I'm not some bitter, jaded retro gamer who hates any game produced after October 25th 2000. I enjoy plenty of modern games like... look, it's not important what modern games I like but I'm positive there are some.
Almost recently I wrote an article titled Skyward Sword and the Evolution of the Zelda Series. As the name implies it explored how the series changed from its open world roots to a more linear format. Along the way the amount of player hand-holding has grown to the point of being ridiculous. It got me thinking about how the original Legend of Zelda would look if the design principles from Skyward Sword were applied to it. The first picture I came up with was a bit obvious:
I planned to do an entire gallery like this but then my short attention span kicked-in and I decided to cover more NES games and modern gaming trends. I probably could have done 100 images but decided to stop at 20 to avoid beating any jokes to death. These are sorted from what I think turned out funniest to ones that maybe are kinda dumb in hindsight.