So recently I've been doing a binge of Exate's old quests, because they had a direct influence on how I would go on to design my own quests, and many of his quests are things I just explicitly grew up with (I can't believe being 23 means you grew up with ZC if you found it soon enough).
I unfortunately started a little out of order, with Mario's Nintendo Crisis, and the demo of the Link to the Darkness Super Duper Remake, but then I decided to start from the beginning afterwards with the original 5 Link to the Darkness quests. My marathon will likely end with Link's Nightmare (I'm not too interested in the Metroid quests, just because I didn't really grow up with those, and also I'm just not really a Metroid person in the first place. But hey, if any of you wanna throw out appreciation for those, go for it!). Maybe I'll replay Ibuprofen and Pessimistic Pizza afterwards, who knows.
Regarding replaying his quests in order though, I actually really like just the sheer volume of ideas that start out in his older quests, and then get expanded on in later ones. Pretty much every single (if not, every single) Exate quest I've played so far has a Forest dungeon of some kind, and it's legitimately entertaining seeing how he expands on the concept, culminating in the Forest Dungeons for both LTTD 5 and the Super Duper Remake. Stuff like Level 1 of Super Duper remake directly taking after Level 3 of Link to the Darkness 5 (Even in song choice) is genuinely cool too. In the early quests too, there's the bog standard "X amount of hearts for the Sword" caves, but then as things go on, you get Sword Dungeons instead, and the Sword Dungeons only improve as you go through more and more of his quests, becoming a common staple with his later quests.
Speaking of common themes with his quests, the play houses are the funniest thing on the planet and I'm genuinely considering putting it in one of my own quests as a direct homage. Exate's quests are also what made me have a weird obsession with two tone tunics as well (For context, like the ones in A Link to the Past). Early on is definitely still the era of combat oriented quest design, and so the balance can be all over the place. Minus the pick a door rooms in LTTD 5, it's probably the best balanced of his early quests, and I really enjoy how it gives you the Mirror Shield immediately in order to allow for a faster jump in difficulty, while making some enemies that would normally be considered mega threatening seem much more mundane (You literally start encountering Cracktorocks post Level 1, and you're not afraid of them because you have the tool to deal with them.).
So yeah, old Exate quests are cool, I'm wondering if anybody else has as much appreciation for them as I feel. If not, though, what are some old quests you yourself have some intense appreciation for?