Zelda In Real Life

Recently, I discovered a web site that has some old Super Nintendo games available for download as freeware to be played on a PC. I suppose when a game is almost 20 years old, the makers assume they've milked just about all they're going to get. First, checked it out vis-a-vis malware and found that it was reputable. Looked around and found that they had Zelda: A Link to the Past available. That sure brought back memories.... Spent summers in WNY helping load hay at my uncle's farm and firewood at another uncle's.

At this other uncle's, the television was rigged with a metal box on the side of the television stand containing the power cords and a contraption to regulate television usage with a key. Now, my cousin always seemed like a master at getting the original or a spare copy of that key, despite the best efforts of my uncle to keep it turned off during the day, at least. My cousin would find a spare in a pair of pants or on a dresser and one time had several copies of the key made at a hardware store.

One by one, he would get caught with the television on at a time when it was supposed to be locked and the contraband key was confiscated. But not too often while I was there. I admit it, I aided and abetted. And so, taking a break from splitting logs when everyone else was out and about, we would go inside and play Zelda.

For anyone who's never played it, Zelda is a one-player game where the character, Link, must search for various and sundry items and tools to help him navigate the way toward beating Ganon, an evil wizard. All the while, Link must maintain his magic level and 'heart' power rating (you earned more hearts by destroying a boss at each castle, and by finding hidden pieces hither and yon in the game --- inside caves, through portals, in the oddest of places that required using whatever tool would get the job done). Often, you have to backtrack and go over the same ground 100 times. Many people might get frustrated by this, but we were 12, we drank highly-sugared iced tea mix (I would bring this as a masking agent for the high sulfur content of WNY water --- it helped minimally), and by using a secret television key, it had the lure of the forbidden.

But now that I'm seeing it again, Zelda does seem to have some parallels with real life, doesn't it? All the times when you had to go through the same door six times because you forgot something, you needed to complete some other steps first or just because that's how many trips it took to bring everything where you needed it. So many times we cross paths with people who hold some tiny clue in our greater quest, but without that smidgen of information or bit of help, we would be unprepared or entirely lost as what to do next. And sometimes, we simply need to look around, explore what's out there and hope we get lucky.