Christmas Gaming (Cont.): Platypus Nostalgia

I was working my way through "J.R.R. Tolkien Artist and Illustrator" when I found this passage from "Leaf by Niggle":

You could go on and on, and have a whole country in a garden, or in a picture (if you preferred to call it that).  You could go on and on, but not perhaps for ever.  There were the Mountains in the background.  They did get nearer, very slowly.  They did not seem to belong to the picture, or only as a link to something else, a glimpse through the trees of something different, a further stage: another picture.

The first thing that popped into my head when I read this was what Shigeru Miyamoto said about creating the Legend of Zelda series.  He said that he envisioned the games as a set of gardens in which players could wander and explore.  Thinking a little further, the defining feature that encloses the world of Hyrule in the first four games is a mountain range.  There was something magical about reaching the top of Death Mountain in A Link to the Past and seeing on the other side the faint suggestion of a forest spreading out into the unexplored world beyond: a further stage: another picture.