| THE
LEGEND OF ZELDA |
  Ah yes, another masterpiece from master Miyamoto! The LEgend of Zelda was a top-down adventure game in the same vein as Adventure for the Atari 2600 VCS. It was inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto's childhood in Japan roaming the forests and finding adventure as a kid. Quite a departure from the linearityy of Mario. The Legend of Zelda was a more autonomous affair. It was originally released for the Famicom DIsk System in Japan in 1986 (a Floppy disk system for the Japanese NES - aka . Family Computer). Then released in 1987 in the USA as one of the first games with a Battery Backed save feature (please press Reset before turning off hte Nintendo).
In The Legend of Zelda, there's a whole long story about an old lady (we never see) telling Link to seek out the triforce and save Princess Zelda. How this is actually done is by upgrading equipment from various little holes found around Hyrule, fighting enemies for rupees and to replenish your bomb/arrow supply with certain fiends, and of course, go through all nine dungeons obtaining a piece of the triforce. AT this point in the series, there was only ONE triforce and it was split into eight pieces and spread among Hyrules dungeons, all protected by various bosses. The game is now one of those "Must Have" titles if you still use NES hardware. Nintendo did have a internet-connected device for the SNES in Japan that had a version of this running on the SNES Legend of Zelda: A link to the Past engine.Adventure II - My Experience The Legend of Zelda was probably the first or second NES game I ever played. I remember it being that my sister needed to babysit for some rich friends of hers - this was around 1988-1989, and basically, I got to spend my evening at a upper middle class home playing Nintendo. This was the second game I played and it impressed me, it was what Adventure for the Atari 2600 was supposed to be, annd I almost wondered if it was a sequel to adventure - ie Adventure II: the LEgend of Zelda - as if Nintendo and Atari were the same thing. Years later, when I got my NES, this was one of the first three games I got for it. And of course, I never beat it until a few decades later in mny late 30's (albeit with a game genie code or two, even then it was still HARD). I always like to have this one around because it sort of fills a gap that Dragon Warrior could not, and thaat's the immediate death of an enemy that I have hit with the sword. |
