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The Legend of Zelda
Developer(s)	Nintendo R&D 4
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Designer(s)	Shigeru Miyamoto Koji Kondo Takashi Tezuka Toshihiko Nakago
Platform(s)	Famicom Disk System Nintendo Entertainment System Game Boy Advance Virtual Console Nintendo GameCube
Release	February 21 1986 August 22 1987 November 27 1987
Genre(s)	Action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single player

The Legend of Zelda (THE HYRULE FANTASY ゼルダの伝説, Za Hairaru Fantajī Zeruda no Densetsu) is a video game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and published by Nintendo in 1986. A classic example of the action-adventure genre, the game is set in the fantasy land of Hyrule and centers around a young hero's quest to rescue Princess Zelda from the villainous Ganon by collecting the eight fragments of a powerful artifact known as the Triforce of Wisdom.

As the inaugural game of the The Legend of Zelda series, it was first released in Japan as a debut title for the Famicom's Disk System peripheral. With its vast world, open-ended gameplay, scrolling capabilities, and autosave system, Zelda featured groundbreaking technological advancements. Because the Famicom Disk System was not released outside of Japan, the game was published internationally on the Nintendo Entertainment System's cartridge format in 1987, with an internal battery to facilitate data saving, where it enjoyed even greater critical and financial success.

Zelda has been re-released on multiple platforms, most recently on the Wii's Virtual Console in 2006. The game was also included in The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for the Nintendo GameCube, and is obtainable with an Action Replay in the GameCube game Animal Crossing. The game was also re-released on the Game Boy Advance in 2004 along with its sequel as part of the Classic NES Series. As one of Nintendo's flagship franchises, Zelda is among the most recognized names in video games.

Story and characters

Due to space limitations, The Legend of Zelda's plot heavily relies on backstory given in the short in-game prologue and the instruction manual: Hyrule was engulfed in chaos after an army led by Ganon, the Prince of Darkness, invaded the kingdom and secured the Triforce of Power, a magical artifact bestowing great strength. Hyrule's Princess Zelda split the artifact's counterpart, the Triforce of Wisdom, into eight fragments, hiding them in secret dungeons throughout the land to prevent them from falling into Ganon's hands. She commanded her most trustworthy nursemaid, Impa, to escape and find a man courageous enough to destroy Ganon. Upon hearing this, Ganon grew angry, imprisoned the princess, and sent a party in search of Impa.

According to the manual, Impa fled for her life but was overtaken by her pursuers. As Ganon's henchmen surrounded her, a youth appeared to drive the monsters off. The boy's name was Link, and Impa told him of Hyrule's plight. Link resolved to save Zelda, but to fight Ganon he had to find and reassemble the scattered fragments of the Triforce. Undeterred, Link set off for Hyrule in an epic adventure.

During the course of the game, Link locates the eight dungeons and retrieves the Triforce fragments from the clutches of powerful guardian monsters. Along the way, he picks up a collection of useful items and weapons, including the powerful Magical Sword (the Master Sword in later Zelda games, according to the official Zelda website) to aid him against Ganon's minions. With the Triforce of Wisdom, Link is able to infiltrate Ganon's fortress high upon Death Mountain. He confronts the Prince of Darkness himself, destroying him with a Silver Arrow which he had discovered deep within Ganon's dungeons. Link picks up the Triforce of Power from Ganon's ashes and returns both Triforces to Princess Zelda, whom he releases from her nearby cell. According to Zelda's words, peace would then return to Hyrule.

A "symbol of courage, strength and wisdom", Link was designed by Miyamoto as a coming-of-age motif for players to identify with: the silent protagonist begins the game an ordinary boy but grows in strength and fortitude to triumph over the ultimate evil.

The name of the princess was inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald: "Zelda was the name of the wife of the famous novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald. She was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name. So I took the liberty of using her name for the very first Zelda title," Miyamoto explained.

Gameplay

When Zelda was released its gameplay defied categorization, incorporating elements from action games, adventure games, role-playing games, and puzzle games. The game begins with the player controlling Link, armed with a small shield. A sword is immediately available in a cave behind him. To advance, Link must explore the overworld, a large outdoor map with varied environments. Scattered across the overworld and hidden in caves, shrubbery, or behind walls are merchants, gamblers, old ladies, and other people who guide Link with cryptic clues. Barring Link's progress are creatures he must battle to locate the entrances to nine underground dungeons.

Each dungeon is a unique, maze-like collection of rooms connected by doors and secret passages and guarded by monsters different from those found on the overworld. Link must navigate through each dungeon to obtain the eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom. Dungeons also hide useful items, such as a boomerang for retrieving items and freezing some enemies in their tracks, and a recorder with magical properties. The first six dungeons have visible entrances, but the remaining three are hidden. Except for the final dungeon, which cannot be entered until the previous eight have been completed, the order of completing dungeons is largely arbitrary.

Nonlinearity, the ability to take different paths to complete the game, separated Zelda from its contemporaries. Link can freely wander the overworld, finding and buying items at any point. This flexibility enables unusual ways of playing the game; for example, it is possible to reach the final boss of the game (but not defeat him) without taking a sword. Nintendo of America's management initially feared that players might become frustrated with the new concept, left wondering what to do next. As a result, the American version of the game's manual contains many hints, tips, and suggestions for players.

After completing the game, the player has access to a more difficult quest, officially referred to as the Second Quest, where dungeons and the placement of items are different and enemies stronger. Although a more difficult "replay" was not unique to Zelda, few games offered a "second quest" with entirely different levels to complete. Entering "ZELDA" as the player's name at the start of the game begins the second quest automatically. The Second Quest can be replayed each time it is completed.

Development and release

Designer Shigeru Miyamoto was responsible for the development of Super Mario Bros., which was released for the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. In Mario, Miyamoto downplayed the value of the high score in favor of a more concrete goal—to "complete" the game. The evolution of games from endurance tests to simple narratives gave players a goal beyond simple continued survival.

Miyamoto's team worked on The Legend of Zelda at the same time as Super Mario Bros., and since the same team did both games, they tried to separate the ideas: Super Mario Bros. was to be linear, where the action occurred in a strict sequence, whereas The Legend of Zelda would be the total opposite. Miyamoto himself was in charge of deciding which concepts were "Zelda ideas" or "Mario ideas." Contrasting with Mario, Zelda was made non-linear and forced the players to think about what they should do next with riddles and puzzles.

With The Legend of Zelda, Miyamoto wanted to take the idea of a game "world" even further, giving players a "miniature garden that they can put inside their drawer." He drew his inspiration from the fields, woods and caves outside Kyoto he explored as a boy, and always tries to impart this sense of exploration and limitless wonder to players through the Zelda titles. "When I was a child," he said, "I went hiking and found a lake. It was quite a surprise for me to stumble upon it. When I traveled around the country without a map, trying to find my way, stumbling on amazing things as I went, I realized how it felt to go on an adventure like this." The memory of being lost amid the maze of sliding doors in his family's home in Sonobe was recreated in Zelda's labyrinthine dungeons.

In the initial game designs, the player would start the game with the sword already in their inventory. According to Miyamoto, those in Japan were confused, as they had problems finding their way through the multiple path dungeons. Rather than listening to the complaints, Miyamoto took away the sword, forcing players to communicate with each other and share their ideas to solve puzzles. This was a new form of game communication, and in that "Zelda became the inspiration for something very different: Animal Crossing. This was a game based solely on communication."

In February 1986, Nintendo released the game on the Famicom's new Disk System peripheral. Zelda was joined by a rerelease of Super Mario Bros. and Tennis, Baseball, Golf, Soccer, and Mahjong in its introduction of the Famicom Disk System. It made full use of the Disk System’s advantages over the Famicom with a disk size of 128 kilobytes, which was expensive to produce on cartridge format. Due to the still-limited amount of space on the disk, however, the Japanese version of the game was only in katakana. It used rewritable disks to save the game, rather than using passwords. It also used the microphone built into the Famicom's controller that was not included in the NES: the instruction manual reads that Pol's Voice, an enemy in the game, "hates loud noise"; blowing or shouting into the microphone kills these creatures.

Contrary to the fears of Nintendo's management, the game was wildly popular and well received. Nintendo published the game a year later in North America, released with a small portion of the box cut out to display the unique gold-colored cartridge. In 1987, The Legend of Zelda became the first NES title aside from Super Mario Bros. to sell one million copies. In 1988, 7 million more NES units were sold, along with 33 million game cartridges. Nintendo of America sought to keep its strong base of fans: anyone who purchased a game and sent in a warranty card became a member of the Fun Club, whose members got a four-, eight-, and eventually thirty-two page newsletter. Seven hundred copies of the first issue were sent out free of charge, but the number grew as the data bank of names got longer.

From the success of the magazines in Japan, Nintendo knew that game tips were an incredibly valued asset. Players enjoyed the bimonthly newsletter's crossword puzzles and jokes, but game secrets were most valued. The Fun Club drew kids in by offering tips for the more complicated games, especially Zelda, with its hidden rooms, secret keys, and passageways. The mailing list grew. By early 1988, there were over 1 million Fun Club members, and this led to Arakawa's decision to start Nintendo Power magazine.

Since Nintendo had so few products, it made only a few commercials a year, meaning the quality had to be phenomenal. The budget could go up to $5 million for one commercial, easily four or five times more than most companies spent. One of the first commercials made under Bill White, director of advertising and public relations, was the market introduction for The Legend of Zelda, which received a great deal of attention in the ad industry. In it, a wiry-haired, nerdy guy walks through the dark making goofy noises, yelling out the names of some enemies from the game, and screaming for Zelda.

Zelda became a gold mine for Nintendo, and the company released a slew of Zelda-related merchandise, from toys and guidebooks to watches, apparel, trash cans, and even breakfast cereal. The game (and its sequel, The Adventure of Link) was also adapted into an animated series, episodes of which were shown each Friday on television's The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Link and Zelda also appeared in select episodes of Captain N: The Game Master, though these episodes revolved more around themes from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

BS The Legend of Zelda

BS The Legend of Zelda, a modified version of the original, was released for download in four episodes on the Satellaview, a satellite modem add-on to Nintendo's Super Famicom system, from August 9 1995 to August 30 1995. The first game broadcast on the Satellaview, BS Zelda featured updated graphics, a smaller overworld, and different dungeons. Link was replaced by the Satellaview mascots, a boy wearing a backwards baseball cap and a girl with red hair. It also featured "Sound Link," where every few minutes players were cautioned to listen carefully as a live narrator, broadcast over the network, gave them play clues. When the game was rebroadcast in December 1996, Nintendo changed the dungeons again. This revision had a smaller broadcast audience and is known as "~MAP 2~". A fan-made PC version, Zelda Classic, allows users to create custom quests with new tile sets and level layouts.

Reception

Zelda became a bestseller for Nintendo, selling over 6.5 million copies in its initial run. The game was brought back for Nintendo's "Classic Series" reissue in 1990, with Zelda II, Metroid, and other high-profile games. The game placed first in the player's poll "Top 30" in Nintendo Power's first issue and continued to dominate the list into the early 1990s.

Zelda places prominently in lists of games considered the greatest or most influential: it placed first in Game Informer's list of the greatest games ever, fifth in Electronic Gaming Monthly's 200th issue listing "The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time," seventh in Nintendo Power's multi-issue list of the 200 Best Nintendo Games Ever, and 80th among IGN readers' "Top 99 Games." Zelda was inducted into GameSpy's Hall of Fame in August 2000 and voted by GameSpy's editors as the tenth best game of all time. Editors of the popular Japanese magazine Famitsu voted the game among the best on the Famicom.

Even in its Game Boy Advance remake, created 17 years after its initial release, Zelda passes the test of time, scoring 79% at the Game Rankings and 87% at the Game Ratio rankings compilations. In individual ratings, IGN scored Zelda with an 8 out of 10, GamePro a 4.5 out of 5, Nintendo Power a 4.5 out of 5, and 1UP.com a 9 out of 10.

The Legend of Zelda can be purchased from Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel for 500 Wii Points, or US$5.

Impact and legacy

Zelda is considered a spiritual forerunner of the console role-playing game (RPG) genre. Though its gameplay elements are different from those of stereotypical computer or console RPGs, its bright, cartoonish graphics, fantasy setting, and musical style would be adopted by many RPGs. Its commercial success helped lay the groundwork for involved, nonlinear games in fantasy settings, such as those found in successful RPGs, including Crystalis, Soul Blazer, Square's Seiken Densetsu series, and more recently, Alundra and Brave Fencer Musashi.

Zelda spawned numerous sequels and spinoffs and remains one of Nintendo's most popular series. Although the plot of Zelda is simplistic by today's standards, it established important characters and environments of the Zelda universe: Link, Princess Zelda, Ganon, and Impa, and the Triforce was introduced as the power that binds Hyrule together.

Footnotes

1. ^ "Zelda no Densetsu". GameSpot. Retrieved 2006-09-30.
2. "The Legend of Zelda". GameSpot. Retrieved 2006-09-30.
3. IGN Staff (2003-10-06). "True Zelda Love". IGN. Retrieved 2006-10-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
4. ^ Long, Andrew. "Oldest School". RPGamer. Retrieved 2006-10-01. Cite error: The named reference "rpgamer review" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
5. ^ The Legend of Zelda Instruction Booklet (1989), p. 3
6. ^ The Legend of Zelda Instruction Booklet (1989), p. 4
7. "The Great Hyrule Encyclopedia". Nintendo. Retrieved 2006-09-27.
8. Nintendo (January 1, 2006). "The Great Hyrule Encyclopedia - Link". Zelda Universe. Retrieved 2005-09-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
9. Superplay Editorial Staff (2003-04-23). "Shigeru Miyamoto Interview". Superplay Magazine. Retrieved 2006-09-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
10. Mowatt, Todd. "In the Game: Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2006-10-01.
11. ZELDA: The Second Quest Begins (1988), p. 27
12. ZELDA: The Second Quest Begins (1988), p. 28
13. ZELDA: The Second Quest Begins (1988), p. 26
14. ^ Vestal, Andrew (2000-11-14). "History of Zelda". GameSpot. Retrieved 2006-09-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
15. "Miyamoto Speaks", Nintendo Power, vol. 89, pp. 64–67, October 1996{{citation}}: CS1 maint: year (link).
16. Bufton, Ben (2005-01-01). "Shigeru Miyamoto Interview". ntsc-uk. Retrieved 2006-09-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
17. Sheff (1993), p. 51
18. Sheff (1993), p. 52
19. Fahey, Michael (2007-03-08). "GDC07: Liveblogging Nintendo". Kotaku. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
20. alistairw (September 8, 2006). "Special: History of The Legend of Zelda Series". Nintendo. Retrieved 2006-09-30.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
21. The Legend of Zelda Instruction Booklet (1987), p. 36
22. Sheff (1993), p. 172
23. ^ Sheff (1993), p. 178
24. ^ Sheff (1993), p. 188
25. "BS The Legend of Zelda". IGN. Retrieved 2006-10-01.
26. "March 25, 2004". The Magic Box. 2004-03-25. Retrieved 2007-04-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
27. "Top 30", Nintendo Power, vol. 1, p. 102, July/August 1988 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link).
28. S.B. (February 2006). "The 200 Greatest Video Games of their Time". Electronic Gaming Monthly. Retrieved 2006-10-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
29. "NP Top 200", Nintendo Power, vol. 200, pp. 58–66, February 2006{{citation}}: CS1 maint: year (link).
30. "Readers' Picks Top 99 Games: 80-71". IGN. April 11, 2005. Retrieved 2006-09-30.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
31. Buecheler, Christopher (August 2000). "The Gamespy Hall of Fame". GameSpy. Retrieved 2006-09-30.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
32. GameSpy Staff (July 2001). "GameSpy's Top 50 Games of All Time". GameSpy. Retrieved 2006-09-30.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
33. taragan (2006). "Famitsu Readers' All-time Favorite Famicom Games". Pink Godzilla. Retrieved 2006-09-20.
34. "Classic NES Series: The Legend of Zelda". Game Rankings. Retrieved 2006-10-01.
35. "Classic NES Series: The Legend of Zelda". Game Ratio. Retrieved 2006-10-01.

References

• Sheff, David (1993). Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children. Random House. ISBN 0-679-40469-4.
• The Legend of Zelda Instruction Booklet. Nintendo of America, Inc. 1987. p. 46. Stock No. 004-000-00345-4.
• "ZELDA: The Second Quest Begins", Nintendo Power, vol. 1, pp. 26–36, July/August 1988 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

External links

Official sites

• The Legend of Zelda at Zelda.com

General resources

• The Legend of Zelda walkthrough at StrategyWiki
• The Legend of Zelda at MobyGames
• The Legend of Zelda Series at Zelda Legacy

• 1986 video games
• 1987 video games
• 2004 video games
• Nintendo games
• Action-adventure games
• Famicom Disk System games
• Game Boy Advance games
• The Legend of Zelda games
• Nintendo Entertainment System games
• Virtual Console games