The Legend of Zelda, the first game in the Nintendo saga, turns thirty this 2016 since its release in Japan for the Famicom Disk System. Link’s first adventure revolutionized the market due to its non-linear concept.
The Legend of Zelda is one of the most emblematic sagas in the world of video games and one of the flagships of the Nintendo factory. Starring Link, throughout these thirty years we have seen the Hylian hero with various aspects: From his earliest ages to his stage as an adult, wearing masks, transformed into a wolf, with cel-shaded graphics, making cameos in other video games and , even its female version, called Linkle.
The origins of The Legend of Zelda saga date back to 1986 with the launch of the first video game in the franchise on February 21 of that year in Japan for the Famicom Disk System, a peripheral for the NES that used floppy disks to store data, instead of of the classic cartridges of the time. However, we were able to enjoy it in Europe from November 27, 1987 for the NES, Nintendo’s 8-bit desktop console, on cartridge and this being the first to include an internal battery to save the game.
The first The Legend of Zelda video game introduced us to the world of Hyrule, a kingdom full of very different regions, such as forests or deserts, with a fantastic medieval setting. Hyrule would not only be the setting for the videogames in The Legend of Zelda saga, but it would also be a virtual fantasy universe that would revolutionize the concept of videogames due to its dynamics and the experience it gave the player. A real advance for its non-linear approach.
Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, the first The Legend of Zelda game combined adventure, action, puzzles, and exploration in a top-down perspective. This fusion of genres gave the player an unusual freedom for the time in which we could advance as we pleased. If it is true that to complete some dungeons we needed a special object that was found in a different one, so perhaps we had to retrace our steps. This “where do I go?” or “I’m going to go this way” presented a new experience for players at the time, with the first The Legend of Zelda being a precursor to what we currently understand as open world video games.
Link picking up one of the fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom.
The story of the first The Legend of Zelda also had a princess guarded by an evil being. Exactly, Princess Zelda was imprisoned on Death Mountain because of Ganon, Prince of Darkness and absolute villain of the video game. Besides, our enemy had in his possession the Triforce of Power, one of the three pieces of the Triforce, a golden relic made up of three equilateral triangles and a symbol of the franchise. Our mission was to rescue Zelda. To do this, we had to go through Hyrule in search of the eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom, another of the pieces of the Triforce.
The eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom were spread across eight dungeons throughout the kingdom of Hyrule. Each dungeon in the first The Legend of Zelda was a set of rooms and rooms connected in a labyrinthine fashion. In them we fought against monsters different from the usual ones of the outer places, apart from the final confrontation against a guardian boss to obtain the fragment in question. With all the pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom collected, we were ready to go to the Mountain of Death and face Ganon in his anthropomorphic pig form to defeat him with the silver dates.
One of the fairies we found in The Legend of Zelda.
In addition, in each dungeon of the first The Legend of Zelda we were getting new weapons and useful objects to become stronger. Others were obtained in exchange for rupees, the currency of the saga, in other specific places in Hyrule. Link used, apart from his sword and shield, a bow, a boomerang and its magical version, the magic scepter, bombs, the flute, the blue or red candle and the blue or red ring, among other utensils to solve the riddles and attack our enemies to protect our hearts, the health of the video game.
When we finished the first The Legend of Zelda, we had the possibility of passing the game again in its Second Quest. This second return to the world of Hyrule with the same task made all the enemies of the video game stronger beings. Also, the dungeon locations were changed. For this reason, apart from the increase in difficulty, we once again felt the sensation of freedom (or confusion) to advance in our odyssey.
In the final battle against Ganon.
With all these ingredients, the first The Legend of Zelda was a complete and replayable adventure, with a variety of items and weapons to use throughout the game, and an amazing world to discover. Three decades after its release, the glow of its Triforce has not faded and this game is still brimming with power as it is considered a precursor of open world games and RPG genre, full of risk value for its time with its non-linear concept. and exultant in wisdom for being a classic from the NES catalog and an example of the history of video games.