Platform reviewed – 3DS Virtual Console
Other platforms – Nintendo Entertainment System, Famicom Disk System, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance
Developer – Nintendo EAD (formerly Nintendo R&D 4)
Publishers – Nintendo
Genre – Action-adventure
Rating – 7+
Release dates
FDS/NES – November 1987
Game Boy Advance – July 2004
Wii Virtual Console – December 2006
3DS Virtual Console – September 2011 (for 3DS Ambassadors), April 2012 (normal customers)
Finally I get to review the great iconic The Legend of Zelda, the original in the series to which this blogs name was inspired from. From a time era a bit before my time the 80’s was truly when video gaming was beginning to hit the market with fantastic sights and sounds.
Ah retro gaming, it’s really fun to play a game that’s older than myself, and even though I didn’t play the original when it first came out (obviously) I still feel captivated by the great Zelda theme playing both on the opening main menu and then in the in-game overworld. Such a great iconic piece of gaming.
Though, like anything, this game is not perfect no matter what people want to believe. It has its annoying flaws, yes, though that is what makes it a challenge to complete.
Now The Legend of Zelda was the very first game in the Zelda series and came around in 1986 for the Famicom (NES) in Japan. It took just a year after this for it to be seen in the western world. After it was released it received great reviews and praise for its design and general concept; it was also extremely commercially successful as 6.5 million copies were sold worldwide. This made it the fourth best-selling NES game for all time and the second best-selling Zelda game to date, followed by the winner Ocarina of Time which sold 7.6 million copies.
After this it was a while before ports were introduced of it for consoles such as the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance. It was also released on the 3DS system as downloadable content last year and is still a fan-favourite. Though among fans the game is known as the Japanese name Hyrule Fantasy: The Legend of Zelda as to not confuse with other games in the series.
Now the plotline focuses on a boy called Link in a time when the world was in the age of Chaos. In the middle of all this though, in the kingdom of Hyrule, a legend about the ‘Triforce’, golden triangles of magnificent magical powers, was passed down from generation to generation. One day though an evil army led by Ganon, the Powerful Price of Darkness, attacked Hyrule and stole the Triforce of Power in an attempt to seize the whole world for himself and plunge it into darkness.
It was then, in an effeort to stop Ganon from gaining its power, that Princess Zelda of Hyrule split the Trifroce of Wisdom into eight fragments and scattered them across the land. Entrusting her loyal nursemaid, Impa, to escape and secretly find a man with enough courage to face and destroy Ganon. After hearing this though the Prince of Darkness imprisoned the princess and sent out a search party to locate Impa.
Soon Impa came across the young boy after he saved her life from a horde of evil henchmen. After hearing the tale of the princess and the evil Ganon Link’s sense of justice shone, and it was at that point he started his quest to find the eight pieces of the mystical triangle and rebuild it in an attempt to face the powerful foe and vanquish him forever.
With such a simple, basic plot the gameplay is exactly the same. While quite challenging, and also extremely annoying, the main gamplay is to merely explore the land of Hyrule, both in the overworld and in the various dungeons scattered throughout the map. The game takes on many forms though such as action, adventure, puzzle-solving and even roleplaying as you try to complete the main quest without getting too lost in the process.
It’s dangerous to go alone, take this!
The moment you start you are given no clear indication of where to go, you do not even start off with a sword. You must realise yourself to go to the cave in front of you to acquire the special sword which fires off a special sort of beam when your life energy is full.
That’s one of the things which makes the gameplay difficult as well as annoying, the fact you will get lost so many times as well as trying to figure out exactly where to go next. This apparently was remedied when the game moved over from Japan to America; the game’s manual contained many hints, tips and suggestions at what to do next, making the gameplay a little easier, though I suppose it would take all the fun out of it.
That sense of accomplishment after finally locating the next dungeon in the correct order is a great feeling, but then again the feeling of finally finding it but dying halfway through it is not, especially when you are sent back to the middle of the map.
The overworld exploration is only half of it, the rest is made up of combat against the many evil creatures that scour the land. Most of them are easy to avoid, while others are so jumpy they manage to trap you, easily whisking your health down when at a low heart count of 3 -6 hearts. As well as keeping your health up you must also be on the lookout for dungeon entrances and shops so you can use the rupees you collect from killing monsters on stuff such as magical shields, lanterns, potions and so forth. Side-quests are also available to help you greatly on your quest.
Dank, dark and deadly!
The nine dungeons though are the main focus and the way in progressing through the storyline. In these dark, dingy, evil places there are a large variety of traps, monsters and puzzles. This is where the game gets that little bit more difficult as you traverse the maze-like collection of rooms connected by doors and secret passageways. The monsters that guard the rooms here are much different than those in the overworld and require much more thought in taking them down, in some ways they are easier than the annoying little squirts outside.
Reaching the end of each dungeon is the main goal as you collect the pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom. Hidden, secret items are also stored within these dungeons such as the bow, boomerang and a recorder and all do different things to help you on your quest.
Throughout each dungeon you can make things easier by taking the risk to gather up the map and compass items. These items help your exploration of dungeons in the way that the compass shows the Triforce Room as indicated as a flashing red dot. The map however shows you all the available floors in the dungeon, both are definitely worth risking your life for as it would save random wandering around.
The variety of bosses in the game is pretty good though overall, each with different abilities, fighting styles and all require different strategies to beat ‘em. The bosses are found just before the final part of the dungeon and reward the player with a Heart Container once beaten, increasing your health by one heart.
As well as fighting monsters to secure keys to advance through the dungeons you are also required to figure out puzzles by pushing blocks; these can unlock hidden items as well as secret hints from the old man you met at the start (if it is indeed the same guy).
Keep Healthy!
Now in terms of health if you happen to get hit enough times and lose all your hearts then it’s Game Over for you, friend. From the Game Over screen you can then choose to either save, retry (which will take you back to a previous save) or continue, meaning you carry on with the death being counted to your gameplay. After this you then respawn at the starting point of the game with three hearts.
See how familiar this is to the new Zelda games? The newer games are just a more advanced, larger, more plot driven versions of the original which is great to see how they keep to their roots. They all follow this extremely basic yet effective and fun gameplay style.
The graphics are very simplistic with basic sprites of the hero, bad guys and items; though not that terrible you cannot even tell what they are they are nothing amazing even back in the day. With the game being designed originally to be stored in an 8-bit cartridge the graphics do not use that many elements overall; for example the sprites for the environments, enemies and other characters are quite overused, with some colour variations to tell them apart such as octoroks being a common red, while sometimes they can be blue, or how the dungeons are made out of the same bricks, just painted different colours.
The game is still enjoyable to play for the most part though even with these graphics, as it’s the challenge the game presents which is the reason a lot of people rate it such a high-score game, even now.
Now for sound there really isn’t too much to say as there are only three different tunes to listen to; the overworld/main theme, the dungeon theme and the final level theme. The other sound effects are for things such as when you take damage, when you use your sword and when you collect items such as hearts and rupees. Overall the sound is very average, though still quite effective, it’s better than there being no sound effects at all, and at least the sound of you taking damage sounds like you are actually shouting in pain though even with the sound being so simple.
The dungeons feature such repetitive yet extremely fitting music, it’s dark, dingy and early, just the sort of music which you should hear in a dungeon filled with evil. The music fits very well in this game, the uplifting theme for the overworld and the eerie music for the dungeon levels; the original theme of evil/Ganon is so great to hear.
Now as for features and replayability, if the main storyline quest was not challenging enough for you there is a new mode to add to the replay value, Second Quest. In this more difficult challenge the dungeons and placements of items are different while the enemies are much stronger than their First Quest counterparts.
For more extra replay value and for a nice touch challenge you could always try and beat the top time for completing the game. Apparently the fastest completion time (with Up + A warps) is 31 minutes and 37 seconds by Rodrigo Lopes on June 12th, 2006. Good luck!
Now don’t go thinking you can just run off and buy a NES version for cheap, chances are you may on ebay or from an independent shop, but there are other ways to play the game; such as downloading it from the Wii Shopping Channel for 500 points, or buying the Zelda Collection game from CEX which includes this game as well as Zelda II – The Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask; a pretty good buy for all those games in my opinion.
Now you can also play the game through the 3DS eshop Channel too as it was released for £4.50 on the 12th of April 2012. It’s a pretty good price overall.
Overall this game is a pretty good, if not annoying in some parts, play with a lot of challenging aspects which is what most retro gamers think is lacking in today’s video games. Whether I agree on that or not is an issue for another time.
8 rupees out of 10
See some of my other old Nintendo game reviews: Pokemon Yellow, Yoshi’s Island
Green Rupee Gaming 