This is a truly fascinating post! I was thinking about this myself the other day, when I delved back in Twilight Princess. There's many reasons why it's not as vivacious as Ocarina Of Time, but what staggered me most of all was that Twilight Princess barely has any replay value! The reason for this is of course that Twilight Princess offers very little freeroaming up to the first 3 dungeons. All of the areas are shut off, and on top of that Midna bosses you around. It is only after you get the mastersword that the game starts to become fun. Ocarina Of Time on the other hand, has you explore Hyrule as you see fit. It even allows you to re-explore as Hyrule as a grown-up!
Anyway, good read! Moving on to part 2 :)
VicariousE
As a kid, I had Adventure! for the Atari 2600. After a info-stealing trip to the bookstore, I managed to find the easter egg. That was some time in the 1970's, early 1980's... so I'm kinda done with retro stuff lol.
I've always had a soft spot for adventure games, pitting my wit against the folks who programmed the things.
ForgottenDawn
I gotta look that up now! My fascination with adventure games started in the modern age with the PS2 (that's my console) and then with Flash games, more often than not escape the room games.
In the next article I'm going to analyze another game that shares some of the traits I described earlier.