The Legend of Zelda (video game franchise)
The Legend of Zelda is a renowned action-adventure video game franchise that originated from the creative minds of Japanese designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, with its debut in 1986. The series is celebrated for its innovative gameplay, which features a top-down perspective and allows for non-linear exploration within a richly detailed fantasy world. Players assume the role of Link, a young hero on a quest to rescue Princess Zelda and thwart the villain Ganon, while navigating dungeons, solving puzzles, and battling various enemies.
The franchise has seen numerous successful installments, including notable titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, each contributing to the series' legacy. Over the decades, The Legend of Zelda has expanded beyond video games, inspiring adaptations in various media, including animated series and comic books. The games often incorporate themes of courage, wisdom, and power, symbolized by the Triforce, a central element of the narrative. As a pioneer in the gaming industry, The Legend of Zelda has left an indelible mark on video game design and culture, making it a significant subject of interest for both gamers and scholars alike.
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The Legend of Zelda (video game franchise)
The Legend of Zelda is a popular action-adventure video game franchise created by Japanese game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and developed and published largely by Nintendo. The series began with the 1986 release of The Legend of Zelda, a top-down perspective game wherein the player navigates through a fantasy world filled with dark dungeons and a variety of dangerous enemies. Considered one of the premier titles for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), The Legend of Zelda was an immediate success that quickly spawned an entire series of sequels that has included such equally successful entries as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017). Over the years, the Zelda franchise has also been adapted into everything from a Zelda-themed cartoon series to comic books, board games, and more.
Background
The original incarnation of The Legend of Zelda was a fantasy-themed action adventure game that was released by Nintendo in 1986. Unlike most other video games of the time, The Legend of Zelda featured a top-down perspective, which meant that players viewed the action as if they were looking down from above. Another key element that distinguished The Legend of Zelda from its contemporaries was that it avoided the traditional gaming mechanic of one-directional progression through a predetermined set of levels. Instead, it allowed mostly nonlinear open-world play that could be continued across multiple gaming sessions thanks to the inclusion of battery-enabled save functionality. Within this structural framework, The Legend of Zelda featured a variety of gameplay styles that ranged from simple exploration to questing, combat, puzzle-solving, and role playing.
Narratively, The Legend of Zelda involves a small cast of characters from the mythical land of Hyrule. The player’s character is Link, a young elf-like boy who is tasked with rescuing the titular Princess Zelda from the villainous Ganon. Ganon’s ultimate aim is to take possession of the Triforce, a legendary artifact that represents the essence of the Golden Goddesses who created Hyrule and is said to bestow godlike powers upon its holder. The Triforce is made up of three smaller pieces, including the Triforce of Power, the Triforce of Wisdom, and the Triforce of Courage. At the outset of The Legend of Zelda, Ganon has already seized the Triforce of Power and is in pursuit of the Triforce of Wisdom. In an effort to keep it out of his evil hands, Princess Zelda breaks the Triforce of Wisdom into eight separate segments and scatters them throughout a series of underground dungeons. Shortly thereafter, she is kidnapped and imprisoned by Ganon. That leaves Link with the responsibility of recovering the segments, reassembling them into the Triforce of Wisdom, defeating Gannon, and rescuing Zelda.
Most of the subsequent games in the Zelda franchise followed the same format as the original game, though a few deviated significantly. Most of these games also featured either the same cast of characters or their ancestors or descendants.
Overview
The Legend of Zelda was created by renowned Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who first rose to fame in the industry as the mastermind behind Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. While the latter was still in development, Miyamoto began work on a very different type of game with the help of story writer Takashi Tezuka. In the mid-1980s, most console-based video game titles—including Super Mario Bros.—were side scrolling platform games in which players raced through levels while attempting to collect items and dispatch enemies as quickly as possible. For his next project, Miyamoto planned on taking a very different approach. He conceived The Legend of Zelda as a fantasy-themed adventure game with role playing elements and a sprawling narrative that would unfold in an open world environment. That narrative was based on Miyamoto’s memories of his own childhood in the Kyoto countryside. His goal in designing The Legend of Zelda was to replicate the wonder and excitement of wandering the forest and exploring caves.
In addition to its story and design, The Legend of Zelda also represented something of a technological step forward in video gaming. The initial version of the game was originally released in Japan as one of the first titles designed for the Family Computer Disk System (FDS). The FDS was a peripheral for the Family Computer (Famicom) console, which was the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The biggest advantage of the FDS—and the feature most important to The Legend of Zelda—was that it gave players a way to save their game as they made progress. The North American and European versions of the game were ported to a cartridge format that featured a battery-backed memory system with game-saving capabilities.
Released in Japan in 1986 and elsewhere in 1987, The Legend of Zelda was an immediate hit. With more than 6.5 million copies sold, the game became one of the bestselling NES titles in history. This wild success quickly led to the launch of an entire series of sequels. The first of these was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Released in Japan in 1987 and elsewhere in 1988, The Adventure was a notable departure from its predecessor in that it was a more traditional side scrolling game with a greater emphasis on combat. In 1991, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past brought the Zelda series to the Super Nintendo system and restored its original game mechanics. Two years later, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening became the series’ first portable game. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time brought Zelda to the Nintendo 64 in 1998. Other notable entries in the Zelda series include The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000), The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (2002), The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006), The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011), The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (2013), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (2019), and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (2024).
Bibliography
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