Debuting in 1986 for the Famicom Disk System in
Japan, The Legend of Zelda didn’t just serve as that system’s killer app; it became a sensation
worldwide, helping to propel the NES to must-have status in the West and establishing Nintendo
as one of gaming’s most important developers. The idea sprung from Shigeru Miyamoto’s
fond childhood memories of exploring caves and fighting skeletons. It was intended
to translate that sense of adventure and discovery into a game that could be understood
and appreciated by fans the world over. In retrospect, it’s difficult to appreciate
just how large and complex the game felt at the time. Its map was massive, its dungeons
were expansive, and fans lost thousands of hours trying to find and stab an evil
wizard shaped like a pig…and after that, they played The Legend of Zelda. HA HA.
It provided an astonishing amount of content, especially for an 8-bit game, and its impact on
the industry is still being felt to this day. The same is true of nearly all of its sequels,
which are consistently system sellers for Nintendo and which often manage to either set or predict
trends that other series will end up following. Of course, with so many sequels and spinoffs,
not all of them can be created equal. But don’t worry! We are here to tell you which games are
better than which other games and by exactly how much. And we did this by using a scientific
process that we like to call, “playing them and then deciding.” It’s complicated and you
probably wouldn’t understand, but just trust us. Typically when laying out the ground rules
for these videos, we consult Rules Boss. Considering today’s subject matter,
however, we consulted Hyrules Boss. By his royal decree, we will not be including
any LCD games, because they’re rubbish. All of them. They are all rubbish. That is
my review of every LCD game that’s ever been made: It’s rubbish. Now leave me alone.
Also! As usual, we won’t be counting any ports, collections, remakes, or remasters. Zelda
games add an interesting wrinkle, however, as they sometimes span console generations, such
as Twilight Princess releasing for the GameCube and the Wii, or Breath of the Wild releasing for
the Wii U and the Switch. In cases like that, we will consider the earlier generation to be
the “main” hardware, as that’s where the game received most of its development. And if a game
only came to the West on a different system than its original release in Japan, we will look at the
Western version because we can’t read Japanese, and James refuses to learn Japanese just so he
can translate games for us. Selfish James…selfish. Let’s rank ‘em.
I’m Ben and I’m Peter from TripleJump, and this is Every Legend of Zelda
Video Game Ranked from Worst to Best. #34: Zelda no Densetsu:
Kamigami no Triforce (1992) Barcode Battler II
Boy, for something we really couldn’t care less about, we do end up talking about barcode-based
game systems an awful lot. Okay, it’s only been, like, three times, but that’s three times too
many times. The Barcode Battler and its ilk saw notable success in Japan, but a bit less
consumer interest in the West. And by that, I mean that it might as well have been shipped
directly into landfills in the West. The system itself came with a set of cards, with players
scanning them to create characters, power them up, fight enemies, or similarly basic concepts.
The Barcode Battler did not require the use of dedicated cards. In fact, it encouraged fans to
scan household items, books, or anything else that had a barcode, just to see what kind of powerups
and baddies they’d generate as a result. All of which is to say that the console had no idea what
you were doing, and simply translated irrelevant barcodes into equally irrelevant digits. What fun!
The Barcode Battler II, released in 1992, could actually be connected to the Famicom
and Super Famicom consoles, allowing it to…well, provide some actual games as opposed to
telling you which of two numbers is higher. This opened the door to a collaboration with Nintendo,
and the chance to piggyback on a real Zelda game. That’s…not what happened. Barcode Battler
II got a Zelda game, but it was just a set of cards with Zelda-related imagery on
them. You scanned the cards and numbers were either added to or subtracted from other
numbers. It was thrilling stuff, if you’d never seen a calculator or been to a supermarket.
Did we include this only so that we’d subvert your expectations by having something other than
the CD-i games at the bottom? Of course not, and shame on you for inferring such a
thing. Anyway, on to the CD-i games. #33: Link: The Faces of Evil (1993)
CD-i In 1989, Nintendo thought that disc-based media
was the future. And…okay, it was. Well done, there. But they weren’t ready to commit to the
idea, and their indecisiveness led to both some of the best consoles of all time and some of the
worst games of all time. Their abandoned deal with Sony led to the creation of the PlayStation –
which has been their biggest competitor ever since – and another abandoned deal with
Philips led to the creation of the CD-i. The CD-i wasn’t intended to be a
games console, at least not mainly, but it was an electronic device that played
media, which meant that it also had games. The messy divorce resulted in Philips getting
shared custody of, according to interviews, “five characters,” but since the games contain well
more than five Nintendo characters, nobody really knows for sure. Regardless, the CD-I received
three Zelda games and one Mario game. That’s more than some actual Nintendo consoles got!
All four releases tend to come up in discussions of the worst games ever made. Is that entirely
fair? No. Is that basically fair? …yeah. The real problem is less that they are uniformly terrible,
and more that those are two of the biggest and highest-rated franchises in the history of
video games. They would have been disappointing even if they were only “pretty good.”
And they are not pretty good, at least not The Faces of Evil. Remember when I mentioned
that the CD-i wasn’t actually a games console? As a result, The Faces of Evil suffered from
control lag, slow loading, and stuttering, making it feel sort of like it’s being
frantically developed as you play it. Its infamy is due mainly to its bizarre
animations, but the actual game is no better, featuring everything from punishing difficulty to
unclear environments to the permanent suspicion that you’re playing through somebody’s
idea of a joke. But is it as awful as its reputation suggests? Yes. What kind of
question is that? My god, just look at it! #32: Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (1993)
CD-i Most people speak about The Faces of Evil and
The Wand of Gamelon as though they are two chapters of the same book. Very rarely are they
discussed in isolation and… it’s easy to see why. We’re ranking The Wand of Gamelon higher for one
superficial reason: You get to play as Zelda. Does that matter? No. Is she a strong female
character? No. Is she interesting in ways that Faces-of-Evil Link is not? No. But it’s a novelty,
and when two games are so similar in so many ways, novelty can be enough. Also, while Zelda’s voice
actor doesn’t exactly rise above the material, she at least makes an attempt to sound like
a princess, as opposed to Link’s actor, who seems to believe he’s voicing a Ninja Turtle.
And that’s not a case of things seeming out of place in retrospect; contemporary
reviewers were confused as well. This preview in SNES Force wondered why Zelda
and Link talked like Bill and Ted. Of course, they also called the graphics “superb” and the
animation “breathtaking.” Maybe they just meant that they stopped breathing after watching it.
The two games really are interchangeable in most ways. In The Faces of Evil, Link must
find The Book of Koridai and use it to kill Ganon. In The Wand of Gamelon, Zelda must
find… erm… The Wand of Gamelon and use it to kill Ganon. Each adventure is bookended
by lengthy cutscenes animated by teams of distracted toddlers. Same poo, different nappy.
There have been some attempts to rehabilitate the reputations of the CD-i Zelda games, and we
admire these people for even trying, but when doing so means trying to convince people that
they are metroidvanias or outright lie to them that the games are “exhilarating,” it’s probably
a lost cause. These games stink, dude. Cowabunga. #31: Zelda’s Adventure (1994)
CD-i Look, is Zelda’s Adventure actually better
than the other two CD-i games? We think so, but it really, truly does not matter. The
three games come together to form a thick, singular clump that we’re all trying to pass
through the colon of our collective memory. We’re ranking it highest only because it feels
the most like it could have been a good game. It wasn’t – please, let me be absolutely
clear about the fact that it was not – but a return to the overhead screen-by-screen
perspective of the first game was a better impulse than making a clunky platformer.
Zelda’s Adventure, on the surface at least, pulls inspiration from the very first Zelda game,
with a secret-heavy overworld and progression based on finding items and clearing dungeons.
Again, though, that’s superficial praise. And “praise” might be an extreme way of saying
that something didn’t make me actively angry. The rest of Zelda’s Adventure is just differently
bad. The voice acting is more competent, but doesn’t really register as “better.” The
live-action sequences are a nice change of pace from the animations drawn by Satan with
a pen clenched between his buttocks, but so is being hit by a bus. And while the overall
structure of the game better suits the series, it reminds us of the original Zelda just enough to
make us wish we were playing the original Zelda. Zelda’s Adventure has just enough of
the right ideas to keep the AT LEAST YOU TRIED cake out of the bin, but we probably
wouldn’t feel comfortable eating a slice. The game had a limited release in 1995, which
was about five years after everybody made a sacred pledge not to purchase a CD-i, so
it’s not all that easy to come by. Still, if you have a spare $200,000 lying around and
you’d rather own a copy than a home, have at it. #30: Dekisugi Tingle Pack (2009)
DSi The Dekisugi Tingle Pack – which basically means
the Too Much Tingle Pack, which itself basically means The Tingle Pack – is a suite of applications
that was made available as DSiWare. It was just one example of Nintendo charging for things that
should have already been part of the system. And, in some cases, were already part of the system.
These apps never left Japan, which may have been the only wise decision Nintendo made with
them. What of our friends in the archipelago, though? What did they get for their
500 cold, hard Nintendo Points? Not all that much. I know! I was surprised, too!
There’s a fortune-telling app, for starters. I can’t read Japanese but I think it’s safe to
assume that it was 100% accurate. There’s an alarm, in case you ever wanted to be in control
of precisely the amount of time that will pass before Tingle next yells at you. There’s
a calculator, so you can total up exactly how much money you’ve spent on novelty apps
you’ll never use again. There’s a coin flipper, if you happen to be able to afford a DSi and
some software but are unable to afford a coin. And there’s…well…I’ll defer
to the Wiki entry for this: “a marionette of Tingle that will dance in front
of images you’ve taken with the DSi’s camera.” Good lord. I’d pay 500 Nintendo Points, whatever
the hell they are, to prevent that from happening. On the bright side, I tricked you into
thinking that there might be a bright side. The Dekisugi Tingle Pack is the gods’
way of punishing our wicked race, and it’s one that we probably deserve.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that many of us learned from this punishment, and we
expect mandatory Augmented Tingle Reality apps to start coming preinstalled
on our smartphones any day now. #29: The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes (2015)
3DS We’re quite early in the list, but we are already
beyond the “bad games” threshold. At this point, everything we discuss has something to recommend
it, and it’s more a question of which games are better than others, than which games are worse.
Tri Force Heroes is alright, though it’s far from memorable. It certainly wasn’t done any favors
by releasing between two of the best Zelda games in recent memory: A Link Between Worlds and Breath
of the Wild. Even if you enjoyed Tri Force Heroes, would you honestly rather play it than either
of those? Of course not. Stop telling porkies. Tri Force Heroes was meant to be similar to
the Four Swords games, which we’ll get to, but with three Links instead of four. Which you
probably already guessed if you’ve ever seen an episode of Sesame Street. The central mechanic
of the game allows you stack the Links to reach higher areas and toss each other over gaps. That’s
also, according to game director Hiromasa Shikata, why four-player support was removed;three cartoon
elves standing on top of each other is perfectly reasonable, but four cartoon elves standing
on top of each other? Why, that’s just silly. The multiplayer was done better in earlier
games, but there is plenty of fun to be had if you can find a couple of friends. And if
you can’t, the game can be played online. Also, the outfit system allows players to dress
Link in many different styles, including those not usually considered masculine. That’s a
big step for the famously stodgy Nintendo, and it’s nice to see them loosening up a bit. Critics
weren’t won over by it, and fans – assuming there were any – easily forgot it, but it was…fine. The
best part is that it all gets better from here. #28: My Nintendo Picross: The Legend
of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016) 3DS
[angry rabble sounds] Calm down, everyone, calm down. Please, calm down.
I know you all expected this to be #1. I know! But hear me out before you eat me
alive. And then…maybe don’t eat me alive? In addition to having the snappiest title of
any video game in history, My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is more
of a picross game than a Zelda game. And picross is fun! How could it not be? You’re tapping on
squares! But is picross better than Zelda games? Not often. In fact, by my count, it’s
only better than six Zelda games. Additionally, My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of
Zelda: Twilight Princess – a name I will continue saying in its entirety until every one of us hates
it – is not that great of a picross game. It was a free download for My Nintendo members…and it
still seems to be, if you feel like recharging that 3DS in the back of your cupboard.
It was released in an effort to encourage people to play Miitomo. Remember Miitomo? Of
course you don’t. I just reminded you of it for the first time in years and you’ve
already forgotten it again. Anyway, completing tasks in Miitomo was the main way to
earn the currency required to download this game. As a bonus – some might say apology – for playing
Miitomo, it’s fine. As a picross game, there are only around 100 puzzles in total, most of which
are extremely simple to solve and are only made difficult by the handheld’s small touchscreen. As
a Zelda game…well, it’s not a Zelda game. It might be nice for Twilight Princess fans, who get to see
imagery from that game reimagined as pixel art, but Twilight Princess fans are too busy cracking
their knuckles in anticipation of the angry comments they will write when they see how low we
ranked that game. So let’s move along, shall we? #27: Tingle’s Balloon Fight DS (2007)
DS As with My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of
Zelda: Twilight Princess – which they really should have called Twilight Picross, come on
– Tingle’s Balloon Fight DS ranks this highly because the non-Zelda part of the game is fun.
If you don’t like Balloon Fight, that’s okay; you’d rank it lower and the world would
keep on turning. We like Balloon Fight, so here we are, attempting to justify a
game in which a man in a green leotard is plastered all over a classic NES
release that had nothing to do with him. I can say, at least, that Tingle isn’t
a totally irrelevant fit for Balloon Fight. When we met him in Majora’s Mask, he
was already using that inflatable latex to soar high into the air and disappoint his father. It
was part of the character’s DNA from the start, both emphasizing his childlike nature and
allowing him to serve as the game’s dedicated cartographer, mapping areas from above.
And now he’s in Balloon Fight! …okay, look, I didn’t say it wasn’t a stretch. It’s just
not as large of one as it might at first seem. The game includes both modes from the original
Balloon Fight, but adds four-player support, which is a legitimately nice bonus. It also adds
a gallery feature with artwork that’s unlocked as you progress through the game. It is horrifying
and will make you regret that you’d ever heard the name Tingle. I mean, regret it even more.
Less legitimately nice is how rare it is. It was only released in Japan, which you may
have guessed, but it was also only released through the Japanese My Nintendo rewards program.
It’s not the easiest game on this list to find, but it’s also far from the best game
on this list, so, hey, it evens out. #26: Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland (2006)
DS If your first thought upon meeting Tingle
in Majora’s Mask was, “I wish I could help this man breed,” then Freshly-Picked
Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland is a must-have. It begins with our hero lying on the floor
and scratching his arse, which is how all Zelda games should begin in my opinion, when a
mysterious elderly gem tells him to collect cash, which will in turn allow him to raise a tower
that will bring him to a world of hot fairy babes. …and I’ve only this moment understood what
“raising a tower” symbolizes. I have to admit, Nintendo, I didn’t think you had it in you. …and
that in itself might be another entendre, but I’m going to stop before I go in any deeper. Damn it.
Uncle Rupee – and you should definitely inform your parents if anyone asks you to call them
that –has a foolproof plan to get Tingle tinglin’, and everything in the game revolves
around money. It’s your main reward for completing objectives, it’s the way in which you progress the
story, it’s your health, and it’s…well, currency, obviously. It’s even the big bad. Superficially,
it’s like a Wario game if Wario were constantly on the pull. At heart, though, it stays largely true
to its status as a Zelda spinoff, with dungeon exploration, item collection, and impressive
boss fights making the experience quite fun. For a time, at least. It’s a colorful and
memorable adventure, but it also overstays its welcome. Collecting rupees makes sense for
the character, but it can also make the game feel grindy, as though you’re accomplishing little more
than increasing a number, one digit at a time. Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland is
sometimes referred to as being “Japan only,” but it actually released here in Europe just a
year later. It’s possible we’re simply in denial. #25: Link’s Crossbow Training (2007)
Wii How do you get people to buy a piece of plastic?
One option is to package it with a game that ties into a large, globally popular franchise. Easy,
right? Surprisingly, it wasn’t. Link’s Crossbow Training is a fairly slight experience, but its
development was nowhere near as straightforward as it seems. At various points, it was meant
to be either a sequel or side-story to Twilight Princess, a standalone epic adventure, or
a game about Link traveling to a distant future inspired by The Terminator. No, really.
At one point, Shigeru Miyamoto became concerned that the prototypes were both overcomplicated
and unengaging, with him imploring the team to remember that they were making a game and not a
movie. Tensions were so fraught that the project came close to cancellation, and it was only saved
when Nintendo enlisted fans to play an early, simplistic build, asking them if it were even
worth the company’s time to continue making it. That’s a lot of drama for a pack-in game to
be given away with a plastic Wii Remote shell, but it’s also why Link’s Crossbow
Training is actually…good. Nintendo easily could have given us a few rounds
of target shooting and called it a day, but what we got instead is impressively polished and
surprisingly deep, with lots of hidden bonuses, secrets, and strategies to uncover. There’s a
very Zelda-like sense of discovery behind the very un-Zelda-like squeezing of a trigger.
It’s not great, but it’s better than a Wii Zapper pack-in had any right to be. The best
part? You don’t even need the Wii Zapper to play it. You can already point the Wii Remote
at your television; that was the entire point of the Wii Remote in the first place. You
can’t fool me, Nintendo. Nice game, though. #24: BS Zelda no Densetsu (1995)
Satellaview Fans of the original Legend of Zelda were
met with a treat at the end of the game: the ability to play through it again, with a “second
quest” that had a more difficult, remixed layout. Those who entered “ZELDA” as the name of their
save file would also be able to do that, but they were either cheaters or ended up very confused.
BS Zelda no Densetsu was a sort of third quest, released for the Satellaview. It featured
a 16-bit recreation of The Legend of Zelda with completely different layouts once more.
The result was, basically, a chance for fans to experience the adventure all over again,
looking and feeling both fresh and familiar. And that’s not all! It was released in an
episodic format, with live voiceover. That’s all. When we say “episodic” today, we mean that
the game is released in parts. In the case of BS Zelda no Densetsu, it was episodic in the
sense that you had to play it at a fixed time, just like an interactive television show. If
you weren’t home during that hourlong window, you missed your chance to progress
and see what happened that week. “What happened that week” tended to be an
assortment of various buffs and upgrades, triggered by the Old Man from the original game.
It was an interesting experiment, but there’s little we can say about it conclusively.
BS Zelda no Densetsu is considered to be “partially lost media.” A ROM does
exist, but the game is incomplete. Dedicated archivists have done their best to
recreate the missing content, which is admirable, because Nintendo certainly doesn’t seem
interested in doing it. From what we can play, it’s an admirably ambitious
experiment that came too soon for technology to properly support it. It’s
something Nintendo could provide for us again right now, easily and inexpensively, on the
Switch. Which means they won’t. Thanks, guys. #23: BS Zelda no Densetsu
Inishie no Sekiban (1997) Satellaview
Like the first BS Zelda no Densetsu, Inishie no Sekiban was essentially a reworking of an existing
Zelda game, in this case A Link to the Past. Being as the game was already 16 bits, it didn’t
quite get the same facelift, but it did introduce enough to feel like a new experience anyway.
The game is actually a sequel to A Link to the Past. Like the previous game, it doesn’t star
Link, but rather the player’s Satellaview avatar, making these rare instances of being able to
play as a female protagonist in a Zelda game. Once again, the main selling point is the reason
it’s not likely to ever be rereleased; players needed to tune into a scheduled broadcast, and
if they missed that opportunity, tough bananas. Inishie no Sekiban was divided into four episodes,
each of which allowed players to explore more of the map and access new dungeons. The idea was
for players to complete two dungeons each week and explore the overworld, which was quite a lot
to ask of players. As such, the game is far less difficult by design. It was intended to serve as
a comforting form of entertainment rather than a difficult task, which could be either a benefit or
a drawback depending upon the player, but it was certainly the right approach for the Satellaview.
There was one more Zelda game available through the service, but it was more or less a direct port
of A Link to the Past. It was not divided into episodes, nor did it feature the live sound and
events of the other two games. On the bright side, it was consistently available between 1997
and 2000, so you didn’t have to either catch every episode or miss out on it
for your entire life. What a bonus! #22: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011)
Wii Poor Skyward Sword. It was demoed at E3 2010,
with Bill Trinen pretending to have problems with the controls. This was just a setup for
a punchline in which Shigeru Miyamoto himself would descend to the mortal plane and show him
how to play properly…but then Miyamoto also had problems with the controls. Eventually
the game released and everybody on the planet had problems with the controls, too, so
at least we were all in this together. That was just the start of the game’s problems,
with the story of Link and his fellow Skylanders – not that one – being completely overshadowed by
the game’s myriad problems. Eventual criticisms focused on everything from its confused art
design to a companion who insisted on feeding you solutions before you’d even seen the puzzles.
I said “eventual criticisms” because Skyward Sword was a striking example of recency bias. When it
was released, it was met with nothing but praise, with perfect and near-perfect scores coming from
just about every outlet, and fans proclaiming it to be the best in the series. Then, a year
or so later, all anyone ever talked about was what it did wrong, and they made Nintendo
swear a blood oath never to do it again. Some Zelda games are poorly received and stay
that way, some start off as well regarded and only grow in their reputation from there. Skyward
Sword is one of the very few games that occupied both ends of the critical continuum, and that’s
a reminder of just how consistent Nintendo usually is with this series. It’s not all that
flattering to describe Skyward Sword as the game that reminds us of how much better Zelda usually
is, but there is no light without darkness. That metaphor would have worked so much better if this were one of the games with a
Dark World, but instead it had to be the one with a Cloud World. Just one more
way you’ve let us down, Skyward Sword. #21: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (2009)
DS Considering the fact that most of
these games are prefaced with the words “The Legend of Zelda,” you’d expect Zelda
to do something…y’know…legendary. Often, however, she will only pop up to congratulate
you on your legendary deeds, or be reduced to a cameo. There are exceptions, such as having
an ass-kicking alter ego in Ocarina of Time, or dedicating all of her power to sealing evil
away for a full century in Breath of the Wild. But those are, indeed, the exceptions.
Huh? What’s that? No idea what you’re talking about. You must have dreamed it.
The Wind Waker may lampshade this most effectively; Zelda does plenty of interesting
things in that game…until she realizes that she is Zelda, at which point
she stops doing anything at all. Leave it to Spirit Tracks to give Zelda
one of her most active roles ever, as she helps Link throughout his adventure
and possesses enemies on the player’s behalf. Because she’s a ghost now. Did I forget to
mention that? Yes, Zelda is at her most active after she’s basically dead. If that doesn’t
make my point for me, I don’t know what can. Spirit Tracks is a direct sequel to the
much-better Phantom Hourglass, but it’s not without merit. It’s mainly memorable for a train
being Link’s mode of transportation. This allows far less freedom than literally anything Link has
ridden before, but it gives the game a distinct personality. Spirit Tracks also uses the same
engine as its predecessor. I’m not sure what it’s called; possibly the little engine that could.
The game builds on Phantom Hourglass without improving all that much. It tweaks
the controls and the overall design, but anyone who didn’t enjoy that game
won’t like this one either. In fact, it’s so similar, it’s downright freight-ening.
God, that doesn’t even work. Who writes this junk? #20: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987)
NES The odd duck of the Zelda series – wait, are there
ducks in the Zelda series? Okay, yes, whew. The odd duck of the Zelda series, The Adventure of
Link is usually remembered for how few of its innovations stuck around. In that regard, it can
be considered a failure. Whereas most Zelda games establish mechanics and concepts that later games
can build upon, Zelda II mainly shaped the series by showing sequels what not to do.
That’s the narrative, at least, but it’s not the whole story. To be clear, there
are valid reasons that this perspective took hold. Nintendo itself seems happy to forget that the
game ever happened, scrapping its side-scrolling dungeons, its dedicated battle screens, its extra
lives, and its clunky experience system. It did, however, serve as the proving ground for
some things that would pay dividends later, such as magic spells and sword techniques. Even
transformations, if you consider the fact that Link could turn into a fairy. It hasn’t been
as influential as other games, but it’s also not an evolutionary dead end. Wait, is there
evolution in the Zelda series? Umm…you know what, actually? Let’s all just assume there isn’t.
Taken on its own merits, Zelda II is, true to its name, a darned good adventure. The environments
feel varied and the challenge ramps up at a fair pace. For an 8-bit game, there are even a large
number of characters to flesh out the world, though a ropey translation holds them back from
feeling like people. Wait, is there rope in the Zelda series? …right, not quite what I was
expecting, but okay. God, these games as weird. Anyway, Zelda II is better than its reputation
suggests, and aside from a painful final dungeon, it’s not all that difficult. It’s one of
the series’ most significant departures, but on a list of games that sometimes feel a
bit too similar, that’s not such a bad thing. #19: Irozuki Tingle no Koi no Balloon Trip (2009)
DS Translating to “Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip
of Love,” this is the sequel to Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. I’m glad there was
never a third game, because I don’t think they could have come up with another title that was as
brilliantly stuffed with nonsense. In the previous game, Tingle was the kind of sad, pathetic
loser who did nothing but lie around, wishing for a date. This time around, he’s the kind of
even-more-sad, even-more-pathetic loser who reads books. You should be ashamed of yourself, Tingle!
Look at what you’ve let yourself become! Anyway, back to talking about video games all day.
Tingle must be a particular fan of the works of L. Frank Baum, because he gets sucked into
what resembles (but is legally distinct from) The Wizard of Oz. From here, the game could
easily slip right back into the gameplay of Rosy Rupeeland, but it’s an entirely different
genre altogether. This is a point-and-click adventure game, which suits the storybook
inspiration, the lover-not-a-fighter character of Tingle, and the adorable visuals quite well.
The Wizard of Oz provides more than a coat of paint, too; Tingle’s companions are based on the
characters of the scarecrow, the cowardly lion, and the tin woodman…who, because this is a
Tingle game, is instead a sexy alien robot lady. They each have their own abilities
that come in handy on your quest…which is once again to help Tingle make out with hot
babes. I didn’t say everything was improved. So…can it be? A Tingle game that is truly good
on its own merits, rather than simply being a novelty or a reskin? Actually…yes! Irozuki Tingle
no Koi no Balloon Trip is funny and quirky enough to actually be worth playing. …which means
that it never left Japan. Sorry, “the West”! Better luck next time Tingle stars in
a game about his crippling loneliness! #18: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (2007)
DS As popular as the DS was, an overriding memory
for many fans of the system was its reliance on pointless touchscreen integration. You really
can’t blame them, considering just how many games added some unnecessary interaction or other
that could have more easily been performed with a button. We certainly can’t begrudge anyone who
looked at Phantom Hourglass’s touchscreen controls and thought, “No. Thank you, but no.” Even so,
they’re missing out, because after a few minutes of adapting to them, Phantom Hourglass turns what
could have been a gimmick into some of the most graceful controls that the series has had. Okay,
it’s still a gimmick, yes, but you get the point. The game picks up after The Wind Waker, taking
place in the same continuity and making for one of the shockingly rare direct sequels in
the series. Visually, it retains all of the charm and character of that game. Otherwise, it’s
necessarily a step back. You’re still sailing the ocean blue, but the experience is much shallower,
likely due to the limited hardware. There is also an irritating amount of treading the same ground,
due to the game’s Temple of the Ocean King, which must be revisited multiple times. Thankfully, each
visit feels a bit different from the last, but not quite different enough to fully stave off fatigue.
All of which probably sounds negative, but what the game gets right, it really gets
right. The sense of adventure is intact, the features of the DS tie interestingly into
the puzzle design, the boss fights are great, and greedy old Linebeck is among the best
companion characters in a series full of them. It’s a bit overstuffed and it pales in comparison
to The Wind Waker, but it’s a damned good time. #17: The Legend of Zelda: Four
Swords Anniversary Edition (2011) DSi
We thought for a while about what to do with Four Swords, the bonus game that
was released with the port of A Link to the Past for the Game Boy Advance. We don’t count alternate
modes or bonus games as their own entries, and, in addition, we don’t count ports
separately, so we wouldn’t even be covering the main game to which it was attached. And yet,
Four Swords – which could have been nothing but a quick bonus mode – is important to the Zelda
franchise, in the same way that Bowser’s Fury already feels important to the Mario franchise,
even if it, too, was bundled with a port. Fortunately for me – well, for everyone, but I’m
selfish – Nintendo rereleased Four Swords on its own for the DSi as an Anniversary Edition. And
also, you could play with friends wirelessly, not having to faff about with link cables for
the first time in any Four Swords game. And also, they added more content. And also, the soundtrack
had been remastered. And also, there was a single-player mode. Oh, and also, it was free.
Good lord; if Nintendo ever seems stingy today, it’s only because they used up all of their
generosity on Four Swords Anniversary Edition. The game involves multiple Links, controlled
ideally by friends, who must work together. Single-player mode lets you swap between control
of the different Links; this allows you to handle all of the stuff designed for multiplayer, but it
may take a bit longer. Which is good, because it gives you time to wonder how you made it this
far in life without making a single friend. If you want to play it…too bad, baby. It was
a limited time offer. Nintendo did re-release the game in 2014 – for exactly one month –
before delisting it from the shop forever. What was that I said about Nintendo’s
generosity earlier? I take it all back. #16: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006)
GameCube In response to the backlash over the art
style of The Wind Waker – one which seems particularly absurd in retrospect, considering how
gorgeous that game still is – Nintendo seemed to overcorrect, giving us a smear of brown and
grey called Twilight Princess. In a sense, they did what the fans wanted: They gave us a
Zelda that looked as realistic as the hardware could handle. The graphics also aged like a
beached whale, so I hope everyone’s happy. Rare is the Zelda game that is completely
without merit, though. Twilight Princess does manage to get a lot of things right, such
as the soundtrack, and the companion character Midna, who is by a fairly wide margin the
best companion character the series has ever had. She tips into “overly helpful” a bit
too often, but what companion character doesn’t? What sets her apart is her personality, which
is well-rounded and impressively realized for what could have been a hint box.
There’s a moody, dour atmosphere over Twilight Princess, which makes it feel like
an aberration in a series that usually likes to play with itself. I’m realizing now that I could
have phrased that very differently, but you get the idea. Twilight Princess is self-serious to
a fault; the realistic stuff feels artificial, and the fantastical stuff feels out of place, to
the point that very little seems to fit. The fact that the entire game feels moody also robs the
Twilight Realm of its ability to feel threatening. If everything is already miserable, what
difference does it make if more misery leaks in? And yet, it’s still quite good. There are fun boss
fights and interesting new items to play with, even if they aren’t always as useful as they
should be. Plus, Link turns into a wolf, bringing the number of things he has in
common with Sonic the Hedgehog to…one. It’s by no means bad, but it is one of Link’s
lesser adventures. Midna deserved better. #15: Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the
NecroDancer featuring The Legend of Zelda (2019)
Switch As with Hyrule Warriors – the first game,
anyway, which we’ll get to – and Tingle’s Balloon Fight – which are three words I
will never say again – Cadence of Hyrule is really an entry in a different series with
a coat of Zelda paint. I went to school with a Zelda Paint, actually. Her breath was wild.
In this case, it’s Crypt of the NecroDancer, a 2015 indie rhythm-action roguelike, a
combination of adjectives that sounds like a mess but which played surprisingly well. It garnered
acclaim and was ported to just about everything. The main gimmick of the game was that everything
you did – movement, attacking, interacting – had to be done in time to the beat of the music.
The learning curve was steep. It was sort of like trying to play Godzilla in Guitar Hero
while also fighting the actual Godzilla. If you managed to get the hang of things, though,
the game was deeply satisfying to master. Ryan Clark – one of the game’s directors – was
interested in including Zelda characters as DLC. He didn’t think Nintendo would allow it, but
Nintendo responded by asking him to create an entire game in the Zelda universe. He presumably
stood there in shock for several months before he was able to utter another word, but eventually
got started on what became Cadence of Hyrule. Like Crypt of the NecroDancer, the game was well
received, and it now catered to nostalgic fans of the Zelda franchise. It even had different modes
that allowed it to appeal to a wider audience, including permadeath for hardcore players, and
a mode that removed the need to act in time to the music…which sort of defeats the purpose but at
least allows people like me to survive the first screen. It’s clearly not a proper Zelda game,
but as a danceable, bite-sized love letter to the series, it’s a lot of fun. Now, Nintendo, when are
we getting Sin and Punishment: Dancing All Night? #14: The Legend of Zelda:
Four Swords Adventures (2004) GameCube
With Mario, Nintendo knew exactly what a party game should look like:
mindless cartoony chaos. With Zelda, things weren’t quite so straightforward. This series had
an emphasis on exploration, adventure, and grown men who dressed like elves. Tossing four players
into a minigame in which they compete to see who can flick Ganondorf with a towel the greatest
number of times just wouldn’t work. That was fun, though, even if it’s the last time James is ever
coming to the office in his Halloween costume. Eventually, Nintendo worked out how to manage
it with Four Swords Adventures. The game gives each player a color-coded Link of their own and
plops them into a simplified take on the formula, with both cooperative and competitive elements.
The challenge is low, as one might expect, but the fans who were lucky enough to play it
have been clamoring for a sequel ever since. And why would they have been “lucky” to play
it? Well, because it wasn’t a budget-friendly experience. Someone had to own a GameCube and a
copy of the game, of course, but a full roster of four players would also need four Game
Boy Advance handhelds and four link cables. In a way, that’s cute; you need four “links” to
control four Links. In another, more accurate, way: Some of us need to spend money on food.
As such, it’s one of the lowest-selling games in the series, and is one of the few that never
managed to crack 1 million sales. It turns out that it’s tough to sell a game when people need
five consoles in order to play it. What a shock! A game like Four Swords Adventures would have
been much easier to pull off with just about every system Nintendo has released since,
and yet we’ve never gotten a proper sequel. It’s not easy being a Nintendo fan,
sometimes. They really make you work for it. #13: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (2001)
Game Boy Color For the Oracle duology on the Game Boy Color,
Nintendo handed Capcom the keys to the kingdom. Which is usually meant metaphorically, but Zelda
games do usually take place in an actual kingdom so…that part is literal. The keys are still
metaphorical, however. Right? I’m… about 70% sure of that. Anyway, you’d think that getting Nintendo
to hand you one of its best-known and most-beloved franchises would be difficult, but apparently
it goes rather easily when you’re Capcom. That developer had proven its worth
with its great titles for the NES, SNES, and Game Boy, so Nintendo trusted them
to produce a Zelda game of respectable quality. Actually, Nintendo expected there to be three
games in this sub-series rather than two. And did you know that Nintendo initially asked them
to make six titles, and wanted each of them to release within four months of the previous game?
Probably so that their staff would have time to eat and sleep, Capcom ended up negotiating a
trilogy, which was then scaled down to the two interlinked games we know today. They are based
heavily on Link’s Awakening, even reusing sprites and sound effects. Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of
Ages – which, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, we will talk about momentarily – are very similar games,
though fans tend to refer to Oracle of Seasons as having a stronger emphasis on puzzles, while
Oracle of Ages has a stronger emphasis on combat. Many of the puzzles in Oracle of Seasons involve
Link cycling the environment through summer, autumn, winter, and spring. He does this by
getting his rod out and waving it around, which none of you should try at home. We’re
ranking Seasons slightly lower on the grounds that its puzzles don’t compare as favorably to
Nintendo’s own as the next game’s combat does, but the games are about equal in terms of
quality, and it’s worth picking up both. #12: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (2001)
Game Boy Color But why is it worth picking up both, I heard
you ask? Even though I couldn’t answer you until now because I had to introduce the title
of this entry first? Well, because both games are – ahem – linked. That pun never gets old,
does it? You’ll get a password upon finishing one of them, and using that password on the other
game will adjust its story to serve as a sequel. Either game can be played first, you’ll
get some new goodies, and it will also unlock the true final sequence, but there’s
not much to the linking system beyond that. Oracle of Ages takes place in the land
of Labrynna. Throughout his adventure, Link will hop about through time, which is
exactly what caused the divergent realities that Nintendo assured us happened in Ocarina
of Time…even though they didn’t happen here, or any other time Link altered history. But
Nintendo had a timeline in mind from the start and the games carefully adhered to it, I promise.
If you’re curious about the sequence of these games on the timeline – which is totally
something Nintendo had planned all along, and they definitely didn’t invent a “hero fails”
branch of the timeline just so games that didn’t otherwise fit could still be included – well,
according to the Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia, it’s: A Link to the Past, Link’s
Awakening, Oracle of Seasons, and then Oracle of Ages. Perfectly simple. I’m lying,
of course, because it depends on the language in which you read the Encyclopedia. According
to the Japanese version, the Link in these two games is a different incarnation from the Link
in the prior two games. In the English version, it’s the same incarnation across all four.
But don’t worry. Nintendo planned all of this from the start, I assure you. Even the
stuff that contradicts the other stuff. #11: Hyrule Warriors (2014)
Wii U The Wii U is destined to be remembered as one of
Nintendo’s least important consoles, serving as a half-step between the far-better-realized Wii
and Switch. Its importance to the Zelda franchise is significant, though, as it is home to some of
its most experimental content. On the Wii U, the series was suddenly more willing to take risks.
From the Nintendo Land minigame to Link being added as DLC to Mario Kart 8 to a zone in
Sonic the Hedgehog– so that’s two things they have in common now – the very concept of
Zelda was opening itself up to new experiences for the first time in a long time.
In retrospect, we know that Breath of the Wild would find the Zelda team actively
reinventing the core series in a way that would allow it to endure. These new directions for Link
weren’t just novelties; they were symptoms of a willingness to take the series to new places
and expand the scope of what was possible. The most surprising experiment was Hyrule
Warriors, which saw Nintendo collaborating with Koei Tecmo to create a Zelda-themed
musou game in the style of Dynasty Warriors. Not only was it a rare shift in genre for
Zelda, but it was an equally rare occurrence of Nintendo allowing any other developer to
touch the franchise. Previously, Nintendo had reserved that honor only for video-game royalty,
such as Capcom, or…oh. Still, you get the point. The game ended up being a surprising success. And
I don’t just mean that fans were surprised; Koei Tecmo was shocked to learn that during its first
weekend in North America, the game sold twice as well as it did during its first full week in
Japan. This proved that fans wanted to see Zelda experiment just as much as the developers did, and
further experimentation would pay off very soon. #10: The Legend of Zelda (1986)
NES The game that kicked off the entire
franchise is impressively high on this list; that’s a testament to just how brilliantly
Nintendo planned the series from the get-go. Just as Super Mario Bros. nailed
platformers with its very first attempt, The Legend of Zelda nailed adventure.
It didn’t, of course, come without precedent, however. The Legend of Zelda took more than
a little inspiration for that adventure from… well, Adventure, released in 1980 for the Atari
2600. That game also featured a hero wandering from screen to screen, collecting useful items,
and uncovering secrets. Adventure itself was inspired by 1976’s Colossal Cave Adventure; it
took the rough experience of that text-based game and gave it a graphical successor.
Adventure was an impressive step forward, and The Legend of Zelda was an even
more impressive step forward from there. Was the first Zelda game perfect? Goodness, no,
but its imperfections tend to be ones that were unfortunately commonplace for games at the time.
Poor translation, a lack of clear direction, and items with vague purposes all make the
game feel a bit rough today, but its core experience – exploration through dangerous areas
with tricky enemies – is excellently realized. The reason that the original Zelda ranks so highly
when compared to the original entries in other long-running series is that it’s still unique. In
many series, understandably, sequels build upon previous ideas and enhance them in ways that can
make the first attempt feel obsolete. With Zelda, though, none of the later games provided the same
degree of freedom, the same willingness to let you walk blindly into danger, or the same level of
trust in players. For fans who enjoyed such an open-ended challenge, such a vast world ganging up
against one tiny little hero, such a willingness to punish you for not paying attention…there’s
still not another experience quite like it. #9: The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (2004)
Game Boy Advance Capcom proved itself several times over in
regards to the Zelda series. Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons, and Four Swords were
more than impressive enough for the Big N to let them develop the lone true
Zelda game on the Game Boy Advance: The Minish Cap. So impressive was Capcom’s
work that Nintendo essentially gave an entire handheld to them when it came to the series, and
it was an honor to which Capcom absolutely rose. The Minish Cap remains one of the most beloved
games in the franchise, feeling both true to the series overall and impressively unique. It borrows
a lot of visual inspiration from The Wind Waker, and it takes much of its structure from A Link to
the Past, but it has a personality all its own. The game focuses on a previously unmentioned
race: the Minish, who are the tiny little people responsible for hiding all of the goodies
you’ve been finding in other games under bushes and in pots. Your companion in this game
– Ezlo – is a talking hat who allows you to shrink down to Minish size. This lets you
scurry through otherwise inaccessible areas, but also causes enemies who were previously
pushovers to become hulking boss monsters. It’s one of the series’ most impressive and simplest
gimmicks, as it reframes common obstacles in ways that force you to completely rethink them.
There is also a great, game-long quest in which you find and match Kinstones with NPCs.
This ends up elevating characters beyond being simple merchants or flavor-text dispensers. It
makes it worth meeting all of them, helping them, and getting to know them. This alone makes the
world feel as though it’s populated with actual individuals, which is something the series has
only achieved better once, in Majora’s Mask. #8: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (2020)
Switch Age of Calamity really should have been a
calamity in itself. Hyrule Warriors offered plenty of content just a few years earlier, and it
received two ports, meaning it wasn’t stranded on the Wii U. A sequel was welcome, but as fans
of Metroid, Pikmin, and Star Fox can attest, Nintendo doesn’t usually feel obligated to
give us a new game just because they gave us new hardware. Additionally, Breath of the Wild
didn’t need a prequel. As you played that game, various characters and flashbacks would pencil in
bits of the past, but most of it was left to you, your powers of observation, and your imagination.
So a Hyrule Warriors sequel that was also a Breath of the Wild prequel was doubly
unnecessary. And yet it was also great, providing more on both ends of that
equation than fans could have expected. To discuss the Breath of the Wild stuff
too much is to rob Age of Calamity of its surprises. As of this writing it’s still
a very recent game, so I won’t spoil it, but it has a larger scope than you might expect.
Age of Calamity’s story isn’t limited in appeal to those who wanted to know about what
already happened. And... I’ll say no more. The other half of the game is the Hyrule Warriors
half. We’ve already seen how Zelda in general can translate to a solid musou experience,
but here it fits better, it’s more varied, and it’s more fully realized. The fact that
these skirmishes largely cover a single, catastrophic conflict gives weight to each one
of them, and the fact that they are happening in a world we’ve already seen decimated by them
means that we know what we’re fighting for. Musou games have their appeal rooted in waves
of disposable enemies, but in Age of Calamity, those waves are each meaningful, as any one
of them could be what causes the downfall of an entire social order. It’s still a musou game,
but Age of Calamity is also, convincingly, a Zelda game, and it’s far better than an unnecessary
sequel to a novelty spinoff had any right to be. #7: The Legend of Zelda: A
Link Between Worlds (2013) 3DS
A Link to the Past is so beloved that Nintendo could have given us a 3D remake of
the game and we would have been happy. Instead, we got an entirely new game with unique mechanics,
which just happened to occupy the same setting. The map was both lovingly recreated and expanded
to take advantage of the new hardware and the new ideas, and the result is one of the most
effortlessly charming games in the series. It feels both fresh and familiar,
like a playable bout of déjà vu. The story is that paintings have learned
how to fight. That’s not actually the story, but that’s what I took away from it and I
have no regrets. The mechanic allows for a whole new way of exploring largely familiar
areas, granting a fresh perspective that ties in thematically with the “similar but
different” philosophy of the game itself. The real innovation of A Link Between Worlds comes
from the fact that you can rent items – nearly all of them very early – and use them to explore
the world as you see fit. This was a significant break from Zelda tradition. Instead of needing
to complete a dungeon to obtain an item that would allow you to access the next dungeon, you
could rent any of them and set out adventuring. It was an experimental return to openness that
eventually gave way to the even-more-open Breath of the Wild, and it works exceptionally well here.
You rent these items from a peculiar man in a purple rabbit costume, who introduces himself
as Ravio. As you might guess, his true identity is a mystery throughout the game, but I’m going
to spoil it for you here: His surname is Lee. Wockawocka! Oh, come on. It’s hard to be funny
about games that are good. Cut me some slack. #6: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (1993)
Game Boy The first proper Zelda game to have
nothing to do with the titular Zelda, Link’s Awakening not only showed that the series
could survive outside of its familiar trappings, but that exploring new environments
could help it to thrive. The game begins with Link setting sail that
day for a three-hour tour. A three-hour tour. The weather started getting rough and you know the
rest of the song. Our hero washes up on the shores of Koholint Island and Link comes to realize
that he is trapped in a dream of the Wind Fish. This explains the game’s bizarre characters
and imagery. What explains them even further is the fact that director Takashi Tezuka was
inspired by Twin Peaks. If only the Game Boy had been more powerful, we might have gotten to
see Link honking down on a Sinner’s Sandwich. The game includes some of the most interesting
dungeon designs from the early series, such as this one, in which you must work out how
to transport an iron ball around tricky obstacles. Fans and critics alike loved it, and it’s often
referred to as a game that deserves more love. Considering the fact that it already gets all
of the love…well, that’s still correct. It deserves even more love than all of the love.
Link’s Awakening got two different remakes, with the first being a deluxe port on the Game
Boy Color. This version added a new dungeon, an optional photography side-quest,
and a few other gameplay tweaks. Oh, and, uh…color. The second remake was a more
complete overhaul with a brand-new art style, released in 2019 for the Switch.
Not bad for what could have been a thoughtless cash-in for the sake of
having a Zelda game on a handheld system. #5: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002)
GameCube Coming off the back of Ocarina of Time and
Majora’s Mask – among the most significant one-two punches in the history of video games –
fans had high expectations for The Wind Waker. And with the GameCube struggling to
gain the traction of previous consoles, Nintendo had high expectations for it as well.
A SpaceWorld 2000 – not that one – demo led fans to believe that it would lean into the
darker, more-grounded aspects of those games. Yes, people used words like “darker” and
“more-grounded” to describe games in which Peter Pan travels through time. But what
we got instead was something that looked and felt like a Saturday morning cartoon.
Nearly all of the discourse around the game focused on this seeming bait and switch…which
was, let’s be fair, entirely on the fans. Nintendo never claimed that The Wind Waker
would be an edgy mope-fest, nor did they suggest that the tech demo was the next Zelda
game. People connected the dots themselves, drew the wrong picture, and got upset at Nintendo
for breaking a promise that was never made. The Wind Waker was great, whether or not you
wish we’d instead gotten a game about a grizzled Link leading his surrogate daughter across the
wasteland. And whatever you may think about the visual style itself, the fact is that it’s aged
better than literally any other game in the series and better than most games overall. It brought us
the single most expressive Link we’ve ever had, and every character and enemy is brimming
with personality. It also, perhaps better than any Zelda game before or since, captures a
perfect-coming-of-age tale, with Nintendo even considering having Link physically mature over
the course of the adventure. We didn’t get that, but the Link who confronts Ganondorf under the
sea is not at all the Link we met napping on his birthday, and the thrust of the narrative
– not that one – still works brilliantly. Of course, it’s not perfect. It’s shorter
than most comparable Zelda games and the Triforce fragments quest was so dull that it
retained its dullness in a remaster that tried very hard to undullify it, but
in so many respects – charm, humor, timelessness – The Wind
Waker gets everything right. In short, water great game. No,
it’s okay, I know the way out. #4: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991)
SNES There’s a strong argument to be made that A Link
to the Past is the single most influential game in the entire Zelda series, which is itself one of
the most influential series in all of gaming. It refined absolutely all of the best aspects of the
first game and introduced a number of the elements that would define the sequels moving forward.
Waypoints on the map? A small set of dungeons before the quest proper kicks off? Bosses
conveniently living a few rooms away from the items designed to kill them? All of those
and more were cemented by A Link to the Past, and it’s a template that continues to serve not
only this series well, but so many other series that have pulled inspiration from Zelda.
It also introduced elements that are less essential to Zelda’s identity, but which have
endured in various ways over the subsequent games. The spin attack, angry chickens, themed dungeons,
parallel worlds, bottles being the most valuable thing on the planet, even Kakariko Village.
Somebody playing it for the first time today might well say that it feels like a loving
demake of later titles, distilling the massive Zelda experience down into a dinky little 16-bit
game for the sake of a quirky experiment. But, in reality, it was the other way around, with
this one game being so effortlessly brilliant that nearly every installment to follow has
stood on its shoulders without weighing it down at all. A Link to the Past is a masterpiece that
holds up nearly as well today as it did in 1991. It even manages to make it clear where to go next
without telling you how to get there or what, exactly, you’ll need to do along the way.
That’s something that many later games have struggled with, with the low point coming
from Fi’s, “My analysis suggests that you’re already sick of me” approach in Skyward Sword.
Other games are more technically impressive, but few of them match the mastery of the
moment-to-moment design of A Link to the Past. Even if it does happen to catch Link during
his brief pink-haired punk-rock phase. We’ve all been there, bud, it’s okay. I’m just glad
they didn’t make a game about me during mine. #3: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)
Nintendo 64 Right, we imagine that a lot of you will be
upset at seeing Ocarina of Time this low. And it says a lot about how great a game is when a
ranking of #3 is considered low. So let me be clear about one thing: We debated putting this
at #2. We’d be perfectly happy seeing it at #1. This high up the list, the rankings are tight,
and small things can make all the difference. Judged solely on its own merits, Ocarina
of Time is an exceptional game, and it’s worthy of all of the praise it’s received in the
nearly 25 years since its release. (That’s right, 25 years. If you played this game as a child,
you should start getting your affairs in order.) Playing it for the first time today, it might be
hard to comprehend just how much of a step forward it was for the series. Isn’t it basically just the
same template as most Zelda games used afterward, only with worse graphics and, puzzlingly,
without the theme song? Well, yes, but it also uses that template almost flawlessly.
Today, the physical scale of the game feels smaller and its novelties feel less novel, but
everything here works so well, from its atmosphere to its puzzle design to its characters. And while
many Zelda games position you as the lone hope for a dying world, Ocarina of Time might do the best
job of making you feel as though that’s true. You get to see exactly what happens in a Link-less
world. It’s like It’s a Wonderful Life, if George Bailey kept getting stunned in place by redeads.
There’s something genuinely sad about leaping into the future and seeing the world you’re
fighting to save ailing with death and decay, and Ocarina of Time does a great job
of forcing Link to grow up immediately, something illustrated, of course, by Link’s
physical growth when he takes the Master Sword. It was a strengthening of the Zelda foundation
that doubled as an enormous step forward. You played previous Zelda games for
the sense of challenge and adventure. You played Ocarina of Time to save the world. And
it’s still only the third-best game in the series. #2: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000)
Nintendo 64 So, yes, we’re giving Majora’s Mask the edge
in our humble contribution to the debate. I think it’s safe to say that, whichever
of the two Nintendo 64 releases you prefer, we can all agree that they’re both truly
excellent games. And I should acknowledge here, clearly and openly, the fact that Majora’s
Mask builds upon Ocarina of Time so much that this game couldn’t have existed without that
one. Almost everything that this game does, it owes to its immediate, celebrated predecessor. But Majora’s Mask stands out for its focus on
a single location, for its incredible sense of escalating dread, and for the sheer depth with
which it’s willing to explore its characters. It takes Ocarina’s grand time-travelling adventure
and reimagines it as an eternally repeating three-day cycle of hell, one that ends with
the deaths of so many characters who are all, in their own way, attempting to cope
with the premature end of their lives. It’s a smaller game, allowing the characters
and situation to be explored more deeply. It relies on familiarity with Ocarina of Time so
that it can more reasonably ask you to perform similar tasks and fight similar enemies while
now under duress. And it adheres strictly to a definitive point of termination that arrives
whether or not you’re ready to start the cycle all over again. It’s a messy and famously
glitchy game that sometimes feels like it’s falling apart as you play it, which ends up having
an unintentional thematic relevance as well. This is the end. This is tenuous. At any point, the
screen could go dark, and there’d be nothing left. And as you fight against fate itself
to save a world that isn’t even yours, you’ll see panic set in. Depression. Denial.
Fear. Anger. Desperation. You’ll see society fall apart. You’ll see townspeople flee, though
there’s nowhere that they will be safe. You’ll see the face of mortality itself not just bearing
down on you from above, but descending, slowly, minute by minute, wherever you are on the map,
growing larger as it approaches, relentlessly, not so much threatening the end of the world but
promising it, without even having the courtesy of making it quick. It’s one of Nintendo’s
smartest, most mature, most experimental, most thought-provoking, most unnerving, and best games.
Anyway, yeah. We think it’s good. #1: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) WiiU
Remember nine entries ago, when we said that the original Zelda still offers
a unique experience for how willing it is to just toss you into the world and trust you to find
your own path forwards? Well…it’s not that we lied to you. We’d never lie to you. We love you.
But it wasn’t the entire truth, because Breath of the Wild went right back to the original in
that regard. For the first time since that game, the series was willing to let you bumble
yourself to an early grave, dozens of times over, with little to no guidance. And our battered,
blood-drained corpses could not be happier. Of course, it’s not quite as directionless as
the first game could be. If you wanted a hint, you could ask for one. If you didn’t know
where to go, you needed only to look for a tower or a shrine, which would provide you
with both a destination and a task. If you found yourself in unforgiving terrain, you could
open your map and find the quickest way home. But those things are really just evolutions of
the same idea. They don’t bail you out of danger or solve problems for you; everything is still
on your shoulders. You need to determine what must be done. It’s just that now, if you’re
truly at a loose end, the game is willing to nudge you just slightly back on course.
Breath of the Wild, basically, trusts players to find their own fun. It’s not a guided tour
through Hyrule with regular stops to stretch your legs and perform minigames; it’s a vast canvas
upon which players can paint their own adventure. And, for the first time in decades, each
player’s adventure would actually look different. There are plenty of nits to pick, of course. The
enemy variety is slim. Some of the shrines require precious little brainpower. Traditional dungeons
are missing. But if those things are the price of a freeform journey on this scale, with so
much to discover, so much to enjoy, and so many opportunities to get lost in the experience…well,
it’s hard to argue that that wasn’t a good trade. All of which is to say that as great as
Breath of the Wild is, there’s still room for a sequel to improve upon it. Here’s
hoping that that’s exactly what happens.
