I’ve said elsewhere that Ledo and Ix are the best game characters you’ve never played, and while it’s true viewing them on the small screen strips away the interactivity that propelled my early adventures on the NES and SNES, watching them interact with each other and various villagers gets to the heart of what made early RPGs so special.
We weren’t just insulting the spoony bard, we were the spoony bard.Limitation breeds creativity, and the lack of snazzy graphics and emotionally cued voice acting required us to fill in the blanks ourselves. We truly had to role-play our RPGs. We imagined the scenery represented by black screens and a pixelated sketch of a mountain range. The protagonist’s voice became our own, but so did everyone else’s. We weren’t just insulting the spoony bard, we were the spoony bard.
~ Sara Clemens