Fans thought a Zelda on the Master System was impossible. And then there was Oliv. I remember this game more from conversations between guys than from the screen, because it was rarer than hen's teeth. An indie project from 2021 on a console from the eighties — that was such a crazy combination that everyone with an HDMI switch and a moment to spare had to try it.

It's a dungeoncrawler in the spirit of classic Zelda, where you play as Oliv on a quest for a lost princess. There's nothing revolutionary in terms of originality, but that was never the goal. The creator wanted the player to feel like they were playing a lost game they remember completely differently than it actually was. The maps are bland square rooms, the inventory gets tossed around by cycling, and on the Master System it looks exactly as clunky as it should.

It's played with mouse and keyboard, which on a browser emulator dangerously resembles typing. This control scheme makes movement uncertain and mildly annoying, especially when you're trying to navigate a narrow hallway. But that's not a game flaw, more of a peculiar decision against today's reality. When you get the right joystick, everything changes. Shooting arrows and using the sword then isn't nearly as crude as it seemed on first attempt.

Fifty years after the revolution, nostalgia became an industry, and Oliv remains authentic within it. Unbiased and slightly gloomy, without graphical effects, without the slightest reason to get lost in the story. Yet precisely because it didn't try to be hip or fun, something bizarre happened — the game is like an archaeologist returning what we actually remembered from the original Zelda, as if all time had been pushed aside.

Who might it suit? Those who can't stand modern graphics and want to play something that Sega could theoretically have released in 1988. There's no salvation, no checkpoint rescues. Just you and your determination to pull it off without a map. Today you can run it in your browser, though with the mouse it's on the edge of playability — ordering a physical cartridge release is another matter.