Old School

[Oh! My Car!]

Well, until I recently found the english rom version (please forgive me), I had no idea what those Japanese nutters were saying in the cut-scenes....

oh, yeah, but it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so in retrospect, it didn't really matter

[Brats]

I can see both sides of the language argument.

I bought the Japanese Zelda Windwaker for Christmas last year and the language barrier both improved and worsened the title at different times.

In the dungeons, the puzzles are mostly abstract and it was more satisfying to solve the puzzles all by myself without any narrative to help me. In the US version, there was some prompting which I felt rather unececessary.

Out of the dungeons though, it was horrible. Working out which person I had to to talk to to trigger the next event was just random guesses. There was no logic to fall back on as all the clues were in the script which I couldn't understand. I constantly had to rely on inernet guides and translations, which I hate. In the end I sold the game and bought it later on US release.

Anyway, back to Jibber's initial point about the "directness" of older games, I agree that it can be refreshing. Simple title screen, press start and you're in the game. Whilst we still get this with many arcade titles, it's surprising to see it in a title such as Zelda where we have gradually become accustomed to intros and cutscenes.

Then again, the "story" in the first Zelda is extremely limited. I can't remember a single advanture game that plonks he player straight in the action without some kind of cutscene first.