Retro Games Beaten

I disagree with that, obviously. Storytelling in older video games benefit from the conciseness imposed on them by the medium, and storytelling in games in general benefits from the higher degree of involvement that comes from controlling the main character. As such, they should be judged for what they are, and not how they sound in theory. Most stories I've experienced in Japanese RPGs would not have been interesting to me in another medium, but I enjoyed playing through them. In the case of most older RPGs, what matters is almost never the motivation for leaving on a journey or the confrontation with the antagonist at the end - in fact, they almost always suck from a narrative standpoint (though fighting the final boss is usually a gameplay highlight for turn-based RPGs, at least). What matters is the journey itself. That's where the story really is. Going from town to town, and all the adventures you encounter along the way. And I find that RPGs are much better are giving you a sense of adventure than most forms of fiction. That's older RPGs, of course. I didn't really start running into really terrible stories until the new style of RPGs that started appearing on the PSX in small numbers, and became more and more common in subsequent generations - those that eschewed the sense of adventure for overlong cutscenes and focused on the worst parts of RPG storytelling (melodrama, power-of-friendship, eeeeeevil, etc).

I feel the same way about horror. Most horror movies, novels, etc., do not engage me. Very often, what should be scary is stupid and ridiculous. There are exceptions, of course. But in video game form, the simple act of playing through the same type of story I would roll my eyes at in another breathes life into them and makes them come alive. Provided the game is any good, that it. And again, the brevity helps. All the story sequences in a PSX Resident Evil game, or the first two Silent Hills, probably amount to 1/50th of the time it would take to read through the average Stephen King novel. (I like King, but almost never for the horror - it's the psychology of the characters and the depiction of certain parts of the US - mostly New England - that he's good at).

"But toei, Super Metroid and A Link to the Past have concise stories!" They have nonexistent stories, which isn't the same thing. Their narratives are on the level of Streets of Rage. But Streets of Rage is a pure action game, and the story does not matter one bit; Zelda is in most ways an action RPG, so for me, the lack of towns and story hold it back, leaving nothing but the skeleton of what an action RPG should be.
Super Metroid is a borderline case where I don't mind as much. Lack of story is hardly the main reason I found it mediocre, though a better story could have helped.