Seriously.
You needed a map to play this game.
And I don’t mean, like…oh, better press pause, and look at my map.
Didn’t work that way.
I’m saying you needed, like, a roll of parchment.
You needed to have this place mapped out.
Brick by brick, tree by tree, cave by cave.
And if you didn’t have one?
You either made one, or you tightened up your tunic.
And became one of those people.
The ones who were brave enough…to go it alone.
And lonely enough.
They probably had very little to do.
I’ve gone back to three NES games lately…inspired by the Wii U game NES Remix, all on the Wii
U’s eShop.
And they’re games that…you sort of take their greatness for granted.
I mean, it’s not like you need to have played Donkey Kong lately to know how great it is.
Or Donkey Kong, Jr. or this one…the Legend of Zelda.
But when you go back and actually play them…
I mean, holy crap.
It’s not just that these games were great.
And are great.
It’s that they broke ground in ways you can only fully appreciate when you play them
again.
Because even if you know these games by heart, they still manage to blow you away, every
single time you pick them up.
Perhaps none more so…than Zelda.
The Legend of Zelda was released almost 30 years ago.
And in video game years, that’s an eternity.
There aren’t many games approaching their thirties that, in terms of size and design,
can actually still impress you.
Video games have come a long way since 1987.
And yet this one feels as adventurous, and creative, and
relevant…as it ever has.
It’s not that Zelda was a masterpiece.
It’s still a masterpiece.
And its world is still a place where, screen by screen…you can just get lost.
Of course, that feeling was all the more impressive when it was released.
The Legend of Zelda came to a world where video games—even the most ambitious video
games—were pretty clear about what you were supposed to do.
You were either scrolling to the right, or…clearing all the enemies.
Not the case with Zelda.
This was a game that, once you pressed start…you were legitimately on your own.
It made you apply real-life thinking…to a video game.
You had to remember things.
You had to use logic.
When you faced a problem in Hyrule, chances were you could solve it the same way you would
on Earth.
Room’s dark?
Hey, what about that candle I found?
And you know, I bet I could use it to burn down bushes, too.
And so, along with games like Metroid, Nintendo was taking video games into a much more complex
direction.
This was a massive world, overrun by evil…where its people are hiding in caves.
And if you wanted to defeat that evil, you have to talk to the right people, and find
the right tools.
That was a far cry from earlier NES games, which all sort of followed the same premise
of…there’s one way to go, find the goal, survive ’til you get there.
Zelda felt…insane, in comparison.
And the cool thing is that, since games have evolved to be more accessible to the player,
Zelda’s quest still feels…daunting.
And maybe even more so.
So it’s the size, that groundbreaking design…there are a lot of reasons Zelda feels like such
an epic adventure.
And of course, one of those reasons…is the presentation.
Hyrule actually has topography, which is ridiculous.
There are coastal shores, grasslands, mountains, deserts, each with their own enemies and characteristics…and
then of course, there’s the music.
Zelda doesn’t have many songs, but the ones it does have are among the greatest, most
memorable songs in gaming history.
There have been a lot of Zelda games since this one, and obviously, they’ve done a
lot to refine the formula.
But that’s the thing.
That formula?
You can see it here.
And when you come back to the original, you realize that…today’s Zelda games aren’t
that far removed from this one.
The graphics are prettier, the worlds are bigger, the gameplay’s better…but the
adventure.
That’s one flame that burns as bright as ever in the Legend of Zelda.