Was Zelda the first game ever to let you input a name for your save and with NPC's calling you with name?
Was Zelda the first game ever to let you input a name for your save and with NPC's calling you with name?
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>Was Zelda the first game ever to let you input a name for your save
On console probably
>with NPC's calling you with name
I think the only time the game calls you by name is when you finish Quest 2
What was the first game ever in any platform to let you do that then?
No idea what the very first is, but in Wizardry you can name all your characters. All of the ideas in 80s games comes from Dungeons and Dragons originally anyway.
Ultima 1 came out a bit before Wizardry and let you name your character. There's probably even earlier examples from really, really early CRPGs pre-Ultima/Wizardry though.
See
Ancient mainframe games that let you save your session always let you name your character/session for obvious reasons, they were mainframe games played by lots of people.
True. I'm aware of the ancient PLATO stuff although I've never played any of it. I was just spitballing what game let you not only enter your name in but also had NPCs who'd call you by that name. I'm pretty sure dnd and Oubliette didn't have that feature (might be wrong though) and I can't remember if Ultima 1 had that either.
Neither Zelda nor Wizardry has npcs that refer to you by name.
And Dungeons and Dragons came originally from a LotR fanfic…
No.
Yes.
Very no. Gygax didn't even like LotR. Believe it or not other fantasy novels did exist between Tolkien's books and 1971,
DnD primarily took inspiration from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, but stuff like the hobbits in early DnD before they got censored to "halflings" clearly came from Tolkien.
They did come from tolkien but they were only in the game because the players wanted them. The creaters didn't really care about them.
Not QUITE, but it started off as an attempt at working fantasy elements into medieval wargaming, and "fantasy elements" basically meant "elements from a tiny handful of fantasy novels, one of which was LotR". Early DnD had terms like "hobbit" and "balrog" in them that they had to get rid of when the Tolkien estate threatened to sue.
I remember an old Dragon Magazine from the 80s even joked about it in a What's New comic where the characters go to D&D's headquarters and everyone inside can only say "circular metal band" instead of "ring".
And right we have WotC making a crossover of Magic the Gathering with the Tolkien Enterprises books…
Computer games asking for player/character names was common by the 1970s, but as for the first one, I think we'll probably never know the real answer to that because once you go back that far, computer games are just things people were writing on mainframes to show their friends/classmates, and there's no distinction between published and unpublished that we'd normally make for e.g. the difference between me writing a game for my Atari 800 and Scott Adams publishing a game for Atari 800, where we simply don't bother to count the former if I never showed it to anyone outside my family.
If the rule is that an NPC refers to your character by the name you chose for him in an in-universe manner then I don't think any of those mainframe games have it. Maybe ULTIMA 1 has it.
Akalabeth has Lord British refer to you by name. And in that game you don't actually name your character at the start either, you type it in when he asks you what your name is.
Likely some version of Oregon Trail.
The first version of Oregon Trail came out in 1971; it's doubtful there was anything earlier that did that unless it was some unusual pinball cabinet.
It was a staple on FDS and even Famicom games before Zelda, but on western consoles? Maybe .
I'm pretty sure that there were no battery saves on Famicom before FDS. Dragon Quest 1 presented you with a very long password in the Japanese version.
Glad we were spared that, at least. Getting that for free with my Nintendo Power subscription was one of the best gaming deals ever.
DQ1 still lets you name your character. And UNLIKE Zelda, that's actually used as your character in the game. In Legend of Zelda it's just the name of your save file.
>check internet
>everyone's talking about some link
>"wut? what link? the one who saves zelda is [INSERT NAME HERE]"
His name is PAUL.
how have i never heard of this
Because it's an untranslated choose-your-own-adventure based on LttP that was only ever sold in Japan?
>Sahara
WHO?
I think it's supposed to be that old wizard dude near the East Temple Sahashala or whatever the fuck he was called.
It's supposed to be Sahasrahla's grandson.
Why does Link (oops i mean Paul) look like a girl?
>Paul
Hey, my name's Paul, and this, is between y'all.
>descendant of Hyrea
Hylia?
My first game to do that was pokemon ruby.
>Was Zelda the first game ever ... with NPC's calling you with name?
No. The main character in the NES games is always named Link. A Link to the Past was the first Zelda game in which name of save file = name of playable character. That's presumably because Nintendo wasn't 100% on board at first if your character in ALttP/LA should be named "Link" since he was always considered a separate character, unconnected to the Zelda lineage established in II. Once OoT established multiple "Links" were going to be a thing, the unnamed ALttP/LA character retroactively became a Link.
>the unnamed ALttP/LA character retroactively became a Link.
This smells of bullshit. The Game Boy game is literally called "LINK'S Awakening" and it released in 1993. There's nothing retroactive about it whatsoever.
>NoA shits up the subtitles so much they canonize them.
News at 11.
Wasn't BotW the one that unified all timelines tho?
It might be bullshit, but reviewing the english manual and I was surprised that not one instance of the name "Link" is used. Instead both manuals exclusively use "You", "Your character", and similar second person means of conveyance.
>it's the same in jp
Huh, isn't that sort of speech considered rude in Japan? I remember they turned Shadowgate first person to avoid it and the game wound up being laughed at for its even more ridiculous way of wording things because of it.
a) No
b) It's not in second person, it's in third person, referring to the main character as "the player"
Space Quest 2 had this, not saying it's the first game to to it, but it is relatively early.
Not if you count dying and putting your name on the tombstone as a game, and I do
Probably not, there must've been some obscure game nobody even knows today, that did this
Such as?