I like how Miyamoto says how its more important for a game to be plain and fun at its core rather than attention grabbing. Very nice.

Really Sterling? I love the original Zelda. Still play it. It's not nostalgia either. I didn't really start playing Zelda until after Wind Waker. I think it's great even by today's standards. It's just a fun little game.

The whole 2D Zelda was before my time, but Ocarina of Time and forwards is my absolute favourite franchise of all times. The game's got so much soul! When I saw the amazing 25th anniversary fan art it really brought a nice warm feeling to my heart.

Let's not forget that it was much more popular internationally than it was in his home country.

I think the original Zelda was brilliant.

Sure, it seems plain now. At the time it was revolutionary. This is coming from a guy who really isn't that in to the Zelda franchise.

I've honestly never been a 2D Zelda guy. Got my start with OoT. Played Link to the Past and I adored it, but not at the level that I liked the Oracle duo, for instance.

The first Zelda...I played a bit as a kid, thought it was nifty, then never heard of the series again until Ocarina of Time lol

having the perspective of playing the game when it first came out, and replaying it so many times i lost count (the last time was two weeks ago). i'd agree with the statements of simplicity. it is a simple sort of game. that being said, it's still has more depth than the large majority of games that are coming out these days. for an 8 bit game, it's perfect. as for pacing, dude, you control the pacing in that game, how can you complain?

zelda nes = still amazing

@Xzyliac - Completely agree with what you said (except for the part about 'Wind Waker'; I've been playing Zelda since 1991).

I think the original Zelda is shit on too much. Yes, it definitely has it flaws, even back then. There was no direction, no real story, impossible-to-find-secrets (how the hell should I know what wall to bomb when it's completely random), etc. But honestly, I've played through that game at least 10 times and would gladly play it again today over all the crap that I've tried to endure.

It's not even nostalgia that makes me play through it. Despite its problems, I still think it's a great game.

Zelda 1 isn't really that great anymore, there are numerous problems with it, but it nevertheless has had more influence than almost any other game.

The original Zelda is awesome. Great music, great puzzles, and it was one of the longest games ever in its day because you could actually save. The gold cartridge was awesome too.

I can't see why anyone would complain about it.

It was Gauntlet Lite, released a year after.

I mean, it was solid - it built on many elements Gauntlet had, and paved the way for a new generation of home users. It should be praised.

I think the first Zelda game is awesome, but A Link to the Past is by far my favorite. 3D kinda killed the series for me.

It seems plain now, but at the time e had nothing to compare it to. Its always important to think in the context of the time when a game was released rather than view it all from the present.

Things are better now, sure, but there's a lot more we have now that we take for granted. I take 3D graphics for granted and there are things I've missed in OOT now that I wouldn't have missed because I was so bent on exploring what 3D offered me in it 1998.

8-Bit Zelda is the exact zame way. We didn't have action/adventure games like this before it, so a lack of presentation didn't mean much to a kid who just though burning bushes down and bombing cracked walls was fun.

I'd like to see classic Zelda get the LTTP treatment, not unlike how Metroid got Zero Mission, in a bid to bring newer players to the fold.

I actually thought it seemed kind of plain at the time as well. I had it back on the NES, and it always just seemed plain-looking on the surface to me. However, I did enjoy PLAYING it, which is what counts.

Sterling, you're a young pup so I'm sure when you started gaming, you had a much broader catalog of games to play. When I was a kid, this game was leaps and bounds above any game in my Atari 2600 or 7800 collection, plus, games like these were few and far between. Trust me, if you were 7 years old when the NES first came out, you'd love the shit out of this game.

If George Lucas thinking that Empire Strikes Back is the worst Star Wars movie is enough to qualify him as the worst person to handle the series, similar consideration should go to Miyamoto for thinking that Zelda 1 was "plain". Anybody who played that game in its day would tell you it was an epic following in the steps of such classics as the Ultima games, yet accessible and streamlined enough to bring that feeling of adventure and action to a home console. Miyamoto not knowing that Zelda 1 would be a hit makes the Zelda series decline make more sense. Who else but somebody who doesn't understand why people liked Zelda would let a "twist your hand to make a snake statue fit into a hole" "puzzle" make it into a hack-and-slash game?

OH GOD WE NEED ANOTHER ADVANCE WARS.
PLEASE.



Why did I ever bring up Advance Wars? Because those tiled shrubs/trees reminded me of the hills and mountains in Advance wars. 3DS Advance Wars please, Miyamoto. Get Intelligent Systems cracking on it.

I replay the original legend of zelda pretty often and it's always wicked fun. I think it's a great game even by today's standards. The only thing that turned me off as a young'n was the lack of direction.

@FistfulOAwesome

Zelda 1 established the series as a hack and slash game, A Link to the Past established it as an adventure game with a focus on puzzle solving and hack and slash elements. Seeing as A Link to the Past is often considered one of the best Zelda games around, I would be tempted to suggest that those puzzle solving elements were very effective in improving the established formula.

Looking ahead to the Zelda games available on the Nintendo 64, there was even more of a focus on puzzle solving while keeping the hack an slash aspects of the game to a few simple button presses.

So how the series has evolved and advanced it seems that as soon as they were able to they put more of a focus on puzzles and less so on killing x amount of enemies to advance, which to me is a much better route than what could potentially be a long series of plain hack and slash games.

"I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the original Legend of Zelda ain't that great."

Wrong.

End of debate.

"Zelda 1 established the series as a hack and slash game, A Link to the Past established it as an adventure game with a focus on puzzle solving and hack and slash elements. Seeing as A Link to the Past is often considered one of the best Zelda games around, I would be tempted to suggest that those puzzle solving elements were very effective in improving the established formula. "

Zelda 1 totally had puzzle solving elements. ALttP build on top of these elements when designing its own puzzle elements.

I think you're really overselling this.

I'll say it again, the original Zelda is that great. I still go back and play it every now and then. Sure, it is easier now than it was when I bought it as a kid, but that is because I know what I'm doing now.

Games lost something when they moved away from the first Zelda. The Zelda franchise lost *a lot* over the years, the damage starting with Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time, which established a bland stock formula for Zelda games that developers mindlessly and soullessly follow. I wasn't a big fan of Zelda 2, but it tried to be more than anything like Wind Waker (which completely botched trying to recapture the feel of the Zelda 1 overworld), Twilight Princess, and by all evidence so far Skyward Sword, have attempted.

i like how most of the comments of dislike in here can be boiled down to one point. do you like games that are "nes hard" or not. zelda is definitely a "nes hard" title. no hints (at least not any that aren't extremely obtuse), and the game just drops you into a large gaming area and says, have at it. it's pretty obvious that zelda is the start of sandbox gaming. that alone makes it a hallmark. i really can't wait to see how they celebrate this anniversary.

also, what trygle said. advance wars is the shit, and we need another one.

my buddy and i went back to beat LOZ. with no hints of course. we both got so pissed we couldnt figure out how to get past mr grumble grumble at the end. we were about to turn it off because we couldnt figure it out. then i remembered like an hour later you had to give him something. oh shit, remember that meat way back?

Yeah, we easily need another Advance Wars.

Here's a fun observation:

If you squint really hard, those bushes look like penises.

A game that came in a gold cartridge is NOT an attention grabber? WAAAT!?

Anyway I still like the original Legend of Zelda, but honestly, Jim is right. The game is very janky by today's standards. not diagonal movement, you shop in caves and without the original manual (which was essentially a strategy guide), it was very easy to get lost.

The original is still one of my favorites in the series. I end up replaying most of it at least twice a year.

The original TLoZ was great when it came out. But A Link to the Past happened for a reason, and the original has not aged very well; the primary offender being the lack of direction giving to the player. But by no means is it an insignificant game.

The music in the original Zelda grabbed my imagination as a kid. It took me there.

@ScooneySteve

Games journalists on the whole ignore Zelda 1 as the start of the series and prefer to go by Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time (as Nintendo did in its first Skyward Sword trailer). I'd say this is partly because games journalists don't like "hard" games and prefer ones they can beat or "experience" on time for their reviews and stories. Certainly LTTP's world and puzzles offer a more interesting looking screenshot and easier progression than Zelda 1's. This is why LTTP is mentioned as a great game over Zelda 1, which is treated as a necessary acknowledgment rather than being a great game and phenomenon in its day.

As for following the leader, sales show that LTTP (original SNES sales) sold less than Zelda 1 did. Seemingly, something that LTTP added turned off a lot of people who liked Zelda 1 and, more importantly, slowed the series momentum. I say it was definitely the puzzles which hampered the games combat and sense of freedom, causing it to be more constrained than Zelda 1 is. Unlike Zelda 1, where (minus a few caveats) dungeons could be beaten in any order, LTTP added many necessities (like needing certain weapons or items) that forced an order (as commenter Baines alluded to). LTTP is saved and still managed to be a hit because the scale of these infractions is small so the game still had a focus on combat and adventure (yet it cannot be denied that even these small changes put off a large number of people).

Going on to Ocarina of Time (the current Zelda model (again most confirmed by the first SS trailer ignoring the four that preceded it)), that game is the most successful since Zelda 1 and has many more puzzles than any preceding Zelda. This may seem to suggest that puzzles are liked, but it really shows the power of exploring the world and combat in a different form and what people tolerated to play that in 1998. OOT is for the most part an overrated game that continued the series decline into bland combat,constricting story, and dumb puzzles, again saved by the combat still not having fully degraded (but it has its start with bombs now practically useless in combat (and they were already nerfed in LTTP)) and the new form offering a different look at Hyrule (but that is a fleeting interest).

Zelda 1 has staying power in its focus on being a game that OOT and its successors (which add many cutscenes, talky villagers, and puzzles) do not. The hack-and-slash focus of Zelda 1 (further exemplified by its maze-like dungeons forcing constant encounters) made it a very scary, exciting game. OOT and its successors don't have these moments of exhilaration where your life ticks away and you try to escape death nearly as much (most would say that they never died in WW or Twilight Princess (and rarely on OOT/MM playthroughs)). Zelda 1 had massive freedom in its combat, where the majority of enemies could be taken out by just about any weapon (a favorite being the extreme power of the bombs) and making it feasible to do so. OOT onwards had many enemies who had specific needs to be killed or at least vastly better techniques. Zelda 1 had an overworld that was almost as much a deathtrap as its dungeons. OOT onwards has safe overworlds that are barely populated (by enemies) at all.

Those are all problems that need to be fixed in order for Zelda to be the sales giant and phenomenon it used to be. But looking at the direction of Skyward Sword and those comments by Miyamoto slighting the original Zelda, it doesn't look like they'll be fixed. Not when the fixes are seen as problems and the problems are seen as glorious game design.

@FistfulofAwesome - If puzzle-solving is a part of the "decline" in the series, just where did that decline begin?

The first game?

Because half of that was puzzles, too. I don't think I was bombing walls, burning bushes and pushing blocks for no reason. The whole "ancient ruins with traps and puzzles" was a long running thing in movies and other fiction - clearly an inspiration to a game such as this.

We don't play Zelda to just hit things with a sword.

When I replayed the original Legend of zelda on the virtual console a bit ago I was struck by two things. The first is that, yeah it is kind of plain and simple (in construction, not difficulty) by todays standers. But, I was also impressed by just how solid the game design was. I think their are many games these days that could learn from stuff like the original legend of zelda and trim some of the fat and tighten up the design of the game.

I do find the original rather on the plain side IN the game, but the concept art is amazing and gives the world a whole new feeling :D but the gameplay has evolved since then, and currently Oracle of Seasons is my favorite yet. I love the new games too, but I just like the art direction of Oracle of Seasons/Ages so much!!!!

It was before your time Sterling. You wouldn't understand.

Jim is an idiot; that is all.

First Zelda was fine, Jim. It didn't have great pacing, but it essentially did everything that modern Zelda games do. You got a damn map with it in the NES era, pointing out which temples were which. I'm not sure why you couldn't just do that today.

I never originally played the first game until 2007, either. Zelda became my favorite series with Ocarina and Link's Awakening DX. Then I started to get every single title until I had amassed them all.

Zelda 2, on the other hand. That is a whole different story.

I might actuall get Steel Divers now. I'm normally not that kind of guy but...

Zelda is one of those games that I wish I could go back in time to enjoy. These days, the game just doesn't have the same appeal to me.

OMG!! Jim has an opinion on something. Just because something hasn't aged as well as we'd like it to be, it doesn't mean that we still can't enjoy the hell out of it.

I haven't played through it since it was new, so I can't objectively say how well Zelda has held up.

In it's day though it sure was amazing though. Zelda should be remembered for being one of the first console games to break away from the arcade quarter munching standard of it's day.

...but yeah, I've replayed A Link to the Past several times and have yet to replay the original.

@The Silent Protagonist

What you say is truth. The original Zelda had traps in its dungeons like those spiked discs that would come at you and hidden stairs/ladders that would warp you around the dungeon (usually uncovered by pushing a block). But those weren't "really" puzzles. They played into the ancient ruins stuff and into the maze-like nature of that game's levels. The puzzles of later games are more like stuff you might find in Professor Layton (a dedicated puzzle game), something I don't like worming its way into my action game. I like the focus on mazes, secrets, and combat, not "brain-teasers".

The combat may not have been all it, but it was very much a focus and the meat of the game. Everything led back to fights and the most common way to progress was usually kill all the enemies (most of the time you couldn't push a block without eliminating the present enemies). The combat was also very varied in its design and in the players abilities. (Most) enemies had no set pattern or weakness and could be defeated in the myriad of ways the system offered. Enemies change, Puzzles don't.

I'm not claiming that the original Zelda is perfect or even fantastic. Just that its design is purer than modern Zelda. Zelda 1 was very confident in mazes, uncovering secrets (by bombs and flames), and combat. The entire game was basically just that. Modern Zelda is scared of being simple so it throws a bunch of puzzles and story in place so nobody notices how hollow everything is rather than commit to the mechanics. Ultimately, I respect the confident games since they are very focused.

This is hilarious. How could he not see that The Legend of Zelda was something incredibly special? When it was released in the US, they KNEW it was something special. The card was fucking GOLD.

I wish they would've kept that up with A Link To The Past and the DS games.

@Killrig

I know! It's baffling.

Criticizing the original Zelda on not being well paced is like criticizing a car for not being able to fly. It's not the intended purpose. And, to be perfectly honest, the fast action and adventuring is a lot better than the snore fest puzzles and ocean-traveling of The Wind Waker (more like Wind WANKER amirite?)

the original Zelda is vastly overrated. not a terrible or bad game by any means, at all. but it's very...well, yes, plain. and crude. and nearly incomprehensible to the point where original copies of the game included a paper map that told you where to go.

it wasn't until Link to the Past that the series started becoming something really special and rich and compelling.

"the original Legend of Zelda ain't that great."

fuck you jim. you can be all anti-retro you want, but zelda not great? ignorance.

@ FistfulOAwesome- Don't lump "game journalists" together like that! Colette Bennet and I are two game journalists who really love the first Zelda.

No snide meant, Mr. Holmes. I said "on the whole", speaking for what I see a majority crowd. I never meant to imply all. I'm sure there are many individuals like yourself and Ms. Bennet who are fans of the first game.

I'll agree that the first zelda lacks a bit of flash, but it makes up for it in total genius and innovation, with saved games and non-liner progression. I didn't lose track of the series thanks to the gameboy, though it would have been easy to since I've never owned a snes.