No matter how many times I remind myself, I have and probably always will continue to pronounce Arkista's Ring with an extra R. It's like how people call the local grocery chain Krogers instead of Kroger, it just sounds more natural to say it wrong. NO RAGRETS! :)
After diving back into some classic NES games thanks to the expanding library they've ported to the Switch, this kind of retrospective is just what I'm really looking to dig into. Thanks so much, looking forward to part 2!
You made an error. Hydlide is not a Zelda clone, rather Zelda is a clone of Hydlide. Hydlide predates the release of Legend of Zelda by two years as it was released in 1984 (not on it's NES port however which was released 1986, same year as Zelda). Instead you should have given a special mention to Hydlide at the end, and how Legend of Zelda was either influenced by or ripped it off, especially it's gameplay/screen transitions, etc, but how Zelda vastly improved upon and is far superior to it.
You are correct in that Hydlide came out first. My point with this series is just to highlight other games that are close in gameplay or design to some of the more famous NES titles.
I recently started delving into Faria. What I decided to do right off the bat although it's very boring and tedious was grind for about 3 days of playing outside the first town until I built myself up enough that I wasn't dying constantly. Yes emulation safe spots and online walkthroughs are a huge help! There are bosses in the dungeons
@@BigOleWords I have been enjoying it but it's definitely not for everyone. I probably could have started the actual game with less grinding & been ok, but as most I'm not big on bringing so I figured I'd get it out of the way early. It would be better if the imhit detection wasn't so weird. But I don't like turn based combat at all but like other aspects of RPGs, so it fills a niche that not a lot of NEE games do.
I played fester's quest as a child and I finished it on my nes. Really hard until you upgrade your weapon and health bar. Hard and somewhat frustrating, but finishing it was very satisfying as I really felt badass for finishing such a hard game! Later, as a young adult (but still many years ago!), nostalgia came to me and I played it again on an emulator (my nes is gone due to a flooding :'( ) and I found that odd reset point too! I downloaded other roms and emulators and as far as I can understand this is really a bug that happens to many roms found online (possibly the same source shared over and over?) and there is no way around it; I finally found a rom that worked and that's it, I finished it again. Oh and yes, there are boss fights and they are quite cool IMHO, and quite hard especially the last one if you don't know what to do.
@@dpgreene They're actually not too bad to map, but you have to know the trick to it - they're on a 16x16 grid but the boundaries wrap instead of being a hard boundary. So if you started with graphing paper and laid out a 16x16 square border, you could start with the first room in any position that you wanted and branch out the map from room to room, making sure to wrap to the other side of the square once you pass the edge. Sadly, 6 year old me didn't understand the concept of border wrapping and so my dungeon maps were multiple pages of graphing paper with repeating rooms.
Some of these games mixing real time combat with RPG mechanics reminds me of the NES game Venus Wars (based on the anime), which had tactical RPG elements mixed with racing combat for the battle scenes. Much like how most shooters today have XP systems and similar RPG elements, it's interesting to see how even in the 80s devs were trying to mix genres to create unique fusions of games they loved playing themselves.
Buddy, your passion for the NES and its library is phenomenal. Every time I finish one of your videos I ask, "surely he's run out of material on the NES now!" And every time there's another banger just around the corner. When I finally start dipping my toes into that wonderful system, at least I'll have a top class Sherpa to guide me through its wonders. Keep 'em coming my friend 😎👍
I enjoyed Fester's Quest but I grew up with the PAL version which is the best version to play (it fixed some annoying issues compared to the NTSC version). The game does have dungeons, although they are in 3D and they do include a boss fight at the end. Don't know what happened to your game though when it reset to the title screen, never happened to me.
@@BigOleWords Yes "R" is correct, def. check that shit out! the difference is night & day (All enemies and bosses take less hits for them to be killed, and the projectiles fired from the gun can go through walls and obstacles). I love your videos, keep it up.
I actually really like Fester's Quest, but it's got to be the PAL version. It fixes the hit detection issues, and bullets pass through walls in the PAL version instead if being absorbed by them. It really makes the game much more fun and playable.
Very cool to see these Zelda-like games on the NES. Such a great series. Deadly Towers was indeed a turd - I remember my disappointment playing it (despite some cool artwork on the cover) back in the day!
I have a soft spot for Fester's Quest. Yes, the game play is dull and you can't use your weapons most of the time, but something about it is cozy as hell.
Interesting, I never considered Fester's Quest to be a Zelda clone but the more I think about it, the similarities are there. Also that game is brutal as it has no checkpoints in the game until you get to the last area.
Fester's Quest seems to be the most popular one in the comments here. That's the only one I have other than those mentioned in the intro. I always liked Addams Family better, but I never beat either one. I don't hate Fester's Quest. It just takes more patience than most people are willing to give it thanks to our collective idiotic short attention spans.
I'm surprised Willow wasn't mentioned. As a kid, I remember seeing the preview coverage in Nintendo Power magazine and thinking that was a super Zelda game. While the gameplay wasn't as polished, I'd still classify it as a Zelda clone.
Wow.. I'm sitting here, in my 30s, having played, owned, rented, or borrowed untold dozens if not hundreds of NES games growing up, finding out about COUNTLESS more online in the last couple decades, and playing nearly all of them via emulation, virtual consoles, modern re-releases or however else possible, I'm at a point where I'm 100% positive I've played or at least know a good deal about EVERY single game ever released for the system in any region, and yet still, *STILL* I find brand new ones i've NEVER heard of, like Faria here... which despite your claims of how difficult it is I find myself kinda dying to try, considering how much I adore action-rpgs of any kind... Not only are you a really cool youtube channel that really takes me back to the good old early era of the platform when almost everyone was just people chillin' talking about retro games or whatever hobbies they have, which is super relaxing and nostalgic, but you're doing the impossible and showing me games that somehow to this day escaped my attention... good stuff man.
Hey thanks for saying that! Faria is really hard and requires a very dedicated amount of grinding without taking damage. It may get really fun after that, but I haven’t pushed it any further.
Faria has a bell curve of fun. It starts off really hard and gets easier as you progress through the game and gain more weapons/abilities, but once you reach the ice caves and ice tower the difficulty gets dialed up to 11. Having a written guide is required to figure out the correct path to take in the ice maze (78 possible cave entrances to navigate, think Death Mountain from Zelda 2 but far worse). You need a flashlight and batteries to navigate the caves, and once your batteries run out the screen turns pitch black.
I think the most blatant Zelda-clone I ever played was a DOS game called God of Thunder. There are some screens which I think are tile for tile identical to screens in Link's Awakening and Link to the Past. The gameplay is a little different, because instead of a short pokey-stick sword, you have Mjolnir, which you can sling most of the way across the screen, and it returns to you. Despite the extremely basic Gauntlet style "run directly at the player" enemy AI, planning your throws added some complexity to the combat, because, while Mjolnir damages enemies on the way out and on the way back, you're defenseless while it's in flight.
Also, as a 90s PC gamer, my first thought on Akista's Ring wasn't "oh, like Gauntlet", it was "oh, like Catacomb", but Catacomb is pretty clearly a clone of Gauntlet, in many ways.
Hey man! The algorithm just started recommending your channel to me, and I got to say, really good stuff so far! Keep up the good work - liked and subscribed!
Fester's quest has some amazing music though! I heard that the guy programming it got sick of it and just finnished it sloppily just to get it over with.
If you wanna get anal about things, TECHNICALLY Metroid was originally referred to as "search action" which is something that would definitely allow you to put Metroid and Zelda under the same banner as. Which is cool since they're both dissimilar but oddly specific in terms of design.
Guardian Legend has to be high up in the Zelda clones, at least for me. Complex dungeons paired with increasingly hard shmups, a lot of fun items and things to do. My grandpa beat this game while I just watched in awe. And that soundtrack still bangs ❤️
Awesome video! Awesome Series! I remember sinking a lot of time into Festers Quest as a kid but never completing it. Played it more recently and know why. 😂 Gotta head over to check out part 2 now. 🤙🏻
The US release festers quest had a glitch when up grading the gun it was to be way more powerful if you played on a EU ver you got what it was meant to be and was lot more fun because it wasn't a slog to just move about
@@BigOleWords Thanks for responding . but yeah like maxed out gun for the US did like only 4 damage where the PAL did 8 there was also a timer on the health of the US enemies each where you had a small time limit to get the next hit it or else the enemy would get all of its health back.
Subbed, hope you feature Ys for part 2, i love Nihon Falcom Corporation game. Ys Origin was awesome. I will probably need to replay it with the hack to have Adol's route.
I think Hydlide intended the character to be fairly weak and for the players to use some planning in how they go about attacking, as melee has some strategy and the enemies present a bit of a puzzle. If you attack the back or side of an enemy while they're moving in a certain direction there's a very high probability you will do a lot of damage very quickly to enemies within your level and the enemy will do little to none, provided they don't turn in your direction suddenly. It's a risk/reward based strategy, which requires retreating, patience and stalking the target/waiting for isolation, and I would honestly call it partially a stealth-based RPG. The Ys (1-2 and 4-5) has a similar mechanic. I almost beat Hydlide using this strategy when I was under 10, and am planning to revisit it as an adult sometime with faster reflexes... just have a million and forty-six over games to play and very little time XD
Great video as always. Can’t wait for the second half. A few of these I hadn’t thought to compare to Zelda before. Now I’m waiting to see how your compare one of my all time favorites with Zelda.😁👊
Fester's Quest does have boss fights once you find a building with a pseudo-3D maze. I don't think I've had the game reboot when entering the building.
Fantastic video! I love the Zelda Scale, brilliant! Are you planning on expanding to Zelda clones on other consoles, or are you just sticking to the NES library?
There are some good ones out there! That’s tough though. I really like the collecting part of these videos and while I have games like Beyond Oasis and Crusader of Centy, I’m too gun shy to spend the money on consoles I’m not as into like Golden Axe Warrior or Neutopia I and II. All of those are really fun though, so maybe!
@@BigOleWords I feel ya there. A lot of these games are in the "if you haven't gotten them already, you're out of luck," realm. Either way you go, I'm sure it will be good. Thanks
Neutopia 2 is my favorite Zelda clone. I played a demo at Incredible Universe and loved it so much that my parents got us a Turbo Express for Christmas.
Honestly, it's funny that you mentioned Metroid to begin with, because according to the late Gunpei Yokoi, Metroid was both inspired by, and took elements from Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda... So, Nintendo essentially ripped off their own games. Lol But as a massive Metroid fan, I'm glad they did it.
I got my copies of Faxanadu and Fester's quest in the mail today And Hydlide is one of the few NES games I have beaten nice to see some of those games here! also Deadly Towers for the win!
@@BigOleWords I have been playing it a ton and I have been enjoying it here is my Password to see how far I am (Assuming You will bother to put it in) y4o4gQskCABoQhCBg
Great video! I'm curious though, any reason you didn't specifically list medieval/fantasy elements as one of your criteria? Is that because it's not a gameplay element and more of a content element?
From what I’ve seen, there are a ton of solid zeldaesque home brews out there. I don’t have a ton of experience with them honestly, but it is an area of the NES I’d like to become more familiar with for sure :)
@@BigOleWords yeah, some of them are mindblowing. Lookin forward to the superdelayed game full qiet for example, that one will probably be worth the loooong wait. Check it out
Man, I was hoping you would mention Faxanadu, and you kinda did, just to say you don't... I still love that game, Faxanadus soundtrack is so awsome. If you gonna make a Zelda 2 video you should talk about the first Castlevania, as Zelda 2 is inspired by it, or a clone itself :). Also since you only mention NES games, no Golvellius I guess, but it is a Zelda clone that's actually fun to play.
Fester's Quest is a LOT easier with a NES Advantage with the turbo attack tuned just right. Once you get the difficulty down it's not a bad game, I remember having a blast with it when I was a kid - in fact, my whole family would gather around to trade off and watch the gameplay. Misunderstood gem in my book.
That does sound way easier and more fun considering how much shooting was required to kill anything! Honestly though, I can’t really get into the Max or the Advantage. Never quite feels right!
@@BigOleWords Basically. I've been binging your content and you've noted that the only place to get games near your home as a kid was basically a big gas station, I was thinking maybe it was a major drive to the nearest arcade games and you may not have spent a lot of time playing them vs your home console?
@@TheWarmotor I don't remember mentioning a gas station! I grew up in a big city so we had the usual Kaybee/Toys R Us/Blockbuster kind of spots to buy and rent games. We had arcade games everywhere, but I can only really think of arcade specific place back in the day. For sure mostly played at home or at other friend's houses though.
It's a shame Deadly Towers is so bad, I've always enjoyed the music and the weird aesthetic. It does have possibly the largest game world on the NES though, it's absolutely enormous. There's something like 10 dungeons with each being a 16x16 room grid that's almost entirely filled.
@@BigOleWords At the very least, it's less cluttered and has more open space than Fester's Quest does, so I think it would be more favorable regardless. lol
I find it interesting that you classified Metroid as a Zelda clone. I've always lumped the Metroid series and Zelda series together as well, mainly because both franchises focus on finding items that increase your ability to access locations in the game world, but neither were RPGs with experience points and levels. In the Super NES days, Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past would both scratch the same itch for me.
I had Deadly Towers as a kid. Played the bajeezus out of it. Got nowhere. I beat Zelda, Zelda II, Contra (no death), Rad Racer, Metroid...I only beat one boss in DT. The bear guy.
Yeah now when I do these videos I try to make them into one video because I'm not a big fan of splitting the content, but this one was way to long. I'm learning though!
@@BigOleWords all good. And when I did find your Crystalis entry, you did say it was probably the truest Zelda clone on the system and one of the best overall games. I was pretty happy with that. Had a great experience with that game as a kid back when nobody else knew what the hell it was.
I wouldn't consider Metroid a Zelda clone at all, They were developed at more less the same time so it's not like Metroid was inspired by Zelda's success. And Metroid is action-oriented whereas Zelda is more about strategy. Metroid isn't as much of a sandbox/open world either, the game is pretty good at nudging you in the right direction. Fester's Quest was essentially a re-hash of Blaster Master (well at least the sewer levels). I had that game as a kid and I forced myself to get through it... I think. Difficult game to beat without the game genie. I hope part 2 includes The Guardian Legend and Metal Gear. Add Rambo to your Zelda 2 clone list (at least certain parts)
I see what you mean, but it’s not really about when it was developed as games like Hydlide predate Zelda. More just about similar elements than anything.
Isn’t Zelda more of a Hydlide clone (which is in turn a Tower of Druaga clone)? While NES Hydlide came out ridiculously late in the US it was an early famicom title in Japan a port of an even older JP PC game.
It does predate Zelda for sure. I think my point with this was more games similar to Zelda more than direct clones (although a lot of these are total ripoffs). “Clones” was just the easiest descriptor.
Yeah, I am pretty sure the "official" story of Zelda and Zelda 2 is a lie. Zelda is a Hydlide clone with better combat and Zelda 2 is a Xanadu clone, again, with better combat. They just didn't want to admit that they were just cloning successful games, so they created the "official" story.
@@BigOleWords blaster master, ufouria, legacy of the wizard, adventure island 4.....and then bridging back to megaman are games like bionic commando and strider.
I really don't think it's fair to lump hydlide as a clone, considering it came out on home computers many years before Zelda. I guess you could say Zelda sort of cloned it but did all the elements correctly.
If you think Faria's combat is cute. Go play S-Word of Vermilion on the Sega Genesis. Then come back and tell me how much you more you want to see that s**t in old school RPGs.
I mean I'm using the word pretty loosely here, but yeah many of them are directly basing their design off of a specific game. And I would absolutely argue that most early Jrpgs were merely working off the Dragon Warrior formula.
@@BigOleWords Even if you get maps from an FAQ, it's super tough. The GaoGao name/password is there for a leg up, though! I drew maps for the first two dungeons, which I might still have in a middle school notebook.
No matter how many times I remind myself, I have and probably always will continue to pronounce Arkista's Ring with an extra R. It's like how people call the local grocery chain Krogers instead of Kroger, it just sounds more natural to say it wrong. NO RAGRETS! :)
Looking forward to the video on metroid clones.
Please look into snes games too
Agreed.
People do that with Kroger here in SC as well,drives me nuts lol
Is it just me or did he forget *Willow* was that game nothing like Legend of Zelda ?
@@joezar33 I talked about it in Part 2! ua-cam.com/video/0LeXd_ecIIU/v-deo.html
4:37 don't forget Rambo!
That game straight up steals the Zelda II game engine.
After diving back into some classic NES games thanks to the expanding library they've ported to the Switch, this kind of retrospective is just what I'm really looking to dig into. Thanks so much, looking forward to part 2!
Hey thanks!
You made an error. Hydlide is not a Zelda clone, rather Zelda is a clone of Hydlide. Hydlide predates the release of Legend of Zelda by two years as it was released in 1984 (not on it's NES port however which was released 1986, same year as Zelda). Instead you should have given a special mention to Hydlide at the end, and how Legend of Zelda was either influenced by or ripped it off, especially it's gameplay/screen transitions, etc, but how Zelda vastly improved upon and is far superior to it.
You are correct in that Hydlide came out first. My point with this series is just to highlight other games that are close in gameplay or design to some of the more famous NES titles.
I recently started delving into Faria. What I decided to do right off the bat although it's very boring and tedious was grind for about 3 days of playing outside the first town until I built myself up enough that I wasn't dying constantly.
Yes emulation safe spots and online walkthroughs are a huge help!
There are bosses in the dungeons
Yeah that’s exactly why I can’t get into it, I just don’t have the patience to grind it out! Does it get fun after that?
@@BigOleWords I have been enjoying it but it's definitely not for everyone. I probably could have started the actual game with less grinding & been ok, but as most I'm not big on bringing so I figured I'd get it out of the way early. It would be better if the imhit detection wasn't so weird. But I don't like turn based combat at all but like other aspects of RPGs, so it fills a niche that not a lot of NEE games do.
I played fester's quest as a child and I finished it on my nes. Really hard until you upgrade your weapon and health bar. Hard and somewhat frustrating, but finishing it was very satisfying as I really felt badass for finishing such a hard game! Later, as a young adult (but still many years ago!), nostalgia came to me and I played it again on an emulator (my nes is gone due to a flooding :'( ) and I found that odd reset point too! I downloaded other roms and emulators and as far as I can understand this is really a bug that happens to many roms found online (possibly the same source shared over and over?) and there is no way around it; I finally found a rom that worked and that's it, I finished it again. Oh and yes, there are boss fights and they are quite cool IMHO, and quite hard especially the last one if you don't know what to do.
Glad it happened to someone else, I was really confused!
i had an NES advantage, so festers quest was a breeze for me. i ran through the entire game with rapid fire on.
Fester’s Quest is greatness.
The real kicker in Deadly Towers as a kid was finding a dungeon, and then trying to map it. It was absurd.
Yeah that sounds tedious.
The 9 dungeons are like 300 rooms each. It’s just insane. I gave up mapping them pretty quickly.
@@dpgreene They're actually not too bad to map, but you have to know the trick to it - they're on a 16x16 grid but the boundaries wrap instead of being a hard boundary. So if you started with graphing paper and laid out a 16x16 square border, you could start with the first room in any position that you wanted and branch out the map from room to room, making sure to wrap to the other side of the square once you pass the edge.
Sadly, 6 year old me didn't understand the concept of border wrapping and so my dungeon maps were multiple pages of graphing paper with repeating rooms.
What an awful game. More or less unplayable. My heart goes out to the little version of you on the birthday is Xmas when you got Deadly Towers.
Some of these games mixing real time combat with RPG mechanics reminds me of the NES game Venus Wars (based on the anime), which had tactical RPG elements mixed with racing combat for the battle scenes. Much like how most shooters today have XP systems and similar RPG elements, it's interesting to see how even in the 80s devs were trying to mix genres to create unique fusions of games they loved playing themselves.
Interesting, I’ve never hear of Venus Wars! I’ll have to look into it.
Buddy, your passion for the NES and its library is phenomenal. Every time I finish one of your videos I ask, "surely he's run out of material on the NES now!" And every time there's another banger just around the corner. When I finally start dipping my toes into that wonderful system, at least I'll have a top class Sherpa to guide me through its wonders. Keep 'em coming my friend 😎👍
Haha we’re still at base camp buddy! Plenty more climbs up NES mountain ahead.
I enjoyed Fester's Quest but I grew up with the PAL version which is the best version to play (it fixed some annoying issues compared to the NTSC version).
The game does have dungeons, although they are in 3D and they do include a boss fight at the end.
Don't know what happened to your game though when it reset to the title screen, never happened to me.
I’ll have to check out the PAL version, I didn’t realize there was a difference!
@@BigOleWords Yes "R" is correct, def. check that shit out! the difference is night & day (All enemies and bosses take less hits for them to be killed, and
the projectiles fired from the gun can go through walls and obstacles). I love your videos, keep it up.
Definitely check it out, it's a lot better!
Here's a detailed video of the differences ->
ua-cam.com/video/eZc3S0gSEg0/v-deo.html
I actually really like Fester's Quest, but it's got to be the PAL version. It fixes the hit detection issues, and bullets pass through walls in the PAL version instead if being absorbed by them. It really makes the game much more fun and playable.
Very cool to see these Zelda-like games on the NES. Such a great series. Deadly Towers was indeed a turd - I remember my disappointment playing it (despite some cool artwork on the cover) back in the day!
YES! Haha Fester’s Quest! Excellent video, buddy. An incredibly entertaining watch. Nicely done!
Hey thanks bud!
I have a soft spot for Fester's Quest. Yes, the game play is dull and you can't use your weapons most of the time, but something about it is cozy as hell.
I think if I had it back in the day I'd stick with it longer.
Always appreciate a good clone. Excellent videos lately. Glad the dropped hard drive didn't set you back too much. Take care out there🤙
Hey thanks so much!
Wait there are two parts to Zelda clones 😲 I didn't realize there were so many 🤔 But I'm glad to hear of all these 😁
Yep! I think for future editions I’ll combine them into one long video
Neutopia for the TG16 is the most Zelda-like clone ANYWHERE.
Fester's Quest always makes me smile.
You’re alone there ;)
I love this series! So often I find a game I like and am always interested in finding series similar.
Awesome! Yeah it's a fun one to do.
Interesting, I never considered Fester's Quest to be a Zelda clone but the more I think about it, the similarities are there. Also that game is brutal as it has no checkpoints in the game until you get to the last area.
All the games in this video are more subtle Zelda clones than the ones in part 2 for sure. I’ll have to take your word for it on the last area!
Fester's Quest seems to be the most popular one in the comments here. That's the only one I have other than those mentioned in the intro. I always liked Addams Family better, but I never beat either one. I don't hate Fester's Quest. It just takes more patience than most people are willing to give it thanks to our collective idiotic short attention spans.
I'm surprised Willow wasn't mentioned. As a kid, I remember seeing the preview coverage in Nintendo Power magazine and thinking that was a super Zelda game. While the gameplay wasn't as polished, I'd still classify it as a Zelda clone.
It's in part 2! ua-cam.com/video/0LeXd_ecIIU/v-deo.html
Having beaten Fester's Quest, I can attest that there are dungeons and boss fights. The boss designs and fights remind me strongly of Blaster Master.
Props to you, I never make it that far
Very cool! I know for me the coolest one is Star Tropics! I still haven't beaten it, but it is a fun one. Cheers and have a great weekend!
My dad beat Fester’s Quest back in the day. It’s a brutal game but does have some cool boss fights.
Damn dude, just trying to make me feel old! ;)
@@BigOleWords hell I’m 43 he was in his 30’s when he played it
By the way love your channel. Thinking of starting one with my kids as they love playing my old consoles more than the new ones.
Wow.. I'm sitting here, in my 30s, having played, owned, rented, or borrowed untold dozens if not hundreds of NES games growing up, finding out about COUNTLESS more online in the last couple decades, and playing nearly all of them via emulation, virtual consoles, modern re-releases or however else possible, I'm at a point where I'm 100% positive I've played or at least know a good deal about EVERY single game ever released for the system in any region, and yet still, *STILL* I find brand new ones i've NEVER heard of, like Faria here... which despite your claims of how difficult it is I find myself kinda dying to try, considering how much I adore action-rpgs of any kind...
Not only are you a really cool youtube channel that really takes me back to the good old early era of the platform when almost everyone was just people chillin' talking about retro games or whatever hobbies they have, which is super relaxing and nostalgic, but you're doing the impossible and showing me games that somehow to this day escaped my attention... good stuff man.
Hey thanks for saying that! Faria is really hard and requires a very dedicated amount of grinding without taking damage. It may get really fun after that, but I haven’t pushed it any further.
Faria has a bell curve of fun. It starts off really hard and gets easier as you progress through the game and gain more weapons/abilities, but once you reach the ice caves and ice tower the difficulty gets dialed up to 11. Having a written guide is required to figure out the correct path to take in the ice maze (78 possible cave entrances to navigate, think Death Mountain from Zelda 2 but far worse). You need a flashlight and batteries to navigate the caves, and once your batteries run out the screen turns pitch black.
Another good Zelda-like is Willow.
Just stumbled on your channel. Between the NES content and the Mr. Show sound bite in the title, I couldn’t sub fast enough
Two of my favorite things right there!
If you do a Zelda 2 one, Rambo is a must include. I'd say Ghoul School and Stanley potentially as well
Interesting! I wouldn’t have considered either if them for the Zelda 2 discussion…
I think the most blatant Zelda-clone I ever played was a DOS game called God of Thunder. There are some screens which I think are tile for tile identical to screens in Link's Awakening and Link to the Past. The gameplay is a little different, because instead of a short pokey-stick sword, you have Mjolnir, which you can sling most of the way across the screen, and it returns to you. Despite the extremely basic Gauntlet style "run directly at the player" enemy AI, planning your throws added some complexity to the combat, because, while Mjolnir damages enemies on the way out and on the way back, you're defenseless while it's in flight.
Also, as a 90s PC gamer, my first thought on Akista's Ring wasn't "oh, like Gauntlet", it was "oh, like Catacomb", but Catacomb is pretty clearly a clone of Gauntlet, in many ways.
That actually looks pretty interesting, thanks!
Hey man! The algorithm just started recommending your channel to me, and I got to say, really good stuff so far! Keep up the good work - liked and subscribed!
Hey thanks so much, glad you dig it :)
I love Fester's Quest!
There is a really nice improvement hack out there that solves a lot of those issues too.
I’ve heard good things about that hack!
Metroid: Not an open world, but the world opens up.
Fester's quest has some amazing music though! I heard that the guy programming it got sick of it and just finnished it sloppily just to get it over with.
That would explain a lot!
Oh I’ll check it out
Really like your videos, just stumbled across your channel and subbed. Good stuff!
Hey thanks so much!
Would have loved to see The Guardian Legend mentioned here; it's just about the best Zelda-like game for the NES.
Part two! Legend of Zelda Clone Games for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) Pt. 2
ua-cam.com/video/0LeXd_ecIIU/v-deo.html
If you wanna get anal about things, TECHNICALLY Metroid was originally referred to as "search action" which is something that would definitely allow you to put Metroid and Zelda under the same banner as. Which is cool since they're both dissimilar but oddly specific in terms of design.
Man I love that term “search action”. Perfect!
That Arkista's Ring is giving me some Gauntlet vibes.
Very much so.
Guardian Legend has to be high up in the Zelda clones, at least for me. Complex dungeons paired with increasingly hard shmups, a lot of fun items and things to do. My grandpa beat this game while I just watched in awe.
And that soundtrack still bangs ❤️
Awesome video! Awesome Series! I remember sinking a lot of time into Festers Quest as a kid but never completing it. Played it more recently and know why. 😂 Gotta head over to check out part 2 now. 🤙🏻
Hey thanks!
The US release festers quest had a glitch when up grading the gun it was to be way more powerful if you played on a EU ver you got what it was meant to be and was lot more fun because it wasn't a slog to just move about
I’ve heard people say the PAL version was much better and that makes sense why!
@@BigOleWords Thanks for responding . but yeah like maxed out gun for the US did like only 4 damage where the PAL did 8 there was also a timer on the health of the US enemies each where you had a small time limit to get the next hit it or else the enemy would get all of its health back.
I'm like one of the few people who likes Fester's Quest. The levels aren't nearly so laborious after the first.
I've heard that it gets easier and that the Euro version is way more streamlined, but I can't stick with it.
Like a good many awful game on the NES, sometimes the only redeeming thing is their cover art. Deadly Towers ticks that box, I love that painting.
It’s pretty amazing! I actually talked about it in this video about bad games with great covers: ua-cam.com/video/lXBhPAOIHW8/v-deo.html
Technically, Zelda is a Hydlide clone if anything. Hydlide on MSX was a few years ealier.
Subbed, hope you feature Ys for part 2, i love Nihon Falcom Corporation game. Ys Origin was awesome. I will probably need to replay it with the hack to have Adol's route.
Hmm probably just sticking to the NES for now but at some point :)
I think Hydlide intended the character to be fairly weak and for the players to use some planning in how they go about attacking, as melee has some strategy and the enemies present a bit of a puzzle. If you attack the back or side of an enemy while they're moving in a certain direction there's a very high probability you will do a lot of damage very quickly to enemies within your level and the enemy will do little to none, provided they don't turn in your direction suddenly. It's a risk/reward based strategy, which requires retreating, patience and stalking the target/waiting for isolation, and I would honestly call it partially a stealth-based RPG. The Ys (1-2 and 4-5) has a similar mechanic. I almost beat Hydlide using this strategy when I was under 10, and am planning to revisit it as an adult sometime with faster reflexes... just have a million and forty-six over games to play and very little time XD
Great video as always. Can’t wait for the second half. A few of these I hadn’t thought to compare to Zelda before. Now I’m waiting to see how your compare one of my all time favorites with Zelda.😁👊
Thanks! These are definitely more subtle than the part two games for sure :)
Fester's Quest does have boss fights once you find a building with a pseudo-3D maze.
I don't think I've had the game reboot when entering the building.
Might've just been a freak thing.
@@BigOleWords Or perhaps either a poor connection or a faulty mapper chip.
Doesn't Hydlide actually predate The Legend of Zelda? So if anything, Zelda improved on what Hydlide was trying to establish.
Yes it does!
Another great watch Ole
I played crystalis before zelda and i remember being like "wtf they ripped off crystalis?!" 😂 ah to be a kid again.
Haha sounds like something I would’ve said!
Fantastic video! I love the Zelda Scale, brilliant! Are you planning on expanding to Zelda clones on other consoles, or are you just sticking to the NES library?
There are some good ones out there! That’s tough though. I really like the collecting part of these videos and while I have games like Beyond Oasis and Crusader of Centy, I’m too gun shy to spend the money on consoles I’m not as into like Golden Axe Warrior or Neutopia I and II. All of those are really fun though, so maybe!
@@BigOleWords I feel ya there. A lot of these games are in the "if you haven't gotten them already, you're out of luck," realm. Either way you go, I'm sure it will be good. Thanks
The main reason I love Metroid is because it combines both gameplay styles of Mario and Zelda.
I passed Fester's Quest with save states. One of the most satisfying times i ever had with a game i could never beat as a kid.
Yeah that’s the only way to go with this game.
I bought Fester's Quest back then so I...finished it...yes...it was painful but a real challenge.
Props to you!
Ah, for your video on Zelda II, don't forget Rambo! Lmao.
I'll throw some Rambo in there for sure!
Neutopia 2 is my favorite Zelda clone. I played a demo at Incredible Universe and loved it so much that my parents got us a Turbo Express for Christmas.
Damn, you had a Turbo Express?! That’s the holy grail right there!
Great selection here 👍
People need to stop pretending Zelda is not a Metroidvania. It has all the defining elements of the genre.
When i played landstalker i used to keep walking into the monsters because i forget it was different than ys
Land stalker is probably the most frustrating platformer I can think of!
Honestly, it's funny that you mentioned Metroid to begin with, because according to the late Gunpei Yokoi, Metroid was both inspired by, and took elements from Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda... So, Nintendo essentially ripped off their own games. Lol
But as a massive Metroid fan, I'm glad they did it.
For sure. It definitely has that spirit but with it's own twists.
If you're willing to deal with some early grind, Faria is actually pretty good though that is a big "if" I realize.
I've tried a few times and cannot make it past the first dungeon. One day!
For zelda 2 clones there's also Stanley: the search for Dr. Livingston.
I feel like I’m the only person who liked Deadly Towers as a kid
I got my copies of Faxanadu and Fester's quest in the mail today And Hydlide is one of the few NES games I have beaten nice to see some of those games here! also Deadly Towers for the win!
Wow dude really rounding out the collection! Faxanadu rules!
@@BigOleWords I have been playing it a ton and I have been enjoying it here is my Password to see how far I am (Assuming You will bother to put it in)
y4o4gQskCABoQhCBg
Great video! I'm curious though, any reason you didn't specifically list medieval/fantasy elements as one of your criteria? Is that because it's not a gameplay element and more of a content element?
Hmmm I don't know if ever really thought of Zelda as fantasy! I mean it is clearly but I never made the connection!
You really know your shit man! Would be fun if you slide in some homebrews in this series in the future, like easter eggs or whatnot
From what I’ve seen, there are a ton of solid zeldaesque home brews out there. I don’t have a ton of experience with them honestly, but it is an area of the NES I’d like to become more familiar with for sure :)
@@BigOleWords yeah, some of them are mindblowing. Lookin forward to the superdelayed game full qiet for example, that one will probably be worth the loooong wait. Check it out
Man, I was hoping you would mention Faxanadu, and you kinda did, just to say you don't... I still love that game, Faxanadus soundtrack is so awsome. If you gonna make a Zelda 2 video you should talk about the first Castlevania, as Zelda 2 is inspired by it, or a clone itself :). Also since you only mention NES games, no Golvellius I guess, but it is a Zelda clone that's actually fun to play.
Faxanadu is one of my all time favorite games so I’ll definitely discuss it at some point :)
if you can't get far maybe checking some speed runs just to see if it fits in the way you think and may save you some time as well
I do for sure depending on what I’m trying to get out of it!
so glad I found your channel... great channel...
Hey thanks so much :)
2:20 That sound is nowhere near as obnoxious as the low health warning from either Metroid 1 (NES) or Pokémon on the GameBoy (by far the worst, IMHO).
Fester's Quest is a LOT easier with a NES Advantage with the turbo attack tuned just right. Once you get the difficulty down it's not a bad game, I remember having a blast with it when I was a kid - in fact, my whole family would gather around to trade off and watch the gameplay. Misunderstood gem in my book.
That does sound way easier and more fun considering how much shooting was required to kill anything! Honestly though, I can’t really get into the Max or the Advantage. Never quite feels right!
@@BigOleWords Did you have arcade games in your town when you were a kid?
@@TheWarmotor Yep! You mean like if I could play arcade games with a joystick why not the Advantage?
@@BigOleWords Basically. I've been binging your content and you've noted that the only place to get games near your home as a kid was basically a big gas station, I was thinking maybe it was a major drive to the nearest arcade games and you may not have spent a lot of time playing them vs your home console?
@@TheWarmotor I don't remember mentioning a gas station! I grew up in a big city so we had the usual Kaybee/Toys R Us/Blockbuster kind of spots to buy and rent games. We had arcade games everywhere, but I can only really think of arcade specific place back in the day. For sure mostly played at home or at other friend's houses though.
It's a shame Deadly Towers is so bad, I've always enjoyed the music and the weird aesthetic. It does have possibly the largest game world on the NES though, it's absolutely enormous. There's something like 10 dungeons with each being a 16x16 room grid that's almost entirely filled.
12:27 I feel that Addams Family Values would be the more interesting take from Sunsoft, on SNES. Have you played that one?
I have not!
@@BigOleWords At the very least, it's less cluttered and has more open space than Fester's Quest does, so I think it would be more favorable regardless. lol
metroid just got explained like mega man
It did?!?
I find it interesting that you classified Metroid as a Zelda clone. I've always lumped the Metroid series and Zelda series together as well, mainly because both franchises focus on finding items that increase your ability to access locations in the game world, but neither were RPGs with experience points and levels. In the Super NES days, Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past would both scratch the same itch for me.
They’re definitely two sides of the same coin!
I had Deadly Towers as a kid. Played the bajeezus out of it. Got nowhere. I beat Zelda, Zelda II, Contra (no death), Rad Racer, Metroid...I only beat one boss in DT. The bear guy.
I think i made it through one tower. The game does get easier once you leave the opening section, but not anymore fun!
Say what you will, but I liked Fester’s Quest. The bosses were just so damn hard though.
Hey, why isn't Crystalis here?
EDIT: Then I realized the title said "Part 1"
Yeah now when I do these videos I try to make them into one video because I'm not a big fan of splitting the content, but this one was way to long. I'm learning though!
@@BigOleWords all good. And when I did find your Crystalis entry, you did say it was probably the truest Zelda clone on the system and one of the best overall games. I was pretty happy with that. Had a great experience with that game as a kid back when nobody else knew what the hell it was.
Theres way more Zelda 2 clones out there than the 2 on NES. For example, Golden Axe on Game Gear, and the Gargoyle's Quest series on game boy and SNES
Not the Gargoyle's Quest on NES?
@@BigOleWords it got ported?
So the scale is less about how good the game is and more about how close it is to the original zelda?
Haha yep! Although as the similarities to Zelda increase it also tends to mean the game is better :)
Rambo is a Zelda 2 clone!
Zelda 2 > OoT
Don't @ me.
You could argue that Turtles is a Zelda 2 clone. And if you want to include some Famicom in that video I would recommend Getsu fuuma den. Great game!
Man I’m scared to bring Famicom into all this. Like opening a door I cannot close!
I like your channel and your title screen is cool
Hey thanks so much!
Festers Quest is fun! :)
If you say so! ;)
I’m guessing you are also in the Atlanta area given the 5 stripes flag in background. I got season tickets and go to all their games
Yessir! Also a season ticket holder, see you and 50000 people on Saturday ;)
I wouldn't consider Metroid a Zelda clone at all, They were developed at more less the same time so it's not like Metroid was inspired by Zelda's success. And Metroid is action-oriented whereas Zelda is more about strategy. Metroid isn't as much of a sandbox/open world either, the game is pretty good at nudging you in the right direction.
Fester's Quest was essentially a re-hash of Blaster Master (well at least the sewer levels). I had that game as a kid and I forced myself to get through it... I think. Difficult game to beat without the game genie.
I hope part 2 includes The Guardian Legend and Metal Gear.
Add Rambo to your Zelda 2 clone list (at least certain parts)
I see what you mean, but it’s not really about when it was developed as games like Hydlide predate Zelda. More just about similar elements than anything.
Isn’t Zelda more of a Hydlide clone (which is in turn a Tower of Druaga clone)? While NES Hydlide came out ridiculously late in the US it was an early famicom title in Japan a port of an even older JP PC game.
It does predate Zelda for sure. I think my point with this was more games similar to Zelda more than direct clones (although a lot of these are total ripoffs). “Clones” was just the easiest descriptor.
Yeah, I am pretty sure the "official" story of Zelda and Zelda 2 is a lie. Zelda is a Hydlide clone with better combat and Zelda 2 is a Xanadu clone, again, with better combat. They just didn't want to admit that they were just cloning successful games, so they created the "official" story.
Battle of Olympus, Faxanadu and Zelda 2 belong in the same category as Rygar. They are all Metroid-ajacent.
Yeah I think whenever I get to the next clones video I’ll do Zelda 2 and Metroid together
@@BigOleWords blaster master, ufouria, legacy of the wizard, adventure island 4.....and then bridging back to megaman are games like bionic commando and strider.
Why does that house makes you reset? Is that a debugger coding issue? Or a in game glitch? I enjoy Festers Quest. But that bs is wild
I still have no idea
You should have more subs, love your content
Haha not as much as I love that username!
Calling Hydlide a Zelda clone is like calling Coke a Pepsi clone. Hydlide predates Zelda by _two years(!)_ which is impressive.
Except it was horrible
Hydlide was fun after I got older
If you say so! ;)
I really don't think it's fair to lump hydlide as a clone, considering it came out on home computers many years before Zelda. I guess you could say Zelda sort of cloned it but did all the elements correctly.
If you think Faria's combat is cute. Go play S-Word of Vermilion on the Sega Genesis.
Then come back and tell me how much you more you want to see that s**t in old school RPGs.
Man it’s been a while since I’ve played Vermillion!
Are they clones, or just different entries in the same genre? Are all jrpg's clones of final fantasy?
I mean I'm using the word pretty loosely here, but yeah many of them are directly basing their design off of a specific game. And I would absolutely argue that most early Jrpgs were merely working off the Dragon Warrior formula.
Faria is so good and soooo very difficult.
I really should sit down with it and push through, but man it’s insane
@@BigOleWords Even if you get maps from an FAQ, it's super tough. The GaoGao name/password is there for a leg up, though! I drew maps for the first two dungeons, which I might still have in a middle school notebook.
I'd say Prince of Thieves is more of a game trying to be like the CRPGs of the time.