Welcome to the world of Zelda

The Zelda video game series is one I've been casually wishing to play for maybe a few years now. By "casually wishing" I mean I decided I'd have to try it out someday, but I wouldn't go out of my way. I wouldn't buy any of the games before trying my hand at one, and I wouldn't even beg a friend to borrow their copy. But if the opportunity fell into my lap, I wouldn't hesitate to give these games a whirl. Just recently, an opportunity fell into my lap. Due to circumstances I don't want to explain fully, involving a borrowed game that was never returned, a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition ended up at my house a while ago. I found out about this yesterday and was pretty excited. This disc includes some of the earlier games, including the one for the NES that I assume is the original. Don't ask me; I just got into this stuff today.

Anyway, I decided to start at what I assume to be the beginning, because it just seemed right. And let me tell you, ouch. I played for over an hour before I had any clue what to do, and that was a mistake. The whole time I was trying to figure out where to go to get to the next stage of the game. Well, I had the wrong idea...

 This is called the Overworld. There are nine dungeons to be found here, which have their own maps, but basically this right here is the whole game. And I was trying to get off of it. So much frustration resulted. Honestly, if I hadn't searched the internet and found a map like this, I would have given up on the game and counted myself a loser. Thank you, internet.

But my lack of an idea for the objective of this game was not my only problem. This is one of those games in which the player starts out with just three hearts as a health bar and can gain hearts later (so far I think I have five) but no matter how many hearts your max health is at, you restart after every death with only three hearts. This wouldn't have bothered me so much if it wasn't for the fact that, when your health is full, you can throw your sword at enemies. Now, I'm a sucker for a good ranged attack, so the whole three-hearts-to-start-with thing really ticked me off once I worked myself up to five. How was I supposed to refill my health when I'm useless without a ranged attack?

Simple: use the bow, silly. So the bow can be found in a secret chamber in the first dungeon, and I missed that memo the first time around. Then when I got there and couldn't figure out how to equip the bow, because of course you have to buy arrows first. And apparently every time you shoot an arrow it costs one rupy (Zelda's unit for money, if you're not familiar), but I still think it might be worth it. With finally a reliable ranged attack, I might have a fighting chance with this game.

So far, The Legend of Zelda has been little more than a huge and frustrating waste of time for me. However, I still see a lot of potential for this game. I'm determined to see if I can finish this game, and then I'll move onto the others. Legend of Zelda, I accept your challenge!