Well, it looks like Nintendo took their sweet time in finishing and releasing a much hyped game again. It seems that the longer they wait to let us have something the better it does. I have never seen anyone benefit from being late except for Nintendo. So Zelda 64 finally came out, I have it, I almost beat it. I only have the Spirit and Shadow temples left before Ganon. Of course I haven't been playing it as many hours as you people who have already beat it have. Plus I like to hang around and get goodies and do side quests instead of just burning through the game just to see the ending.

Okay the first thing that makes Zelda 64 better is that it has more RP in it's RPG. There are townsfolk to talk to, there are towns to visit, and the story is much more involved. In TLOZ (The Legend of Zelda) the most you get is old men who have a whole room to themselves and automatically tell you the same thing over and over. The story is limited to the blurb in the instruction manual and the final scene of the game.

I also have to give credit to Zelda 64's graphics. They arn't spectacular for our time, but they are 3D, but of course this has no effect on how good the game is. I just had to mention it for all you frooty peoples. Oh yeah, Zelda 64 also has better sound quality, but has worse songs. The original Zelda theme song is much better then any song in Zelda 64.

TLOZ is much harder than 64. You might think it is easy, but that's only because you know the whole game already. Imagine trying to play it without knowing where the levels, the swords, and the secrets are. What do you do when you get to the guy in Level 7 who says grumble grumble? Yeah, you give him food, but I'd like to see you figure that out for yourself. In Zelda 64 they tell you where the next level is. They make your rumble pack shake when there is a secret nearby. In TLOZ they didn't even tell you there were secrets if you burned trees or bombed outside of levels. There were no holes in the wall or big boulders that obviously needed bombing. In TLOZ everything looked the same to the gamer, until you bombed it. Try burning a whole screen of trees with the blue candle one day.

Zelda 64 may have a more involved story, but the game is no where near as deep as TLOZ. When you play Zelda 1 you get into it. When I first bought that game I got into it. You could spend 2 hours searching for level 7 until you found out all you had to do was blow the whistle in the spring with no fairy. You could blow the whistle on every screen in the entire map before you found all the secrets there are. And you could have the game for 2 years and still not know you can walk right through some walls. So basically Zelda 64 is too damn easy. When a game tells you how to beat itself that's pretty sad. Whats'a matter? Can't read the instruction manual anymore?

Also the people who made 64 are terribly unoriginal. They just combined all of the previous Zelda games with Mario 64. It's basically more of the same old same old. How come they couldn't come up with anything original. Malon and Talon are Marin and Tarin from GB. The Ocarina is from GB. The magic is from Zelda 2, bombs and arrows are in almost every Zelda game. The only thing new is riding a horse which doesn't take a genius to come up with. And how do Zoras, Gorons, and Gerudos fit in with the stories from the rest of the Zelda games. If you make a prequel it has to fit the story line of the already existing games you can't just make stuff up. You can't go back and change what's already done, you have to stick with what's there. You can expand upon it and go into more detail, but you can't sway off course as the makers of Zelda 64 have done.

The one thing that TLOZ has hanging over Zelda 64's haead is it's second quest. In Zelda 64 you beat it you're done. Sure you can hunt Gold Skulltullas, or use the mask of truth on every statue in the game, but what's the point if you already beat it. The ending isn't that much better if you complete the whole game anyways. I doubt the ending even changes at all. In TLOZ after you beat the game you get to do it all over again. But it's harder, has more secrets, new bad guys, and to this very day despite my endless searching I have yet to find the location of Level 8 in the second quest. I have found level 9, but not 8. I'll put it to you this way in the first quest there was one place you could walk through a wall to get a secret of 100 coins. In the second quest you can't even get every secret in level one without walking through a wall. In the first quest there is one place you can blow the whistle to open up a secret (level 7) in the second quest there are at least 10 secrets that open up when you blow the whistle. Plus in TLOZ some secrets are bad! A guy makes you pay him for his door repair charge! In 64 you will never find a bad secret. In the first quest there are stalfos in level 1 that take two hits to kill. In the second quest they shoot swords at you and take more shots to kill. In the first quest... You get the idea.

Zelda 64 is a good game, but it can't live up to the greatness of Zelda one. The only other games that come close are Zelda for GB and SNES. Come to think of it there is only one thing wrong with Zelda 1. Links eyebrows are the same color as his clothes. First green, then white, then red.

So if you want to be cool and have people visit your house get Zelda 64. If you are a real gamer and don't want to be a follower get Zelda 1. TLOZ is not the best game ever, and Zelda 64 is far from it. If you just want to look at cool graphics go watch a movie. If you want to hear good sound get THX. But if you want a real video game whip out your N I N T E N D O.

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