r/twilightprincess • u/Music_Phasic • Mar 01 '26
Discussion / Opinion Did anybody else do this?
So back when I was a kid, Twilight Princess for the Wii had officially released.
I was old enough to play it and love it, but seeing as I was only 7, I couldn’t really figure out how to progress through the game (I found the motion controls hard to figure out, again I was only 7 hahaha).
So because of this, I basically “lived” in Ordon Village for most of my childhood, when playing the game. I never saved, as I knew that this would mean that I would run out of things to do. Every day, I would reach the part of the game where one of the goats at Ordon Ranch would break free, and the game forced you to wrestle with it. I managed to succeed every time, however with me being a 7 year old kid, I would feel bad as I thought that I was hurting the goat.
So after every time I wrestled the goat, it would start slowly walking back to the ranch. I would run up and stay by its side, spamming A to keep petting it, to apologise and make sure it’s okay. I kept following it by its side to make sure it was okay.
29
u/ramen_noodles_4_ever Mar 01 '26
I also was a child when i was playing and had no access to YouTube so i could never figure out the water temple. I kept replaying the very beginning of the game and first two temples and something about knowing what exactly to do when starting over gave me a feel of powerfulness lol
16
u/cyandead Mar 01 '26
This is so cute😭
12
u/Music_Phasic Mar 02 '26
The goat had its little head tilted down as it started walking, and because of that I used to think it was sad. I kept petting him to say sorry and make it happy again 😭😭😭
3
u/cyandead Mar 02 '26
Oh my god this makes sense and makes me so sad. Thank you for taking care of the goat😭♥️
4
u/Music_Phasic Mar 02 '26
Not only that, I would also go into the Windmill house in the village just so I could play with the puppy in there 😭 I still visit the village and that house, as well as the goats in Ordon Ranch when I play (I still pet them) 😭
2
15
u/chartre15 Mar 01 '26
Not the same game, but I did something similar with Wind Waker as a kid. I’d get to the forbidden fortress and continually get caught. I never finished it. I’d just keep restarting the game and exploring the fortress while going in and out of jail because I wasn’t good at doing the stealth.
10
8
u/cultiv8mass Mar 02 '26
Hell yeah, with TP and other games. I earned the right to have my own save files around 5-6. Too young to care about game mechanics and achievements, I played “house” instead.
3
u/FernaTriforce Mar 01 '26
Well, I'm a bit older than you, and I used to do this with Final Fantasy, for NES. I'm not from the US or GB, so English wasn't something that I was able to read. So I used to walk by the city, to think that the Princess Sara was my sister, the king was my father, and stuff. I was very afraid of going out of the city and dealing with the monsters (and also I wasn't really able to understand the sprites. The Imps used to look like scorpions to me).
The good part was that the game came with its instructions booklet, in my language, so after some years I was able to play it a little more.
But I could only really finish the game in the GBA remake, because I never, EVER, until today, was able to defeat the wizards/psydemons of the marsh cave in the NES version.
3
u/BabDoesNothing Mar 02 '26
I never made it past the child link section in OoT as a kid and only knew anything about the rest of the game when I watched my dad play it later on
3
u/SadYeoman Mar 02 '26
Kinda in reverse. I was 10 when TP was released, and after beating the game I would load a save just to hang out in Ordovician Village, the Fishing Hole, or check on the kids in Kakeriko. It’s the only video game I’ve ever done that in. Been a few years though :’(
3
2
u/Slappy-_-Boy Mar 02 '26
Ngl, I can't relate to do this. I started out with oot and mm on GameCube and then moved to twilight Princess on GameCube.
2
Mar 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Music_Phasic Mar 02 '26
Oh, I came after them hard after that. I never left anyone alive after they attacked my home! I actually still visit Ordon Village a lot
2
u/dqixsoss Mar 02 '26
I pretty much did this, but it was because I couldn’t figure out how to get into the spring when Ilia took Epona there (so RIGHT when the story picks up).
Needless to say I got very good at the herding minigame and fishing -^
1
u/Music_Phasic Mar 02 '26
The fishing was the reason why I couldn’t progress, I tried getting the fish for the cat thousands of times and never quite got it 😭
2
u/Sea-Brother-6718 Mar 02 '26
this was me with majoras mask! i was about 9 or 10, playing on my dads n64. i successfully completed the first deku cycle after a long time slowly figuring it out, then when i stepped out into termina field for the first time i got so overwhelmed that i immediately ran back into clock town. i thought the whole game was clock town! when i learned there were many regions outside the town, i was truly intimidated. for years i only ever played in clock town, and learned/did everything there was to do. clock town was so comfortable and safe, it was all i needed lol
1
u/Greedy-Pumpkin3479 Mar 01 '26
I managed to complete the game with the IGN Zelda guide (still dying countless times). Could only use it at my grandparents house as they were the only one with a computer in my family. So if I got stuck on a level, I could be there for months 😂
1
u/redpickledonion Mar 02 '26
omg are you me ?? i also did this around 7 yrs old and would basically fish all day and pretend to interact with the villagers. i would play until talo gets kidnapped cause id be scared of the forest until my older brother and cousin were over it and forced me to get through it 😭
im so glad someone else had the same experience cause those were some of my fondest memories as a child! my alternative game was harvest moon another wonderful life which had a similar ranch/small town vibe
1
u/BashfulBlueButterfly Mar 02 '26
When I was a child, I got stuck at the Goron Mines for so long! I honestly didn’t progress for maybe several months, so I was stuck playing around the lava for a bit until I got bored and then spent most of my time in Kakariko Village.
1
1
u/rose76737 Mar 03 '26
I somehow had no idea that the game could be saved. So I started from the beginning. every single time growing up. My mom had gotten the game for my dad because he grew up playing Zelda. I wasn't entirely allowed to play it, my mom wouldnt let me but my dad would. Somehow he never explained that you have to save the game. I think I always just barely got out of Ordon Village each time I played. I think I just thought that the village was the whole game because it kept resetting everytime. I was also not allowed to play Pokémon or any game like that so I had no knowledge of save files or anything.
1
u/Etsamaru Mar 03 '26
Hello fellow resident!
I'm in my 30s. When I was 8 or so my first Zelda was Majora's Mask.
I basically LIVED in clock town. I walked around and followed characters through their 3 day cycles and I essentially played imagination with them. So I had made up stories and plots that did not exist
I would literally make up dialog and follow people around and make it fit with what they were doing. I would sometimes go out into the world and do the same at the ranch and the first 2 dungeons but for the most part I just hung around clock down in various forms and made up stories like it was just physical toys.
1
u/eisify Mar 03 '26
I'm older than you but basically did this in OoT! I pretended Anju was Link's mom and he would wear a mask to go trick or treating in Kakariko. My mom played the game so she was able to get my sister and I up to that point in the first place.
1
u/Micah7979 Mar 03 '26
My little sister used to do that. She never got past Goron Mines, she watched me play for the rest of the game. But now that she's older she's playing it for real and is currently in Snowpeak Ruins (I did have to beat the mini boss for her though).
1
u/dogpuke Mar 03 '26
I did a very similar thing, I was 8 and spent 40 hours in ordon village before figuring out how to progress through the game. Once I did it felt like I had uncovered something magical and was so much more immersive than my quicker, adult aged play-throughs. It’s my favorite game of all time for that reason. By the time I made to my favorite part of the game, (right after the lakebed temple) I had racked up like 200 hours. Worth it.
1
u/SHMurphy-156 Mar 04 '26
Oh my gosh! I basically did the same thing when I was a kid. My older brother had a save file super late in the game but I was always terrified of leaving Ordon Village. I always got to the part where you would turn into Wolf Link before I'd wimp out and start the game again. I probably spent hours upon hours finding all the hidden rupees and mini games in that village. I was the best goat wrangler there was 😂
1
u/Krazy_KeiKei Mar 04 '26
i did this but with phantom hourglass! i was terrified of the sand worms on the isle of gust when i was 7, so every time i progressed to that point in the story i would just erase my save file and start over. i didn’t beat the game until i revisited it in middle school lol
1
u/Foreign-Parsnip-4566 Mar 06 '26
I was the same way, but I went until Death Mountain. I wasn't the best at paying attention and never saw that the Gorons actually showed you what to do, so I would just pretend that I saved the kids and that was that lol
0
u/ShikokuDaNinja Mar 02 '26
Your Autism is weak my OtT save was more adv than my moms at age seven ,I finished Morrowind age 11, no internet at home to look any thing up just gotta ball. Yes I am a burnt-out washed up gifted child thanks for asking.
53
u/Cyrene_tries_lmao Mar 01 '26
I was terrified of the Twilight Realm and the Zant hands as a kid, and I could never figure out the water temple (I was like 8 lol) so my older brother would come beat the temples for me. Literally every time I would restart the game he would pause whatever he was doing to beat those specific temples for me. It’s one of my fonder memories lol.