I had a very good friend when I was in 1st~2nd grade of Elementary school who had an SNES. He got the game shortly after it came out, and we played it together. The game seemed pretty magical to me at the time. I had played a lot of the original LoZ, but this was on a whole different level, ya know? I remember being kinda miffed the next time I visited and learned he'd played a ton of the game without me. Obviously I was wrong to feel that way, but I just wanted to be part of the experience so bad.
Years later, when I was 13 years old, I decided to hunt the game down. I'm not sure what prompted me to do that, actually. It might have been the release of OoT that got me interested in the franchise again? My parents wouldn't let me play OoT because of its obvious occult influences. (I'd get possessed by demons if I played it, ya know). For some reason, the older LttP flew under their demon-posession radar. Plus it was just more interesting to me, since I'd fantasized about playing it for years.
This would have been 2000, so I wouldn't have had Internet access yet. And even if I had, it's tough to turn cash into an Internet purchase in the days when adults were all certain that putting credit card information into a computer was a guaranteed way to get your identity stolen. An SNES was easy enough to find. I bought it from Software Etc. at the local mall. (Software Etc. being one of the companies that sold out to Gamestop eventually). I remember it was shrink wrapped in plastic along with two controllers and all of its cables. Game stores were magical back then, completely different from most of what's out there now. I'm pretty sure I still have the bag I carried it home in, somewhere.
The game itself, unsurprisingly, was the really tricky thing to find. I spent at least a week, maybe two, calling every place in the phone book that might sell games. I called game stores obviously, but also thrift and even pawn shops. Nobody had it. Finally I did eventually find a copy for $50 at a small hole-in-the-wall shop in the nearest big city to where I lived. I got my dad to drive me there, bought the game, and spent three weeks playing through it in my basement. It was the first game I'd ever acquired on my own, as opposed to getting it for Christmas or something.
Good times.
