The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda was the first game in The Legend of Zelda series of video games, made by Nintendo under the direction of game creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who also created Mario. The game was inspired by Miyamoto's imaginary adventures in the hills of Kyoto, Japan as a young child. It was released on the Japanese Famicom system in February 1986 and its western equivalent on the NES in 1987. The music including the classic Zelda theme was composed by Koji Kondo.

The game is set in the imaginary land of Hyrule and revolves around a young Hylian named Link, who must rescue Princess Zelda from the grasp of the villain Ganon by collecting eight pieces of an item known as the Triforce of Wisdom.

The game was included in The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for the Nintendo GameCube. In 2004, Nintendo re-released the original Legend of Zelda for the Game Boy Advance, as part of the Classic NES Series.

Innovations
Its gameplay defied categorization at its time of release, incorporating elements from action-adventure games, role-playing games, and puzzles. The game was one of the most successful of its time, selling 6.5 million copies. Zelda featured many technical innovations as well. Its cartridge was the first to feature a battery that allowed the player to save his or her progress across multiple sessions with the game (previous games used passwords, often long and complicated). In addition, the plastic casing of the cartridge was gold just like the box instead of the usual gray, making it seem special from the very beginning. It was later re-released in a gray cartridge in 1990. The first Zelda appears relatively simple by today's standards, but it was a very advanced game for its day. Innovations included the ability to use dozens of different items, a vast world full of secrets to explore, and the freedom of relatively nonlinear gameplay. Many of these innovations became staples of the Zelda series and other games which followed its lead. The game was wildly popular in Japan and the United States, and many consider it one of the most important videogames ever made. Zelda is also considered one of the spiritual forerunners of the console role-playing game (CRPG) genre. Even though it contains gameplay elements different from those of a typical computer or console RPG, its aesthetics, such as its bright, cartoony graphics, fantasy setting, and music, would be adopted by a number of later RPGs, and its commercial success helped create a market for involved, nonlinear games in fantasy settings, such as those found in successful CRPGs.

Story and characters
Due to space limitations, The Legend of Zelda ' s plot heavily relies on backstory given in the short in-game prologue and the instruction manual: Hyrule was engulfed in chaos after an army led by Ganon, the Prince of Darkness, invaded the kingdom and secured the Triforce of Power, a magical artifact bestowing great strength. Hyrule's Princess Zelda split the artifact's counterpart, the Triforce of Wisdom, into eight fragments, hiding them in secret dungeons throughout the land to prevent them from falling into Ganon's hands. She commanded her most trustworthy nursemaid, Impa, to escape to find a man courageous enough to destroy Ganon. Upon hearing this, Ganon grew angry, imprisoned the princess, and sent a party in search of Impa. According to the manual, Impa fled for her life but was overtaken by her pursuers. As Ganon's henchmen surrounded her, a youth appeared to drive the monsters off. The boy's name was Link, and Impa told him of Hyrule's dilemma. Link resolves to save Zelda, but to fight Ganon he must find and reassemble the scattered fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom. Undeterred, Link sets off for Hyrule in an epic adventure. Guided by Hyrule's sparse inhabitants, Link manages to locate the eight dungeons and retrieves the Triforce fragments from the clutches of powerful guardian monsters. Along the way, he picks up a collection of useful items and weapons, including the powerful Magical Sword (possibly the Master Sword, according to the official Zelda website ) to aid him against Ganon's minions. With the Triforce of Wisdom, Link is able to infiltrate Ganon's fortress high upon Death Mountain. He confronts the Prince of Darkness himself, destroying him with a Silver Arrow which he had discovered deep within Ganon's dungeons. Link picks up the Triforce of Power from Ganon's ashes and returns both Triforces to Princess Zelda, whom he releases from her nearby cell. According to Zelda's words, peace would then return to Hyrule. A symbol of callow youth and raw courage, Link was designed by Miyamoto as a coming-of-age motif for players to identify with: the silent protagonist begins the game with an ordinary boy but grows in strength and fortitude to triumph over the ultimate evil. The name of the eponymous Zelda was inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald: "Zelda was the name of the wife of the famous novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald. She was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name. So I took the liberty of using her name for the very first Zelda title," Miyamoto explained.

The second quest
This was accessible in several ways. For the cartridge version, once the game was completed (or by using a secret code, entering "ZELDA" as your character's name), the player could play through the "second quest". In the Japanese disk version, the player simply flipped the disk and put it in the other way around to play the second quest; this second side was labelled "Ura Zelda" (裏ゼルダ), meaning "Flip Side Zelda". The basic overworld map is unchanged, but the locations and layout of the dungeons is completely different, and most of the items and secrets are in different places than before. For example, only two of the nine dungeons now have visible entrances, and the fifth dungeon is where the fourth dungeon used to be. In this regard, the second quest is much more difficult than the first. While a more difficult "replay" was not an innovation unique to The Legend of Zelda, few games offered a "second quest" with entirely different levels to complete. This added a great deal to the replay value of the game.

Third quest
A modified version with updated graphics, a smaller overworld, and completely different dungeons, known as BS Zelda, was released in 1995 for the Satellaview, the Super Famicom's Japanese-only satellite-based addon. Several Japanese sources allude to this as being intended as a "third quest", much like The second quest (above). When the game was rebroadcast in 1996 they changed the dungeons (and probably the overworld as well); this revision apparently had a smaller broadcast audience and is known only as "~map2~". This second map could well be thought of as a "fourth quest". Additionally, Link was replaced by the Satellaview mascots, a boy and a girl; the girl had red hair while the boy wore a backwards baseball cap. also, there are other downloadable quests in Zelda Classic.

Controversy
The nine dungeons that a player must traverse to complete the game each have the shape of an easily recognizable object (eagle, lion's head, snake, etc.) which make them easier for the astute gamer to navigate. The third labyrinth has the shape of what appears to Western audiences as a left-facing swastika. This shape is actually a "manji", which is a Buddhist symbol of good fortune. In Japan, where this game was initially released, swastikas and similar shapes are relatively benign, which explains why a symbol so offensive to many Western audiences could be included. In the United States, there were surprisingly few complaints about the manji, but years later, when Pokémon became popular in the United States, Nintendo was forced to alter one of the cards due to complaints regarding a manji.

Reception
Zelda quickly became a bestseller for Nintendo. The game was brought back for Nintendo's "Classic Series" reissue in 1990, with Zelda II, Metroid, and other high-profile games. The game placed first in the player's poll "Top 30" in Nintendo Power ' s first issue and continued to dominate the list into the early 1990s. Zelda places prominently in lists of games considered the greatest or most influential: it placed first in Game Informer ' s list of the greatest games ever, fifth in Electronic Gaming Monthly ' s 200th issue listing "The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time," seventh in Nintendo Power ' s multi-issue list of the 200 Best Nintendo Games Ever, and 80th among IGN readers' "Top 99 Games." Zelda was inducted into GameSpy's Hall of Fame in August 2000 and voted by GameSpy's editors as the tenth best game of all time. Editors of the popular Japanese magazine Famitsu voted the game among the best on the Famicom. Even in its Game Boy Advance release, dated 17 years, Zelda passes the test of time, scoring 79% at the Game Rankings and 87% at the Game Ratio rankings compilations. In individual ratings, IGN scored Zelda with an 8 out of 10, GamePro a 4.5 out of 5, Nintendo Power a 4.5 out of 5, and 1UP.com a 9 out of 10.