Iconic doesnt begin to describe it.
The story is as follows, the antagonist(Gannon) has kidnapped the princess of the land in a bid to find the Triforce(a powerful artifact). The princess in order to hide it from him split it into numerous pieces so he couldnt find it and now Link(the hero) must put it back together and rescue the princess. The story since its an NES game is bare bones and enough to just give you a decent idea of why youre doing what youre doing. Anyone who has played an NES game before knows that this is usually the most story you will ever get so it doesnt matter.
The game starts of simply enough by giving you a top down view of the protagonist Link lacking a weapon or anything else. Quickly you are given a wooden sword in a cave and are shoved off on the adventure to find the pieces of the triforce in the numerous dungeons scattered across the land. This being an old NES game, it really lacks in giving you any direction in which to go. If you are someone who needs to be led by a carrot on a stick then I would strongly suggest playing this game with a guide, because you could spend a ton of time just searching for the dungeons themselves.
The first dungeon you come upon will be simple enough to navigate and will introduce you to your first secondary weapon the boomerang. Using this will allow you to stun enemies from a distance making them much easier to kill. As you go on in the game you will find more and more useful items and weapons to help you along in your adventure. This was one of the things that really endeared me to the game as a kid since I was used to most games just handing you a sword or a gun.
At the end of each dungeon you will fight a boss. Some of them are simple enough to vanquish by just attacking them with your sword, others will require you to use special items against them in route to their demise. Once the boss is defeated you will be given a heart container that extends your max life and will find a piece of the mystic triforce. The game includes 9 dungeons in all, 8 of them with triforce pieces and the last where you will face Ganon himself. As you go along in the game the dungeons really get more difficult and you will find them hard to navigate because of secret passages you will use to get around them.
The best part about Zelda is as you move along with the game it allows you to save your progress, so no more marathon sessions or having to leave your NES on when you leave in order to beat it. At the time this was a huge deal and was an amazing innovation(I dont know if this was the first game to do it but it was the first game I played that did).
The two things that really set Zelda apart for me as a kid were the sprawling size of the world(their is no map in the game I suggest you find one online) and the secrets that you find within it. Scattered across the map are numerous secret locations that you can find by burning bushes, blowing up walls or simply walking through bare rock. You could spend hours just bombing random locations looking for hidden heart containers(life upgrades).
Last but not least the music really is memorable and classic. From the theme at the start of the game to the music that starts when you set foot in the dungeon it really stays with you and has continued to grow and evolve as the series has gone on.
What more can I say? Zelda is my favorite series of all time and this is the game that really got me into gaming. As a kid the amount of time I put into this game just searching for that next elusive dungeon was insane. To this day it still holds up and I enjoy playing it now as much as I did back then.
PS - Their is a secret that you earn after you beat it but Ill leave it to you to find that out. :P