I didn't want to review anything in the opening post, so here are some of my thoughts.

First, I think that at least four of the quests here are solid enough to have won had none of the other three been entered, though if I am to be a bit more pedantic about it then I would say I have no problem with any one of two quests being the 5th quest. These are BigJoe's and MischaPetya's, so for arguments sake I would give each of them a normalized score of 100. Back to this in a bit.

Another quest that was extremely solid all the way through was Chris Millers entry. The problem I had here was that I couldn't really enjoy it as much because it way too easy, and everything was one and done. Really well made later levels though--just a side note. I found out this quest was originally intended to be a 4th entry and was not finished in time and redone for the 5th; too bad, it would probably have been the front-runner 4th quest to beat.

The next quest that was simply too easy for me too enjoy was Hero Of Fire's entry. I zipped through the middle dungeons so fast that I barely remember much about them--besides some really interesting door mechanics done with scripts. Also entirely way too much rupee grinding in the beginning for my taste. Some good ideas but I wouldn't be able to place it any higher on the list than 6th.

Then we have the next group which were somewhat comparable: Nightmare's quest and LFF's quest. Both of these were very fun and had a generally solid gameplay and difficulty curve all the way through, though had slightly less NES compatibility in different ways and weren't quite as consistent all the way through like the top two picks. If it weren't for Nightmare having trees in LV.2 or the middle dungeons being far too linear I might actually place this entry in the top-tier. -- Fun thought: Hey, what if we combined these two quests into one super 5th quest? I think we'd have a really fun top-tier quest here! ...Where's _L_ when you need him?


And that brings me back around to BigJoe and MischaPetya:

MischaPetya: Best "modern design" quest with NES paradigms. Very strong entry. Excellent difficulty balance in the original version (The DX needs tweaking). If I have any complaints it would be these: 1) A little stingy giving out dungeon items. I felt that Links arsenal was very light for most of the early levels. 2) A lot of passageways. This probably cannot be helped without direct warps though, so, "just sayin'" I guess. 3) Very long quest.

BigJoe: High NES consistency without being boring. Very hard but good balance. Original music. If I have any complaints about this one it would be: 1) Some of the tunes are too atonal. Zelda music is usually melody driven, so this is a rather large leap for me. I really wish you made these as midi format so they could be tweaked by musicians. 2) Very large dungeons. This quest is a doozy, I tell you what.


So there are my top two. Like I said, I'd be happy with any one of them as a winner. :)

...Okay, okay, I'll pick one. You know, for tie-breaking purposes and such.

...drum roll.....

1. BigJoe. I simply had more fun with this quest because of the inventory selection early on. Once you get some rupees and are able to find Levels 1 and 2 initially, you can do a lot of B-button smashing.



Quote Originally Posted by Nightmare View Post
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That's actually a fairly solid interpretation, though I would squabble about the order a little.