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The Legend of Zelda hands you a sword in a cave and then refuses to tell you which dungeon comes next. Burning a bush or bombing a wall is often the only hint the game is willing to give.
Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka wanted a game that felt like wandering the hills behind Miyamoto's childhood home. The American gold cartridge included a battery so the overworld, the bombed walls, and the collected triforce pieces survived after the console was switched off.
Link burns bushes, pushes tombstones, and learns the whistle mostly by rumor. A second quest rearranges the same Hyrule once the first is finished, which was a rare trick on a cartridge of that size. The manual's map, often drawn on by the owner, became part of how people played.
Every later Zelda borrows the mix of a wide map, a tool for each dungeon, and a final Ganon. The side-view sequel that followed is a different game with its own page.
Same series is the tight name match. Same franchise is the wider family. Same platform is other games on the systems named above.
Facts in this grid are RAWG's, not our review. Open the RAWG record. RAWG.
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