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Review Date: March 9, 2021
Release Date: August 22, 1987
Platform: NES
Genre: Adventure
Anecdotes: Sometimes, a video game is just a video game. They’re released to crickets and quickly forgotten. Only people like me would remember. Zelda, of course, was not one of those games. We had the whole neighborhood collaborating on this game. We would all ask each other questions, and we all spread our knowledge to those asking. A neighbor showed me how to get the raft. I later showed him how the get the recorder. My brother stumbled across the ability to push through select walls in the second quest. My youngest brother figured out the Lost Woods. This was truly a team effort. It took me, my brothers, my neighbors, my classmates, and the people at the hotline to get everything. Now, I see people on Twitch blow through the game in 40 minutes on a regular basis, which we couldn’t do then, nor could we do it alone. On a different note, none of us called Manhandla by its name because we didn’t know it; we just called it “The Fan Guy.”
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Description: Link has to save Hyrule and rescue Princess Zelda in the process. To do so, Link must defeat Ganon who is hiding up in Death Mountain. However, it’s not that easy. Entry to Ganon’s lair is denied until Link finds all 8 pieces of the Triforce. Hyrule has 9 dungeons, but there is one Triforce piece in each of the first 8. While trying to collect all the pieces, Link will need to obtain items that open the way.
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Positives:
- There are somewhere around 400 rooms to explore in the first quest alone, which is astounding for 1987. Like Metroid, there will be rooms that look identical, but they’re far less frequent and the enemies aren’t the same. Assuming the sword was picked up at the start, the entire overworld (except for the raft screens); all of levels 1, 2, and 3; and parts of levels 5 and 6 are all available right from the start. The options are many, and even if players don’t know the game, levels 1 and 3 are really easy to find.
- The programmers, amazingly, were able to fit levels 1, 4, and 5 into a neat 8 by 8 square and still managed to give each level a unique but detectable shape. This also applies to levels 2, 3, and 6 as well. It doesn’t truly affect the game, but it’s a cool thing to note.
- Link has a lot of great toys to play with. In the order they appear on the menu: the boomerang, useful for stunning enemies and taking out bats; the bombs, best used for blowing open holes in the wall; the bow and arrows, useful for Gohma and Pols Voices, but cost one rupees per arrow; the candle, which burns down select bushes; the recorder, which weakens Digdogger, but also can warp Link to completed dungeons; the bait, usually just used to get past the Grumbler in 7; the potions, which recover Link’s health; and the Magic Wand, which works long distance on some enemies.
- Excluding levels 7 and 8 because they repeats of previous bosses, the bosses are all different and require different strategies. One can’t be hit with the sword at all. Two other have to have something else used on them first. They are all fair challenges. None are cake walks, but none are next to impossible, either.
- The game has a wide variety of enemies and there are different properties for each one. For example, Link can get in a Goriya’s face and attack, but Darknuts have to be attacked from behind or the side. There are Stalfos skeletons and Ghini ghosts. The are Like Likes that look like hamburgers and Wizzrobes to make things harder. It’s a nice mix.
- This is just my opinion, but I really believe this game was a huge reason why console gaming took off. Before it, console gaming was a passing interest and arcades were still popular. Legend of Zelda turned that around. Home consoles became the rage and arcades started to struggle to stay afloat. There was no arcade version of this, so it wasn’t designed as a quarter muncher. That means the difficulty was a LOT fairer.
- There are tons of things to find. We eventually went over every screen in the overworld with bombs, the candle, or the recorder. There were a lot of jerks that charged Link for it, but we found level 9 that way.
Negatives: Other than a few glitches that only speedrunners know or care about, what else is there?
More Screenshots:
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Grade: A (first quest only)