Nostalgia is an awfully funny thing. When I think back, I don’t understand why the Zelda series is so core to my history as a video gamer. I genuinely love the series, but I don’t have the same memories of it that I do of games like Final Fantasy VI (III U.S.), EarthBound, or even the bizarre discovery that was Harvest Moon.

Don’t get me wrong, the memories are there. I loved jumping into the original Zelda and even trying (and being horrible at) Adventure of Link. When A Link to the Past came out it was a game we drooled over. Sketches from the Zelda instruction booklet and official Nintendo strategy guide littered my art pads. I spent hours reading and rereading the history of Zelda in the official Link to the Past strategy guide, and still own the comic book that originally appeared through several volumes of Nintendo Power.

As much as I love the design of the franchise, I don’t know if I’ve ever truly loved the franchise. Which is strange, as seeing the game footage for the upcoming A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS finally spurred me to sit down and replay A Link to the Past over the last few days.

I think what is most surprising in the past few years is to return to old games and see them from a slightly new light. I expect to play these games as habit, completely glossing over some of the more nuanced design choices. Instead, some of them stand out more to me. Walking into the Tower of Hera and noting to my roommate how the switches are organized to lead you a certain direction to explore first, for example. How most of the pieces of heart and other such upgrades are located somewhere near a spot you have to go to. How many secrets are scattered throughout the overworld map, and yet you technically don’t even have to explore it all.

In fact, the world map is perhaps my favorite part. Once you leap to Ocarina of Time the world map is merely a hub. Hyrule field is large and empty. A Link to the Past took the general design concept from the first Zelda, a world with hidden secrets worth exploring, and started to make it much more interesting and memorable. The western portion of the map is dedicated to a forest, a village, and a desert. Up north lies the cathedral, cemetery and a mountain. Northeast holds a series of waterfalls, the Eastern Temple resides in what looks to be a quarry, and a marsh and Lake Hylia to the South. The Dark World is very similar, but the changes to these familiar areas only help to make it all the more memorable.

It’s a clever game in a variety of ways, and truly built off of what made Zelda such a successful title. Link could not only dash, but he could dash into piles of rocks and shatter them, or knock into objects to reveal a pathway or teeter an item to the ground. He not only charges his sword, but he can tap on the walls to see if it’s hollow on the other side and can be bombed. Of course, any tapping is bound to attract every guard in the area.

There’s even a sense of verticality to the game, one of the reasons Miyamoto even stated a desire to take on A Link to the Past on the 3DS. In the very first dungeon link is not only able to climb up and down stairs, he can drop from one height to another and knock soldiers over cliff-faces to their doom. In later levels he is able to fall down holes that take him to other areas of a dungeon, forcing a player to consider how the entire structure has been designed.

The leap from Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time was primarily based on technology and the result. Nintendo could tell a much more cinematic story, but the way you interacted with the world had to change. Ultimately Nintendo brought over what was possible in 3D, and simply supplemented other ideas for what had to be lost or left behind. It’s interesting to see that Nintendo hasn’t gone back to recycle concepts like the cape of invisibility, which also allows Link to wander across spike pits without harm. Perhaps the problem is making the pit of spikes function in 3D.

In any event, this is where it will become a preference of generations. With 3D technology came the difficulty of land creation. To save on loading times and memory, a hub world is necessary. You can’t have one big interesting land like in A Link to the Past, which results in a less natural and, in some ways, more boring Hyrule. Combat also has to completely change, as the semi-arcade nature of foes littering a screen in A Link to the Past simply doesn’t work as well in 3D. Enemies must be reduced, and a player should have the chance to see them. A limited peripheral viewpoint is not as forgiving as a top-down view of a room.

For many of us, Ocarina of Time was certainly impressive, but A Link to the Past still clung to our hearts. It was a huge evolution in gameplay and not just graphics, bringing a lot of great ideas to the table that are unique to its style. Ocarina of Time and the games that follow are almost their own thing.

Yet for someone that has never played the 2D games before, I can understand why they might be put off. While A Link to the Past leaves a lot unsaid, and a player may easily get stuck in certain spots if they don’t go exploring (for example, not buying Zora’s Flippers leaves the player unable to reach the Ice Dungeon in the Dark World, and without the Ice Rod the player may not even be able to defeat the dragon of Turtle Rock), it starts friendly enough without really harassing the player. The hand-holding of modern games is mostly absent.

In addition, the dungeons in the Light World are all mostly straight-forward. They are rather short, even the Tower of Hera, and mostly direct the player in a certain sequence in order to retrieve all the items necessary (map, compass, and the big key with the dungeon treasure on prominent display). While there is some level of difficulty, more with the bosses than anything else, the general enemies don’t often target the player. They simply wander the room, and occasionally they’ll be in a tight spot or cluttered enough that the player will have to take them out.

This changes drastically in the Dark World. The dungeons become much longer and, while they still direct the player to an extent, they are a bit more vague and easy to get lost in. A player will have a variety of paths they can travel open to them, and sometimes back-tracking will be required. Foes will start to target them more often, and as they progress through dungeons there will be invincible objects spitting fireballs and hugging the walls causing even more chaos.

What it comes down to is that the gameplay may seem a bit too easy to a teenager or adult playing for the first time, and if they manage to stick with it then the game will see such a spike in difficulty. Having played the game several times since childhood I’ve learned a number of tricks (not to mention remembering most of the heart container locations from the strategy guide (forgot where four pieces are located this time, though)), but those will not always be available to someone just picking the game up for the first time.

While Ocarina of Time has its own frustrating moments, I can understand playing A Link to the Past and getting sick of the difficulty. Particularly when fighting bosses such as the Moth or Blind the Thief. Some of these boss fights were just the right sort of chaotic and challenging, while others were simply a pain in the ass.

All in all, A Link to the Past was a significant leap in what Zelda was and later became. Ocarina of Time gets most of its best ideas from its predecessor. Yet whether A Link to the Past is truly a better game or not, as I often attested to in my younger days, well, it’s harder to say. Or rather, it’s harder to compare. The games are very different in how they play and how the player approaches them.

Yet I do know that A Link to the Past is still a damn good game, and I cannot wait for A Link Between Worlds.