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A hero
from another country, Link is
found to bare the mark of the
Triforce of Courage, meaning his
fate is inextricably twined with
that of Hyrule's. The evil king Ganon
has broke through
the Sages' Seals and captured
Hyrule's Princess Zelda.
However, before Ganon can get
his hands on her coveted
Triforce of Wisdom, that would
allow him to take control of the
world, Zelda split it into 8
pieces and hid them around
Hyrule. It is your job as Link
to reunite the 8 pieces and use
them to defeat Ganon. Compared
to later games in the series,
the story in The Legend of Zelda
is incredibly bare. This didn't
faze hardcore adventurers back
in the late 1980's, but there's
little of interest here for
modern gamers looking to get
their retro fix on Virtual
Console.
After sampling the delights of the
newer 2D Zelda games, players will have a hard time getting over
how clunky and slow the controls
are. This can get very
frustrating when trying to avoid
projectiles or enemies. However,
persevere and you can still pick
up the feel of Link quite
quickly. Combat is simple enough,
usually involving just a sword or
a bow, and constantly respawning
enemies means that getting
around Hyrule can be a
repetitive chore. Difficulty on
the overworld is less about battle tactics, as in later Zelda
games, but your ability to handle swarms of enemies at once. The
dungeon puzzles are equally as
archaic, very
much of the 'move this here,
switch this there' variety, but
when the game was originally
released this was groundbreaking
stuff, though knowledge of this
does little to alleviate tedium
for modern gamers. Testament to
the original game design is that
both the overworld and dungeons
hold an a mysterious, eerie
aura.
For a NES title, Legend of Zelda
boasts some gorgeous graphics.
Not as ageless as those of A
Link to the Past, they still
hold a certain appeal only
otherwise found in the Mario
Bros. series. Some gamers today may
dismiss them as primitive, but
they remain bold and clear. The characters and
enemies hold a relatively high
number of frames (of animation), showing how
well Shigeru
Miyamoto squeezed the juice out of
the console to get what were, at
the time, amazing results. In
particular, the start up screen
was graphically spectacular.
Because of the NES's feeble sound
hardware, the sounds that emerge from
your speakers are nothing short of
basic. What they did with the lack
of power was incredible as the
tunes are still very catchy and almost
powerful. In the dungeons they're slow and mysterious and
create an air of tension. The music fits the style
of the game, as after all, you would think it
strange if they had an orchestral
soundtrack to accompany such basic
graphics.
If there's one thing that this game hasn't lost
over time is its sense of atmosphere. Even without the
soundtrack of Ocarina Of Time or the graphics of Twilight
Princess,
LoZ has dungeons which still feel
cold and dreary,
and forests that feel mysterious. It is very easy to lose
yourself in this 8-bit Hyrule.
Without this game there would
be no Ocarina of Time, Twilight
Princess or A Link to the Past, so in that sense, The Legend of
Zelda has made a bigger contribution to the
series than any of the others. It
set many of the series' gameplay paradigms and conventions, and aside
from that, it introduced Hyrule, Link, Zelda, Ganon, and
many locations such as Death
Mountain which have since found a
home in many players hearts.
The end product amounts
to more than the sum of its parts; it's a massive adventure, an
8-bit playground that, just when you think you've finished it,
delivers a second, much harder quest. Retronauts should snap
this up immediately, because
despite the rapidly aging
gameplay, this game is an
industry landmark and like the
T-shirt says, you should know
your roots.
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Gameplay |
5 |
Overall
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Graphics |
2 |
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Sounds |
5 |
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Atmosphere |
7 |
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Contribution |
9 |
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