The Legend of Zelda. The game with the legendary golden cartridge. If you had this game in your collection then you were legendary. You could save your game, something unknown to NES gamers at the time. Passwords and grey cartridges were for the peasants. (I don’t know who the black unlicensed TenGen carts were for… witches maybe?) If you had the gold cart you had the Holy Grail. You were playground royalty.
Before it spawned a legendary game series, The Legend of Zelda was released in February 1986 in Japan as a Famicom Disk System launch title. It was developed at the same time and by the same team as Super Mario Bros., Nintendo R&D4. Yes, the man behind Donkey Kong and Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto; also created The Legend of Zelda. It released in Europe and the United States in 1987 to much critical acclaim. In Japan it sold over a million copies on its first day. It sold over 6 million copies world wide. In their August 1987 issue, Computer Entertainer said it was “THE most anticipated title yet” and called the Legend of Zelda “a must have for every owner of the Nintendo Entertainment System” that “got us totally hooked on this amazing game”. It won Computer Gaming World’s best adventure game of 1988. It was one of the first open world games and it came out on the NES. It would set the standard for future titles in the franchise and inspire many future adventure RPGs for generations to come.
Miyamoto designed the Legend of Zelda to be the opposite of Super Mario Bros. SMB was the linear, fast paced, side scrolling action game. Zelda was the slower, open world, top down adventure. Super Mario Bros.’ first screen with the Goomba and question block teaches the player to hold B and go right; jumping to clear enemies and obstacles. Zelda’s first screen shows the player that they can go in any 4 directions, however; the player is defenseless but an ever conspicuous cave begs to be explored. In it the player finds the old man who utters the famous line: “It’s dangerous to go alone…take this!” and gives them their first means of self defense. This teaches the player that they will need to seek out the advice of NPCs and they will need to explore every nook and cranny to find their own path to defeat Ganon. This was revolutionary in 1987 and still holds up for players today.
Despite this, I had never actually finished the game (or any other game in the Legend of Zelda series, for that matter) before this year. I had tried before as a kid but could never really decipher the game’s hints and would eventually get lost and lose interest. Even as a kid, though; the game was really engaging and I knew I would keep coming back to it until I eventually beat it. It may have taken 35 years but here are my thoughts on the game.
Controls
The controls in The Legend of Zelda are pretty simple. It’s played from a top down perspective and the dpad moves the character, Up Down Left or Right. The A button attacks with the sword while the B button uses the currently equipped item. Enemy projectiles can be blocked with the shield just by facing them. Not all projectiles can be blocked and the hit detection is slightly off so it’s more consistent to just try to avoid enemy attacks rather than block them. Start brings up the inventory and lets you check the map in a dungeon or equip a new item to the B button. The controls feel responsive and Link is a joy to move around the screens and fight monsters. However there is some weirdness in the hit detection and so some hits don’t seem to register. Other times you may feel like you dodged an attack that landed anyways. Displaced Gamers on Youtube made an excellent breakdown on why the hit detection and collision is slightly off. It doesn’t affect much of the adventure but it is noticeable. For that reason I give Zelda 4 🎮’s out of 5.image2
Gameplay
The Legend of Zelda is like a jigsaw puzzle of information. As you explore the world, NPCs will give you little snippets and hints. These tidbits don’t quite make sense on their own but as you piece them together, it creates a clear picture of the path you have to take to progress through the game. According to Miyamoto, when designing the game he wanted to give players the same experience in a video game that he had as a child exploring the forests, fields, and caves of Kyoto, Japan. As such, this game is best experienced without using a guide to experience the amazement and wonder of an unknown adventure. However, the same philosophy makes the game somewhat cryptic and some people refuse to play the game without a guide. I think that is totally valid as well. Instead of using a guide to get me through the game, I elected to play the game without any kind of walkthrough or information from the internet; relying on taking notes with my phone to guide me. (When I was a kid, my father had a special yellow flip pad full of notes for this game).
The gameplay consists of traversing an overworld of over 90 scrolling screens, defeating monsters, collecting items, and gathering hints to find the 8 dungeons, defeat the 8 dungeon bosses, and collect the 8 pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom to unlock the 9th and final dungeon. Each kind of enemy has their own weaknesses and you will have to discover what those are and how to exploit them. In the world you can find swords to increase attack power, rings to increase defense, and various items that unlock new abilities. Some of these items are required to progress the game. The game isn’t overly difficult but you will die a lot trying to find your way. Thankfully a Game Over just returns you to the first screen if you die in the overworld or to the first room if you die in a dungeon. Game Overs aren’t too frustrating and instead motivate you to keep pushing forward to find the correct solution to clear the dungeon you are exploring. After finishing the game I went to watch some videos on Youtube and it turns out, I didn’t come close to finding every thing the game has to offer. There is a lot to explore here. When beating the game you even get the option for a second quest with 9 brand new dungeons with new layouts and item and enemy placements.
Most monsters are fun to fight and are mostly fair in their attack pattern. The Darknut and Wizzrobe enemies can become frustrating as they tend to pop up in the most inconvenient places when trying to explore the later dungeons. Some secrets are basically impossible to find unless you check every corner and bomb every wall but every required item and dungeon is pretty much telegraphed by an NPC in the preceding areas. Still this is why the game got the reputation of being a scheme to sell subscriptions to Nintendo Power and why I give it 3.5 ▶️’s out of 5.
Graphics and Sound
The Legend of Zelda is a colorful game with large sprites and many different locales. Enemies and projectiles are easy to see and usually come in red or blue varieties. There are a lot of browns and greens but the various locales break up the monotony. Blue lakes, white ghostly graveyards, and dark dungeons stick out among the many mountain and forest screens. The game might not have the graphics of later NES releases like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Kirby’s Adventure but it isn’t a black box NES release either. Overall I’d say LoZ is one of the better looking games for Nintendo. As for the music; longtime Mario series composer, Koji Kondo, also was the composer for the Legend of Zelda. The game only has 5 background tracks but you won’t mind because they are all amazing. You will hear the overworld theme the most as you traverse screen to screen finding secrets and progressing the game. I can’t help but hum along to it when playing. (And maybe even sing along to Brentalfloss’ “Zelda with lyrics”). Funny enough Kondo has said in an interview that this song was originally supposed to be a classical song, “Bolero”, but the copyright had not yet expired and so he was forced to write this theme and did so in a single night. It has since become the official theme of the series and is referenced in nearly every Zelda game. Sound effects had to be downgraded from the Famicom Disk System release to the NES release as the NES lacked the extra sound channel of the FDS. However the sound effects are mostly good (the boss roar sound effect can get a bit grating when you are next to the bosses’ room). The Legend of Zelda is simply one of the best sounding NES games. While it doesn’t have a huge quantity of tracks, it makes up for it in quality. The Legend of Zelda gets 4 🖼🎵’s out of 5.
The So What
The Legend of Zelda is a great game and a humble beginning for the now-lauded Legend of Zelda series. It’s engaging but not too challenging. Cryptic but not impossible to figure out. For the time and system it came out on, its downright amazing. For today, as the first game in the top-down 2D style, it’s a well executed first attempt that established the formula for later Zelda games. It’s absolutely worth your time to replay it in 2022. Maybe disconnect from looking for Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom spoilers and try beating this first game with just your wits. I promise you won’t be let down with this classic.
4 ⭐’s out of 5
