Retro-Active is a Nerd Republic column dedicated to the the video games of our youth.  In an attempt to rekindle some of our long lost childhood, we will occasionally revisit some of these retro classics and ask… Do these games still hold up?  Or are they merely victims of nostalgia?

When it comes to video games, very few can compete with Nintendo in terms of pure entertainment.  The House that Mario Built is stuffed full of characters and franchises that reach back into decades past and stir up wild emotions and fond memories for many people, myself included.  And while Mario was always Nintendo’s most beloved mascot and face, there was another franchise that was birthed from the same creative minds that holds even more of a special place in my heart.  To me, The Legend of Zelda is irreplaceable.

During the early days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, the company was working on two titles:  Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.  The brainchild behind the two (and the most influential man in the entire industry), Shigeru Miyamoto, wanted to create a game that captured the feeling of adventure that he felt when he would explore as a child.  Discovering caves and lakes on his own in the mountains and getting lost in his family’s home were just a few of the inspirations that kick-started one of the most successful franchises in video game history.  Nintendo was worried about the reception the game would receive, citing its unforgiving difficulty and non-linear gameplay as reasons people might shy away from it.  However, Miyamoto was insistent on making a game that required players to collaborate together in order to solve all of its mysteries, instead of simply laying out the obvious path before them.

And while some people definitely were turned off by the lack of hand-holding and arrows to point one in the right direction, the challenge presented in the original The Legend of Zelda is one of the aspects that grabbed my attention even at an incredibly young age and still has me coming back twenty-four years later to revisit it yet again.  I have fond memories of sitting with my dad, myself around the age of three or four, watching him play the game as we both worked together to solve some of the game’s more devious puzzles and secrets.  I was there to help him remember important details that he would need to recall later, such as the directions to get through the Lost Woods or where one can buy meat to give to the “Grumble, grumble” creature in Level 7.  It wasn’t until a few years later that I began to tackle the game and its even more deranged Second Quest on my own and become engulfed in the accomplishment and pride of surviving its hellish difficulty on my own.

Who can forget stumbling into the room in Level 2 that rewards players with the Blue Boomerang for defeating multiple Blue Goriyas while dodging energy-shooting tiles in each of the room’s corners?  The overwhelming challenge of something so simple is still prevalent today, but so is the sense of accomplishment for surviving it as well.  Or spending countless time in vain searching for that elusive Level 8?  Even as video games have changed and evolved far beyond what the original Zelda had to offer, the emotions that it steals from players even today is a feat to applaud.

Scores of video games owe much of what they have to the foundations created by The Legend of Zelda.  It successfully established the adventure-RPG genre on consoles in a way that few could ever had foreseen.  Its impact can still be felt today as modern adventure games rely on many of the archetypes it created, such as the progressive use of found items and unlocking secrets in previously explored areas with new equipment.  And on the technical side of things, it was the very first cartridge game to save a players’ progress without the need for a password.  The word “revolutionary” often comes to mind when describing the original, but even that feels like a bit of an understatement sometimes.

Replaying it now, it’s easy to see some of the cracks in the armor from its aging over time and the advancement of the genre.  However, the game’s brutal difficulty still has me on the edge of my seat many years later.  And despite completing the game uncountable times throughout my life, I still find myself forgetting where particular items or dungeons are in its vast world.  Very few games can invoke the joy and excitement that I feel when hearing the overworld music, or delivering the silver arrow to Ganon’s chest for the umpteenth time.  Not to mention that glorious chime each time a secret is uncovered.

Very few franchises can continue to elicit the same level of excitement and fervor from its inception to the present.  Fortunately, The Legend of Zelda is indeed quite legendary and will continue to stand the test of time for many more decades to come.