NES – The Legend of Zelda
February 22, 2008 - 4:24 pm - Posted by Sean
This revolutionary title brilliantly combined hack-n-slash action with RPG-style adventure, challenging both your mind and reflexes.
So has this 1986 Nintendo classic managed to stand the test of time? Yes! Playing it for a first time in many years, it struck me how unlike contemporary Zelda adventures, this one doesn’t “hold your hand” through the first stage or two.
No, you’re tossed straight to the wolves from the very start! You’ll die repeatedly before you gain enough strength to defeat monsters, but stick with it, because the game gets easier and more interesting as you progress.
Zelda’s world is a rectangular patchwork of screens with forest, desert, water, and mountain environments. Scattered throughout the landscape are wandering monsters, multi-level dungeons, merchants, and wise men that offer advice like “walk into the water fall”. When your life meter is full, your sword can fire projectiles, making combat a heck of a lot easier.
It’s fascinating to see how so many of the weapons, monsters, and musical themes in this game have endured throughout the entire series. Legend of Zelda may be timeless, but it does lack the polish of subsequent chapters.
It’s annoying how monsters materialize briefly after you enter a screen, leading to some really cheap deaths. Upon reaching the edge of the “world”, the screens start repeating in a confusing manner. Money is hard to scrounge up, and I would not recommend playing the gambling mini-games.
Despite these quibbles, the Legend of Zelda is almost as fun to play now as it was back in the day. Plus, it’s kind of refreshing to play a Zelda game that you can finish in a weekend.
DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE. And don’t hit the old folks, they don’t like it.
Something you could have brought up is that it has save files. I believe that it was the first game to use internal memory to save the player’s game rather than simply forgetting it, making the player remember a password, or using external memory. Even though the memory runs off a battery that was supposed to have a lifetime of about five years, it’s 20+ years later and my save files are still sitting pretty.
And if you’re too impatient to play through the first quest, just start a save file with the name “ZELDA” and you’ll go right to the second quest.