Nintendo launched the “Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition” on the Nintendo Switch. That motivated me to revisit the NES Classic Edition. Instead of focusing on speed runs, I could play the full versions of classic games. That’s when motivation hit! Back in the 1980s, kids used to ask me about the secrets of The Legend of Zelda. Why not expand on that?
It was fun to play The Legend of Zelda again with a new purpose. In order to build a map, all 128 screens of the Overworld were captured. The secrets of Hyrule could be revealed with high detail. Yet, that classic game has an unusual feature. There’s only one secret or special feature per area, if there’s a secret at all.
While the full map is nearly six-million pixels, the highlights could be displayed with modern emoji in a grid. It was different, funny, and simple way to look at the first Zelda game. You can see what that looks like by loading the new “Data” section page.
But, if you want a more detailed map, the Overworld is beautifully presented in a new Photics.TV video.
- Is The Legend of Zelda 4K? 🧝🏻 Overworld Map Revealing Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Secrets 🗺️
Similar to the Crossy Road videos, the approach was to tell a story before revealing the secret — and what a story!
The 8-BIT Nintendo has a resolution of 256 x 240 pixels. Going horizontally, that’s 16 pixels per tile, there are 16 titles per screen, and one row of the Overworld is 16 screens across. Multiply those numbers together and that’s 4096 pixels. It was surprising to see such a modern number in a game that is decades old.
So, a 4K video was edited together. I think it’s pretty good, as some advanced animation was used to explain the size of the Overworld in the Legend of Zelda. Line-drawn animations using Tumult Hype. There’s a discussion about “Adventures In Line Drawing” on the Tumult Forum.