The Legend of Zelda
REDISCOVER RETRO GAMING - CLASSIC 8-BIT NINTENDO NES
NINTENDO NES
Game Title:The Legend of Zelda
System:Nintendo NES
Players:1 Player
Genre:Adventure/Action
Developer(s):Nintendo
Release Date(s):1987
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The Legend of Zelda is a 1986 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo.
The Legend of Zelda incorporates elements of action, adventure, and role-playing games. You control the main character 'Link' from a flip-screen overhead perspective as he travels through the overworld, a large outdoor map with varied environments.
Link begins the game armed only with a small shield, but a sword becomes available to Link after he ventures into a cave that is accessible from the game's first map screen. Throughout the game, merchants, townspeople, and others guide Link with cryptic clues. These people are scattered across the overworld and hidden in caves, shrubberies, or behind walls or waterfalls. To thwart Link's progress on his travels are creatures he must battle to locate the entrances to 9 underground dungeons. Each dungeon is a unique, maze-like collection of rooms connected by doors and secret passages, and guarded by monsters different from those found on the surface. Dungeons also hide useful tools which Link can add to his arsenal, such as a boomerang for retrieving distant items and stunning enemies, and a musical recorder with magical properties. Link must successfully navigate through each of the first eight dungeons to obtain all eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom. Once he has completed the artifact, he can enter the 9th dungeon to rescue Zelda. Apart from this exception, the order of completing dungeons is somewhat left to your choices, giving the game a totally free-roam feel. Although they steadily increase in difficulty and some of them can only be reached or completed using items gained in a previous one. Link can freely wander the overworld, finding and buying items at any point. The flexibility of the game is awesome, it can enable totally different paths every time you play the game!. I personally love the free-roam feel of the game, unlike most other free-roam titles, you don't get lost or bored as all the different areas in the game are totally unique, with tons of various baddies, monsters and villains. Your progress is nice and clear throughout and when you know your way around the overworld, you wont even need the detailed map provided with the game, because at first you really do!. The game is huge, scattered with random, interesting worlds to explore!. The difficulty of the game is nice and easy in the beginning, but actually becomes quite tricky in the later dungeons. If you obtain all the power ups and sword upgrades it’s not too bad, but if you are not optimizing your play, and upgrading Link throughout you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed in later dungeons. Some of the later dungeons actually have bosses from earlier dungeons lurking in the middle of them! It will take quick reflexes and a healthy inventory to make it through death mountain and vanquish Ganon!. And the Verdict is...
Zelda has great gameplay, that was unparalleled at the time it was released back in the day. Even today the gameplay holds up very nicely. The size of the game and the free-roam factor really set this game apart from a lot of its rivals!. This really was ground-breaking back in the 90's, and it could still easily soak up a good few hours of your time today. Fantastic game! 5* |