Legend of Zelda Celebrates 20 Years

The Legend of Zelda is one of the most beloved gaming franchises Nintendo has created. It is also celebrating two decades of life this week. 1up has a great feature on the anniversary, exploring the different games in the series with a list of 'stuff to love'. From the article: "Twenty years ago this week -- February 21, 1986 -- thousands of Japanese gamers played The Legend of Zelda for the first time, and their perspective on gaming was forever changed. Here was a huge world, a massive quest, an open-ended odyssey that demanded exploration. When we Americans first placed that golden cartridge in our Nintendo Entertainment Systems a few months later, we learned what our friends overseas had already discovered: Zelda was addictive. It was adventurous. It was ambitious. It was amazing." Four Colour Rebellion also has commentary on this auspicious occasion, with a Happy Birthday look back and some fond remembrances.

Comments

The SAVE feature

[steveo777]

What a God-send saving your game was. This was the first savable game we owned. Sure, you had to die, but you could start where you left off. No more overly complex code system. So what if you only had three hearts and was back at the beginning. I've got my sword and blue boomerang, just go up three, over one up three and somewhere around there is a nice fairy who will shower you with love and affection. Beyond any other game, this is what made me love Zelda (in the begining). I was only 6 when it came out and I had a hard time adopting to the controller or learning the map.

When my parents kicked me off the Nintendo to make me play outside (which was frequent) they understood that they weren't ruining my last 20 minutes of gaming. Heck, my mom or dad would often sit co-pilot with the map helping me find where to go, but I wasn't allowd to play unless weather didn't permit me to go outside. I grew up in Minnesota, so we get a lot of extremes.

Ah.. memories.

Phillips CD-i

[RyoShin]

Can't read it from work, but I hope the article mentions the miserable Phillips CD-i games in there somewhere.

If not, here's a brief history:

Originally, Nintendo worked with Sony to create a CD add-on to its then-successful SNES. Things were going along merrily, but, for some reason, Nintendo cut ties with Sony and changed to working with Phillips- and Sony didn't find out until Nintendo made a public announcement. As part of the agreement for developing a CD attachment for Nintendo, Phillips got to use some of Nintendo's properties for its own ill-fated CD-i game system.

There were three games in all (Wand of Gamelon or something is the only title I can remember.) One had a cartoon opening scene (dubbed "Gay Link", and you'll know why if you ever see the video), another had live-action scenes (I think it was something like Myst), and another had you messily controlling Zelda on her way to save Link (hey, it had to happen sometime.)

In the end, Nintendo did away with the whole CD thing anyway. So, out of this entire thing, we got:
-One (1) ill-fated gaming console by Phillips
-Three (3) horrible Zelda games which should only be referenced to prove that a good series can go bad
-No (0) CD add-on for the SNES

And, as you may have already guessed, Sony didn't stop production after Nintendo cut its ties- the project they were working on? You know it now as the Playstation.

That's right- Nintendo help create the very gaming console that now overshadows them. This was the first of many stupid decisions that lead up to the Gamecube (where they corrected many of the problems.)

As an aside, some of the other stupid decisions were: forcing N64 developers to work on the Virtual Boy (we all know how that faired), the Virtual Boy itself, using cartridges over CDs for the N64 (due to, as I understand it, mainly piracy concerns- you can't copy something if you lack the media), and losing Final Fantasy to Sony.

For those who'd like to give it another go

[hairyfeet]

http://www.zeldaclassic.com/ it is the complete original game plus gives you the ability to download add-on quests made by the fans.Dozens of quests to feed your zelda addiction!

And does anyone remember those freaky comercials that came out for it with the guy popping his head up going "zelda?zelda?" I can't believe after all these years I still remember the damn commercial.Got to give credit to Nintendo.They really saved console gaming after the crash of '83.

Re:Short list 'o memories

[voice_of_all_reason]

The white/multicolored sparkly clouds were in 1st quest. They took your sword away for a few seconds. 2nd quest had red clouds (took your sword away permenantly) and blue clouds (which restored it). Problem one, some dungeons had only red clouds, a real pain in the ass :(