More than any video game series, The Legend of Zelda formed my early years and made me fall in love with digital unfurling narratives as well as solid puzzle design. Whenever I return to the original Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System, I’m instantly transported back to sitting in front of my TV’s limited palette with my NES’s native cartridge slot A and my faithful old controller. Then, as now, any journey into the land of Hyrule meant, to me, both a refreshing return to a well-known locale, a thrilling act of nostalgia—and a chance to step again into a well-constructed world of charming lore and very good gameplay.
The Legend of Zelda and I go way back, over more than half a lifetime, to when the NES was still the current system and a “cartridge” was something you popped open a dust cover to slide into the bay. My mom and dad bought the game during a part of my childhood in which I, as an indoorsy kid, had plenty of hours to kill unless the Costa Rican weather cleared up and sent me and my bike out into the yard. From there, Zelda moved with me through three decades and over a half dozen systems I or my brother happened to own as we grew up.
The Legend of Zelda was truly a revolutionary game that introduced so many things still unappealed in gaming. Changes to the scale of any game, as compared to its contemporaries, vested a whole array of experiences. For the player, it was basically the first time that they could see themselves as a hero as well as a point of view in what amounted to be a storytelling through a keyhole. The game’s Secrets and Dungeons gave a real sense of being a seeker as you, the hero, ventured into secret labyrinths, fighting the horror within and going to places previously off-limits.
Drawing maps on graph paper took up an inordinate amount of time, but the task made me feel like a cartographer of old, invested as I was in creating character for the locations that would pepper our path through Hyrule. When I wasn’t doing that, or, to be honest, sometimes when I was supposed to be doing other things. I drafted a complete walkthrough for the game, all from memory, that I compiled in one of those black-and-white speckled “composition” notebooks, which told you everything you needed to know about how seriously I took my adopted mission.
An extremely delightful feature of The Legend of Zelda is its stress on exploration. Whether it’s the filled forests or the dangerous mountains, every part of Hyrule is screaming to be investigated. And the game doesn’t stop there. It keeps going, pushing the player to look around its world and discover what makes it tick. It rewards their curiosity with heart pieces, bomb upgrades, various story beats, and all the work that a player puts in. The Legend of Zelda by Bonk
The first time I found a secret cave is a memory that remains fresh in my mind. I was bumbling through the woods, fighting off Octorok and Moblin and doing my best to act the part of the lost fairy tale prince. My 13-year-old heart was beating like a drum as I topped off my health bar with potions, moved a few steps, and took riverine paths that were like a lover’s teases. You get that in this game, you can be going hard in any direction, and at any moment something can emerge that makes you gasp, smile, or say, “Wow.” And even then, it’s still a primer for a steady beat of nervous anticipation. A dungeon is down there. And in the dungeon, there is an item to be found, something that will make this game even easier for those of us who are hardwired to worry.
Every fresh find felt like an individual triumph. You could be discovering a never-before-seen dungeon, acquiring an intensely powerful and absurdly hidden item, or just kind of bumbling into a fairy fountain, which is literally a thing that happens in this game and every one of these cases would fill me with the same sense of awe, the same degree of boundless elation. Although I have to think the last case really takes the cake for me.
The main part of The Legend of Zelda game is always dungeoneering. In every game, there are always a certain number of dungeons. It’s Theseus finding his way to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, a story written in the stars and retold here in pixels and 8-bit sound. The Zelda game dungeons are demarcated zones where the most celebrated and profound aspect of the gameplay comes to life. They combine elements of combat, puzzle-solving, and The Ice Palace from Ultima 1 forms of safe-cracking in a space where there are exactly zero townspeople you might accidentally stab while trying to figure out whom to trust).
The dungeons really tested our mettle and minds. They demanded we creep around corners, overseer combat judiciously, and, most torturous of all, force us to twist and turn our brains to solve problems—demented problems that they compounded with puzzles of fatal consequence to make into real, five-alarm “don’t screw up” dungeons. And preamble us with Level 1, portrayed as a shadowy top-down labyrinth, but then at Level 2, scale up the ante.
A memory that stands out to me is one from a day when I pushed myself to make it to Level 7. I was coming at it from the same place that my friend from grade school did—it was a spatial maze. You had to maneuver yourself around its hidden walls using the compass you’d pick up to see when they were activated and where you were going. And, god, it was already hard to do that without the also powerful enemies offering to kill you.
When my character was on the way back, in the same sequence seen in the image above, why didn’t I just use a warp whistle? If you do get to the end and beat the boss, you have to go down three more basement levels.
The Legend of Zelda is, in essence, a journey of a hero. It’s the story of Link, a young and modest boy, who takes on the humongous task of rescuing Hyrule, as well as its fair and just princess, from the forces of evil. The narrative of the game has a significant impact on me considering that it has allowed me to grow and develop alongside the player, whose story mirrors that of my own in a roundabout and not-always-so-obvious-to-me kind of way.
Playing for the first time, I was fit to be molded. In guiding Link through his many quests, I began to feel a personal connection to him after a while. When he had to step up or when he found out he was holding the means to deal with the final boss in his very hand, my heart mirrored what I could imagine his to be like. Hell, I was a child. Whole worlds were beyond me, and here I was thinking that whatever happened within the game world was unfolding solely because of my actions, as if I too were a part of that bridge for the Hero of Time to exist in.
Getting the Master Sword was one of the most important moments in the game for me. That legendary blade was Link’s birthright: it’s become something of a family symbol for the hero of the Hyrule series. Gaining it in Breath of the Wild meant living up to Link’s true potential. You have to find the sword by passing a series of tests in a crazy, almost Alice in Wonderland–type environment. And when you finally get it? Oh, man, it’s a rush.
The Legend of Zelda! Oh, how my love for the series has grown! At this point, it’s professional simp territory, and I will gush to you about why it’s one of the best video game franchises ever. Let’s not get too distracted talking about the love of my life, though. Most of the video essays on this YouTube channel are actually about like… a range of different topics. But, for some reason, in this essay, I’m still talking about the same freaking thing. And in the very next paragraph of the video script, I continue to gush over this same damn thing.
Link’s second adventure was a break from the groundwork laid by the original Legend of Zelda game. It took the foundation and then built something unique and vastly different on top of it. It was a side-scrolling action platformer, still very obviously an RPG, but with far more going on in terms of world-building and a proper narrative. In its totality, Zelda II was more of a sin to commit in regard to completion. Yet, it was still enjoyable throughout many parts, and if it wasn’t for a blob of frustration seeping into the nooks and crannies, it would have been a monumental achievement.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was a throwback to the original game. It was a game going back to using the top-down view and style, but the “graphics and what could be done were way ahead of what was in the original, and the original was no slouch. I think the story was a fair amount more complex, too. They used top-down views, but the number of deeper layers of how you played the game that they exposed you to, and the number of twists and turns, made you feel transported into a world.
The moment The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out for the Nintendo 64, everything changed. Transitioning to 3D allowed the previously flat world of Hyrule to become a living, breathing kingdom. The monumental shift in the very nature of what video games are and what they could be was seen through the world of Hyrule. The seminal work in establishing the often-imitated, seldom-replicated genre of “action-adventure” was also frequently revolutionary.
When Ocarina of Time was released, I was a high schooler. I recall saving up money from my meager allowance, I was not cash-flush like Bradley from the fourth chapter of Infinite Jest, a recluse who plays the guitar with his teeth. Once the game was in my possession, I hurried home and left for Hyrule. The first few notes from the ocarina as Link steps into the Kokiri Forest took my breath away. I drowned within the first seconds of the game, in much the same way that I drowned within the first verses of “Stairway to Heaven” when I was a naive 14-year-old.
One of the most remembered elements of Ocarina of Time is the Ocarina itself. This is no ordinary ocarina, or even the ordinary concept of what an instrument like an ocarina can do. Solving puzzles and whisking Link through time in games of temporal tag are one thing. But what Ocarina of Time was most known for on release was blending the world of a 3D adventure game with the odd but endearing sense of musical discovery.
Ocarina of Time’s dungeons are expertly crafted, and not one of them is anything like the others. Each offers its own set of tests, its own time to shine. The Shadow Temple by itself might be creepier than the whole of a lot of other games. Its boss looks like half of a fossilized monster that you might see in a natural history museum—he hardly seems alive, but he sure is angry. And fighting this guy is a great, demanding set-piece (the whole game is full of these). Every boss here is a story event.
When I retrieved the Sword of Virtue from the Temple of Time and went ahead by seven years – that was when the world of the game was turned on its head. Hyrule was altogether different; it was no longer that three-dimensional, under-the-sun Hyrule in The Ocarina of Time manual. Now it was a more serious world totally immersed in the moonlight of the N64. It was no longer a game where the “half-human/half-beast” guy in the manual was just some poor unfortunate bastard whom you could “wish well” by defeating, he was now really against you, against… the world.
The Zelda game, The Wind Waker, transformed the series and took my journey with it to a new level. The Wind Waker seemed to leave behind what made the first few Zelda games simple and sometimes silly. It felt like it had crafted a bigger, more serious world. It bore a new art style, one that we have come to know as “cel-shaded,” that felt right. It was not uncommon for eyebrows to be raised when the game was first released, given that prior entries in the series (such as Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past) had been revered as classics, with the former often being cited as the greatest game of all time.
When The Wind Waker was released, I recall being uncertain about the change in graphics but was soon converted to a cell-shaded fanatic. Sailing the Great Sea gave me a substantial feeling of being in an open world, one with hidden challenges, puzzles, and treasures. The ‘college me’ should have been too mature to be playing a GameCube, but I still enjoyed my ‘second childhood.’ And while I’d like to say I was playing dungeons and mini-games on Offstater Archipelago, it’s pretty unlikely.
For many players, a remarkable sequence in the topography of the game The Wind Waker took place deep under the sea, a drowned world still visible and sunken into silence. That was such a wonderful moment, an act of imagination that fully persuaded and rewarded players who’d made the big oceanic journey beyond Windfall Island. Link looked cool in his conductor’s clothes, his baton upraised beneath the music that swelled from the sunken castle’s tower as a sterner figurehead in the hall directed a gospel choir of swordmaidens and half-buried burghers.
Just as impressive as the overworld in The Wind Waker are its traditional Zelda-style dungeons. These labyrinthine complexes are set in starkly beautiful and cool places; some mayor mayoral influence went into dungeon construction, one suspects. They seem to blend physical art with secret passageways, “Aha!” mechanisms for solving puzzles that open up new areas, and what I can only call “combat opportunities.” I know that sounds very board-gamey, but battles are the way that the game gets the player sort-of stuck in one place, capable of getting through it, but forced to use one’s brain a little bit (or a lot, depending on the dungeon at hand).
When The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out for the Nintendo Switch, it signalled a completely fresh, utterly invigorating, and simply massive turn for the iconic franchise. It’s got a kind of vast openness that has it constantly and surprisingly being compared to the original 1986 game. Yet, it’s got the necessary (revolutionary) (re)establishment of just what the hell it was about the original game that was so good, bizarre, and unbelievable.
At the time of the launch, I led a hectic life, crammed with work and family obligations. Yet this game delivered one of those “must play” moments; given that the first month after its release was the launch window, that seems a fair time to figure it in. Since it was physically impossible for me to play for as long and as intently as I wanted, filling in the runic shrines; besting the overworld bosses; progressing the plot; managing my little in-game kitchen; I let The Wild World’s combination of moments and mechanics carry me far away…
Breath of the Wild was powerful for a lot of reasons, the main one being its communication of a state of discovery. This was a world loaded with secrets. Secret weapons. Secret ancient ruins. Secret powers that you could gain if you found a worthy item. Secret side-quests. Secret lairs of bizarre enemies. And reaching these in a nonlinear way made it feel like you were the one uncovering them. I often felt like [David] Bowie in the title role of a 1986 fantasy movie called Labyrinth…
I connected profoundly with the narrative of Breath of the Wild. It’s a tale revolving around the three elements of loss, redemption, and hope. The epic is of a twofold nature: to resurrect Princess Zelda and to topple the upstart Calamity Ganon. The player is the Redeemer.
My life has been profoundly touched by the Legend of Zelda series. Starting from the awkward, early NES days when you had to play with the half-baked top-down perspective that could only approximate the two-thirds viewpoint, going all the way to the system’s end with The Adventure of Link, and now on to even more modern and dramatic systems, where no Link is ever alike but the graphics are always crisp and beautiful, these games are and always have been half of my double life.
What I have learned from playing Zelda namely, patience, tenacity, problem-solving, and the thrill of discovery has stayed with me in all facets of my life. The memories are crystal clear. They are of overcoming obstacles, finding hidden rewards, and conquering a difficult enemy. They have become brain tattoos, forever reminding me of the powerful journey that my favorite game has enabled me to undertake. The affectionate understanding of what makes life and gaming so great has become part of the fabric of what makes me, me.
This exercise allowed me to re-experience one of my favorite childhood video games in surprising detail and was a wonderful call-back to simpler times. Each time I die in the game or accomplish a major task, I recall the numerous occasions I perished on the various perils of death mountain, in the temples, and in the open wild of Hyrule. Yet, as before, I invariably find myself in the presence of the utterly malevolent Ganon. They say that history is bound to repeat itself. In the case of me, a 28-year-old writer and fervent video game fan, this is a good thing.
Here’s to The Legend of Zelda a game series that profoundly influenced not only my past but also our collective past as a society of gaming enthusiasts. It stands as a seminal pillar of quality, one on which rests the pantheon of greats we now recognize as the medium’s luminaries. And even if you weren’t around when these games first came out like me you grew up with them simply by being in this wonderful world of gaming. Our thanks must go to them for this. As well as for the joy and the memories.
