Link's Awakening all the way. While we had a computer with a few random games on it, our first systems in my house were a Genesis and an original Game Boy. That thing was a beast. And while there were some great games on the Genesis that I really liked, Link's Awakening, which came at that same Christmas as the systems, just owned them all. It set my standards so darn high for what excellence in a game could be, standards that were only ever raised by OoT. But Link's Awakening came first.
I started playing it when I was like 7, maybe 8. It was so hard. Every dungeon was a challenge, some taking months of me putting the game down out of frustration and coming back later. Bottle Grotto, with the "First defeat the imprisoned Pols Voice. Last, Stalfos." hint just stopped me in my tracks. We had to call the advice line to figure it out. It would have helped knowing what the monsters' names were. But there were challenges everywhere. Sometimes, I would just explore all the areas, seeing the unattainable areas and the heart pieces behind walls. When I finally got them, years after seeing them for the first time, it was just great. It took me till I was like 11-12 before I finally beat it. I still remember it like it was yesterday, rather than almost a decade ago.
Last summer, my sister went to play it again. (She's as big a Zelda fan as me, though she watches more than plays.) She did her thing, and saved and quit. Later, she went back to resume play, but her save was gone. All three files were empty. The game's internal battery had finally died, 15-ish years after it entered and changed our lives. Even though I hadn't played it for years, I felt sad. A piece of my childhood was gone forever. I'll never throw out the cartridge though.
My brother never played many games, where as I have been eating them up ever since.
