Zelda Classic Quests

By: Derek Yu

On: February 4th, 2012

[This is an overly enthusiastic guest article by vinheim that was originally posted to TIGForums. Zelda Classic is an enhanced remake of the original Legend of Zelda that runs custom quests built with ZC’s editors.]

Hey TIGers, prepare your anus for a waaaaall of text.

I bet some of you who’ve played the Legend of Zelda series and enjoyed it are probably thinking “Damn, these are incredible, it doesn’t get better than this!” or “There’s no way a LoZ fan game could compete with these.” Well I’m here to tell you that you are completely wrong and it gets better. Much, much better.

I’d like to introduce two types of LoZ fan games. For the rom hack games, I’ve made some short reviews on [a TIGForums] post. There’s one post near the top and another near the bottom. Don’t worry about the negatives, the gameplay makes up for it.

Second, for the Zelda Classic games, which may as well be the pinnacle of gameplay in the history of videogames since forever. These quests take the core engine of LoZ, add some additional functionality, graphics, and music through scripting and the level editor and let their creativity do the rest. One of the unique functionalities is how people have emulated side-scrolling screens.

Here’s some of the best I’ve played. Assume that graphics, gameplay, sound, and exploration is already awesome and the story is mediocre before reading the additional comments.

Best Game in History Award

Lost Isle – The biggest quest I’ve encountered so far. The overworld itself is 24×16 from what I’ve explored and I’m only up to the 2nd dungeon! (For comparison, it is 3x bigger than LoZ’s 16×8.) This game also has beautiful graphics, beautiful exploration (jot down pathmaps and notes on a notebook and even these simple lines are a piece of art), Nintendo Hard overworlds and dungeons and, so far, the best-themed dungeons. One is based off OoT Water Temple and another off MM Stone Tower/Temple.

If you play this game, you will want to sacrifice yourself to the god found in the nearest book in the nearest library you can find.

Perfect

Hero Of Dreams – Massive overworlds and challenging/interesting-themed dungeons as well as interesting characters. You will wet yourself when you encounter Dungeon 8 if you haven’t already done that before reaching it.

MegaMan: Dr. Wily’s Revenge DX – Everything is Mega-Man-themed here. All the items, people, enemies, things like stop signs and cars… you name it. Except the Triforce and the fact that the land underneath you was called Hyrule, but that’s explained. Apart from the theme, the dungeons are a beauty to explore, and the bosses aren’t just rehashed LoZ bosses – there are unique ones that are challenging.

Isle of the Winds – Exploration is top notch here. You can explore the majority of the 16×16 overworld after Dungeon 1 and can attempt any dungeon from 2 to 7 in any order. Based on Wind Waker, this quest is extremely challenging (you will probably need a full potion for the very first boss and still die to it a couple times!).

Origin – If you want to play a remake of LoZ, play this one. It takes the same structure and themes as LoZ, but redesigns the whole thing with beautiful graphics and fun dungeons.

Masterpiece

Link to Tortuga – Immersive pirate theme with constantly changing village and huge, challenging dungeons.

Link in Cestria – Small overworld that managed to fit tons of interesting content and great exploration in it. Each dungeon has a unique theme you’ve never seen.

Link’s Birthday Deluxe – Challenging and interestingly-themed dungeons. Everything else is excellent. Sounds bland, but you will have a hell of a time playing this.

Excellent

Ganonco 2: Work Is Death – A story based on working for Ganon’s corporation. Interesting theme, but the dungeons are the main attraction, as well as the battle tower.

Castle Haunt II – Halloween-based quest which relies on you using your own intuition to progress. Not just pure exploration. You will NEED to take a note of what looks suspicious to you.

Castle Haunt III – Same as above, only harder and more beautiful.

Wolfstyle DX – Oriental-themed quest with Normal and Hard difficulty. Hard is a bitch to play! Excellent oriental music too.

Legend of Mario – Xmas Apocalypse – Extremely vulgar content, which makes it beautiful. For example: eating Toad hearts, a child-molesting priest, and a caveman who thought you were dead and wanted to rape you are among the least-threatening content here. You will feel sick and awesome.

WHY SHOULD I PLAY THESE GAMES VINHEIM?!

Well apart from the descriptions I’ve given, these quests are basically higher-quality LoZ games compared to the commercial ones, as well as being 2 to 3 times longer than the commercial ones and also costing 100% less than the commercial ones! They also follow the simplistic gameplay of LoZ, which I have now deemed to be the best engine out there for fan games after DRoD. Sure the stories feel effortlessly written, but it hardly matters when you are balls deep in fun.

ADDENDUM: HOW TO PLAY

You’ll need the ZC program. I recommend v2.10 and v1.92 “The 184 Player”.

It’s recommended to play the quest on the version it was made on. Also, for Lost Isle and Origin, they require you to play on a “Lost Isle” build of ZC which they link to. And remember to back up all sfx.dat files as some quests (mostly by Freedom) give you their own to use for that particular quest.

When you start ZC, you’ll need to register a new name… I’d go for an abbreviation or shorthand version of the quest you want to register it with. Then press whatever button you assigned to “A” twice, locate the file, choose it, then you can start playing.

Posted in Action, Fan Games, Freeware, Mods / Hacks, Remakes, Tools, Windows

anonymouse

HNGGGGGGGG
Nathsapholin

Zelda Classic came bundled with a lot of spyware the last time I looked into it. That was a few years ago though. Have they dropped that bad habit yet?
Jack Sparrow

I don’t want to seem like a prude, but asking me to prepare my anus is quite offensive. I mean, you don’t even know my name yet.
are you kidding

balls deep in fun
Theon

WHERE THE FUCKING HELL DID ALL THESE AMAZING-LOOKING GAMES COME FROM!?
They are EXACTLY what I’m trying to make at the moment…

Makes me just want to give it all up.
I hate talented people ;_;
Theon

However… I can’t seem to get the engine to load any quest but the original.
The readme just says to “press ENTER to enter your name, then ENTER again before you choose your quest file”, but the game just starts, and no option to choose files is given.
The Lost Isle-build doesn’t even allow me to choose alternate graphics saves…
http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

I added some “how to play” hints that vinheim wrote to the bottom of the post.
http://twitter.com/phubans Paul Hubans

Dude, it’s going to be okay! Most of these graphics are either ripped directly from the game or made by people who can’t do much else besides pixel up really pretty tiles (not that that isn’t deserving of talent, but these are basically built from parts that other people made; not like one dude is responsible for the whole thing!)

So yeah, don’t feel daunted by these in the least. They do look awesome, however, and I’m looking forward to dipping into some of them soon >: J
http://twitter.com/danielqsegura Daniel Q. Segura

I can’t make Lost Isle Build to work in mac os x “lion”… :P
Theon

Ah, now it works. Thank you!
Theon

Thanks for motivational words! They DO help a lot! :D
Theon

Also, how on earth do you get it to run in full screen mode?
I found you could set the “sbig” parameter in the config to 1, and get a slightly bigger screen, but it’s still tiny on a 1080 screen…
Zhyn .exe

There are some command line options:
http://www.zeldaclassic.com/faq.php?q=12
http://www.facebook.com/sargeantibbsandthebedbugs Ben Tibbetts

Literally laughed out loud. Llol. But, cool games.
Anonymous

Yeah, I want to play some of these, but potential spyware in the ZC engine is bad news. What’s the word on that?
Elephantfluff

As I remember the Mac OS X build is actually behind the current build for windows. http://www.shardstorm.com/ If you follow that you can see where the mac build is.
Machomanstillfightininmyheart

Are you guys really that afraid of a 5mb file?
Nope

Holy crud!
I din’t think you’d EVER cover this.
Thank you!
OfCourse!

You are right, spyware must be at least 10mb to be considered harmful.
SirNiko

Download Zelda Classic directly from PureZC or Zeldaclassic.com. If you download from a different site or via a torrent you might get some spyware added by a third party.

I’ve never seen any spyware as a result of playing Zelda classic with official builds direct from the website.
SirNiko

You (or the person you talked to) probably downloaded ZC from an unofficial site. I do think there was an issue with third party sites offering unofficial builds of ZC that were carrying spyware.

Download ZC directly from Zeldaclassic.com and you will not get any spyware bundled in with the download.
http://www.facebook.com/sargeantibbsandthebedbugs Ben Tibbetts

You sissies. I download 100MB Spyware and kill it using only my teeth.
News

nostalgia goggle irrational
WHEREdidiputmypants

amazing and novel idea: why not just tell readers what a game is like instead of all this stupid hyperbole the site is steeping in these days. do you think people won’t try what you recommend unless you act like a flailing tube man from a car dealership?

“PLAY THIS GAMES ITS DICKS EXPLOSION APESHIT WOW WOW WOW”

“i never seen nothing so b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l as when i saw some pixels and some plink musics bits”

real quotes from TUGSource article
futility

you just can’t win them all
John Sandoval

get over it
WHEREdidiputmypants

sorry if it got your panties in a wad but i’d rather have something insightful to read instead of these fluff pieces.

just ignore my very valid critique and carry on with your “you are balls deep in fun” writing.
http://plng.myopenid.com/ P

This could have been C|Net, sadly. They’ve been bundling their downloads with spyware, from the bottom of the popularity pile, moving upwards in the past year or two.
John Sandoval

have you looked at the front page

most of the posts are written in a very even handed tone

case in point, the humble android bundle post, the recent good knytt stories post, gunpoint, dustforce, recent good iphone games, tigjam uk, and airmech. all of these are all fairly devoid of hyperbole, and simply tell you what the games/events have in store

thats 8/10

of course, then you have the issue of people complaining about the articles being too short/plain

ultimately, if you have an issue with the articles being written, join the forums and submit one yourself
http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

Using hyperbole is okay when you’re criticizing someone else for it, John.

Geez, that’s like basic anonymous commenting 101, weren’t you paying attention?!
Anonymous

I’m having trouble with mine. I downloaded the Lost Isle build, but there’s no LostIsle.qst file for me to load, just 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

EDIT: Nevermind, I found the file.
WHEREdidiputmypants

deflecting thoughtful criticism with sarcasm. how many cats do you own?

some guy: “the quality of tigsource articles is very low!”

cult guru: “yeah, well, you are not someone I know and your critique was not submitted in MLA format and you should shut up lalalalala I can’t hear you everything is fine!”
http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

Your criticism wasn’t that thoughtful, though. Like John said (and which you ignored), most of the posts on the front page are not hyperbolic at all.

I honestly thought that, given the article was about 5-year-old Zelda fan games, given the extremity of the language, given my sly little “wink” in the intro… I honestly thought people would “get the joke” and give the hyperbole a pass, especially since every other post on the front page is so understated.

What you’ve shown me, Mr. Pants, is that I was wrong. No matter how much work you put into something, someone will misunderstand you and extrapolate from it ideas that are so far from fact that they can only be called fiction. Not only that, but they will have the gall to do the very things they criticize you of while they criticize you – use hyperbole as they accuse you of hyperbole, ignore as they accuse you of ignoring, etc.

You’ve shown me that, after sitting there calmly for hours while they scream red-faced at you, spittling on you for crimes you’ve never committed… if you raise one finger in protest or mockery, they will only use it and twist it against you.

And over what, I ask? Zelda fan games. Say it with me now: “ZEL-DA FAN GAMES”.

In short, Mr. Pants, you’ve knocked another Piece of Heart off the lifebar that represents my faith in humanity. You’ve tarnished the golden sheen of my Triforce of Courage. YOU SIR, have added another off-key note to my Song of Time.

GAME OVER, MR. PANTS

GAME OVER

RETURN OF GANON
WHEREdidiputmypants

yes, it’s all very suspicious how my thoughtful, in-depth critique contains all the flaws I’m pointing out from the articles. very s-u-s-p-i-c-i-o-u-s indeed. ever heard of a meta-commentary? try using google.

you consistently underestimate the reading public and it’s a real shame because I’m guessing a lot of people visit this site for the front page news. shame. shammmmmmme. guess I’ll just have to use Kotaku when I want to spend some time reading some gaming news worth my time.
Snow

Why bother acknowledging someone who simply wants to hear himself speak or in this case read his own writing?

You take the time to research or play games and the time to write an article about them, for the benefit of the indie gaming community. Nobody pays you or any other member of the site that writes an article or demands that you write them. You guys just simply wish to share information. Kudos. If you do happen to get some information wrong or there maybe a flaw here and there that may have been missed, you don’t owe us the readers any apology or explanation. The large majority of us know that you’re not trying to mislead us.

TIGSource is in my top 10 list of websites I visit almost every day.
This is one of the websites that has given me inspiration to become a game designer and creator. Thank you for being part of that.
Manwiththefiles

dl
http://koti.welho.com/pranta18/index.htm
JeanBaudrillard

I would also like chastise the author for telling me to prepare my anus. I would never let Derek Yu or vinheim anywhere near my anus. It is a disgusting suggestion for the sake of being disgusting. Childish. Also, you’ll probably upset your lefty pals into accusations of homophobia, which certainly isn’t worth it for such a trite expression. This post is not even long. Anyone that has to “prepare their anus” for this tiny amount of text must have a frontal lobe the size of a peanut. I come to this site because I want to read about games; don’t act like I shouldn’t want to read about games because that just alienates your audience. That said, thanks for reminding me about Zelda Classic and pointing out these mods, some of which look very enticing. At the very least, they ought to be reasonably challenging.
Anonymous

Derek’s reply was quite fun to read. I bet it wasn’t torture to write
Karl

Downloaded the LostIsle build. But there’s not Lost Isle quest file in the installation. Only 1st.qst, 2nd.qst, 3rd.qst. Where to get it?
teh12

the shot from castle haunt 3 was looked so familiar, then it popped into my mind :http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/930227-the-legacy-realm-of-terror/images/box-70572
Nope

The quest needs to be downloaded separate.
http://www.purezc.com/index.php?page=quests&id=204
The download link is right above the rating.
Anonymous

I can promise that you will not be missed.
Anonymous

Now go make the games you want to make!
Anonymous

These games look neato. Guess it’s time to prepare.
Pixelghost

This is old news though, ZC has been rocking for a while and still continue to rock it.
another good engine but old, and i still currently use today due to its open concept, is Open Graal. Open Graal is basically a remake of the Zelda: A Link To The Past. but has a twist.. it is all completely customizable. from tile sets, gui’s, inventory screens, has its own built in editors, its own scripting language. basically you could make anything you want with it. best part about it, its multiplayer! you could create multiplayer servers with up to like 700 people if you like.

i highly recommend jumping on the forums and checking it out, the engine, trying the graal classic server and others. there is many different types of servers, with different tilesets, or you can create your own.

and spread the word, the more people playing this, the better it is. im serious. TIG needs to do a review of Open Graal if zelda games are in the flavor of the month. i wish more people were on. countless hours on tilesets and new weapons etc and not a lot of people. and this game is amazing!

http://forums.graal.in/forums/
Kevbo

Thanks Pixelghost!!
It’s always good to find out about hidden gems. I love LttP and multiplayer sounds crazy awesome :)
Connor

*sigh* that’s all that went through my head too…
Elephantfluff

How can you consider Zelda Classic old news but Graal not?

I played Graal back in the 90’s. Back when there was only one server and it had 16 hearts to find, multiple shields, multiple swords, and an actual ending. It had a whole story line with a beginning and end. At one point I had more items than the mods did because they started taking items off of the server like the gold sword and mirror shield and some heart containers but anyone who had those items got to keep them.

I mean, Graal still technically exists but why they destroyed Graal Classic is beyond me.