30 replies to this topic

[WhippyBoi]

I've always wanted to know how people have discovered this program. Here's how I found it: I was watching Zelda Universe TV and it was NintendoCapriSun (NCS) playing a 16-bit Zelda game that I had never seen or heard about before. The name of the game was the End of Time DX. I did some extensive research and found the program and played the quest, then I beat it and loved it, and then I started playing other quests. Honestly, I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for NCS. God bless him. Now, then............. Discuss.

Edited by Lucas, 25 June 2016 - 10:01 PM.

[Russ]

I discovered ZC thanks to Twilight Princess, of all things. Let's rewind way back to 2006 (good lord, that was ten years ago, help I feel old). The Wii was coming out soon, and I was hyped. Mario Galaxy looked to be just about the coolest thing my 11-year old mind could comprehend. But sadly, I noticed, it wasn't a release title. So I tried to find a launch title that I would like. Twilight Princess caught my eye. The Zelda series was one I knew quite a bit about (in large part due to Smash Bros), but had never played (unless you wanted to count the Minish Cap demo they had to show off how cool the GBA SP was at Best Buy). So I decided that Zelda would suffice until I could get my hands on Mario Galaxy.

When I looked up things about the game, I stumbled onto a particular interview. Aonuma had said that the game could be enjoyed on its own, but it would be even better if you were familiar with older Zeldas. Clearly, he was talking about OoT, which TP is a spiritual successor to, but I wasn't aware of that. So I decided I'd start from the start, with Zelda 1. At the time, I knew nothing about emulators, so I was playing it on a site called vNES, which was basically an emulator built into a webpage. The only issue was it didn't support saving, so I had to beat the game in one sitting. Yeah... that didn't happen. Another problem was I was bad at Zelda.

So, confused as to where to go after the first few dungeons, I went to GameFAQs, and stumbled upon this handy guide. Aside from having awesome ASCII maps, it had a little info blurb about this cool program called Zelda Classic. It solved my problem of not being able to save, and seeing the amazing BS graphics it offered (since BS Zelda 1 was conveniently packaged with ZC 2.10 and pre-loaded as a save file), I knew I had to play it. And after that, I started poking around with custom quests and looking at the AGN forums. And the rest is history.

I sometimes wonder how many people found ZC through that same GameFAQs walkthrough. Whoever you are, Dan Simpson, you're an awesome guy.

[ywkls]

I think this is the second discussion I've seen about this, but since I didn't respond to the first one; I'll give this a go.

 

So, there was once a little video game magazine callled Electronic Gaming Monthly. Sometime after 2004 (the date on the file of Zelda Classic that I first downloaded) they had a Zelda-related article. And on the side of one page was a little bar about this website called ZeldaClassic.com telling how there was a program that let you make your own Zelda game.

 

I should note that the article in question also stated and showed screenshots of examples of quests made with Metroid, Mario and Mega Man graphics. This was part of the reason I wanted to check this out since although I had ideas for doing Zelda stuff; I thought the concept of a program that would let you do all of that was even cooler.

 

So, I convinced my dad to download it and me and my family began experimenting with the program. While I don't know what quests were shown in those screenshots or even what issue of the magazine that was, it was definitely the start of a journey for me; exploring the depths and limitations of the program.

 

I also find it somewhat ironic that in all that time, I've only actually beaten one quest I downloaded that wasn't my own. Not sure why, but that hasn't diminished the fun that I've had playing around with this thing.

[Shane]

I found several Zelda Classic quests on YouTube back in late 2008. I believe I ended up finding a playthrough of Lost Isle so I downloaded Lost Isle and played it and I found it to be pretty fun. After a few more videos, one of the YouTube videos provided a link to PureZC and I ended up finding ZQuest (IIRC, the Lost Isle build didn't come with ZQuest?) which was even more fun. A few months later I joined PureZC and after seeing some cool projects, I wanted to showcase my own. Nothing really fancy or complicated.

[Orithan]

I was initially shown Zelda Classic back in 2009 with the 2.50 builds. Back then, I was getting into the Super Metroid ROMhacking scene with SMILE and making awful hacks as I kept getting into arguments with the engine. I was hating SM hacking, due to how the engine makes it difficult to hack properly. Jumping into Zelda Classic, I found it to offer what SMILE could do with SM; but far, far more and did not crash the ROM or anything if I tried to do something too ambitious. Therefore I stuck with ZC.

Edited by Orithan, 25 June 2016 - 11:35 PM.

[Evan20000]

BikdiponaBus, wherever you are, your guide fueled my childhood dream of making my own Zelda game.

[Haylee]

I was 4, it was 2002, and my mom was looking for a game to play online.

 

This program is literally the first game I've ever played.

[Eddy]

I have the most boring story ever when it comes to this...

 

...I literally just looked up "Make your own Zelda game" on Google about 7/8 years ago

[Timelord]

I believe I first read about it on UseNet. (These days, there are probably five people around here that remember what that is.)

I startedusing it ona PS/1 system, using DOS 5 or 6, and at the time it was mind-blowing to see Z1 running on DOS, without some kind of emulator. It was pretty bonkers, but ZC was still in its infancy.

I didn't pay it much more heed until 1.83, when it was relatively stable, and there were abundant quests to play, and I ran it in PC emulators on my Mac systems, which in those days were running MacOS 7.6... It wasn't exactly fun to run in an emulator at times, and there was occasional chatter on a native Mac version, that kept me interested, although it never properly materialised...

Around the time that 2.11 was happening, and there was actually someone attempting to put out a port to OSX, I started posting on AGN. Then, in the dark years, when 2.5 seemed as if it would be continual vapourware, and devs were packing it in, I lost interest.

On occasion, I ran 2.10 on Virtual PC, and I had a great time with HoD mind you, but I drifted away from reading any of the boards, usually peeking at zeldaclassic.com to see if that OSX link was live. When there was finally a release candidate (i.e. Gamma) for 2.5, I decided to return, and as AGN was fairly dead, I decided to participate mainly on Pure.

By that time, I had modern Windows systems to hand, so the OSX port wasn't critical.

Suffice to say, it's been one hell of a ride.

[Mani Kanina]

I don't even remember how I stumbled onto Zelda Classic, probably came up in some discussion somewhere given that I was involved in ROM Hacking before.

[Joki]

I stumbled upon Team UDF's video series on you tube where he did a Lets Play of ZSNES quest parallel worlds.

 

I subscribed to his channel, and became familiar with ZC due to his next LP, The Hero of Dreams. After playing this, I was hooked!

[KingPridenia]

Long ago, I stumbled into a video by our own TheOnlyOne's Youtube channel and a quest called Death's Power. I was in late high school when I discovered this and eventually found BikdipOnABus' channel and his 1.92 beta 183 tutorial.

[Anthus]

My dad installed ZC 1.83 back in the summer of 2000 while I was in California. I played the BS version a lot and joined agn and Pure in January of 2005.

[The Satellite]

I don't even remember, to be honest. Maybe a Google hit. I only remember for certain that I found ZeldaClassic.com first, and a friend pointed me to PureZC, also Hero of Dreams. Rest was history.

 

Said friend did later join PureZC, but didn't really post or stick around. Hasn't logged in since 2007. In fact, I haven't seen him in person in almost that long either...

[4matsy]

Back in...late 1999 or early 2000, I think? It was not too long after I first got internet access in late '99...I found a page on classicgaming.com that linked to several remakes of old/retro games. The page is gone now, but yeah, ZC was one of them. So I joined the AGN forums (which, at the time, were pretty active, since ZC had just started development some months ago and the editor was nearing its first public release) and eventually the editor came out and then there was demo.qst and new.qst and then 1.84 or 1.90 or whatever version had all those new items in it and it was awesome.

 

I made an account on PureZC sometime in 2002, not long after it first opened. Didn't do much but lurk though. During that time, my ISP changed, so when it came time to actually make use of the account in 2004, I couldn't receive the password because of the changed email address. The only staff online at the time happened to be Teilyr, so I emailed him through the forums, and he reset the password, and I thanked him.