AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Other than the two NES Zeldas (which I wouldn't recommend to a modern gamer unless they're on a retro trip due to being NES-hard), I started on Link's Awakening on the Game Boy. While not the truest Zelda game to the franchise, it's darn close to a perfect game.

Ocarina of Time is perhaps the best way to introduce someone to the Zelda franchise.

(I honestly wish more Zelda games made use of Roc's Feather. A huge chunk of 3D Zelda puzzles could have been solved a lot faster that way )

The first game I played is A Link To The Past, the GBA version. The first game I owned is Four Swords Anniversary Edition. I also own Majora's Mask.

Im rather proud to say that as a Legend of Zelda collector, I have all the games

And have beaten 9 of them... for some reason Ocarina keeps boring me... wait no. Bongo Bongo plays the drums with my head and I get mad and quit. XD

he never gave me a problem, i just hated that invisible wall room with all the hands X.X

Link's Awakening... a perfect game...
It's frustrating to figure out where you need to go, the game doesn't present anything too interesting until about the second half, and Roc's Feather plays a rather big part of the biggest problem of all: SO MUCH PAUSING. It breaks the flow of the game up horribly. A Link to the Past did this so much better, with more buttons, auto-shield, combining the gloves-button with the pegasus-boots button, and generally requiring only one utility item at a time. This is why Skyward Sword has that quick-equip system.

Also, Roc's Feather is in the 3D Zelda games. It's called "autojump".

As far as Bongo Bongo, aim for his hands with your bow and charge up your spin attack to stun him. Should make mince-meat of him without even using the lens/eye of truth.

Look, the Gameboy only had so many buttons. That's just life in the early 90s. Where do you need to go? Notice all those black squares on the map? Those places. Go to those places.

I'm aware of hardware limitations. They just happen to make the game far less enjoyable than, say A Link to the Past.

Ever heard of minimalism? You dont need more, you should make the most of a small resource. Links Awakening does that perfectly

There's a difference between minimalism and control suckage due to design choices

I dont see the problem, it was the first Zelda I beat, and I never had issues with the controls

I never had control issues with ALttP either. As to where you need to go, that IS warranted, actually, it got pretty daisies annoying at times, and no it wasn't always follow the black squares as I recall...I wasn't aware the overworld map had black squares. I also wasn't aware black squares showed you how to reach them. They don't. It's just a general pointer, and yeah, that got annoying to follow at times. If I want to explore every daisies corner of a map, I'll go play Metroid; I don't recall that being too often required in Zelda titles, nor am I keen to see it become a thing.

wait really

isn't exploration and discovery one of the main draws of the Zelda franchise??

Exploration and Discovery, yes.

Exploration and OH LOOK LOADS OF OPTIONAL ROOMS no.

EDIT: To clarify, my experience with LoZ is you get what you need to beat the game, in the course of the game. There's upgrades for a few, but there's not normally more than one or two upgrades per item. Metroid, on the other hand, has...how many of those accursed missile, energy, power bomb tanks? And in Super Metroid, Missiles and Super Missiles are SEPERATE. So if you wanted to 100%, you had to hunt down another type of power up.

Play fusion. Check out Sector 2. The majority of that area is green on the map - meaning "hidden rooms". You actually have to go through hidden room sections of the map to beat sector 2. The basic map you get in the Navigation room bodaciously at least DOUBLES in size if you flesh out all the corners. Perhaps triples; I haven't checked the exact ratio.

However, I've yet to see that in a Zelda game; You get the occasional "Bomb this wall there's another room!" thing, but I never got the feeling of "I have to bomb that wall or I won't 100% my file. There's probably another bomb bag behind it." With Metroid though...*Sigh* Can't count how many power bombs I've used.

Bumpage for a note people missed: The orginal NES had the same number of buttons as the orginal gameboy. Also the Player 2 controler in japan had less. It didn't have a start/select button and instead had a microphone. (On a semi related, that's the Loud Noises the pols voice hate. Someone shouting into that!) Also that controller hurt your hands, those corners were sharp.

I don't really get the complaints about the minish cap, it's fun, kinstones and collecting those figurines was fun, too..

I've played all Zelda games except for...the train one, shit I forgot the name. I also have them all, except for that one, well, not the original NES games, but the rest I do have original (NES ones for the gameboy).

I did enjoy OoT a lot but, maybe it's a tad over rated? I like MM better.

Zelda II is fucking hard I couldn't pass the first stupid cavern there's some invisible guy killing me off all the time¿? And the game&watch one is kinda...not so fun, but looks great. The console that is.