The Legend of Zelda Review

    

Gameplay Help

Link must battle bosses, such as this four-headed Gleeok to obtain the 8 pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom and rescue Princess Zelda. System: NES Release: 1986 Copies Sold: 6.5 Million After collecting the Triforce of Wisdom, Link battles Ganon to get the Triforce of Power and rescue Princess Zelda.

This is the game that started it all.  After the game was released in 1986, gamers everywhere were glued to their TVs searching for that next dungeon or the next piece of the Triforce.  The Legend of Zelda is regarded as a true classic by all gamers, and believe it or not, it was the first game to feature battery backed-up saves instead of passwords.  

     The graphics in The Legend of Zelda are typical for a NES game, yet it is the gameplay that this game delivers that makes it a classic.  Every screen that Link is on contains five, six, or sometimes even more enemies that must be defeated.  In dungeons, sometimes a door that Link needs to get through will not open until all the enemies in a room are defeated, or sometimes by defeating all of the enemies in the room, Link will receive a key that will open up a door further in the dungeon.       

     The game also introduced many of the key elements that are still present in Zelda games today.  Just about everywhere Link traveled, it was possible to find a secret by bombing a wall, touching an Armos statue who would come to life and reveal a stairway or by burning down a tree.  Even entire dungeons were hidden in this game.  The game also introduced bosses that couldn't just be defeated by great fighting skill, Link would have to figure out the strategy needed to defeat each boss.  Some could only be damaged by bombs, while others were immune to bombs, but could only be damaged by arrows at certain times.

     The dungeons in The Legend of Zelda are great.  Each was challenging and like the dungeons in each of the future Zelda games, each contained a special item that Link would need to complete his quest.  Link would have to fight his way through each dungeon, find the special item and then defeat the guardian at the end of each dungeon in order to obtain one of the eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom.  

     And if all that was not enough, the game featured a second quest once Link defeated Ganon.  The second quest took the overworld from the first quest, but contained entirely new dungeons and was much more challenging.  A player could skip directly to the second quest by entering their name as ZELDA when setting up a character.

     The Legend of Zelda was a great game that laid the groundwork for all the Zelda games that followed it.  No matter how graphically advanced future Zelda games become, The Legend of Zelda will always be a classic and will always be remembered as the game that started the greatest videogame series ever made.