Lockdown 2020: A Link to the Past with Abby! - Part 1

Excited to see someone play this with a fresh perspective.

I went from playing this game from the first time to doing randomizers this year I hope Abby enjoys it.

That nose comment! Can't unsee it.

One of the goats. Think I should replay this since it's "free" on Nintendo online.

Wow. I randomly started playing this the other day out of boredom. It's a pretty good game i think

This was really fun to see someone learn the game new! As long as she keeps enjoying it, I hope we get more!

Is the highest res version of this 480p? Nothing higher is showing up for me.

Oh man, I'm suddenly 11 years old all over again. What a game.

Definitely didn't expect to hear a shoutout to Port of Call but yep, one of the best little burger joints down here. Which is saying something. Nothing fancy about them. Just straight-up burger-ass burgers and loaded baked potatoes.

You want fancier burgers hit up Company Burger maybe. Or Fharmacy. Maybe Blue Oak for one of their specials. Or basically any newish burger joint in the area, they all got gimmicks and specials on the regular.

But yeah Port of Call is just a good vibe, good food, good drinks, decent location if you aren't driving. Pretty much right between the quarter and Frenchmen so you can pick your flavor of touristy club/bar areas before or after if that's your thing. Or, you know, not...there are museums around there too.

Aaaaand now it's setting in just how much it blows having these places around but not being able to go anywhere.

Also hell yeah Annemunition is dope. Definitely a favorite. Very skilled, takes a sort of analytical approach to games that I really appreciate, chill as fuck, a fellow designer with an eye for aesthetics and production which also goes a long way for me. She's good people.

It was great to see people in the chat who also grew up with this game. I also learned how to read from Link to the Past. I even made a short about a kid who plays Link to the Past with her dad appropriately named "Save and Continue": https://youtu.be/cl2SPMigXnE
Hope Abby keeps playing it! It'd be a great feature.

@ybbaaabby The aspect ratio of this video is screwed, both here and on Youtube. The Twitch archive is 1080p60 and it fills the screen.

@thisisacooltag: I’ll chime in to confirm that this is the case.

It appears to be applying some crazy letter boxing both horizontally and vertically (and/or the entire resolution is lower than the video file thinks it is). It did this for both the SNES Classic portion of the video (Legend of Zelda) and during the Switch portion (menus + Animal Crossing).

@bestyhammar: The beginning parts and the music always send chills down my spine.

School obviously helped, but playing adventure games at a young age definitely made me learn english better. Too bad they didn't really improve my other skills when it came to studying, but better than nothing.

I was wondering what Abby meant by "squirty villager" when talking about animal crossing. I wasn't even sure what she was saying, so I just googled "squirty villager." And safe search was off.

It did not go well.

Abby naming Link "Zelda" reminds me of when I played Fire Emblem Awakening and named Robin "Chrom".

Lissa still thinks the name sound foreign with her brother standing right nest to her.

I never realized how similar the music in this and Breath of Fire is.

Not in terms of notes, but in terms of "tone."

This got me to go back and play this for the first time since ~1993. It's impressive how well the game holds up mechanically, artistically, and technically. The puzzles and secrets are very fair to the player, striking a balance between being overly cryptic and too obvious. The fact that I was able nearly 100% it (missing a couple heart pieces), didn't have to resort to an online guide, only died twice, and never felt annoyed or impatient is a real feat of game design.

Calling any game the "best" or GOAT probably always oversells how good a game is, but I'm struggling to think of many other games that are distinctly lacking in faults to the same degree that this game is. Listening to Abby talk while playing this, I get the sense that much of what she perceives as "classic Zelda" tropes could more accurately just be described as "A Link to the Past", as it was this game where they originated, or at the very least, adequately executed for the first time. If she were to go back and try playing through NES Zelda, I suspect she would find it unplayable and surprisingly devoid of much of what she considers characteristic of a Zelda game (puzzles, NPCs, dialogue, story, etc).

I love the music at the start. Anyone know what its title is?

As someone who has played this since I was a kid I love seeing someone play through it for the first time, brings a sense of re-discovery back for me. Also thought it was a very entertaining stream!

@undeadpool: I want to say there was a lot of instrument crossover between the BoF games and Megaman X2, specifically the guitar

@jape: That definitely tracks, Mad One.