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 The video game industry is a funny thing, but aren’t many other industries as well? In our crazy industry, it’s not unheard of for certain game properties to simply have expectations that would require unadulterated perfection to meet.
If there is one franchise in the game industry that fits this description impeccably well it has to be Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda. Born in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System, the first game in the franchise put into motion the series’ very own legend. At the time, The Legend of Zelda was hailed for its numerous innovations, many of which have impacted the art of game design so heavily that they are still used and recognized in today’s most modern video games.
Zelda began its life in the imagination of renowned game creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who at the time of release of The Legend of Zelda on NES had created the Mario series just years before. The game was inspired by Miyamoto’s own imaginary childhood adventures through the hills and caves of Kyoto, Japan. His vision transformed into a video game innovated in many regards – both in gameplay and in technology. The Legend of Zelda NES was an overhead 2D adventure that let players run around an open world, collecting items, solving puzzles, fighting enemies in real-time and exploring unknown dungeons and caves. Meanwhile, technically speaking, it employed a groundbreaking save system that allowed gamers to, for the first time, save their NES game progress. In an era where you either had to resort to sometimes ridiculously long save codes to continue your adventure or simply could not save your game progress at all, this was a godsend – one that truly revolutionized the game industry, and in fact, without this breakthrough, games as we know them today would not exist.
Miyamoto’s imaginary childhood adventures through the hills of Kyoto, Japan inspired him to create Zelda
Following the soaring popularity of The Legend of Zelda both in Japan and in the United States, Nintendo eventually released The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Super NES. After the RPG-like departure from the roots of the original Legend of Zelda, known as Adventures of Link, A Link to the Past was like a reassuring breath of familiar air for many. Once again, the foundation that made the first Zelda so successful lay at the foot of this new Zelda. A Link to the Past, at its very heart, played like the true successor to the first Zelda. But it still managed to push forward the franchise, shaping it into The Legend of Zelda many gamers know and love today. The game introduced multiple-level dungeons, new items, more complicated puzzles, more interactive NPCs, a more lively overworld and upgraded visuals. All of these improvements made a lasting impact on the franchise, as a whole, and can be seen in contemporary iterations of Zelda.
 
Ocarina of Time transformed Zelda into 3D
The next huge jump for Zelda was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64, the first 3D Nintendo home console of all time. Just as the original Zelda laid the groundwork for future 2D adventure games, Ocarina of Time rocked the 3D adventure genre and even ten years later is, for many, not only the greatest Zelda game of all time but the single-best video game ever crafted. These are big words, and they are not used lightly. Ocarina treaded grounds no console adventure game had explored before it. With the title, Nintendo took the Zelda formula – a 2D concept – and realized it as a 3D reality. The leap was huge. Nintendo’s fathered at-the-time wholly new gameplay mechanics, such as lock-on targeting. The result was a piece of software that is used as a benchmark for games being developed a decade later. Zelda titles released today are immediately measured against the N64 masterpiece.
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