1st Zelda game finished!

I have started a lot of games and never finished them, many of my fellow gamers are the same, maybe the game isn't all that great, maybe you got stuck on a puzzle and forgot, or the worst, your save file was somehow deleted and you can't be bothered to start over. I have fallen victim to all of these and more, but none of those seem to apply to every Zelda game I have started...

So I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D tonight, after buying it the day it came out, and loving it, I just put it down and forgot to pick it back up. Yes, it took me 1 year and 4 months to complete what should have been an adventure that I couldn't put down, but here we are. But that almost year and a half is nothing considering I actually started this game back on the N64 when I was in the 6th grade. At the time I had to play it with a guide in hand to get me through most of the game. One day I lost my guide, and never picked up the game again (we didn't have that all knowing resource of the internet in my house at the time). So you could say that it actually took me 12 years to beat this game, a game that many consider one of the greatest of all time! I never revealed to people that I had never finished a Zelda game, sure I have played most of them in various lengths, but having never finished some of gaming's classics was embarrassing.

These days much of my issue with finishing a game, or even putting in an extended amount of time is that I have too many games too choose from (I know, first world problems). I have a shelf full of current titles, most of which have not been completed. I have a dedicated retro game room that is full of classics that are in dire need of beating. My 3DS is full of downloaded titles, among them the "Ambassador" games that Nintendo gave away to the early 3DS adopters. Among those titles are 3 Zelda games, all of which I have started to some extent.

 There are too many games, and not enough time. I look back on the days of being a kid, when school and homework were the only barriers between you and hours of gaming fun, when a weekend could be spent on a single game. These days I am lucky to have any time on the weekends for gaming, and during the week I play mostly late night before bed. Since my time is so valuable these days, it seems that a game really needs to grab my attention to get me to put in the hours, less it be damned to gather dust in the collection, or occupy hard drive space, never to be played again.

I try to set goals for my games, hoping that if I set some deadline I can force myself to stick to one game, but this tactic seems to make me want to play every game but the one I am sticking to. I always end up picking up more games for my collection, many of them only get played for a minute, or just long enough to check that they work. I always try to keep the mind frame that I will get back to certain titles, and try not to start games in a series before I have beaten its predecessors.

Back to Zelda, I am currently "actively" playing 2 separate Zelda titles (not counting Ocarina of Time that was just beaten). I picked up a Wii again, after trading my launch console for am Xbox 360 shortly after getting it just so I could play Skyward Sword. I poured hours into the game and loved every minute of it, and then I just...didn't play it again. I know I need to get back to it, having completed about 1/3 to 1/2 of the game I left a lot unfinished. When I first bought my 3DS and I was starving for games to play on it,  I purchased Link's Awakening as soon as it was available, and once again enjoyed the hell out of it. Then other games came along and took my focus away. Its hard to go right back into these games because when you boot them back up it takes a little bit to figure out where you are in the game, why you are doing what you are doing, even the controls need to be readjusted to. I am sure I will go back to these, and hopefully I can stick to them and see the credits roll.

By my count I have put some amount of time into no less than 10 Zelda games, with only one completion under my belt. Its not that they aren't fun, I wish I could get sucked into the world and have to play until the end. I am sure I will get back to some of them, others will just be a distant memory. Now I have some games to finish....or now that Ocarina of Time is done I could start Majora's Mask....