Another long-running games franchise hit its quarter century in February.
13 September last year saw the 25th anniversary of the world-famous Super Mario Bros. While some fibbing was involved on Nintendo’s part if the bouncy moustached plumber’s earlier appearance in the original Donkey Kong arcade game isn’t kicked under the arcade carpet, this latest celebration is more modest about its age. It is a legend after all.
The Legend of Zelda’s first outing was for the Famicom on 21 February 1986, developed by the Golden Triangle of Nintendo’s development talent: Takashi Tezuka, Toshihiko Nakago and Mario-creating games guru Shigeru Miyamoto. The game would later be released outside of Japan on the NES. All three Zelda developers are still working for Nintendo after nearly three decades of top notch creative input. Since the N64 era, stewardship of the titles has passed to designer and director Eiji Aonuma.
Zelda is the third popular video game series to have made it to 25 years of age in the past few years. Bomberman blew up the candles in 2008 and 2012 will see break-dancing in the streets to chiptune classics in honour of Mega Man, Street Fighter and Final Fantasy.
Among the earliest series that have managed to stick around are Nintendo’s finest. Super Mario and Zelda show the accessibility and inventiveness that have always demarcated the former playing cards manufacturer as one of entertainment’s greatest assets. The Japanese gaming giant’s hat-trick of long lasting franchises was completed by Pokémon, which celebrated its 15th anniversary on 27 February.
As with Mario’s birthday button bash, Zelda will exceed the age of a large section of the series’ fan-base. This is a cause for cheer in itself, as the many features that make up a Zelda game have helped the series find the broad audience it has. Here’s a top 25 of what those qualities that make Hyrule rule.
25 things to ❤ about Zelda
1. Link:
The impish protagonist of every Zelda game is a blond, green-clad hero known as Link. The solo adventuring aspect of the series differentiates it from RPGs that feature a party of characters with widely different abilities, appearances and weapons. With Zelda titles, you are always Link and part of the appeal of each new game is returning to play another version of the hero.
Versions of Link have also appeared in other Nintendo games, including Super Smash Bros., and Namco’s Soulcalibur II. Fighting games are a good fit for the scrappy character whose family motto presumably coined the phrase ‘choose your weapon’.
2. Novelty:
It’s a little known factotum that pop-country singer Sheryl Crow was in possession of the Triforce of Wisdom when she sang that a little bit of change would do you good. Every Zelda game has its own novelty that separates it from the others while retaining the core characters and features of the series.
Each instalment finds a way to turn the adventure on its head. The novelty themes began with the Light and Dark worlds of A Link to the Past and the idea of transferring from a more peaceful place or time to a much darker one reappears in Ocarina of Time and Oracle of Ages.
Other novelties have seen transition from one realm or time to another, such as the Picori world of Minish Cap, the islands of Wind Waker, physical form in Ocarina and Twilight Princess or the changing weather of Oracle of Seasons. The Four Swords games allowed players to control multiple clones of Link dressed in fetching colour-coordinated outfits.
3. Music:
The Legend of Zelda theme is one of the best known video game soundtracks. Nintendo composer Koji Kondo scored the first game and many subsequent titles. The music is dramatic and bleeps along with the pomp and oomph of a full orchestra, rivalling John Williams Star Wars theme in its capacity to recall a childhood full of geeky memories from the opening notes.
One of the most popular Zelda games, Ocarina of Time, abandoned the traditional opening music, but a memorable feature is its score. Named after the simple instrument used by players to summon their steed Epona and change the weather or time of day, the game has a soundtrack that’s hovered around in impressionable brains for more than a decade. The score is just as important to the series as the earlier tunes.
4. Weapons and items
Anyone who has played a little Zelda knows that Link packs more heat than James Bond Jr. in a Hawkins Bazaar. With the variety of gear acquired, players soon become fully prepped to get mediaeval on any and all villainous posteriors roaming the land.
The two handiest items in Link’s kit are his sword and shield. There are several swords strewn around the games but the usual weapon of choice is the Master Sword, which is often required to defeat the malevolent Ganon. In the next game, Skyward Sword, the Master Sword is set to come alive in pseudo-human form as Link’s guide through Hyrule. More on those later…
Other prominent blades have special properties. The Four Sword of A Link to the Past, Four Swords, Four Swords Adventures and The Minish Cap splits Link into four versions or unites all the elements and the Magical Sword from the first two games shoots beams and fire. Players begin several of the titles with a basic wooden sword, however, and there’s an odd sense of satisfaction defeating menacing areas of grass in the early stages of a game.
Link’s questing ensemble is completed by his shield. Three major types of lunch tray are available in most of the games: wooden, metal and mirrored types. The wooden shields are vulnerable to heat and fire and can be destroyed, but the other types stick closely by the adventurer throughout each game. While the metal shields aren’t much use beyond defending against monsters, mirrored shields reflect light to solve puzzles and best bosses.
Aside from the staples, a small army’s worth of weaponry can be found in each game. Bows, bombs, boomerangs and hammers mean Link doesn’t need to invest in a bazooka to impress any princesses. The oddest aspect of the player’s arsenal is carrying capacity. The forest’s finest must have some pretty big pockets to fit all of his stuff inside.
Sometimes items can be harnessed to solve puzzles as well as offensively. Planting a bomb near a conveniently explosive object manages to be both intellectual and destructive in its satisfaction. The hookshot will carry Link to higher or more distant ground or stun enemies. Healing fairies can be captured in bottles and act as first aid.
5. The game environment
The environments of Zelda games are explorable and persistent, and players direct Link through them instead of finding a location on a map as in the Final Fantasy series. This increases the time spent playing and associating with a single character. As package vacations to Hyrule don’t exist yet, let’s take a snapshot tour of the attractions…
Link sometimes starts out from a rural home like Ocarina of Time’s Kokiri Forest.
Hyrule’s a big place full of high-quality turf.
Recurring locales include the eerie Lost Wood and the imposing Death Mountain, perfect places for questing.
More peaceful locations include Kakariko village and Lon Lon ranch.
The Great Fairy Fountain is another memorable place to visit.
Hyrule Castle is home to the royal family.
A desert region, Ganon’s homeland, neighbours the fields of Hyrule.
6. Dungeons
Dungeons make up the dangerous underworld to complement the more happy-go-lucky overworld of towns and villages.
The monster lairs are found strewn across Hyrule’s landscape and contain the major bosses Link has to knock the curly mustaches off of. There are themes to each dungeon and some are better known than others.
Most Zelda fans will tell you that, when it comes to dungeons, there are two words. The first is water. The second is temple.
Series director Eiji Aonuma famously apologised for Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple in 2009, years after the game was released:
“The Water Temple in the Ocarina of Time was notorious for being very tough to conquer. I am most sorry that it was not easy for you to put on and take off the heavy boots; that all the time you had to visit the inventory. I am very sorry about that. I should have made it much easier to switch to the heavy boots”.
7. Bosses
Each dungeon has a main boss fight for an epic end. Most games’ final encounter is with the big bad of the series, the despotic Ganon. Even in titles with other primary antagonists the ginger overlord is often a hidden challenge after their defeat.
The first real villain to oust Ganon in opposing players was A Link to the Past’s Agahnim. The dark wizard used magic to pull a fast one over Hyrule by solving its apparent ills before deposing the king and sending Zelda to another realm, the Dark World. The final battle reveals that Agahnim was Ganon in disguise all along.
Two villains combat players in the Oracle sub-series: Sorceress of Shadows Veran and General Onox. Once again these poor saps masked the actual threat of Ganon’s surrogate mothers, the witches Koume and Kotake. This pair combines into Twinrova, who unleashes a Ganon beast that was eventually pwned by Link.
Vaati the wind mage pesters Hyrule in the Four Swords sub-series. The air-bender takes five forms before being defeated by Link’s Four Sword and the Light Force power within Zelda. Ganondorf used Vaati as a pawn in the final Four Swords game, Four Swords Adventures.
Shadow Link first popped up to torment his namesake in Zelda II. The spectre would return in Ocarina of Time, Oracle of Ages, A Link to the Past/Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, Twilight Princess and Spirit Tracks. Link’s doppelganger has also been selectable as a character in the Super Smash Bros. games.
8. Ganon
Even when another villain appears to challenge Link as in GameCube’s Twilight Princess, the Oracles subseries for Game Boy Colour and the Four Swords sub-series for Game Boy Advance, the true threat is usually pulling their strings…
Ganon is rarely mistaken for a joint of ham despite his unusual name and sometimes porcine appearance. Born in human form with the slightly more Teutonic moniker Ganondorf, the evil overlord wannabe is granted tremendous physical and magical abilities by the Triforce of Power.
Over the course of the series the backstory of the character has been steadily explained to reveal Ganon’s motives for stealing part of the Triforce and his vendetta against Princess Zelda. A tribe in the harsh Gerudo desert spawned Ganon and the conditions there twisted him into a cruel and power-hungry autocrat desperate to conquer the verdant realm of Hyrule.
Unlike Zelda and Link, however, the Ganon that appears through the series is thought to be the same individual left immortal by his possession of the Triforce of Power. It’s his stubborn pig-headed refusal to give up on taking over the various versions of Hyrule that drives the overall plot.
9. Multiple platforms
Zelda has been available on almost every Nintendo console including handhelds. Nobody really cared about the Virtual Boy much anyway right?
The Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System were Nintendo’s original home consoles from 1983, replaced by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Super Famicom in the early ‘90s. These console powerhouses of the 8- and 16-bit generations were home to the initial phase of the Zelda series, and laid the fan-base for what was to follow. Thanks to the N64 the series would reach new heights, and a potential carried through by the GameCube and Wii titles.
The home console iterations have been some of the most recognised but handheld instalments have kept the series afloat. Game Boy was one of the most widespread, successful games machines ever made and Zelda titles have thrived on the portable platforms since 1993’s Link’s Awakening.
The Game Boy Color received two original adventures developed in tandem by Capcom and Nintendo: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. Neither game was set in Hyrule. Playing one title after the other allowed for a combined adventure with a final fight against Ganon.
Game Boy Advance saw a remake of A Link to the Past that included multiplayer for the first time. This was called Four Swords. The Four Swords sub-series was joined by another GBA game, The Minish Cap.
The animation-style graphics and storyline of Wind Waker has been translated well to the DS. Two follow on games have been released so far: Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Both are reminiscent of the classic overworld play of the earlier games.
10. Guides
In some of Link’s adventures he is joined by a guide who narrates and provides hints on play.
The addition of a fairy guide is reminiscent of Tinkerbell from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan stories, a character of perpetual swashbuckling youthfulness hailing from another, mystical realm and not unlike Link *cough* Navi the fairy is the most famous, and possibly the most irritating, of these. Other fairies such as Tatl in Majora’s Mask and Ciela, Leaf and Neri from Phantom Hourglass have also chaperoned Link across Hyrule and similar lands.
On other occasions the little elf has dumped the fairies and teamed up with other partners like the shadow demon Midna of Twilight Princess and the avian hat Ezlo from Minish Cap.
Wandering around without some company in a dungeon can become quite dull. Whether your fairy companion is an annoyance or provides useful hints, it’s reassuring to have some friendly back-up.
11. Triforce
Ultimately, a Zelda game isn’t complete without hunting for the triangle of triangles. The legendary icon resembles a shining, golden and pointier Olympic symbol in representing conjoined shapes, and is a simple fractal. Its design closely imitates the kamon or coat of arms of the long defunct Japanese Hōjō clan, 13th century regents of the Kamakura Shogunate.
Three goddesses, Din, Nayru and Farore, gave the Triforce the abilities it confers on those who bear a segment. The Triforce of Power has long been held by the villainous Ganon, whereas the Triforce of Wisdom is associated with Zelda. Link wields the final element, the Triforce of Courage, which was not introduced until the second game. Possession of a Triforce fragment is often shown by a mark on the hand of its wielder that glows when another comes near.
Each of the three sections of the Triforce holds its own gifts. Power provides the obvious strength while Wisdom lends mystical clarity and Courage gifts skill with weaponry. Occasionally, part of the triumvirate of pieces is split into further sections to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, with games focused on reclaiming and reassembling these.
12. Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker double whammy
Every Zelda fan has their own favourite game in the series. Often this is the N64’s Ocarina of Time, released in 1998 to global adulation and the biggest-selling of the series, followed closely by The Legend of Zelda.
Series co-creator Miyamoto stated in an interview on the release of Ocarina that the story was the chronologically the earliest in the Zelda timeline, and this is one of the few examples of a much later prequel improving on the original. Using the best features of that console to their limits, Ocarina contained the series first example of 3D graphics and allowed players to roam around the massive fields, villages and mountains of Hyrule on foot and horseback. The popularity of this one title and its fans’ dedication outweighs most of the other incarnations put together. It’s no surprise that of the post-32-bit generation Zelda games that could’ve been remade for the 3DS’s release this year to mark the anniversary, Ocarina of Time has been chosen.
Ocarina’s game-play spanned the childhood and adulthood of Link and this could explain its popularity. While Ocarina brought admirers of the NES and SNES titles together with a new generation of young players, the GameCube’s first Zelda game proved more controversial. 2002-2003’s Wind Waker retained the controls of its predecessor but abandoned the visual style in favour of cel-shaded graphics and a boyish Link who could’ve sailed straight out of an animated movie. Split between its lovers and haters, Wind Waker is an excellent game that only pales in comparison with Ocarina because of the difficult position it occupies in Zelda fans’ esteem.
Overworld Kiwami 