The Besties - Still Deciding The Best Zelda Game of All Time

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

It's all down to this! We've narrowed down the greatest Zelda games of all time to a perfect 8, and now we've got to bring it all the way to number one. Sorry Link's Target Practice fans, this one is just for the big 'uns. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

So when Ganon gets strong, he turns into a big pig man. And he loses the dwarf. And he loses the dwarf. Thank you, Russ. That's another great point is that when Ganon gets strong, he turns into a pig man. He turns into just Ganon, no dwarf. Yep. Is dwarf his last name?

And is Ganon some sort of cool street nickname? And also, most importantly, why has he turned into a pig man? I hope if I ever drink a Triforce potion or whatever to get super powerful, I don't grow pig-like features. That's a glow down, in my opinion. I mean, why are you yucking his yum? He's an evil man, Russ. I think I'm allowed to yuck his proclivities.

yum he's an evil man russ i think i'm allowed to yuck his his his proclivities i mean it's a little bit king shaming to say like pig people aren't people i think that that's a narrow enough audience that we've actually found the one acceptable thing to shame a kink of gannon is a nickname right and dorf is his name right i love the idea that link was calling him gannon and he's like excuse me um excuse me are we friends that's like calling him a little ricky like you don't you don't my name is gannon dorf i'm the fucking uh uh king of thieves the emperor of the dark realm i'm gannon dorf do you think it was like a sag thing where there was already a ganondorf like how michael j fox was actually his name is actually michael douglas but he's like i can't do that so may actually i read this in the big green zelda book that they sent out the other day um ganondorf's actual name is michael douglas okay

and not a lot of people know that either. My name is Justin McElroy, and I'm the best Zelda game of the times. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best Zelda game of the times. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I don't know the best Zelda game, but that's what we're here to discuss. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I'm here to wreck Ocarina of Time. My name is Russ Frush again. Oh.

That was the noise I make every time I open up Skype and I see Russ there because he's such a treasure. Yay. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home, interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year show that goes all year long. And it is a video game club. It's a video game club. It's like a book club for video. People understand what that means. No, no, don't say that. Don't say that. It's a video game club it's like a book club it's like a book club for video people no no don't say that don't say that it's a video game club griffin okay what do you say it's like griffin

if you could compare i mean it's like i mean it's kind of like a book club but for video but we do people understand the idea of what a club is okay okay thank you it's just when you say video game club it makes it sound like we meet up after school at the Burger King and we exchange cheat codes for Grand Theft Auto Vice City. That's what makes it so funny. I mean, I'm recording this from the ball pit at this moment.

Okay, that's fine. When you were a kid, did you want to be friends with that Burger King guy who had like a red backwards cap and then the shades that you couldn't see his eyeballs they're kind of like cyclops's shades my only i don't know if that was kids i think it's probably kid vid kid yeah i think so yeah kid vid yeah i'd i'd fucking hang i'd get a good hang

i'd fuck around with any of the bk kids club they all seem like a good hang but we're not here to discuss the bk kids club we're here to arbitrarily pit these Zelda games against one another. Yeah. The number of people who came in support of Chris Plant after his bad opinions in the last episode saying that Ocarina of Time was the win back of Zelda made me really shook my faith. I didn't think my faith in humanity could be shooken

any more than it already has been over the last year. But damn, if they didn't just grab the faith with both hands and just start rattling it violently. I mean, it would be really hard to find out you're wrong like that. Yeah. Should I do a quick sprint through the current matchups? Yes, that's probably the only sane thing to do. Okay, so we've got Majora's Mask going up against Ocarina of Time.

We've got... Also, a lot of people let me know that it's not just mario the word russ says wrong he also says oh ocarina ocarina of time ocarina of time who's to say okay hey there's links like octoroks octoroks no i don't know justin you stepped all over chris's really great macarena joke and I want to make sure that it has Let's get it clean Let's get it clean Hold on Chris let me get it clean

I'll catch you in 3, 2, 1 Hey Macarena Alright So Majora's Mask vs. Ocarina of Time The Minish Cap vs. Link's Awakening Plus remakes A Link to the past versus wind

waker and breath of the wild versus the legend of zelda on the nintendo entertainment system holy shit yeah i didn't put this together until i heard russ say it in the way that he says words funny sometimes is is the minish cap supposed to be like diminish oh cap like it makes you smaller because that's did i say that wrong too you kind of hit it like diminish cap no it sounded that way to me too but okay cool i think it's an intentional yeah i think so play on words a little fun little pun didn't put that together oh actually it turns out minish is actually just a word and it means to make less make fewer and make smaller oh sorry it's archaic so totally understand no but

thank you for and once it's just it's like sometimes we're start we start to have fun and then you come in here with books and lessons and then it's I'm sorry I just wanted to tell you the word I wanted to know no I appreciate it if this is an Ashton thing where

you guys are finally going to reveal to me when we're done recording that the Minish Cap is one you made up, please tell me now so we don't waste a bunch of time talking about it. Let's get into it. Let's do the damn thing. Okay, Majora's Mask versus Ocarina of Time, and sorry, I'm just not going to say it right. Hey, don't go changing trying to please me. Yeah, be yourself. I love you. We love you just the way to say it right. Hey, don't go changing and trying to please me. Yeah, be yourself. I love you. We love you just the way you are.

Yeah. This is such a weird pairing, because it's like, I don't know who doesn't like Ocarina of Time that does like Majora's Mask. Well, we discussed this last time, where Chris, and I kind of sort of disagree.

I sort of agree with Chris's complaints that he hinted at last time. And I'm going to try to go into them, but maybe Chris can back me up a little bit. I think Ocarina of Time is a extremely revolutionary, impactful game that has defined not only Zelda games that have come after it, but also liked games 3d action adventure game can even happen um the idea of like lock on targeting the idea of like not a lot of games do this but that like run and jump like the auto jump thing was like totally revolutionary and really remarkable um it's a remarkable game but i would say if you go and play it now um the first like five hours are pretty slow they just are they're they there's just like a lot of like you're running through the forest and you're doing

little tasks in the town and the deco tree in my opinion is in a super fun dungeon and i don't love the beginning i think it gets a lot more interesting once you get more get more tools um but i don't love the beginning uh so that is sort of my big critique on okay so at least one of our listeners kindly pointed out that some of the uh great additions to 3d video games appeared first in megaman legends a whole year before ocarina of time i'm just saying that maybe megaman legends is the win back of 3D games. Have you played Mega Man? Okay, but the complaints you leverage at Ocarina of Time, I would leverage at Mega Man Legends.

I recently went back to try to play that game, and holy shit, it's a rough time. It's not a real defense. I just want to build off Rush's thing really quick, because I actually think Ocarina is definitely going to win this. But for me, I think Majora's mask is a more interesting and better and more polished version of the things ocarina of time set out to do yeah and i think in the same way that i would never say call of duty one is the best call of duty game uh i i would not say ocarina of time

is the best game i i i prefer the polished version I don't think the historical stuff is enough to make it warrant being exceptional in this case. But that said, I think like fighting against Ocarina of Time is like fighting against the ocean. It's not going to go well. Yeah, I would agree. But I agree with you. I think, I mean, inherently, right? Majora's Mask is a sequel to Ocarina of Time. So there's a lot of stuff there that got,

uh, that got polished up. I think that, uh, the way that Majora's mask breaks out of the loop in the same way that link between worlds does of go into dungeon, get new item, use item to solve the thing.

While Majora's mask is much more like follow this storyline to find this mask that like supplements this, like know typical staple zelda mechanic uh like that shit's really interesting uh if of i don't know about you guys i have been going back and replaying zelda games i'm almost done with link between worlds because that was the one that sort of lulled me in with that siren song i would rather go back and play majora's mask the 3ds version than ocarina of time again but i can't discount the history of like what that game meant to to me i can't think of too many moments that were more mind-boggling in my youth than when you pull out the master sword and then become the older cooler link with cooler tools and then all of a

sudden you have like a billion new things to do all at once i think that that is one of the best reveals in video games and like for for me like that's that's tough to beat jelson what do you think uh i you know it's hard i you gotta appreciate what ocarina of time stands for i mean certainly uh i i have a personal bias against majora's mask uh that makes it something that i just don't enjoy as much i find it more stressful and uh it is a polish it is polished but i would also i would argue encounter to that that the games that came after Ocarina of Time the Zelda games were similarly an evolution of Ocarina of Time in a lot of ways and like they don't necessarily get the credit for like we can't just say like well it's just like Ocarina of Time

but later so it's better um because they're just doing the same stuff so I'm not sure that that argument holds a lot of water with me vis-a-vis Majora's Mask. And I find it scary. And I find it stressful. And I don't like it. And I want the Ocarina of Time to win. It's a slam dunk. I would say this for Majora's Mask.

I'm not going to fight tooth and nail over this one, but I would say, I think one of the things that I really love about Majora's Mask is that there's a lot more off the beaten path, like secret quote secret stuff. Oh, yeah. To the point where like, you know, obviously getting like bigger on sword and Ocarina of Time is sort of like the one big secret that like is not required for beating the game. Majora's Mask has like shit loads of those, like tons.

A literal journal. Like that's what the I think it's called the Bomber's Notebook is like literally full with just that shit. Yeah, and when I think about like the moments in Zelda that I love, it's very rarely the like main critical path stuff. It's almost always the like weird side stuff where you like meet Tingle or there's like a really good dungeon in Breath of the Wild

or just like the trading quest in lynx awakening so that is my i mean i would personally vote for i think majora's mass but that's just me is this an argument though the current world record for beating majora's mass looks to be uh 25 44 oh okay world record for being ocarina of time seven minutes seven minutes and nine seconds it is it all right could you are you that like maybe that's a better game i mean that's a lot more game that is majora's mass that's like three to four times as much game i think just the sort of infinite monkeys theorem like we have thrown a lot more sweat equity into ocarina of time to figure out how to truly fuck up its bits and bites and boobs and bobbles uh if you watch i watched a speed run for for ocarina of time it is indiscernible

like it is not you have to you fight goma you dump a fish out at this exact frame and then hop backwards through the door and then you're in the final cutscene. Yeah, it's wild. So just to boil this decision down, we are really talking about, I think the majority of us agree that Majora's Mask is the better game. But the question is, how many points do we give Ocarina for being the more, quote, revolutionary and impactful game? I think I have, I think I have a pretty easy answer for this, which is while Majora's mask is a better game, there are better Zelda games than Majora's mask. If we're just talking about pure,

like, is this just a good, fun, great video game cutting all the historical stuff out. Right. So like, sure. That makes sense on the,

on the better game scale. It is not near the top of it. But on the historical setting precedent scale. Importance. Yeah. Then Ocarina of Time is in the top two. Oh, I understand what you mean. Ocarina of Time. And we really have to be careful in the standards that we pick at this point.

Because we're going to get into the last round of this. Is going to. If we want to start talking about the importance of like his history precedent setting and and history like legend of zelda classic wins this in a walk damn you know what then that's a good point justin i vote for majora's mask i think it's the cooler game i think that zelda gets fucking buck wild after that and every game in this one you turn into a wolf in this one your sword's alive in this one you can turn into a painting like each zelda game has had to iterate on top of that in such a wild way and sometimes it was colossally bad and a tremendous failure

but majora's mask i think the gimmick there kind of kicks ass and is like a huge huge like stretch for you can also make a compelling argument in terms of precedent setting to what you just said, Griff, that Majora's Mask was the one that said, hey, we don't necessarily, this formula is not sacrosanct. Like this is a formula. There's a, in George Clinton, his greatest hit CD, he's got liner, and he's talking about some of his inspirations. And he says that James Brown made it legal for armpits to stink. And I feel like Majora's Mask made it legal for armpits to stink

in the sense of Zelda games. I don't know. The fucking moon's gonna crash everything. It's just a thing we're trying. Let's try it. Fuck yes. And I think that that's a cool legacy. Bravery. I'll go Majora's Mask. I can fuck with that. So it's Majora's Mask. How wild. I just want's a that's a cool legacy bravery I'll go Majora's Mask I can fuck with that so it's Majora's Mask how wild

I just want to say that my plan worked perfectly I'm just playing a little seed and then I back away the camera's pulling out and we're all connected to strings

I act like I don't want it too much I am I am learning a lot about myself in this series which is why we do this show okay next

let's try not to take as much time with this round because it's the minish cap versus versus all versions of links but this is a good only one's real it is a good segue uh the minish cap versus links awakening because um the minish cap is an extremely good zelda game as we talked about last week it is even though it was made by capcom not an internal studio but it's like a very good well designed very interesting gorgeous 2d zelda game yeah um i do not think that it is as interesting as lynx awakening as i wasn't as invested lynx awakening i've replayed this game probably four or five times over the course of my life and i very rarely replay games that shit makes me cry every single time when i beat that

game every single time it is such an emotional journey and it i think does a better job of humanizing all the side characters in the zelda world better than any other zelda game maybe ever because you have such this intimate connection to each of them link to the past does this as well we'll talk a little bit about that but like lynx awakening i have such an attachment to that island the like premise of the story it's it's such a journey whereas links which is can you sum up sum up for people that we're trying to like what's the what's the hook the hook of lynx awakening is that you wake up on an island and you don't remember anything.

I mean, do we want to spoil Link's Awakening at this point? What's the statute of limitations? Well, you know what? They did just remake it on Switch. Maybe let's not. I would say, even though it starts as seeming, hey, this is the most generic premise of all time, it is a much more interesting idea in Link's Awakening

than you would imagine. And yeah. Here's my silly epiphany. Portable Zelda games are by far the best Zelda games. Obviously, the worst stinkers are in that area too, but Minish Cap, Link's Awakening, what's the one that was linked to the past sequel that we talked about last week?

I always forget its name. Link Between Worlds. Link Between Worlds. And technically Breath of the Wild, was a link to the past sequel that we talked about last week. I always forget its name. Like between worlds and technically breath of the wild. If you want to stretch it, but like, that's a pretty bonkers good set. If, if you didn't come up in that game,

like early middle game boy era, there was a lot of attempts to bring NES experiences to game boy with like varying levels of success right the final fantasy game boy games were not great but they were attempting that scope link's awakening surpassed the originals by like a lot it was like on par by a lot and was like on par with link to the past and it was on game boy which is a which was a fucking wild accomplishment uh and and it also i think sold the game boy color with links awakening dx like i i i had forgotten until you brought that point up like what a tremendous sort of evolution of what a portable you know game could look like and feel like and

links awakening sort of set that bar i think it's links awake i think so too yeah what is the what is what is the remake the remake that just got announced which what are they doing oh uh skyward sword it feels like doesn't it feel like minish cap is due like let's get the links awakening df they didn't really make yeah i don't know if they'll ever do it because it's a capcom game yeah it's a bummer like oh i mean i i i really hope that some folks listening to this probably like virtual console or something eventually but yeah maybe not as like a full remake it's weird that some of these are just cut like it's one of the biggest franchises ever it's weird that some of these are just kind

of lost in the yeah yeah in the shuffle anyway uh so we're gonna go with links plus plus the remix uh listen next up is a is a tough one i don't know how else to say it a link to the past versus wind waker okay wow oh wait no actually this is tougher than i i mean i've linked to the past is gonna win right but for some reason i was thinking skyward sword when waker is a really special game yeah i think yeah i mean we have weirdly set up two sort of competing metrics now of just like the history like value of these games and also the willingness to say, fuck that history. Like, let's get wild on it.

And I do not think you get anything more wild than Wind Waker, which was like people were clamoring for grown up Zelda, big 3D experience on the GameCube, and Nintendo was like, how about this? Well, not to mention that. Not just the art style, but like, hey, remember Land? Nope.

Yeah, nope, not for you. That's crazy. I did not like, it was not even a, I had succumbed the whatever the opposite of hype the hatred of wind waker for its art style and mechanics and stuff like when i first played it i did not i did not care for it mostly because of sort of the seafaring structure of it but when it came out the remake on wii u i think is what sort of uh made of made it click a little bit more for me. But Link to the Past, I mean, holy shit. Justin convinced me to trade in a bunch of Game Boy games at Babbage's

so that we, as a family, could acquire Link to the Past, which I only now sort of recognize as a nefarious plot for Justin to acquire Link to the Past using my incredible cartridges. I mean, no, it was a good trade. a good it was a good trade you were not wrong a good trade yeah i mean some of those some of those some of those game boy games are probably worth a mint now but yeah can i play one sound for you guys i've been replaying length of the past because it fucking is still great listen this is the sound that it plays when you go through the mirror into the dark world listen to this are you kidding me doesn't get any better than it's so fucking amazing uh yeah it's amazing the whole thing sounds amazing they now plant could you speak on your experience a little bit because

i know this was a new one to you what kind of what kind of jumped out at you i i'm very much still working my way through it slowly uh so i i feel like uh unprepared for have you gotten through the first dungeon yeah of course um well that i mean that intro like a prologue of like getting through that within the rain and uh going through the castle i is very was very formative for me it was like one of the first cinematic video game experiences i remember having this is also a thing that i love about it that breath of the wild obviously does so when in the in the at the beginning of the game you have to go save zelda from the castle you go to the dungeon yada yada yada uh and one of the things you can do is you can go up these stairwells inside the castle and then exit the castle and then walk around the barrier.

I guess like the gates or the bridge of the castle or whatever. And there's no purpose for that at this point in the game. It's just like an area that you can walk around and go back outside and see the rain and see the world you know this castle surrounded by all these these evil guards and that feels so different from what i expect from like most modern really any nintendo games where every square inch of the game serves a very specific purpose which is kind of brilliant from a design perspective but sometimes uh prevents them from having very much mood or environment and so far from this game i've noticed little bits of that everywhere where i feel like i'm not like i said last time it really does feel wildly ahead of its time how much it feels like an open world game sure um yeah i know yeah it's it's it's incredible i i i i am profoundly

ashamed that it took me this long to play it but like i said i i'm also very glad it took me this long because it's it's wild how well it hits um playing it for the first time now while you were describing that intro scene it it reminded me that like you have there's this moment when you go into the you're outside it's raining you find the secret entrance into the castle when you go inside you can still hear the rain but it's muted and that fucking like i don't know that i consciously absorbed how cool that was but it really way more than like you know in the original nes on the original nes zelda like you'd go into a cave and obviously it was a totally different environment the music would change but there was no sense necessarily

that it was like all taking place in the same world but that small detail does so much to like set the world of Link to the Past and how it's all linked together yeah it's speaking of like cinematic like we were still kind of experimenting with like narrative games at this point the introduction introduction link to the past is you wake up

your dad's gone or somebody i don't know who's your dad uncle your uncle yeah your uncle's gone and you he's like uh zelda's calling you with her mind right and you go you lift up a bush you fall down a hole your uncle's there he's like hey i'm dying can you take my sword and go get zelda he's like yeah i guess no problem literally gets a sword walks through a door and murders the first man he sees like he walks to the door there's a guy in green armor and zelda's at link's like actually fuck you and he kills him like just kills him yeah it's a man he just kills a guy instantly you don't get that in a lot of new Zelda games, do you? Where he just kills a guy. No, they make you pick up a fucking Deku stick for 13 hours before they're like, okay, I guess you're ready. You promised not to kill a man, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, and I don't know if it's fair to include this in the calculation, but the randomizer community around Link to the Past is one of the great joys in my life. I got into it and created a randomized version of the game that doesn't have a sword in it that you die if you get hit one time and also the character sprite is guy fieri so that's about as good as it gets uh the last thing i want to say about when waker even though i agree that links of the past is going to win this category in addition to the visuals which i think are spectacular and the music also spectacular uh it is worth noting that when it first came out and i think this was addressed in the hd remake

but when it first came out there was like an end game quest that was kind of grinding and not great uh like oh yeah you had to get to you had to like find these things that were scattered all over the place and it was just like kind of totally it was pieces of the triforce yeah and it's a real shame because it had a really cool treasure hunting mechanic where you would find maps and then have to like sort of look at islands and landforms like figure out what it was and that shit was cool when it was an optional thing that you could do to like get a leg up and not when it was something you had to do like seven times in a row yeah that was a bit of a drag again i think they did address it in the hd remake and if they re-release it again i'm sure it'll be addressed there yeah but kind of a little bit

of a it's yeah all right last round then yeah god last up we have uh breath of the wild versus the legend of zelda couldn't be a less applicable conversation i mean it's there's no point to this conversation is a silly well it is an interesting matchup. They both have Zelda in the name. Well, yeah, they both have Zelda in the name. That's it. Well, I would say it's an interesting matchup because when they were developing Breath of the Wild, they actually made a demo version of the original Legend of Zelda, but with physics and, like, chemical interactions and shit.

And that was the design document they used to eventually make Breath of the Wild which is really pretty remarkable I think the games are very similar in structure because of how wide open they are obviously Breath of the Wild really leaned into the like physics and everything like that but structurally

they're almost identical in so far as you can go to Dungeon 8 the second that you start the legends of zelda which you can't really do in any other zelda game that i can think of except breath except for breath of water you can literally go right to ganon yeah it's uh this is one of those where i wasn't uh i don't know if i was when did the original legend of zelda come out uh this is the 35th anniversary so it'd be yeah 86 86 yeah so i wasn't alive when the original zelda came out but i feel like for a lot of these games i have the context of like what it was like to be there

when link to the past came out and like changed shit but i i mean juice you would have been six like were you a limited perspective i definitely remember seeing it you know at a friend's house i was probably over at willie's house i he had the nes and i remember seeing it over there um uh i don't think i appreciated what a game changer was at the time but i certainly sunk uh more than my fair share of time into it yeah i mean there had been open world rpg you know adventure and stuff like that there had been open world rpgs before the original legend of zelda uh but in the same way that like there had been platformers before Mario like the Legends of Zelda basically refined the concept and made it like a very polished uh full-filling experience it was

also kind of like a rogue light in ways because you every time you died you start from the beginning uh but you kept your stuff yeah kind of interesting I've never this is one of my favorite game franchises of all time i've never finished the original it's very hard i did really it's it is uh it's it's difficult not necessarily even from a challenge perspective but from a like getting or getting around and knowing where you've been and where you still need to go and like there's everything what you do for that actually griffin is get um nintendo power so it's not even a problem um yeah it's just that everything that the original zelda tried to do cristales came out in 1990 s and k knocked it out of the fucking park and made it better zelda than zelda yeah that's a great actually very

valid point griffin thanks not a lot of people think about Crystalis whenever they're talking about Zelda games I think the Call of Duty 1 Call of Duty 2 thing is applicable here where I think Link to the Past sets what a Zelda game is in motion and the original Legend of Zelda is

a rough draft in that capacity that's not a hell of a rough draft but yeah and breath of the wilds may be the best video game ever made so it's kind of a tough competition between the i think it's breath of the wild i i i you know recency bias is for sure there but it's i i don't harbor that much affection for the original legend of zelda uh because while i recognize its its import in you know in gaming history i it uh yes just it was just a little too early yeah a little too rough i would agree it is not the best 2d zelda game by any stretch uh that's cristales we've

covered this uh yeah i think extremely i mean it's extremely important and still has its merits for for sure but um also i don't think you can discount the the cultural effect that breath of the wild had it was one of the last like and i feel like you get these from time to time still they used to be very common um i feel like breath of the wild bordered on like creating something of a monoculture in gaming for a little bit like it was something where like everybody was playing it in the sense like you saw it on a I think a much fast sped up timetable but maybe broader scale with Animal Crossing yeah uh last year where it's like this is what everybody's do everybody's doing Breath of the Wild um and that's cool and it's still kind of like a touchstone for that like there's people

we work with like our dad and amanda and people like that like who are still going through breath of the wild getting all their stuff yeah uh it i it's fantastic it's amazing i'm trying to think of like console launch games that even we're now what are we four years after the launch of the switch yeah four years afterwards it's still the first game that you recommend to anyone to buy if they buy a Switch. Yeah. Not even a heartbeat. It's the best launch game of any console that's ever happened. Okay.

I think we got it. Breath of the Wild. And we're almost through this thing. And we're about to put this nation of ours back together with our eight hands. Let's take a quick break. Just breathe for a second because we don't have ads. We might. We might.

We might. There might be ads here. Let's take a break. Okay. This is serious now. I'm not kidding around. And these should go quicker. I feel like,

due to the discussions we've had, we got Link's Awakening plus remakes versus A Link to the Past. We can just finish the semifinals, right? I think the semifinals will be very breezy. A Link to the Past beats Link's Awakening and Breath of the Wild beats Majora's Mask. We've talked about these games.

Yeah, we've talked about it a lot. We know these games. In the case of talked about it a lot. I think... We know these games. In the case of Link to the Past versus Link's Awakening, Link to the Past does everything that Link's Awakening is trying to do, but does it better.

Much better. Yeah. Just does it better. And also, the strength of that game is evidenced by the fact that Link Between Worlds is essentially... takes place in the exact same land and still manages

to be a fucking great game like there is something very timeless about yeah the the the the core of link to the past yeah and then and for for breath of the wild better game yeah breath of the wild majority's mask both of them are the the what's special about them is they're doing something different and very different like Majora's Mask is... It's not even remotely similar to what the previous game was. Yeah, as good as Majora's Mask is at doing something different, Breath of the Wild is like... I mean...

This conference, the finals then, is Link to the Past versus Breath of the Wild, which is always what it was going to be, and I feel like that... I don't know if that's something that you all felt in your bones before we got started here but i i feel like this is this is always going to be the final possible there was a moment it was possible i wouldn't have voted for this but the ocarina versus breath of wild matchup could have happened in some alternate reality um but i'm happy with where we landed it's one me on it. I mean, it's pretty simple, right?

We're looking at the best 2D Zelda game versus the best 3D Zelda game. That's it. Yeah. I think it's the most fun Zelda game versus the most interesting Zelda game. What? I don't know which one's which.

I don't even know. The past is fun. Breath of the Wild has breakable gear. Okay, okay. You're out of your fucking mind. No, this is the time to bring it up. This is the time to plantable gear. Okay, okay. You're out of your fucking mind. This is the time to bring it up. This is the time to plant. No, no, no.

Listen, guys, I don't want to shut Plant down here, but he's completely right and doesn't need to waste any more of his precious time. No, no, no. Drop some knowledge for people. Obviously, here is what I would say. I am going back and playing Link to the Past. It has been, what?

Somebody give me a number. How many years? It came out in 92? 93? Yeah. Okay, 25 years. A long time, right? 30 something.

A lot of years. It whips ass. It came out in 91. Yeah, it's 30 years. Jesus Christ. 30 years old, okay? It whips ass. I play it and still it is absolutely playable, understandable, looks great, sounds great.

The puzzles are interesting. The maps are interesting. There's fun, weird stuff happening in the world. The music is absolutely fantastic. It feels good. It still looks great. Right. the it feels good it still looks great right my argument is that if you go if you flash forward 30 years from the release of breath of the wild and you look back on it it will that that you will

feel that aging so much more they're taking big swings it's big strides forward but there's a lot of things that are going to feel and look and sound not good in three decades because it's a 3d game you mean um well because it's a 3d game but also there's mechanics that are like more interesting than they are enjoyable uh in in breath of like climbing a wet climbing a wet mountain face this is is like the opposite. This is what I'm saying, right? Like every inch of Link to the Past has been carefully handcrafted to bring you maximum delight and pleasure. Breath of the Wild says, you're going to find some things you won't like,

but the good news is there's many other things you can go do, but there's going to be some people that like these and you can absolutely just not mess around with them. You cannot, I'm not saying that it's not incredible, expansive, incredibly fun. Link to the Past is like

as close as we have gotten to perfection. And I thought, every time I go back to it, I think, maybe it will have aged poorly this time. Nope. Every time, it looks, sounds, feels fantastic. That is my pitch for- Plant, do you want to shit on Breath of the Wild a little bit?

No, I just- The gear breaks. Justin pretty much stole my thing. I don't think Breath of the Wild is a bad game at all. I think it deserves its spot right here. I think it's like the second best. I think it is more inventive than anything on this list. I just personally found myself not enjoying it for large chunks of the

game there are parts that i thought were like unbelievable that island where you land on an island and respectively the game all encompassed in like one little area that yeah it's still one of my favorite things in any video game but there are also parts where it wasn't just oh the world allowed me to do anything so naturally there are going to be parts i don't like and you know it can't be all perfect that's part of it too but there are also parts of just the core game that i i ran up against i didn't enjoy i remember when i got to the lava area i'm sorry that i don't know the exact name i'm not a real fan but i remember land yeah sure and i and i had saved all of i can't remember the resource now but i had saved all

of this resource that i wanted to get like some big fancy armor that i was super hyped about and i worked so hard and i put hours and hours and hours into it and then i got to that land it's like well you're only going to be able to go through this land if you go and buy this. And I was like, I am not doing that. I have saved for the thing that I want. I have all these like food items that can make it so that I can get through heat. I'll just use that. Like the game has been malleable up until this point.

It'll let me do this the way that I want to do it. And sure enough, it did not. And then I just like stopped playing it for a month because i was so pissed that up until that point and let me do whatever i want and here it was like uh hey glad you saved for that thing that you were super excited about sorry uh throw all that away so that you can just complete a core part of the game it is kind of interesting that the least enjoyable for me parts of breath of the Wild are the like questy parts. The like you've been given a side quest so you need to go do a thing.

And the most enjoyable parts are when it is completely like freewheeling. I'm going to crest this hill. And oh shit, that looks really interesting. I'm going to go check that out. And oh, there's a little puzzle with the Korok. Yeah, and there's a big fucking glowing dragon in the sky. I'm going to shoot at it. Whoa, something just fell off the dragon. Where did it go i'm gonna try yeah it's it's this is the

conversation to me this is the debate is link to the past is like justin said like incredibly manicured yeah and incredibly uh sculpted to a t experience whereas breath of the wild is a lot it you know it has definitely that stuff because it's a nintendo game but it is much more like up to you to kind of find the fun and that is inherent to it's like physics-based systems and interaction-based systems and to me to me i agree with everything you said about a link to the past but like that shit is not something that has been in a zelda game before and i think linked to and i think breath between breath between worlds the breath of the wild does both things

really well i think the manicured experiences i think the dungeons and boss fights in breath of the wild absolutely kick ass but no other zelda game even tries to do the other shit that it does of of it being people are still experimenting with ways to get around this world and stunt on them and and and it's something i think is amazing and when i think about what i want zelda to be moving forward what i want video games to be moving forward it is breath of the wild uh that game came out in 2017 and accomplished that thing better than any game has yet and any game has really even attempted to do so like i can't i can't like that's unbeatable in my mind it is the it is the it is the perfect video game for me right now and what i want all video games so

that it wins in my mind i i agree with that i think link to the past this is the word again because i'm just making my way through it, but being able to have that hindsight, it literally did that thing. Like, you play Link to the Past now, and it set the template for video games for, what, the last 30 years. Like, you can see so much of open-world design

and action game design and role-play design inside of that so i do think there's i just want to give it as much credit here you know it it can seem very um static looking back on it historically because we already know how history played out but i i think right at the time that that is oh for sure i'm really ambitious this is not an yeah this is not an easy decision right i i i think breath of the link to the past these are the right two final games to be here i think to the past a fucking masterpiece but like i i my relationship with video games is changing it changed when i had a kid and my time now became like something else and it's gonna change again

here in a couple weeks when i have a second kid and so my my relationship with games is changing and the amount of time i want to put into games is changing and breath of the wild is the kind of thing that i feel like is is worthy of of my time it is the thing that i am most excited to still sort of invest myself in in like all of gaming so like that's well i think link to the past is a masterpiece but like i breath of the wild is is what i want all of right now i so i want to just talk about link to the past real quick the interesting thing about link to the past even though obviously it builds off of the like baseline of what uh the nes zelda game did um it it really uh introduced the concept that like again i and i talked about this with the rain but link is in a world that exists with inhabitants villagers towns um like campsites

you know effectively the nes uh world was all monsters with like occasionally there'd be a vendor in a cave but that was it right so the idea that you've got this inhabited breathing world that you're in and the fact that it gives you as much freedom as you have to explore this world obviously you can't go everywhere but the the barriers are extremely large and you can flip that world into a totally alternate dimension of a dark world yeah that is just as big and see those and see the like black mirror version of those characters sometimes yeah yeah because they are they establish that when you get the moon pearl and it's like this kid can't go into the dark world without turning into a like a blob or something like yeah i think the dungeons in um in uh link

to the past are the best dungeons that have ever been in a zelda game ever ever like every single one stands out to me it's like a very memorable thoughtful like uh analysis of like the item that you get in that dungeon and then that item is now useful all over the map um you can they're also like this like so concise there's like no fat on them like just when you think like huh i wonder what's around the big key oh cool i got the big key where's that here it is here's the item ah i remember i could go it's just like you blow through them but in a way that feels so good like where there's not a bunch of like wandering around and wondering what the next thing is right yeah i so i guess i feel

like we're all wow i thought this would be a lot more of a fight let's go around the table and just and and vote i think i know which way this is gonna go but i i am i am uh breath team breath of the wild on this one well i'm i'm like but you couldn't remember the name of the game your vote is yeah we've only talked about one or two or three or 18 celda has only played an hour of link to the past but he really liked more than that but he's playing now i can't stop even even having not finished it i do think it's linked to the past i griffin made a very compelling argument there is part of me that wants to heel turn. And I will say the dungeons in Breath of the Wild are pretty stellar.

I think they do really. I actually don't agree. I actually, this is one area that I completely disagree on. Interesting. Wow. I like how they play with 3D space quite a bit. That said, you know what? I will, maybe this is going to be something Fresh will add.

I think they're very smart. I don't know if I find them particularly fun. I find them like, oh, that was very smart. And there is a difference there. Laying siege to that huge elephant, like mammoth tank thing, and then climbing around inside of it, and then the dungeon is the big, like, monstrous robot animal that you just had to like battle to get like that shit it's conceptually cool i do not think i think the dungeons rely a lot on i'm gonna pull this

switch and then wind is gonna show up or i'm gonna pull this switch and things are gonna turn and i do not find those like it's just like a lot of trial and error which i never have found super satisfying whereas i think in link to the past a lot of the things it's just like a lot of trial and error which i never have found super satisfying whereas i think in link to the past a lot of the things it's all puzzles well not only that they're logical puzzles oh i have a boomerang i can now throw this boomerang across this ledge um and i think there is definitely some of that in breath of the wild but i think it is but the physics system the physics system necessitates a different kind of puzzle yeah like a physics a physics puzzle and if that's

all that there is and i i get what you're saying and i i agree i you know link to the past has better dungeons but that that's not what appeals to breath of the wild of to me yeah i mean it's i think did we get a vote from you russ yeah no i yeah i would i would vote link to the past i think breath of the wild i agree justin made a good point about like going back i do agree that like if you were to go back to breath play breath of the wild 30 years from now it would look heinous as shit but i don't think that that's true either is the problem like it just doesn't um and it's like i think... That game came out four years ago and still looks better than most games,

including a lot of games that have tried to look like Breath of the Wild. So I think that there's an argument here. That's because the Wii 3 will have upscaling. So it will help a little bit. But I would say, I think the other reason it'll be interesting is because I 100% agree that Breath of the Wild will define the next, knows how many years maybe 30 years of how video games are made i think you're

going to see way more of these types of games and you will like handhold the assassin's creed cutscene after cutscene kind of games yeah um and so yeah it'll be i would also say first off congratulations to link to the past secondly i would make the point that I would assume that our median age of listener is younger than ours. And this decision may be frustrating for you. And please recognize it for what it is, which is the death rattle of four decrepit men clinging desperately to their youth. Three decrepit men. Three decrepit men. I'm fresh. Oh, yeah. Three decrepit men. Three decrepit men. I'm fresh.

Oh, yeah. I said, three decrepit men and one beloved millennial. Right. One zillennial. Good damn it, Matt. All right. If you haven't played A Link to the Past, it is available on the Nintendo Switch

if you subscribe to online, Switch Online, so you can just play it right there, right now. That's real good. Is this a Nintendo Direct? What happened there at the end fucking here's how you find link to the past i mean if just go find it but who where else would you be able to play it if you don't have a switch blockbuster video oh yeah you go to blockbuster and you have it in the demo i am actually pretty mad at how one thing that has frustrated me going back through the series is how inaccessible a lot of these games are. Yeah.

Games are fucked. Like it should be, you should be able to play like the greatest games of all time. Like at will. It's wild that they're like locked, locked away for this, uh, behind all.

I have one piece of reader mail, uh, before we wrap this episode. Uh, this is from uh our dear friend vibes corner uh when my parents were broke newlyweds in 1998 my mom's only expense was for long distance calls to the nintendo power hotline for help with zelda 2 she still talks about dark link with reverence my earliest zelda memory is watching her beat Twilight Princess on GameCube.

It's very charming. That's so good. What did that cost? Do we know how much that cost? It was not cheap. It wasn't cheap. It was, yeah, it was for, you know, $1989. It was a business model, you know?

Like, Nintendo made money off that. Yeah, for sure to the to the point where i think one could make an argument that zelda 2 the adventure of link was designed the way it was designed to bolster the nintendo helpline uh what happens if you call for like i don't know tmnt that terrible tmnt game or a battle toads that is like next to impossible like What is their advice in those scenarios? Yeah, how do I get through this tunnel in Battletoads where the walls come out?

It's like, what do you... There's nothing. Do you want me to come to your house and do it? There's nothing I can tell you. Be better at it. Speaking of that, did you all see the TMNT news? No. No? The team that made Scott Pilgrim vs. the world the game is making a new

uh pixel tmnt game and it looks yeah very all right very good i'm into it um um very quick what else are y'all playing um oh loop hero yeah it's it's i don't know that there's a ton to talk about there it's a roguelike where you move around in a circle and you collect cards that you lay down to change the environment and you collect resources to upgrade dismissive i want to talk about it more yeah or something on that because that game is blowing up and i think we all have feelings on it okay i don't think it's very cool um i finished uh uh there is no game wrong to mention um if i know griff has started on it but not finished at rust and plant i'm still playing game jam so i want to finish that first it's very okay i really get like the first one okay please hurry it's i i will now decree this i said it on twitter it's true uh it

is my 2020 game of the year wow whoa there is no game wrong to mention it is unbelievable i mean as you as you continue to play through it it is uh unbelievable i also got i just want to mention extremely briefly um because i i don't know it it's been it was a wild year last year and did not realize that fucking frog fractions three had been released uh yes yes yes okay it's in dlc on steam it's on dl it's in dlc do you not know this girl no i'll tell you this for the first time okay so they released frog fractions on steam right yeah it last summer but Yeah. Last summer. But there is an available DLC for it for $8 called Hop's Iconic Cap DLC. So you can start the game with Hop's Iconic Cap if you pay $8 in this Game of the Year edition. And when you start the game with Hop's Icon iconic cap, it starts a completely new Frog Fractions game that is Frog Fractions 3 or 4,

depending on how you count. I count the ARG as Frog Fractions 2. And for the people wondering what that is, we're not going to explain it right now because we do not have the time. It would take two episodes, yeah. Go Google Frog Fractions, play the original. It's basically just a math counting game

where you control a frog and you're grabbing fractions. That's all it is. Go Google frog fractions. Play the original. It's basically just a math counting game where you control a frog and you're grabbing fractions. That's all it is. There's nothing more. Don't go poking around. Okay. Those are mine. Next week. Valheim.

Oh, yeah. We're doing Valheim. Gotta finally put in the elbow grease to learn what that is. What that is. End of sentence. Minecraft with Vikings. Easy. We don't even need to do the that is. What that is. End of sentence. Minecraft with Vikings. Easy. We don't even need to do the episode now.

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that'd be cool. Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!