Think decades ahead of its time!
After their rise to gaming dominance and supremacy with Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. Nintendo wanted to make a new series of games. The task was left in the hands of the hallowed developer Shigeru Miyamoto, the very man responsible for the birth of both Donkey Kong and Mario. With Donkey Kong and Mario focusing on liner, simple and easy to pick up gameplay Miyamoto wanted to try something drastically different with his next title. The idea of The Legend Of Zelda (which was originally titled 'Hyrule Fantasy' in Japan), came from Miyamoto's childhood memories of exploring the region of where he lived as a child in Kyoto, Japan. He wanted to create, as he called it, a virtual 'garden' in which players can just go and explore a huge game world at their own pace. We see exploration as a central point in the gaming industry today, but back in the mid 1980's it was a relatively unknown aspect. There were games at that point in time that had messed about with the aspect of exploration, most notably Warren Robinett's aptly named Adventure and Howard Scott Warshaw's Indiana Jones for the Atari 2600, but The Legend of Zelda greatly advanced these concepts.
The Legend of Zelda was released in Japan in 1986 on the Super Famicom and in America and Europe in 1987, and it was an instant recognised as one of the greatest games ever made. At the time no game had offered the player as much depth as The Legend of Zelda did. I wasn't even born when The Legend Of Zelda was released, but I've heard from gamers who were that it is hard to explain just how different the game was when explaining to more modern gamers. We take open worlds and exploration for granted now, but back in 1986 The Legend of Zelda forever changed the way people viewed videogames.
The Legend of Zelda offered the player one game that successfully incorporated elements from multiple genres. While the game is, at its core, an adventure game that requires exploration it also incorporated elements of puzzle solving, combat and role playing games, and all these elements come across brilliantly in the game. Basically there's some evil pig-like creature on the loose called Ganon, and he's kidnapped a princess called Zelda, so Link takes it upon himself to hunt down Ganon and save the princess. But of course rescuing her is no easy feat, Link will have to explore and battle his way through nine dungeons before he can even reach the climatic final battle with Ganon.
Each of the nine dungeons required you to use all your skills to navigate through, as solving puzzles and fighting enemies is a must in each. Now the puzzles in The Legend Of Zelda aren't as complex as puzzles in latter titles in the series, they basically revolve around pushing blocks to open secret passageways or blowing holes in walls, but for it's time they were the best on offer. To work your way through each dungeon you had to find keys, which unlock locked doors, and you had to find new weapons, swords and shields which aided you in combat against the games hordes of enemies (which all gained in strength admirably as the game progressed). A lot of the dungeons keys were found by simply killing all the enemies in the room you are currently in, but some of them were found by simply entering room which contained one or by blowing holes in walls to reach previously inaccessible rooms. While The Legend of Zelda has quite simplistic dungeon designs compared to, say, A Link to the Past is still has some dungeons that'll really test your brain.
The Legend of Zelda was set in the fictional world of Hyrule, and the world was huge for its time. Hyrule's overworld was comprised of one hundred and twenty eight different 'screens', meaning the world was far, far bigger than anything else ever witnessed on a videogame console. While on the overworld you could navigate Link through different terrains, which all showed off the 'phenomenal' power of Nintendo's 8-bit system, and when you were exploring you could try and blow holes in wall with your bombs to find hidden caves, or you could hop on your boat (once you acquired it of course) and cross water to islands holding secrets. But if you didn't want to do that you could just go around killing enemies until your fingers bled. Like I stated earlier the level of depth The Legend of Zelda had was brilliant for its time. The Legend of Zelda was hugely revolutionary, and in many respects it was years, possibly decades ahead of its time.
If you're going to look back at The Legend of Zelda today from a technical stand point then instantly you'll find the game is very dated, but it has dated extremeley well. Visually the game does again look very, very dated, but in 1987 The Legend of Zelda was top of the range visually and it sounded a treat. The games visuals are just basic block images in a few different colours, just what you'd come to expect from an 8 bit game, and the games music was all bleeps, kid-of like early mobile phone ringtones, but surprisingly the music does sound fantastic despite its limitations, especially the 'classic' Zelda overworld theme, but when you've got a soundtrack composed by the legendary Koji Kondo what else would you expect? Also playing the game today you'll notice that the controls are a little clunky, but it still plays really well despite this.
Now I've got to sum up my review. Well, what can I say? The Legend of Zelda is one of the greatest videogames ever made. There, is there anything else I can add to that? If you played the game for the first time today you'll probably wander what all the fuss was about, but don't let this cloud your judgements of this classic game. Play the game and imagine what it would have been like to play it back in 1987, then you'll see what the game was all about. It'd be impossible for me to not recommend this game, it is the forefather of all modern adventure games and that's al you need to know.
Review by: James Widdowson
Score: 9.7/10