I spent about an hour figuring out how to get to level 3 when I first got this game as a kid.
Then I spent about a year of non stop playing before me and my brothers finally figured out how to beat the entire thing.
These were the days before the internet and we didn't have access to gaming magazines, comics or even TV shows that showed us how to this. It was all up to us. And the feeling of finally winning felt like we had reached the peak of Mount Everest.
It's a significant work of effort just to learn to read in that game, let alone anything else
It's one of the very best modern love letters to classic Legend of Zelda that I've ever played. Don't look up a guide unless you're really about to quit.
I was in grade school when me and my brothers first started playing this and we played it from start to finish because we never knew that there could be hidden parts to the game at all. I went into high school a year later and one of the first friends I met told me about Warp Zones ... I went and showed my brothers and it was like discovering a hidden message from the Illuminati and we had become part of some sort of secret brotherhood.
After learning about all the warp zones ... then the competition became speed running the game. We thought it was just amazing to be able to play through the entire game in under an hour. I know it can be done in five minutes but we were never that good.
New generations today have no idea what it felt like to discover these things for the first time ever when things like this didn't exist before ... and to live in a world where there was no internet or immediate way to talk or chat with people all over the world. Discovering stuff like this through word of mouth was unbelievable and amazing.
It wasn't until college that I was able to beat super Mario land on Gameboy. Spent a couple weeks of dedicated practice. Even then it was only because I stumbled ass-first into a way to generate lives and 80 was barely enough
The days before we had access to Nintendo Power were difficult, but damn it was fun. I remember finding the warp zone in 1-2 my first time. I remember my cousin, after missing the warp zone, accidentally finding the infinite underwater level.