Gadgetory

- It's pretty undeniable that the Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, has been a huge success, rekindling a lot of love for the Zelda franchise, and a lot of people that just haven't played it in ages, and spawning all kinds of fan projects. And, there's one in particular I wanna draw some attention to. The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the NES, an 8-bit remake of old-school-style Zelda using Breath-of-the-Wild-style game design. But first, before diving in the game, let's talk a little backstory on how exactly this project came to be. Back at GDC 2017, Nintendo did a presentation on the making of the Breath of the Wild, and one of the most interesting things to come out of that presentation, other than the fact that they also planned on it being about aliens originally, was how they prototyped the very basic idea of the game. Nintendo created an 8-bit version of Zelda, much like the original Legend of Zelda game, but approached it with a different idea with how they wanted players to solve problems. Rather than just giving them specific puzzles that have one answer, instead, the idea was to present situations to the player, and give them a number of tools to figure out how they wanted to do it themselves. Which is how we ended up with things like all the mechanics focused around cutting down trees, breaking down rocks, and all of the fun little ways you can cheat Breath of the Wild puzzles. Now, obviously, this prototype was never finished up and turned into a full game. Instead, it was scrapped so they could create the actual Breath of the Wild, which ended up being fantastic. But, when they showed this concept off at GDC, it resonated with a lot of people this idea of a classic old-school-style looking Zelda, with more modern mechanics. And, one indie game developer took this idea to create his own demo. Now, this demo is currently up on itch.io, it is completely free to download, you can donate to the creator if you want to help out with the project, and it is super, super bare-bones right now. I mean, you can even see work in progress right there on the map. But, it's just this really basic thing where you just run around, killing enemies, picking up items. But it's really cool in how it showcases the ideas behind how you would blend old-school original Zelda with the Breath of the Wild. Even just looking at it visually. This looks like old-school Zelda, except Link is blue, like in Breath of the Wild, but there's even little changes like adding shading behind the rocks. And, it's not just the fusion of visuals that's interesting, it's really the mechanics. For instance, I just finished this little dungeon area where I picked up a hammer, and just like in Breath of the Wild, I can use that hammer to destroy certain kinds of rocks. Now, unlike Breath of the Wild, it can't break, so I can use it as much as I want, and that's a little closer to old-school tools in old Zelda games. Now, the really useful thing, aside from breaking rocks for hidden passageways, is I can break this right here, and get a flint. And I can use that flint to make fire, which has even more uses. So, for instance, a big thing in Breath of the Wild is, you could cook your own food. So, I can drop this tentacle that I've picked up off of killing an octorok, and I also dropped my other flint on accident, and then, light it on fire, wait a second so I don't burn myself, and I got cooked tentacles that I can eat. Now, it's worth noting this is the first version of the demo, and the creator's already posted a trailer for version two showing off all kinds of upgrades and improvements, including a day and night cycle, improved visuals, and even improved basic physics so you can do things like roll logs on enemies to deal damage. Now, all of that being said, if this demo is something that would interest you, you better jump on this thing right away because it's going to get more and more popular, and eventually, Nintendo's gonna notice and as always, we're about two weeks away from a cease and desist. (beep) That's not what I meant to do. You can also start forest fires, and just run away. Oh no, no.