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This Week in Games - Where Did Zelda Come From, Anyway?

One section in the game requires you to kill two wizard enemies on a certain screen with one Wave spell

The thing is, people will almost always associate the most popular work in the genre as the originator

-Persona 1 and 2: Another big problem is the original Persona games also have a, to put it blunt, assholeish view of mental illness. Eternal Punishment has an entire, unprompted tirade from a PSP exclusive character ranting about how mentally ill convicts shouldn't be remitted. This was written by the original writer by the way so frankly he can go screw himself. The original games do some interesting things, but let's not pretend they weren't products of their time with some stuff that has aged badly.

AiddonValentine wrote:

-Persona 1 and 2: Another big problem is the original Persona games also have a, to put it blunt, assholeish view of mental illness. Eternal Punishment has an entire, unprompted tirade from a PSP exclusive character ranting about how mentally ill convicts shouldn't be remitted. This was written by the original writer by the way so frankly he can go screw himself. The original games do some interesting things, but let's not pretend they weren't products of their time with some stuff that has aged badly.

I don't see anything wrong with having this in a game, but then again maybe I'm so desensitized to the "yikes, this hasn't aged well" mindset being used for literally every piece of media that's older than 3 years that it doesn't surprise me people say this anymore and I just assume people dislike all media that doesn't reflect current year far left viewpoints which is going to keep increasing as the scale shifts further and further towards the extreme. This is the first time I've seen someone complain about Personas 2 though. 2 is often the game the 3-5 detractors bring up as the superior one because of the adult protagonists. Perhaps even that game has become old enough and the political climate has shifted enough for even that to be looked at negatively now. All I know for sure is I'm sure we're all looking forward to revisit Persona 4 discourse when Rewind drops....

I don't see anything wrong with having this in a game, but then again maybe I'm so desensitized to the "yikes, this hasn't aged well" mindset being used for literally every piece of media that's older than 3 years that it doesn't surprise me people say this anymore and I just assume people dislike all media that doesn't reflect current year far left viewpoints

One thing that is kind of sad about seeing Persona 30th anniversary is that Persona 5 came with a 20th anniversary decal for the Morgana bus, so we've gone 10 years without any real sign of a Persona 6. Now, that isn't to say they aren't working on things over there, but it's other series, new IP, or remakes. Pretty much anything other than a Persona 6.

I'm not at all surprised that some merch is all they announced for the anniversary. When something goes that long without a peep, I eventually assume that there will be no announcement at anything.

Seriously, people need to stop highlighting the NES version of Hydlide, which is easily the worst version of the game, & instead actually give the original PC-88 or MSX1 & 2 versions a go. D4 has released all three versions on Switch via EggConsole, while the PC-88 original is also now available on Steam, & all of them are much better experiences than trudging through the terrible NES version. Miyamoto wouldn't have even played Hydlide via the NES version, since that port came out in March 1986 in Japan, a month after The Legend of Zelda first came out on Famicom Disk System.

The thing is, people will almost always associate the most popular work in the genre as the originator, even if the creators themselves acknowledge that they were inspired by other things

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The thing is, people will almost always associate the most popular work in the genre as the originator

Yes sadly. I die a little inside when people say "Stardew Valley like" or "Kingdom Hearts like". Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon and insert early Falcom game here, are right there!

Gonna be honest, my write-up on Zelda was partly inspired by how garbage a lot of discussion on Zelda's inspiration is. I always see people frame it via the story of Miyamoto exploring caves in Kyoto, but I never hear a single person talk about how Tower of Druaga was such a major influence. It's right up there with how Xevious is this major game for Japanese game development history, and yet gets almost no discussion from gaming historians in the U.S.

FinalVentCard wrote:

Gonna be honest, my write-up on Zelda was partly inspired by how garbage a lot of discussion on Zelda's inspiration is. I always see people frame it via the story of Miyamoto exploring caves in Kyoto, but I never hear a single person talk about how Tower of Druaga was such a major influence. It's right up there with how Xevious is this major game for Japanese game development history, and yet gets almost no discussion from gaming historians in the U.S.

...most trivia posts in regards to the first Metroid always tend to say that the game was inspired by Ridley Scott's Alien and nothing else, but I came with a pretty great video that talked about its other inspirations, which maybe even greater than Alien; Samus' being revealed to be a woman is probably a reference to how Princess Leia disguised herself at the beginning of Return of the Jedi; Namco's Baraduke, which predated Metroid by a year, was also a sci-fi game with a seemingly male player character who turns out to be a woman wearing a spacesuit; but probably some of Metroid biggest inspirations came from sci-fi works like Lensman, Barbarella and most importantly, Space Adventure Cobra, in fact, the Metroid aliens themselves look a lot like some aliens Cobra fought in the manga.

FinalVentCard wrote:

Gonna be honest, my write-up on Zelda was partly inspired by how garbage a lot of discussion on Zelda's inspiration is. I always see people frame it via the story of Miyamoto exploring caves in Kyoto, but I never hear a single person talk about how Tower of Druaga was such a major influence. It's right up there with how Xevious is this major game for Japanese game development history, and yet gets almost no discussion from gaming historians in the U.S.

I can understand that, though as I said, I think the popular most gaming trivia videos and posts don't tend to go that in-depth in regards to the history of the development of games like Zelda, another major Nintendo game whose inspirations also tend to be oversimplified and overlooked is Metroid, most trivia posts in regards to the first Metroid always tend to say that the game was inspired by Ridley Scott's Alien and nothing else, but I came with a pretty great video that talked about its other inspirations, which maybe even greater than Alien; Samus' being revealed to be a woman is probably a reference to how Princess Leia disguised herself at the beginning of Return of the Jedi; Namco's Baraduke, which predated Metroid by a year, was also a sci-fi game with a seemingly male player character who turns out to be a woman wearing a spacesuit; but probably some of Metroid biggest inspirations came from sci-fi works like Lensman, Barbarella and most importantly, Space Adventure Cobra, in fact, the Metroid aliens themselves look a lot like some aliens Cobra fought in the manga.

Metroid aside, a lot of this has to do with the quasi-mythic status of certain individuals like Miyamoto, whose words are taken as gospel. Make no mistake -- I have nothing but respect for the man as a creative force behind my favorite games, but there's nothing wrong with trying to separate fact from fiction. None of that diminishes what he and others accomplished with their own enduring franchises (and more importantly, individual games).

Yeah, I haven't seen that video yet, but in hindsight Lensman and Space Adventure Cobra make a ton of sense as major inspirations behind Metroid. Heck, there was an (unlicensed) Lensman OVA that was pretty popular in Japan at one point. (Heck, the basic Power Suit even has a cheeky cut-out over Samus' heart that recent designs have used as a glowing symbol--you can't get more 'Lensman' than that!) Barbarella strikes me a bit more out-there as a reference at first blush, but it was also a very popular and influential science-fiction classic--100% the kind of thing nerds making a science fiction game in the '80s would want to riff on.

One of the more blatant ones that bothers me specifically is the space pirates; it's extremely obvious that, come Super Metroid, the Space Pirates are a take on the Baltans from Ultraman--down to the big lobster claws shooting beams. But because, even now, so few people have actually engaged with Ultraman, the comparison is completely lost on people. Which is still nuts because it's SUCH an ubiquitous touchstone for literally every creator in Japan!

Some of this early-days information/backstory for beloved franchises is cryptic, and it's hard to know how much truth there is to seemingly random anecdotes (like Hiroji Kiyotake apparently claiming that "Aran" was used for Samus' name because he misremembered the family name of Pélé, which sounds so random that it must be true).

That definitely always annoys me how people try to act like Metroid is only influenced by Alien despite Metroid coming out literally a month after Aliens (so not enough time for influence) and there having been decades of Japanese sci-f.

A lot of this likely comes down to the natural inertia of fandoms deifying esteemed creators, plus people from Nintendo specifically being very cagey on sharing any kind of background for their stuff.