The Legend of Zelda (video game)

The Legend of Zelda is the first video game of The Legend of Zelda series. It was first released in Japan, as a launch title of the Family Computer Disk System peripheral in 1986. A year later, in 1987, the game saw an overseas release on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and is played from a gold cartridge. The Legend of Zelda is the first home console title with an internal battery for saving game data.

At its time of release, The Legend of Zelda was noted for its expansive, nonlinear open world gameplay. It would eventually be regarded as one of the greatest and most influential video games of all time, laying the groundwork for the nonlinear RPG genre. A vastly different sequel for the same system, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, was first released in Japan less than a year later. The Legend of Zelda would eventually spawn more successive titles and spin-offs and become one of Nintendo's most popular franchises.

Plot
The story of The Legend of Zelda is described in the instruction booklet and in the short prologue after the title screen.

During an age of chaos, a small kingdom of Hyrule is invaded by an army led by Ganon, who steal the Triforce of Power. Ganon (initially spelled as "Gannon" in-game, which is changed in later revisions), nicknamed the "Prince of Darkness", sought parts of the Triforce to rule over the world with fear and darkness. Fearing his rule, Princess Zelda split the Triforce of Wisdom into eight fragments and hid them around the kingdom. She then commanded her trustworthy nursemaid, Impa, to find someone with the courage to fight Ganon and his forces. Ganon finds out about her plan, so he angrily imprisons Zelda and sends his minions to search for Impa.

Impa fled from Ganon's troops, through forests and mountains. Sometime during her escape, Impa loses all of her energy and gets cornered by Ganon's troops. She is saved by a young hero named Link, whom she retells the whole story of Zelda and Ganon to. Link decides to go on a journey to rescue Zelda and recover each fragment of the Triforce of Wisdom, which he can use to confront Ganon.

During the course of the tale, Link locates and braves the eight underworld labyrinths, each containing a guardian monster, and retrieves a fragment from each one. With the completed Triforce of Wisdom, Link is able to infiltrate Ganon's hideout in Death Mountain, where he confronts Ganon and destroys him with the Silver Arrow. Link recovers the Triforce of Power from Ganon's ashes, and he returns both the Triforce of Power and the Triforce of Wisdom to the rescued Princess Zelda, allowing peace to return into Hyrule.

If the Second Quest is completed, the ending screen concludes with End of "The Legend of Zelda 1", hinting at a sequel.

Gameplay
The Legend of Zelda is notable for incorporating elements from the action, adventure, and role-playing genres. From a top-down perspective, the player can move Link around the Overworld, a large outdoor map with various environments. Link starts his adventure only equipped with a small shield, but he can enter a nearby cave and obtain a sword from the old man. Throughout his adventure, Link is aided by several characters who give or sell equipment and clues to him; these characters are found in caves scattered throughout the land. Some are easily accessible, and others are hidden beneath obstacles such as rocks, trees, and waterfalls. The Overworld is divided into sections, and a few enemies spawn in nearly every part of the map. Link must either battle or avoid them as he searches for entrances to large dungeons.

There are nine dungeons, each consisting of a maze which is individually separated into rooms, which are connected by doors and secret passages. The paths are usually closed off, and can only be opened if Link defeats every enemy in the room, or by moving blocks around. There are some unique items that Link can obtain within the dungeon, such as a boomerang. A boss often appears inside a dungeon, and must be defeated by Link to recover a fragment of the Triforce of Wisdom.

The Legend of Zelda is also noted for its flexibility, so the player can decide on the order that they complete the dungeons. However, the dungeons steadily increase in difficulty by number, and a few dungeon entrances from the Overworld can only be entered by using items that are obtained in previous locations.

After completing the game a first time, the player unlocks a harder mode known as the Second Quest. It is essentially a harder version of the first mode, featuring entirely different dungeons, relocated items, and stronger enemies. The Overworld remains largely unchanged except for the relocation of the dungeon entrances.

Large underworld enemies
These are usually signified with a roaring sound effect in their rooms and may be encountered as bosses or as enemies. Bosses are always found in the room directly before the goal and drop a Container Heart (or in Ganon's case, the Triforce of Power).

Pickups
These are common enemy drops that cannot be used from the sub screen:

Assignable items
These are items that can be assigned to the B button from the sub screen:

Dungeon items
These are items used for dungeon navigation. They cannot be assigned from the sub screen:

Equipment
Equipment items are automatically assigned to Link; some are later replaced:

Plot items
These are rewards for completing dungeons:

Overworld
The Overworld is the hub location of the game. Aside from labyrinths, some other locations appear from the overworld itself:


 * Cave
 * Fairy Fountain
 * Graveyard
 * Lost Hills
 * Lost Woods
 * Main screen
 * Spectacle Rock

While technically not a location, Link can play the Money Making Game from a few of the caves.

Levels
Every level takes place in a labyrinth:


 * Level-1: Eagle (Second Quest)
 * Level-2: Moon (Second Quest)
 * Level-3: Manji (Second Quest)
 * Level-4: Snake (Second Quest)
 * Level-5: Lizard (Second Quest)
 * Level-6: Dragon (Second Quest)
 * Level-7: Demon (Second Quest)
 * Level-8: Lion (Second Quest)
 * Level-9: Death Mountain (Second Quest)

Development
The Legend of Zelda was developed and directed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Miyamoto produced the game and Tezuka produced the script. The manual's backstory was written by Keiji Terui, whose writing was inspired by conflicts in and resulted in the legend of the Triforce. During development, the game was known as 「デス・マウンテン」 (Desu Maunten, Death Mountain).

The Legend of Zelda began development in 1984, at the same time as Super Mario Bros., which had a largely similar development team. The ideas were separated between both games, for instance, how Super Mario Bros. had linear gameplay contrasting with The Legend of Zelda's open world exploration. According to Miyamoto, those in Japan were confused and had trouble finding their way through the multi-path dungeons, and in initial game designs, the player would start with the sword already in their inventory. Rather than merely simplifying matters for players, Miyamoto forced the player to listen to the old man who gives them the sword, and he encouraged interaction among people to share ideas on finding various hidden secrets, a new form of gaming communication. Many years later, this concept was used as the root of the Animal Crossing series.

With The Legend of Zelda, Miyamoto wanted to flesh out 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 his experiences as a boy around Kyoto, where he explored nearby fields, woods, and caves, always trying through Zelda titles to impart players some sense of that limitless wonder he felt through unknown exploration.

Early concepts of the game involved technological elements, with microchips for the Triforce made of electronic circuits and a time-travelling protagonist. While the final game follows a traditional heroic fantasy setting, subsequent games in the series have incorporated some technology based concepts.

The five music tracks were composed by Koji Kondo. The orchestral piece was originally planned as the title theme, but Kondo was forced to change it late in the development cycle after learning that the song's copyright had not yet expired. As a result, Kondo wrote a new arrangement of the overworld theme within one day, which has become an iconic motive echoing throughout continued entries of the series.

Release
In February 1986, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda as a launch title on the Family Computer add-on, the Family Computer Disk System peripheral. It made full use of the Disk Card media's advantages over traditional ROM cartridges, with an increased size of 128 kilobytes which would be expensive to produce on cartridge format.

However, due to the disk space's limitations, all of the text was only sourced from the alphabet. Players could save their progress by using rewritable disks rather than using a password system that many other games had. The Family Computer Disk System utilized an additional sound channel for certain sound effects, such as Link's sword beam at full health, the roars and growls of dungeon bosses, and those of defeated enemies. The sound effects had to be altered for the eventual cartridge release, which used the Family Computer's PCM channel.

When Nintendo published the game in North America, the packaging design featured a small portion of the box cut away to reveal the unique gold-colored cartridge. The cartridge made use of the Memory Management Controller chip (specifically the MMC1 model), which could use bank-switching to allow for larger games than had previously been possible. This release was notable for being the first cartridge-based game to utilize battery-powered RAM that allowed players to save their progress.

From the success of magazines in Japan, Nintendo knew that game tips were a 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 a million Fun Club members, which led Minoru Arakawa to start the Nintendo Power magazine.

Reception and legacy
The Legend of Zelda was a bestseller for Nintendo, selling over 6.5 million copies. 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. The Legend of Zelda was also voted by Nintendo Power readers as the "Best Challenge" in the Nintendo Power Awards '88. In 2016 GamesRadar ranked it the third best NES game ever made. The staff praised its "mix of complexity, open world design, and timeless graphics".

The Legend of Zelda is often featured in lists of games considered the greatest or most influential. It placed first in Game Informer's list of the "Top 100 Games of All Time" and "The Top 200 Games of All Time" (in 2001 and 2009 respectively), fifth in Electronic Gaming Monthly's 200th issue listing "The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time", seventh in Nintendo Power's list of the 200 Best Nintendo Games Ever and 77th in Official Nintendo Magazine's 100 greatest Nintendo games of all time. In 1997 the 32nd issue of Next Generation listed the North American release under their "Five Greatest Game Packages of All Time" list, citing the die-cut hole which revealed the gold cartridge, full color manual, and fold-out map.

In a review of the Wii Virtual Console rerelease Lucas M. Thomas from IGN praised the game's graphics, music, gameplay, and lasting appeal, while criticizing that the game can be too cryptic for new players. He stated that "The Legend of Zelda is a timeless adventure, worth playing through again and again.", while giving the game a nine out of ten. Damien McFerran from Nintendo Life gave the NES version of the game an eight out of ten, stating that the game is "one of the finest 8-bit RPGs available". In a negative review David Fisher from Game Shinny gave the game a six out of ten, praising the game's exploration, difficulty balance, and graphical presentation, while criticizing the game's boss variety, the map not telling the player where items are, the game's controls, stating that "In my own run I died about 5 times between the start of the game and the end of the first boss. This might suggest highlighting The Legend of Zelda (NES) as a game geared toward "hardcore" players, however, the deaths are not because of the game's inherent difficulty. Instead, the difficulty is a result of the faulty controls.", and the game's reliance on the manual.

The Classic NES series port of The Legend of Zelda received a score of eighty-four on Metacritic.

Alternate versions and re-releases

 * 1986 - Original release on the Family Computer Disk System (Japan)
 * 1987 - Original release on the Nintendo Entertainment System (North America/Europe/Australia)
 * 1992 - Re-released on the NES as part of the "Classic Series", featuring a gray cartridge.
 * 1994 - Back-ported to a Family Computer cartridge and renamed to The Hyrule Fantasy: The Legend of Zelda 1 (Japan)
 * 1995/1996 - A remake, titled BS Zelda no Densetsu, was broadcast for the Satellaview add-on of the Super Nintendo in four episodic, weekly installments.
 * 2001 - The original game is unlockable in Animal Crossing for the Nintendo GameCube. It is one of the "Forbidden Four," and cannot be accessed in-game without a cheating device.
 * 2003 - The original game is one of the four full games on The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition
 * 2004 - Ported to the Game Boy Advance as part of the Classic NES Series
 * 2006 - Ported as one of the first Virtual Console titles on the Wii
 * 2008 - Available as a Masterpiece in Super Smash Bros. Brawl
 * 2011/2012 - Ported to select Nintendo 3DS units as an Ambassador Program title, and later became more widely available with a Virtual Console release in 2012 (December 2011 in Japan).
 * 2013 - Ported to the Wii U as a downloadable Virtual Console title
 * 2014 - Also appears as a Masterpiece on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
 * 2016 - Released as one of the 30 games included on the NES Classic Edition and its Japanese counterpart, Nintendo Classic Mini: Family Computer.
 * 2018 - Included as a playable title on the Nintendo Switch Online service. A "special save data" version was released a month later, allowing the player to start the game with more items and Rupies.
 * 2021 - Included on Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda as a playable title

Version differences
There are four versions of The Legend of Zelda's original release: the Family Computer Disk System, the PRG0 and PRG1 revisions, and the Family Computer re-release. The PRG1 revision is the Classic Series re-release, and the PRG0 and PRG1 respectively have a product ID of  and. The Nintendo Entertainment System release features many audio differences from the Family Computer Disk System version, to accommodate for the NES's inferior sound channel, and also includes a couple of minor differences from the original. Starting with 2003, when The Legend of Zelda was included on Collector's Edition, many translation errors were fixed, most notably from the title screen intro. This version was reused in subsequent ports, except for the Virtual Console release on 3DS, which is based on the PRG1 version. The 2003 release's title screen was updated to include 2003 (or 2004 in the Classic NES Series re-release) as a copyright year. In Japan, the Collector's Edition version was released in 2004, and thus the title screen's copyright year was also updated to 2004. This version is based on the first Family Computer Disk System, but retains the rewritten intro from. Similarly, the Japanese 3DS Virtual Console opted to use the original translation.

There are a couple of other notable differences:


 * The Bible was renamed to the Book of Magic from the introduction in international releases. This was done in order to comply with Nintendo of America's censorship policies against adding religious content in-game. The Family Computer cartridge re-release also reads "Book of Magic" text but the katakana text still reads Bible.
 * In the Family Computer Disk System and Family Computer versions, one way to defeat a Pols Voice is to yell into the Family Computer's built-in microphone. Since the NES hardware does not have this feature, Link can instead defeat a Pols Voice by firing Arrows at it.
 * In the NES release, the Zola sprites changed to have a black outline surrounding them, which gives them further on-screen visibility.
 * The NES release features the thicker, common font present in many NES games.
 * In the PRG1 NES version, the save option screen warns users on how to prevent losing their save data. While this message was removed from the hidden Animal Crossing version, the text layout was left unchanged.
 * The Family Computer Disk System version has a smoother screen transitional effect than the NES and Family Computer cartridge releases.
 * The PRG1 version of the NES release adds a trademark symbol to the title screen.
 * The Family Computer cartridge re-release was updated to include the number "1" in its title. This change is also reflected on the title screen.
 * In Japan's 2004 re-release, the copyright info and "Press Start" message reuse the original Family Computer Disk System font.

Staff
Everyone except the producer, Hiroshi Yamauchi, is listed under a pseudonym during the end credits:

Executive producer:
 * Hiroshi Yamauchi

Producer:
 * Shigeru Miyamoto

Directors:
 * Shigeru Miyamoto
 * Takashi Tezuka

Designer:
 * Takashi Tezuka

Programmers:
 * Toshihigo Nakago
 * Yasunari Soejima
 * I. Marui

Sound composer:
 * Koji Kondo