Know your roots - Is it important to play the original game in a series?

Every gamer has the system they look back on with rose-tinted nostalgia goggles. Typically it’s the console we cut our teeth on and experienced our favourite franchises the first time. It’s easy to hold the games on these systems in high esteem and think of them as the best of their respective series just because they meant so much to us the first time we experienced them. 

My foray into gaming began on the Super Nintendo and Gameboy and really took off with the release of the N64. Many of the franchises I love today I first played on these systems and to this day I think of many of them as the best of their kind. But many of these series have older origins which I was never able to experience at the time due to either being too young or in some cases, not having even been born. 

Back then there wasn’t such thing as retro gaming; games had their time and then we moved on with the lure of more and more ‘bits’.  Nowadays, thanks to the likes of virtual consoles and emulation it’s easier than ever to go back and play games from bygone eras and with many gamers feeling jaded with the modern games industry, looking back nostalgically seems to be more and more common.

I consider myself to be a big fan of the Legend of Zelda series, having spent hundreds of hours in Link’s various adventures over the years.  However I’ve never played more than 10 minutes of the original NES game let alone got anywhere close to finishing it; can I really call myself a fan when I haven’t experienced the game that started it all? Shamefully I could say the same thing with most of the other series that started life on the NES. Metroid, Kirby, Castlevania, I’ve played bits here and there through emulation and games like NES Remix but actually playing through from start to finish? Not so much.

It's hardly suprising really, growing up in the UK the NES wasn’t a particularly common system for kids to own. Lower end computers like the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 were far more attractive due to their versatility and cheap (and easily pirated) games. As such it wasn’t until the release of the far more successful Game Boy or even the Super Nintendo that the majority of Brits really got to experience Nintendo franchises for the first time.

Of course this doesn’t just apply to NES games, for some it will be not having played the first Fallout, Halo, Tomb Raider or Metal Gear. In fact as us gamers of a certain generation grow older the games of our youth fade further into obscurity and become consigned to the annals of gaming history.

Does it even matter? It could certainly be argued that experiencing the foundations of a series can give you a greater appreciation of where it is now.  With the Legend of Zelda, it's amazing how little has changed. The gameplay, the items, the dungeons, the puzzles, even the iconic sound effect when you open a chest - the core of Miyamoto's original masterpiece has remained throughout, even managing to seamlessly translate to 3D. It's impressive to say the least.

(Talking of 3D, it could be said that the early titles from the N64 era like Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 were just as revolutionary, if not more so, as their 2D counterparts. Perhaps a title's leap to the third dimension could be considered its own beginning, and one that has just as much relevance in gaming history?)

On the other hand, games generally build and improve on their predecessors making it harder to appreciate the innovations that came before. Would someone who grew up with modern consoles even find the primitive graphics and difficult gameplay of early titles tolerable? Are games too much ‘of their time’ to be able to translate into modern day contexts?

Going back to the Legend of Zelda, the game was notorious for its obtuse and cryptic exploration. At the time, many a young gamer would spend hours placing bombs at every rock face or torching every bush in the hope of uncovering a secret. All of this was considered part of the game's mystery and adventure, but such simple pleasures are hard to imagine in this modern age. We expect to have our hand held, for secrets to have obvious clues, and if we get stuck a solution is only a Google search away.

Perhaps this is why we should welcome the remakes and remasters that have become more and more common lately. Purists (like myself) will always champion the originals but perhaps by enabling younger generations to enjoy the classic early titles in a way that is far more appealing will help prevent them from fading into obscurity, and surely that can only be a good thing.