movement ceases, full stop. But the temporal vector is also one of the game’s subtlest instructional cues. In Anthropy’s article, commenter Bryce notes that new players often have no idea that the B button makes Mario sprint. And indeed, a later commenter posts a video to prove that one can theoretically play through SMB without it. Consider for a moment how difficult it is to convey the B button’s function through gameplay. Miyamoto’s team conceivably could have constructed a gap too wide to jump without it (which they do in World 8 (not to mention the impossibility of snagging the upper flagpole height minus sprinting)), but doing so early on might have frustrated players grappling with a new genre. There are two other ‘forces’ at work that likely solved the problem: first, that the social conditions surrounding SMB’s release—namely that it was monumentally popular—ensured that word-of-mouth would convey the game’s sprint function (a fact noted in Jeremy Penner’s ‘Breaking the Law of Miyamoto’); and second, that the NES controller’s simple design would compel players to experiment with various button combinations. In other words, one can quickly cycle through all possible inputs in a few seconds. Whether by luck or by schoolyard, the B button’s function would disseminate.

But I think the temporal vector is an effective nudge for player experimentation. It’s certainly possible to walk through 1-1 at normal speed with plenty of time to spare, even with a few detours for coin collection. But sprinting can effectively subvert the clock, transforming it from a temporal threat into part of the game’s incentive structure, i.e., if Mario runs faster, he gets more points at the end of the level.

I call the left boundary and incentive vectors ‘weak’ because they do not actively compel Mario’s movement. Instead, they are reinforcements for carrier agency. Later Mario games would implement auto-scrolling levels, changing the leftmost barrier into a strong threat vector, but for now it is a benign constraint. Likewise for coins and points, which have no inherent value in the game’s narrative structure. One can certainly rescue the princess without breaking the high score or amassing extra lives. I am also hesitant to label incentives as vectors, since their directional structure is ambiguous. Mario of course cannot collect coins without moving forward, but it is also arguable that incentives are equally as ‘vertical’ as they are ‘horizontal.’ In other words, incentives compel the player to jump as much as they compel her to move right.

In the spirit of (relative) brevity, I’ll conclude Part I here in hopes that this lays the foundation for some further thinking about vector types and forces in game design. Next time, I’ll talk about other inspirations for this formal vocabulary and walk through a number of other influential NES opening screens.

If you have questions or comments, please say hi on Twitter: @circuitlions.

Pen-and-paper roleplaying games are a fascinating genre, hovering somewhere between storytelling, board games, gambling, genre fiction, and statistics. And thanks to their topsy-turvy status in mainstream culture, they are a genre that must continually revise and redefine themselves. A game played largely through conversation, with few visual aids beyond a character sheet and (maybe) a map and figurines, pales in comparison to the virtual vistas, decorative customization, and orgiastic statistical management of World of Warcraft, despite the latter’s indebtedness to its RPG forbears.

Despite this need, the structure of RPG rulebooks are remarkably codified. Most have an introduction followed by rules for character creation, class types, skills, equipment, combat, magic, setting notes, and a range of appendixes. Decades have proven that this formula works for fantasy-driven RPGs like D&D, whether written and printed by large corporations or distributed online by a single writer. The introduction is particularly interesting because it nearly always includes an Introduction to Roleplaying—a quick summation of what the game is about and how it’s played—targeting the novice reader who might have never tried an RPG before. Many of these introductions ask, ‘What is a role-playing game?’

I thought it’d be interesting to collect some answers from the books in my collection, as well as a few I scraped together online. This is an unscientific survey, limited to a few major players, but even a small sample provides a look at how the genre has changed over time. I’ve added commentary to a few and let others speak for themselves. I’ve also included the section heading when provided; some newer books did not have clearcut introduction sections, so I grabbed the most appropriate quote.

From Dungeons & Dragons: Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures [Volume 1: Men and Magic] (1974):

ONCE UPON A TIME, long, long ago there was a little group known as the Castle and Crusade Society. Their fantasy rules were published, and to this writer’s knowledge, brought about much of the current interest in fantasy wargaming. For a time the group grew and prospered, and Dave Arneson decided to begin a medieval fantasy campaign game for his active Twin Cities club…From the CHAINMAIL fantasy rules he drew ideas for a far more complex and exciting game, and thus began a campaign which still thrives as of this writing! In due course the news reached my ears, and the result is what you have in your hands at this moment. While the C & C Society is no longer, its spirit lives on, and we believe that all wargamers who are interested in the medieval period, not just fantasy buffs, will enjoy playing DUNGEONS and DRAGONS. Its possibilities go far beyond any previous offerings anywhere!

While it is possible to play a single game, unrelated to any other game events past or future, it is the campaign for which these rules are designed. It is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign, and better still, it will cost almost nothing. In fact you will not even need miniature figures, although their occasional employment is recommended for real spectacle when battles are fought.

These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don’t care for Burroughs’ Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard’s Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a “world” where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!

The original ‘white box’ Dungeons & Dragons rules, co-authored by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, has no introduction to roleplaying, but I’ve included excerpts from Gygax’s introduction to show how the game was really an expansion to a prior set of wargaming rules. D&D’s initial readers were hailing from an established tradition of tabletop gaming, so Gygax did not play up the roleplaying aspect in light of the game’s tactical heritage. Still, he emphasizes that wargamers without lacking imagination need not apply.

From Dungeons & Dragons ['Blue Box' Basic Set] (1977):

Preface

This book is based upon the original work published in 1974 and three supplementary booklets published in the two year period after the initial release of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. It is aimed solely at introducing the reader to the concepts of fantasy role playing and the basic play of this game. To this end it limits itself to basics. The rules contained herein allow only for the first three levels of player progression, and instructions for the game referee, the “Dungeon Master,” are kept to the minimum necessary to allow him to conduct basic games. This is absolutely necessary because the game is completely open-ended, is subject to modification, expansion, and interpretation according to the desires of the group participating, and is in general not bounded by the conventional limitations of other types of games. This work is far more detailed and more easily understood than were the original booklets nonetheless, for with it, and the other basic components of the game, any intelligent and imaginative person can speedily understand and play DUNGEONS & DRAGONS as it was meant to be played.

The ‘Blue Box’ set was D&D’s graduation from hobbyist expansion to mainstream product and the preface indicates as much. The emphasis on open-ended, house rule-style play is noteworthy since later games would emphasize the players’ ability to do as they wished within the rules, rather than with the rules. D&D’s subsequent deluge of adventure modules, supplementary rulebooks, figurines, and other merchandise indicate that it made more market sense to feed players additional rules rather than letting them invent their own.

From Dungeons & Dragons Players Manual (1983):

What is “role playing”?

This is a role-playing game. That means that you will be like an actor, imagining that you are someone else, and pretending to be that character. You won’t need a stage, though, and you won’t need costumes or scripts. You only need to imagine.

This game doesn’t have a board, because you won’t need one. Besides, no board could have all the dungeons, dragons, monsters, and characters you will need!

Mentzer’s revision of the D&D rules, largely regarded as one of the best versions, keeps ‘role playing’ in quotes (with no hyphen) since it was still a niche hobby wedded to the wargaming community. The stage metaphor reappears frequently in these introductions, along with the appeal to players using their imaginations. The differentiation from board games, however, is one that disappears in subsequent years, presumably once D&D catches mainstream attention. At this point, Mentzer still had to tell players what the hell this weird boxed game with no board or playing pieces was.

From Vampire: The Masquerade (1991):

Storytelling

In a storytelling game, players create characters using the rules in this book, then take those characters through dramas and adventured, called (appropriately enough) stories. Stories are told through a combination of the wishes of the players and the directives of the Storyteller.

In a lot of ways, storytelling resembles games such as How to Host a Murder. Each player takes the role of a character—in this case, a vampire—and engages in a form of improvisational theatre, saying what the vampire would say and describing what the vampire would do. Most of this process is freeform—players can have their characters say or do whatever they like, so long as the dialogue or actions are consistent with the character’s personality and abilities. However, certain actions are best adjudicated through the use of dice and the rules presented in this book.

Whenever rules and story conflict, the story wins. Use the rules only as much—or preferably as little—as you need to tell thrilling stories of terror, action and romance.

Though D&D competitors existed since its inception, publisher White Wolf was one of the first significant challengers to TSR’s market hegemony. Their gothic settings were not only intended for ‘mature minds,’ but their innovative Storyteller System offered a departure from the D&D mold. Vampire’s description makes no bones about its theatrical nature, nor its fidelity to story above game mechanics. White Wolf elevated the role in roleplaying to its narrative extreme—players were expected to inhabit their characters as much as possible, ushering in a new era of live-action roleplaying.

From Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia (1991):

What Is Role-Playing?

Role-playing games are much like radio adventures, except for one important detail: they’re interactive. One player provides the narrative and some of the dialogue, but the other players, instead of just sitting and envisioning what’s going on, actually participate. Each player controls the actions of a character in the story, decides on his actions, supplies his character’s dialogue, and makes decisions based on the character’s personality and his current game options.

The appeal to both an anachronistic genre (‘radio adventures’) and the buzzword of the ascendent videogame generation (‘interactivity’) is strange. Perhaps an appeal to both older and younger players alike?

From Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game (1994):

What Is A Storytelling Game?

Storytelling games are like imaginary movies that you create with your friends. These games allow you and your friends to become larger-than-life heroes and to have adventures impossible in the real world. Games like Street Fighter are shared stories; each player creates part of a single, ongoing tale.

From The Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game (2001):

This Is A Roleplaying Game

A roleplaying game is a game of your imagination, in which you use the rules and your own creativity to tell stories and have adventures. You take on the role of a character you create—not a character from one of the novels, but one of your own devising. The game resembles a movie, except that the action and adventure takes place in your imagination, not on a screen. There isn’t even a script, other than the notes or rough outline used by one of the people involved, the Gamemaster. The Gamemaster serves as the director and special effects designer. He decides what sort of story to tell…By working together, the players and the Gamemaster create a story, and everybody has a great time.

Continuing the trend of comparing roleplaying to other familiar media, Street Fighter and Wheel of Time opt for cinema over radio plays.

From Ars Magica [5th edition] (2004):

Basic Ideas

In many ways, Ars Magica is very similar to most other pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Players have characters, who are defined by a set of numbers, and control their characters’ actions by telling the other players what they do. One player, called the “storyguide” in Ars Magica, handles most of the world, deciding what antagonists and extras do. Conflicts, or tasks that might be beyond a character’s capabilities, are resolved according to the rules described in this book, and a die roll.

Notice that twenty-first century rulebooks begin to reference the history of roleplaying as a guide.

From Call of Cthulhu [6th edition] (2005):

The Roots of Play

The game is an evolving interaction between players (in the guise of characters unraveling a mystery) and the keeper, who presents the world in which the mystery occurs. Play is mostly talking: some situation or encounter is outlined, and then the players tell the keeper what they, in the guise of their investigators, intend to do. Using the rules to keep matters consistent and fair, the keeper then tells them if they can do what they proposed, and the steps they must follow. If the proposal is impossible, the keeper narrates what happens instead. Roll dice to resolve encounters. Dice keep everybody honest, add drama, and promote surprises, dismal defeats, and hair’s-breadth escapes.

The game rules make the game world understandable, define what can and cannot be done, and offer an objective determination of success and failure.

Cthulhu, like Vampire, focuses on storytelling, but emphasizes how mechanics reinforce narrative.

From Dogs in the Vineyard (2005):

If You’ve Never Roleplayed Before

You and your friends sit around a table or the living room, talking. You’re collaborating on a story about these characters…their adventures and the challenges they face. Each of your friends acts for one of the characters, making decisions and taking action and speaking pretty much for that character alone. Anybody can suggest anything to anybody, but when it comes to that character, the buck stops with that player.

An interesting twist on ‘authorial control’ from an independent game designer. In most explanations, the DM/GM/Storyteller/whatever is the ultimate arbiter. Here, the player reigns.

From Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook [4th edition] (2008):

A Roleplaying Game

The Dungeons & Dragons game is a roleplaying game. In fact, D&D invented the roleplaying game and started an industry.

A roleplaying game is a storytelling game that has elements of the games of make-believe that many of us played as children. However, a roleplaying game such as D&D provides form and structure, with robust gameplay and endless possibilities.

D&D is a fantasy-adventure game. You create a character, team up with other characters (your friends), explore a world, and battle monsters. While the D&D game uses dice and miniatures, the action takes place in your imagination. There, you have the freedom to create anything you can imagine, with an unlimited special effects budget and the technology to make anything happen.

As market leader and genre originator, D&D has the blessing/burden of history behind it. 4th edition was a controversial release. Its detractors claimed Wizards of the Coast were catering to videogame players—complex, rule-heavy combat, inspired by console/computer RPGs, took center stage in favor of storytelling and social interaction. Those who liked 4th edition praised its depth and balance. Whichever side you agree with depends on your gaming tastes. I thought the system was fine, but combat trudged on forever.

What’s interesting in 4th edition’s introduction is its immediate recognition of its own history. The second sentence establishes D&D’s legacy as the industry originator, and that fact is repeated further along. Also note the number of times ‘D&D’ is repeated, giving the text a hint of marketing-speak. They also couch the use of miniatures—a necessity with this edition—with reassurance that your imagination still plays a part. And finally, we see an interesting repetition of the ‘special effects’ metaphor from the Wheel of Time RPG.

From Mouse Guard (2008):

Roleplaying

This is a roleplaying game. Roleplaying games are peculiar and unique. They require a lot of imagination and investment from the players. This creative input is also what makes roleplaying games great. We get to wrap our imaginations around a variety of interesting situations and explore them.

Each player takes on a role in this game—the players have their characters, the GM has his antagonists and supporting characters. In play, you decide what your character is doing and who he is talking to. It’s sort of like acting out a part in a play or movie, except there’s no script. Between takes, we roll dice and make a few notes rather than sitting in our trailers or waiting off stage.

Another throwback to the Basic Set rules, referencing a play with no script. But the subtle jab at the end differentiates roleplaying from mere acting. You’re not just waiting to read a line; you’re doing something.

From The Burning Wheel (2009):

It Revolves on This

Unlike many other rpgs, there is no fixed or predetermined “setting” to play in. Burning Wheel is an heir to a long legacy of fantasy roleplaying games, most of which contain far better worlds and settings than could be provided here. Also, it is my strong belief that players of these games are adept at manufacturing their own imagined spaces for game play; my own world would just pale in comparison to what resides in your imagination.

In the game, players take on the roles of characters inspired by history and works of fantasy fiction. These characters are represented by a series of numbers, designating their abilities, and a list of player-determined priorities. The synergy of inspiration, imagination, numbers and priorities is the most fundamental element of Burning Wheel. Manipulating these numbers and priorities within situations presented by the game master (GM) is what the game is all about.

Burning Wheel’s ‘setting-less’ rule system is a departure from D&D of yore and makes good on the promise to let the players’ imaginations guide the story. (And incidentally, Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard share the same system/author. Luke Crane originally released Burning Wheel in 2002.)

From Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook [4th printing] (2010):

The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a tabletop fantasy game in which the players take on the roles of heroes who form a group (or party) to set out on dangerous adventures. Helping them tell this story is the Game Master (or GM), who decides what threats the player characters (or PCs) face and what sorts of rewards they earn for succeeding at their quest. Think of it as a cooperative storytelling game, where the players play the protagonists and the Game Master acts as the narrator, controlling the rest of the world.

Part of the fallout from D&D 4th edition was the independent continuation of the revised 3rd edition rules (i.e., D&D 3.5) by companies like Paizo. Players frustrated to sacrifice their hundreds of dollars of expensive rulebooks and adventures for a new system opted instead to support a new competitor. In subsequent years, Pathfinder has challenged D&D’s market lead, apparently outselling the reigning champ.

Paizo’s mass market position explains their bog-standard introductory text. When new players are likely to thumb through your book at Barnes & Noble, it pays to explain your game as clearly and succinctly as possible. Paizo does a good job at this, with no burden of historical legacy.

From Sword Noir (2010):

You Know What I Mean

There are a few terms used through the text that are general and are not specifically discussed within the rules, but really need to be understood before embarking on learning the system itself. Some of these terms may be understood by those who already play role-playing games (RPG), which—I’m going to go out on a limb here—likely includes most or all of the readers.

Another independent RPG, Sword Noir knows its audience. If you’re reading the rules, you probably already know what a roleplaying game is.

From Dungeon Crawl Classics (2012):

Abandon all presumptions, ye who enter here. Turn the pages of this tome only should you meet these qualifications:

That you are a fantasy enthusiast of imaginative mind, familiar with the customs of role playing, understanding the history and significance of the Elder Gods Gygax and Arneson and their cohorts Bledsaw, Holmes, Kask, Kuntz, Mentzer, and Moldvay, and knowledgeable of the role of “judge” and the practice of “adventure.”

DCC is one of many independent RPGs leading a renaissance in ‘old school’ roleplaying. These clones of prior systems (primarily D&D) are yet another reaction to the cruft and complexity of modern D&D. And like Sword Noir, DCC knows its audience likely respects the heritage of roleplaying games. So ironically, returning to the roots of D&D presumes one already has an answer to ‘What is a role-playing game?’

• Introduction, wherein I describe the cold run project.
• Session 1, wherein I die in the first dungeon and get lost in the forest.
• Session 2, wherein I bomb for secrets and luck into the entrance to dungeon three.
• Poetics of Mapping, wherein I discuss de Certeau and the poetics of handmade maps.
• Session 3, wherein I drop a lucky bomb and discuss Zelda’s ‘fractal’ dungeon design.
• Session 4, wherein I spring traps in darkness and pursue the Hydra.
• Session 5, wherein I ponder the 8-bit sublime and disturb the dead.
• Session 6, wherein I toot my own whistle.
• Session 7, wherein I continue to hate the Wizzrobes of Level-6.
• Session 8, wherein I master using it.
• Session 9, wherein I succumb to temptation and consult the NES Atlas.
• Final Session, wherein I defeat Ganon and restore peace to Hyrule.

I also drew maps of Hyrule and Level-9, which people seem to like. Those links lead to hi-res JPGs that you can use to decorate your favorite computing device and/or locker.

Comments or questions? Find me on Twitter.

There are fifty-four mapped rooms, by my count, plus a few more hidden rooms and subterranean passageways. That’s nearly half the size of the entire overworld. Miyamoto and team were not playing around. Consequently, Level-9 is the first that I mapped as I played. I can’t imagine navigating purposefully without doing so. The dungeon relies heavily on passageways that tunnel across the length of the map, disorienting you in the process. There are also at least three pernicious looping structures that lead Link through a series of difficult rooms only to end up back where he started, likely with fewer hearts and bombs.

My Level-9 map (click for huge version)

One such loop relies on a cunning trap that I can’t recall from earlier dungeons: one-way shutters. Normally, clearing a room of monsters opens any shuttered portals, but Level-9 has three rooms near the western edge that are one-way trips (you can see my arrow notations above). The portals make diegetic sense—they are placed directly adjacent to Ganon’s chamber and Princess Zelda, so at the moment you are nearest to the final battle, you are whisked northeast and forced to fight your way back to an underground passage. It’s devious but smart.

Bombs and keys are also a necessity. I notated fourteen bombed passages (with x’s) on my homemade map and probably spent double searching for hidden doorways. Thankfully, at this point, I had the master key, so locked doors were no problem. But woe to the player who had missed that item. Locked doors abound and there are few keys stashed within. I didn’t bother collecting these extraneous items, since they were commonly guarded by Wizzrobes.

Expect many locked doors.

Level-9′s enemy distribution is its strangest feature—enemy variety is low. The toughest rooms repeat the most frustrating layout of The-Level-That-Shall-Not-Be-Spoken: orange and blue Wizzrobes, shield-gobbling Like Likes, and sword-debilitating Wisps.

Ugggghhhhhhh.

With full hearts and the blue ring, the distribution is manageable. The orange Wizzrobes are the priority—they apparate along Link’s cardinal vertices and deal the most damage. Luckily, with the master sword, they die in a single hit (and commonly drop hearts). Blue Wizzrobes teleport erratically, but only tend to barrage you when you share their horizontal plane. But when they do, they make a beeline for your position, volleying spells at a rapid rate. I’ve lost more lives to those bastards than any other enemy. I usually kept my red candle equipped to handle Like Likes and Wisps. When the latter inevitably bump you and momentarily disable your sword, the candle acts as a handy alternate—albeit weak—weapon, especially for crowd control. Partly for the sake of minimizing inventory switches (one of the game’s [the series'?] weak points) and handling darkened rooms, I used the red candle for most battles, even to clear swarms of Keese.

Another enemy annoyance is the Patra, who has a swarm of circling drones surrounding its central eye. The drones expand and contract in erratic patterns that make them difficult to strike. Considering the NES’s limited computational powers, these patterns are strikingly sophisticated. At least visually, Patra’s drones exhibit the most mathematically complex behavior of any enemy. Frustration-wise, I HATE THEM.

We all know how this will end.

The level also contains two items, one optional and the other required. The former is the red ring, which cuts damage to a quarter. Thanks to my unfortunate spelunking, I left the ring until moments before I faced Ganon. I had left one northeast room unbombed; naturally it was the one hiding the passage to the ring. It’s a shame the ring doesn’t appear sooner in the game. It makes the Wizzrobe rooms tolerable and Link’s palette change looks killer. RED TUNIC.

The silver arrows are stashed in the room directly mirror opposite of the red ring. I didn’t stumble upon an in-game clue that these were necessary to slay Ganon. It’s just another part of Zelda lore I’d internalized over the years, so I wonder how long it might have taken me to figure out the sword/arrow combo without any guidance. One great bit of level design, one you likely wouldn’t see in contemporary videogames, is that the route to Ganon does not pick up the silver arrows along the way. In other words, it’s possible to reach Ganon without the weapon necessary to defeat him. In fact, this happened to me. Although I knew I lacked the proper weaponry, I wanted to get a feel for Ganon’s attack patterns and verify his map position. This proved prudent—I discovered that you have to strike him with your sword three times before he changes color and pauses for the final arrow shot. Some might scoff that the final boss is largely invisible during the fight, but I like his invisibility schtick—though it was likely a technical concession meant to keep his animation frames at a minimum. Nonetheless, when he appeared, Ganon was impressively sprited. Definitely a nice culmination of previous boss designs.

By the time I had picked up the silver arrows, I already knew the route to Ganon, so my second encounter was much easier. My only hiccup was forgetting to quaff my red potion prior to the fight. I ran in with three hearts and nearly died before I had the chance to switch items. Once I had the full sixteen loaded, Ganon went down with three swings and a single arrow. Once dead, he dissolved into a satisfying pile of ash.

Zelda awaited me in the adjacent chamber, i.e., the left ‘eye’ of the skull map. The surrounding flames were a nice touch. I had to swipe them with my sword to make them shift to the side. Once I reunited with Zelda, we held two (?) Triforces aloft, a short congratulatory message appeared, and the credits rolled. Unfortunately, my capture software chose to bork this one time, so I lost the final thirty minutes of Level-9 video. You will just have to trust me when I say, SESSION COMPLETE.

STATS
Death count: 34
Triforce count: ZELDA GET!
Session time: 01:45
Total play time: 07:25

The whole purpose of the Cold Run Experiment (TM) is to play Zelda ‘cold,’ i.e., with no assistance from FAQs, walkthroughs, online guides, etc. I’ve adhered to this rule as best as possible—years of videogame study have sullied many of the game’s secrets—but Level-6 BROKE ME, people. I was dying so consistently that I decided to consult a guide to make sure I hadn’t missed a crucial item.

But take heart! Though I broke my self-imposed rule, I chose a source that remains within the spirit of the series, a source that I actually owned (and still own) when it was first published in 1991: the NES Game Atlas.

Hyrule exposed

The Atlas contains the complete overworld map, full dungeons layouts, item locations, shop contents, and so on. Much to my chagrin, there were no usable strategies for Level-6, beyond this small text blurb: ‘This is the toughest level yet. Wizzrobes and Like Likes are tough individually; combined, they’re next to impossible. Keep moving! Beat the Wizzrobes first, then concentrate on the slower-moving Like Likes.’ No kidding. So it turns out my Level-6 failures were solely attributable to my poor playing. At least the Atlas confirmed the dungeon’s difficulty—which I would argue is likely the second toughest in the game. Maybe that knowledge gave me the fortitude to get through it.

What was helpful was the list of items, locations, and heart containers I’d missed. I also noticed that there is, in fact, a screen in the upper northeast corner—the sole unfilled rectangle on my own map. Sadly, there is no indication of how to get there, simply a screenshot of a ladder that apparently connects to solid rock below. I return to the screen directly south of my missing rectangle to investigate. No items appear to work. Candles, bombs, whistle—no dice. By chance, I happen to push against the upper boundary and, lo and behold, the hidden screen slides into place.

My finished Hyrule map (click for giant size)

Though I am happy to finally find the hidden screen, the need to walk through the wall feels arbitrary. Up to this point, most of Zelda’s secrets are revealed naturally through gameplay. Chance may govern a few tactics—you might have to, for example, accidentally lay a bomb close to a wall to discover its passage-clearing properties—but I have seen no clues indicating the possibility to push through a solid surface, nor has this technique been necessary in any previous area/dungeon. (Perhaps I simply missed the other ones, but how would I know if I had?) The invisible walkway might have worked better if it was possible for the Peahats to knock you into it, but that would still require a slim margin of chance. Better yet, it would’ve been nice if the whistle took you there, perhaps after a preset number of uses.

I spend the remainder of the session doing cleanup work. I note the location of the power bracelet, a few heart containers, and most importantly, Level-8′s entrance. Frankly, I’m not sure I would have ever found the latter’s hiding place. I suppose its location is somewhat auspicious, considering it lies at the intersection of multiple forest paths, but like the invisible passage, it feels a bit cheaper than the others.

A great hiding spot

Compared to finding the entrance, the dungeon inside is simple. There are two Gohmas that require multiple arrows to defeat, but they prove harmless. The catacombs yield a key with a lion’s head handle and a red book. The former eliminates the need for finding keys, which hasn’t been an issue so far, but it’s handy nonetheless. The latter item augments the wand—once its projectile hits something, whether enemy or wall, it leaves a flame in its wake. The wand’s utility is already a mystery and this garners further head-scratching. The red candle still seems more useful for my play style. The only other interesting trivia tidbit about the book is that it was called ‘Bible’ in the Japanese version. Though the name was changed for US release, neither the manual illustration nor in-game sprite was altered, so the book’s cover still bears a cross (like Link’s shield). Usually such overt religious references were scrubbed from Nintendo’s games.

The Legend of Bible Study

The final dungeon boss is another rehash of Gleeok, this time with four heads. He’s probably my favorite boss and certainly one of the most challenging. His hitbox is a little peculiar; I can’t tell if I need to hit his body directly or if striking the heads suffices. It seems that the former is true, since I have to get in dangerously close to fight him.

Four-headed Gleeok

At this point, though, I’m used to his patterns, so he goes down first try. The next chamber holds the last piece of the Triforce, granting Link entry to the final dungeon. Session complete!

STATS
Death count: 31
Triforce count: 8
Session time: 00:43
Total play time: 05:40

Red candle get

Instead of a single illuminating discharge per room, Link can now wield the candle as an offensive tool. Compared to the sword, candle flame is weak, but its short range of travel and decent duration make it a nice secondary item for crowd control. For slower enemies, the candle can ‘roll’ through them for multiple hits. Bats and mini-slimes die in a single flame, often in multiples.

The dungeon also contains an interesting nod to Super Mario Bros.. For those who don’t know, Miyamoto’s core team worked on SMB and Zelda concurrently. The former would be the pinnacle of the Famicom cartridge’s stock hardware, inaugurating a new era in console platformers, while the latter would launch with the Famicom Disk System and set the bar for fantasy action/adventure games. Not too bad for a team of roughly six designers, programmers, and composers. As a result, the games share many affinities, from enemy names (Great Demon King Koopa/Ganon), to spatial puzzles, to brick patterns. The rotating firebars in Mario’s castle levels? Those were originally meant for Zelda. So Level-7 contains a weird treasure room that is immediately reminiscent of Mario’s underground coin rooms.

Zelda coin room (pipe not pictured).

Whether the team included this consciously or not (my bet is yes), it’s a clear nod to Zelda’s cartridge sibling.

The only tricky bit of Level-7 is the room with the wall grabbers. A partial rectangle of blocks line the room’s edges. While I attempt to push them, Wisps track along the sides, bumping me perilously toward the hands. The first time I reach the room, I am knocked into a grabber and dragged back to the dungeon’s starting room. Though it takes five minutes to work my way back, on the second visit I manage to avoid the hands and find the secret staircase.

The boss turns out to be a rehash of Level-1′s unicorn dragon. I’m a half heart away from full, so I test my arrows. Three shots to the head bring Aquamentus down.

Invigorated by a well-earned heart container (and a fresh stock of blue potion), I return to Level-6. Inexplicably, I breeze through the dungeon, dispatching Gleeok and delving deeper than I have in any previous run. My energy depletes after a few more Wizzrobe rooms, but I drink the blue potion and find a second wind. The final boss is Gohma, a cyclopean crab whom I’m told despises arrows in his giant eye. Understandably so. Remarkably, it takes only a single arrow to send him to his Hyrulean afterlife and OMG could it be my Level-6 nightmare is finally over?!

Gohma pre-arrow

Not quite. In my conquering ecstasy I notice that I failed to acquire an item. Zelda logic assures me that all dungeons contain an item. Consulting my map, I plunge back in and head for any unmapped rooms. A few moments later, I hold aloft the magic wand. I equip the wand and discover that I can now replicate the Wizzrobes’ offensive spells. However, it is not the crushing weapon I hope for—for one, it is useless against said Wizzrobes and, despite its range, feels underpowered at this late point in the game. I suppose it makes a decent long-range substitute when Link’s health is low, but otherwise it seems redundant.

Before I close the session, I make a final trip to the graveyard to see if I can pick up the master sword. Much to my surprise, I can. Wands be damned, this is a weapon. Session complete.

I have mastered using it.

STATS
Death count: 25
Triforce count: 7
Session time: 01:00
Total play time: 04:57

Level-6 continues to be a bastard. Even with full health, a magic shield, and an upgraded sword, the long string of rooms with spitting gargoyles and blue/orange wizards proves difficult. The one time I make it past the trickiest room (filled with wizards, shield-stealing Like Likes, and sword-stealing bubble-whatevers), I run into mid-level boss Gleeok. The balance breaks down at this point. The wizards are too powerful for Link’s current level and Zelda’s combat is too fidgety and digital to make the precise movements necessary to dodge their spells.

This room is hateful.

After a few failed attempts, I decide to experiment with the flute’s non-combat uses. In the overworld, playing a tune summons a small whirlwind that whisks Link to one of the previously-visited dungeon entrances, presumably at random. Though the game pauses briefly when the flute plays, you can dodge the whirlwind after you’ve summoned it. I don’t know if this has a strategic purpose, but it’s a nice touch. If you’ve mistakenly equipped the whistle when you thought you had, say, the boomerang, it’s helpful to be able to avoid a mistimed voyage.

I recall from childhood that one of the auspicious lakes in the forest contains a hidden dungeon, revealed by the whistle. Sure enough, Level-7 is hidden beneath the lake, so I opt to skip my problem dungeon and explore within. Level-7 is a bit of a remix level, combining enemies and bosses from prior dungeons, while adding the Moldorm, a ‘huge worm’ that looks like a string of fireballs from Super Mario Bros. Otherwise, the level focuses heavily on secret passages. As I reach sealed rooms, I end up bombing multiple walls. Thankfully, there’s another bomb upgrade here, so I can now carry sixteen total.

Oh, and apparently there’s a secret in the tip of the nose. Noted.

I call them boogers.

I eventually recover the compass and head toward the level’s northwest side. Here I reach a blockade: the infamous enemy who stands in the old man’s customary spot, saying, ‘GRUMBLE, GRUMBLE.’ I know I need to feed him bait (his stomach is grumbling, get it?), but I don’t have any in my inventory, so I head back to the overworld.

I return to Level-6. More dying. The shifty blue Wizzrobes are awful.

I reassess my Level-6 strategy. Due to previous exploration, I know there are a few item options that might help me. One hidden shop sells a costly blue ring (250 rubies!) that must offer some defensive benefit for the asking price. I consult the manual and this proves true—the blue ring reduces damage by half. There are also red/blue potions that will restore my health mid-dungeon. I decide to grind a bit to amass some items. After about forty-five minutes, I have the blue ring (and a new magic shield, since I somehow lost my previous one…). At this point, it’s late and I decide to pack it in for this session.

STATS
Death count: 24
Triforce count: 5
Session time: 01:15
Total play time: 03:57