So, I just did an act that symbolizes* my coming to adulthood.
I beat A Link to the Past in 3 days.
I've never beaten it in 12 years of playing it; I could never find the hammer past the first dark world dungeon. Because of this, I had a huge sense of childlike wonder about it; I always had a feeling of "what's in there? It could be anything!" about areas I couldn't get to due to not having the item yet.
I started playing it 3 days ago after my computer bricked. I quickly got through the light world; that was the first day. Yesterday, I got through the first four dungeons of the Dark World. I immediately wondered "why was that dungeon so hard for me?", and it wasn't until later that I finally figured out why... turns out I really sucked at dungeon crawling.
First, however, I found yesterday that I knew much of what was coming already. I got the tempered sword as soon as I knew it possible; I got the fourth bottle in short order. I got the magic cape and cane of burna one right after the other. Today, I beat the game with everything but the pieces of heart found; I had 7 pieces of heart total, however. After beating it, I realized: this was my favorite game for 10 years of my life, but when I played it here, it felt like... a game. That I beat. Quickly. I had lost that sense, that sense of wonder that made the game so amazing to me. Ocarina of Time had that feeling, but not as well because I first played that because I was, oh, 12 or so when I first played it. Super Metroid I beat at the age of 11 or 12, too. A Link to the Past was the last game from my childhood that I beat.
And that's too bad. This game represented my sense of childlike wonder. The internet broke that for me. You can look up whatever, whenever. What I want is a game that has that feeling. The problem is that there aren't many things that can. Roguelikes that update often can; I feel like that for the next version of DF, after all, but I'll figure it out soon enough after, it'll go on the wiki, and there it goes. Oh well.
Appropriate that I beat the last, best game of my childhood two days before I become a legal adult, huh?
*in a tongue-and-cheek manner