IGN Presents The History of The Legend of Zelda

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Over a quarter-century after his quest began, Link still shows no signs of slowing down.

The times may change, but the legend remains: A dark wizard, a princess in peril, and an emerald-clad boy as the kingdom's only hope. Like all great fables of times long past, the story of Link has changed much over the years, retold in a new way for each coming generation, but timeless nonetheless. It's a legacy few other franchises can equal, and as the series continues into its second quarter-century, it's important to know and celebrate why Link was elevated to the upper echelon of video game royalty.

That kind of legacy means walking a delicate line; constantly evolving with the times, yet carefully clinging to the foundations on which the series is built; keeping the series active and current, without tiring fans out. It takes a light touch, but that's precisely how Shigeru Miyamoto has maintained his good name. From the NES to the Wii, and every step in between, The Legend of Zelda has been there, never falling from view.

The Legend Begins – The Legend of Zelda (NES, 1987)

When Nintendo launched its 8-bit home console in 1983, it had the best hardware on the market, but the games were still largely the same sorts of single-screen, arcade-style diversions you might find on the ColecoVision or SG-1000. No one was really using new technology to produce the sort of experience only a console could – at least not until Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto was put on the task.

In 1985, Miyamoto began work on the two games that would come to define the system more than any others. The first was Super Mario Bros., a game that needs no introduction. The second was designed to be a killer app for the new Famicom Disk System, fully exploiting its unique advantages. This meant a full megabit of inexpensive storage space and the ability to save progress, allowing for a larger, more involved game.



The Legend of Zelda bucked much of the conventional wisdom about game design in Japan, creating something that resembled Warren Robinett's Adventure and Howard Scott Warshaw's Indiana Jones for the Atari 2600, yet drew on many original ideas and helped to establish a new sub-genre of action-adventure that remains popular to this day in its various evolved forms. In Japan, where computer games and American consoles were never as popular, it is still regarded as the mother of action-adventure.

So what made Zelda so different? Well, it wasn't any one particular element, but rather aggressive poaching of elements from different genres to create a compelling hybrid. It pulled in exploration elements, transport puzzles, adventure-style inventory puzzles, an action component, and even a monetary system and simplified level building (sans experience points) like the RPG genre that was just starting to bud in Japan.

The premise was simple and immediate enough that anyone could play it. You controlled Link, a small boy on an epic quest, placed on a large map with only a mission to assemble the Triforce. It was the perfect exploitation of players' nearly universal urge to explore. And yet, for as immediate as it was, it was willfully obscure in other ways. There were no arrows to point you in the right direction, nor any explicit direction on what to do next. Nintendo noticed during playtesting that players seemed a bit lost and confused, and his supervisors tried to convince Miyamoto to change his tune.

Despite the pressure, Miyamoto was confident his approach was the right one, because he realized the power of community. Gamers don't just keep to themselves. They talk to each other, compare notes, and with their minds combined, Zelda's quest became something far less intimidating. All of the discussion also meant word of mouth marketing, and more and more kids joined in to tackle the challenge.

It was enough to sell quite a few Disk Systems in Japan, but bringing the game to America presented some challenges. Nintendo's engineers had broken the cartridge size barrier by the time they decided to bring Zelda abroad, but the save system presented a greater challenge. Though it meant a significant added cost, they decided to include an internal RAM chip, kept alive by a battery. It was the first solution of its kind, but it would soon become standard in RPGs and action-adventures too complex for passwords.

The unique gold-painted cartridge managed to become the system's first million-seller (excluding the pack-in Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge, of course) and continued to be a top seller for the company for years to come, eventually topping out at over 6.5 million carts sold. It was the start of something new for a company that built its name on the arcades of the early '80s, and Nintendo has never looked back since.

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Changing Directions – Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES, 1988 )

The success of the first Zelda silenced a lot of cynics at Nintendo, so when it came time for a sequel, few were in a position to question the bold change of direction. The ability to save added something very new to console gaming, and many designers were eager to see how this could be applied to other kinds of games. All of a sudden, it made sense to blend an epic story with the arcade action that was still so popular. That desire to fuse genres was precisely what led to the first Zelda, and while its sequel was different, that experimental philosophy remained the same.



Zelda II: The Adventure of Link arrived in the wake of Dragon Quest and the Japanese release of Wizardry, which helped to propel the RPG to a new level of popularity in Japan, and a tidal wave of platform games pouring in on the heels of Super Mario Bros. Miyamoto and his team set out to try to combine these two genres into something new. It would have an overhead map to explore, magic, a leveling system, and proper towns, but the action would take the form of a side-scrolling platformer.

The gameplay wasn't the only thing that changed. The art style took on a slightly darker, more adult feel, with a character that appeared to be an adolescent and not a small child. Even the music changed a bit with the departure of Koji Kondo.

While the gameplay was a major departure for the series, the storyline was a direct sequel, following Link's struggles against the followers of Ganon seeking his resurrection by spilling Link's blood. This helped to legitimize what may have seemed like a strange spin-off of sorts. In America and Europe, the Zelda II name carried quite a bit of clout, and fans of the first game flocked to Link's new adventure. While it never managed to match the success of the first game, it sold over four million copies – hardly worth complaining over.

However, history can sometimes be unexpectedly harsh, and Zelda II's legacy has been tarnished by comparisons to not only the game before it, but the many that would follow. The Adventure of Link is, without a doubt, the black sheep of the series, not only different, but difficult, slow to start, and lacking some of the charm of its siblings. Despite its success, Nintendo never again tried to reproduce the experiment, and the original vision remained the definitive one for as long as the series has continued.

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Winter's End – The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES, 1993)

Ordinarily, when you have a 10 million-selling franchise in only two games, you start cranking out some serious sequels, but that's not Nintendo's way. It is perhaps that restraint that has allowed them to maintain the kind of relevance they enjoy, while a much more prolific series like Mega Man eventually declined and disappeared. For nearly five years after the Japanese release of Zelda II, the series lay perfectly dormant, waiting for the perfect time to strike. When Nintendo launched their new 16-bit system, Hyrule would need a hero once more.

Five years is a long time for any game series to be away, and quite a bit had changed. This would have to be a whole new Zelda. The game returned to the formula pioneered by the original and refined by some of its imitators, but this was not a game stuck in 1986. The new title would cast off the simple wasteland of old for a detailed world teeming with life, people, and a new sense of credibility. There were forests, mountains, castles, and villages to explore – you could almost imagine living in this Hyrule. You wanted to explore it and know its story.



To welcome a new generation of fans, Nintendo introduced a new generation of Link. The game's hero was not the same young swordsman of the last two adventures, but an entirely new character, portrayed in-game with pink hair, visibly different from the boy we once knew. The story was much richer than anything in the earlier games, thanks to the more complex world and larger script. For the first time we came to understand Ganon's past, and got a greater sense of the history of Hyrule – both its light and dark sides.

A Link to the Past gave Nintendo a chance to show what their new hardware could really do for a game world. It wasn't just that it was richer or more complex. From the moment Link first stepped out into the rain, thunder echoing all around, players could sense that Hyrule was alive. Transparency effects and a bigger palette weren't just ways to gussy up the same old techniques, they brought with them brand new ways of effectively setting the game's mood. From start to finish, Zelda 3 was full of memorable moments, revealed in both subtle and obvious ways.

It was the quintessential sequel. Seen by hardcore fans as the perfect evolution of the original, and hailed by skeptics as a bold new beginning, the praise from critics and fans seemed nearly universal. It managed to stay on top of Nintendo Power's annual sales charts for five years in a row, eventually topping out at 4.6 million copies sold across the world. While that may be roughly comparable to Zelda II, time has been much kinder to Link's 16-bit outing.

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Island of Dreams – The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Game Boy, 1994)

Mercifully, Nintendo decided not to put Link on extended leave after his Super Nintendo success. They had a thriving handheld market to feed now, and their green-screened wonder had gone too long without a certain hero in an appropriately-colored tunic. Takashi Tezuka, director of Link's previous overhead adventures, had just finished working on Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (For the Frog the Bell Tolls), a Zelda-esque action adventure for the Game Boy. The experience got Tezuka ready to deliver the real deal on the small screen.



The shift back to eight bits and a monochromatic palette was a transition that no developer would relish, but Link's Awakening never felt compromised. It carried the torch of A Link to the Past capably, without having to scale back the gameplay much. In fact, Link's Awakening added many new items and abilities, and added some variety with the addition of short side-scrolling levels – a rare nod to the oft-ignored Zelda II.

Link's Awakening was able to capture not only the feel of its 16-bit predecessor, but much of the look as well, a feat that remains impressive to this day. Then, in 1998, Nintendo released Link's Awakening DX, a colorized redux for the newly launched Game Boy Color. Even five years later, it managed to become one of the best-selling games on the platform. Between the two releases, it managed to sell six million copies, besting even the mighty SNES adventure.

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The Dark Age – Phillips' CD-i Zelda Games (1993, 1994)

Officially, Zelda may have been on hiatus, but like a frat boy passed out at a party, the sleeping Link would be publicly embarrassed time and time again before awaking once more. After plans for a Super Nintendo CD add-on fell through in the mid-'90s, Phillips and Nintendo reached an amiable agreement to use Nintendo characters on Phillips' new stand-alone console, the CD-i. Nintendo is a pretty savvy company, and they probably sensed that the CD-i was no real threat to their market share, but the agreement made no provisions for quality control on Nintendo's part, and the results were as bad as anyone could have feared.

In addition to a so-so Mario game (and another that never made it to completion), Phillips managed to get three original Zelda games out before the system expired. The CD-i was never much of a graphics powerhouse, subsisting largely on FMV games and other "multimedia" entertainment. The system was, quite simply, ill equipped to deliver anything that could compete with the Super Nintendo in the realm of real-time action.



Phillips hired two developers to work on the Zelda franchise. Massachusetts-based Animation Magic was given 1.2 million dollars to develop two different Zelda games, using the same engine and gameplay. They decided, against all common sense, to return to the side-scrolling gameplay most reminiscent of Zelda II. They also brought in a team of Russian animators to lend about 10 minutes of animated cut scenes to each game.

To their credit, they managed to create a playable side-scroller with hand-painted backgrounds and a scrolling playfield – not such a small feat for the poorly designed CD-i hardware. Unfortunately the controls suffered tremendously – pressing up to jump would have been awkward even without the infamous CD-i remote. Animation Magic also didn't seem to be especially familiar with the subtler points of Zelda's world, and the two resultant games, Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon, felt something like elaborate fan games full of mistakes.

As troubled as Animation Magic was, Viridis would have loved to have been in their situation. Their game, Zelda's Adventure, had an even more meager budget, and was plagued by hellish problems throughout its development. Viridis didn't even have the money for a studio, and their office was about the size of your average living room. In order to shoot characters from the top-down perspective needed for the game, they had to mount mirrors on the ceiling and shoot from the floor. For environments, they used photos taken from around Los Angeles and various vacation pictures of the staff.

Zelda's Adventure never really had a chance. It was an ugly mishmash of photos and drawn art, marred by load times between each screen that made the original NES title seem like a technical marvel. All three CD-i Zeldas are now collector's items; more objects of curiosity than anything anyone would genuinely find entertaining. Had the CD-i been a more successful platform, these games could have seriously wounded the series, but Nintendo was right to bet that they would languish in obscurity, and to this day, they don't acknowledge their existence as part of the series.

Nintendo themselves left the series dormant for far too long, but when they released their downloadable game service, the Satellaview, they decided to roll out their own now-obscure entries in the fabled series. The first was a subscription-based game that allowed kids to play along with daily adventures while a disembodied voiced barked hints at them. The game used mostly recycled graphics from A Link to the Past, and cast the players as a character somehow transported from our world into Hyrule rather than Link. Around this time, they also released a 16-bit remake of the original Zelda, featuring the Satellaview kid in place of Link. Tasteless character swap aside, it's generally regarded as an excellent remake, but like all Satellaview games, it remains relatively unknown.

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Reinvention – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64, 1998 )

Five years slipped by without a major Zelda release. It wasn't that Nintendo didn't care. On the contrary, they had very big plans in store for Link. His new adventure spent four years in development – unprecedented for Nintendo. The reasons soon became obvious: Ocarina of Time was one of the most elaborate games Nintendo had ever created, and a complete rethinking of the series from the ground up.

With the close of the 16-bit era, 3D finally began to overtake 2D gaming, and there was a sense that traditionally 2D games needed to move to the third dimension in order to survive. Platform games were frantically trying any formula they could until Super Mario 64 rewrote the playbook for control and camera design in 3D. The transition for Zelda seemed a little more logical, since the last couple games used a pseudo-3D perspective already, but that wasn't good enough for Nintendo.



The scope of the project was massive. The team swelled to over 120 before their task was complete. Throughout the four years of production, the game underwent many iterations, sharing ideas closely with its sister game, Mario 64. The two titles influenced each other tremendously. Some ideas that were initially conceived for Mario found their way into Zelda, and vice versa, while others were shared by both. At one point, the two games even used the same engine.

Had Nintendo decided to interpret the top-down view to 3D directly, like Metal Gear Solid and countless RPGs, it's doubtful anyone would have complained much. But Nintendo knew they were on to something with Mario 64, and with Zelda they would have an even more compelling showcase for a large, dynamically presented world. Of course, this meant that a lot of the familiar conventions of the series would have to be rethought. To solve some of these problems, they developed a new convention: the target lock. This allowed players to focus their view on an object with the tap of a button, and then move freely without losing sight of their targets. It's an idea we now take for granted, but at the time it was another example of why Nintendo was on the cutting edge of 3D control.

With the new controls and the new feel came a radically redesigned look. The cartoony, colorful look of A Link to the Past was traded in for a more subdued palette and a greater focus on realism. The idea was to make Hyrule a believable world. The size of this kingdom was expanded as well, no longer cramming everything onto thirty acres or so. What it lost in immediacy, it gained in the sense of wonder its vastness inspired.

It was nearing the end of 1998 by the time Ocarina of Time finally landed in stores, arriving nearly simultaneously in all three major territories. Although the market had settled into its new 3D digs pretty comfortably by then, the polish of the new Zelda did not go unnoticed. The title sold millions within a month of its release, and eventually went on to sell more than any previous game in the series on a single platform. The critics were duly impressed as well, with many (including IGN) awarding it perfect scores. It has weathered the test of time with the best of them, and, in 2010, IGN readers even voted it the greatest game of all time.

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The Falling Moon – The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Nintendo 64, 2000)

In an unusual move for the company, Nintendo decided to start work on a sequel right away, using the same engine as Ocarina of Time. After investing four years of development time, Nintendo wanted to re-use some of those resources with a new game, initially planned as a "gaiden" title (a side story, not part of the "main" series). Miyamoto was less involved with the project this time, leaving his protégée Eiji Aonuma in charge of the team. While ostensibly very similar to Link's last adventure, Aonuma doesn't like treading the same path, so there were some major changes thrown into the reused framework.



A true sequel (or mid-quel, since the time travel aspect makes that label complicated), it followed young Link after the close of his adventures in Ocarina of Time. He discovers a plot to destroy the world by plunging the moon into the face of the planet. The story takes some darker, even genuinely sad turns along the way, as Link fights against time to save the world again. It's only by virtue of his trusty Ocarina that he is able to complete his quest in time at all.

The game was locked to a three-day time cycle that could be repeated at will, trapping Link in an endless cycle of real-time progression, like a fantasy version of the film Groundhog's Day. This unusual structure was not the only change, however. The game also introduced masks which allowed Link to transform into other races. The shift in design drew its fair share of criticism, but at least it dodged accusations of rehashing. Even with the same fundamental mechanics, Majora's Mask was a very different experience.

Majora's Mask brought a close to the Nintendo 64 era, and sold a somewhat more modest three million copies when all was said and done. That might have as much to do with the waning interest in the Nintendo 64 as it did with anyone's disappointment in the game, but it still marked a commercial low point for the series. Luckily, Nintendo did not decide to take time off for another five years.

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In the House of Mega Man – The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons & Oracle of Ages (Game Boy Color, 2001)

With the success of the colorized Link's Awakening DX, Nintendo was hoping to see some original Zelda action on their newly revitalized 8-bit handheld. Miyamoto was occupied with more important things, so Nintendo decided to outsource, leaving the project in the capable hands of Capcom's Yoshiki Okamoto, and his team at Flagship.

Okamoto was a long time fan, not to mention one of the giants of the industry, but that doesn't mean that development didn't have its fare share of problems. Initially, he waffled between remaking the first Zelda and starting an original project, before eventually settling on a trilogy of companion games that could all interact with each other.



The innovative system proved to be too complicated, and the constant changes to the scenario pushed the release back further and further. Eventually he decided to scrap the trilogy plan and focus on just two games: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons.

Despite the long development time, the two games recycled most of their graphics from Link's Awakening, and the gameplay remained very faithful to Link's first handheld outing. Even still, the scenarios for each were ambitious. Oracle of Ages relied on a time travel premise, while Seasons had time-sensitive puzzles based on the changing of the seasons.

Unlike the CD-i games, the two Oracle games were able to actually interact with each other with more than just passing references. After completing one game, you'd be given a password that allowed your actions to affect the world of the second game. Earlier in their cycle, some shrugged off the twin-game release as another attempt to cash in on the fad begun by Pokemon, but in practice it was a novel enhancement to encourage fans to experience both games, which were quite different in their own right.

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Avast, Land Lubbers – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GameCube, 2003)

On August 23, 2001, Nintendo showed the world their vision for the next generation of Zelda, and on that day everyone had an opinion. It was most certainly not what anyone was expecting, and the controversy pit brother against brother in a Nintendo fanboy civil war. Before the GameCube's launch, Nintendo had shown a tech demo showing a realistic, adult Link swordfighting with Ganon, and while it was never presented as a peek at the new game, it colored expectations for the new generation. What they got was quite different.

The trailer showed a stumpy, saucer-eyed Link in a brightly colored, toon-shaded world. It was a complete reversal of what many believed was the best direction the series. Some newer fans, used to the darker Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, were furious at the change. Others, nostalgic for A Link to the Past, were thrilled to see the series reclaim something closer to its old artistic vision.



The bold move was really the result of new technology. It was a way to create something striking that simply couldn't have been done on the Nintendo 64. Eiji Aonuma had been searching for a new direction to take the series, and when his staff demonstrated cel-shading technology to him, he was instantly convinced.

Nintendo was wise to show the game early and give players a chance to warm up to the new style. The graphics underwent a good deal of refinement in the months to come, addressing some of the initial complaints, and by the time the final product rolled around, it seemed most of the fans had fallen in line. Once the game hit shelves, we all soon realized that the graphics weren't the biggest change Nintendo had made to the Zelda formula.

The world of Wind Waker was unlike anything the series had seen. Hyrule had been swallowed up by the ocean, leaving only a series of remote islands, separated by vast expanses of water. Like riding the horse in Ocarina, Aonuma thought sea travel would be a fun, novel new way for players to explore. Some agreed, and others didn't. The decision was easily the most controversial design choice the game had made.

However you felt about the sea travel, the level design, music, and atmosphere of Wind Waker were unimpeachable, and on those merits the game was able to once again live up to the series almost impossibly high expectations. The game was finally released in 2002, and early orders came bundled with a remixed "Master Quest" version of Ocarina, originally developed for the 64DD disk system. Famitsu once again gave the game a perfect score, and IGN awarded it a 9.6. Despite this, the GameCube never managed to pick up the kind of market share previous generations of Nintendo hardware enjoyed, and Wind Waker sold only 2.2 million copies.

The Wind Waker was not the only appearance of Toon Link on the GameCube. In 2004, Nintendo released the multiplayer-specific The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, which was based on the Four Swords bonus game from the Game Boy Advance edition of A Link to the Past. (A Link to the Past had been re-released on the GBA in 2002.) Four Swords Adventures included a story campaign where the four Links are trying to stop Ganon from taking over Hyrule after he releases Shadow Link. Four Swords Adventures linked the GameCube and the GBA so each player could control their Link on their own individual screen, although a single player did not need a GBA to play alone.

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Capcom Strikes Back – The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Game Boy Advance, 2005)

The newly re-imagined Zelda was exciting to a lot of people, and since then, a number of sequels and spin-offs have co-opted the Wind Waker aesthetic. Capcom first tried their hands with The Four Swords, which, again, was a short multiplayer game tacked onto the Game Boy Advance port of A Link to the Past. With that out of the way, Capcom and Flagship got to work on their next full-length adventure, The Minish Cap.



Unlike the Oracle games, which used recycled graphics, The Minish Cap lovingly reconstructed the colorful aesthetic of Wind Waker in 2D, with an overhead view like A Link to the Past.

After tampering with time, space and seasons, The Minish Cap gave Link the power to change his size. In the one and only original GBA Zelda, Link could shrink himself to tiny proportions and back to normal size to solve some of the game's puzzles.

The confident effort got its share of critical praise, but there was less enthusiasm about the series, perhaps because Zelda fans had not been starved for so long this time. The game was successful, and praised by critics, but graded on a Zelda curve, it didn't seem to reach the same instant classic status as its peers. Perhaps history will be kinder.

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Those Were the Days – The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GameCube & Wii, 2006)

The brilliant thing about Nintendo's reinvention of the Zelda series is that it gave fans something to look back fondly on; a reminder of how things had changed. While most fans still loved Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time was the most successful game in the series, and many of the kids that cut their teeth on the 64-bit quest had grown nostalgic for the darker, more realistic version of Hyrule. The time had come to give these fans what they wanted.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess made its debut at E3 2004 to gasps and squeals of joy from giddy fans alienated by the colorful Wind Waker and old fans overwhelmed with nostalgia. Interestingly, the new game wasn't really a return to the style of Ocarina, but rather what that idea had become in people's memory. In reality the title went further into the realm of dark fantasy, with an even more subdued palette and a darker story.



There is little doubt that Nintendo wanted to recapture wayward Ocarina fans. Link's trusty steed Epona even made a return, and played a more prominent role in the game from the onset. Despite that, Aonuma and his team still tried to take the game in a new direction by introducing a new wolf form. When traveling to the Twilight realm, Link shapeshifted into a canine form, with entirely different abilities and controls. It was a unique hook that allowed the game to differentiate itself.

Even still, Aonuma was concerned that his game was becoming too much of a retread, and that it was not demonstrating the same kind of innovation Nintendo valued. Miyamoto suggested that the new Wii controller might hold the answer. And so, Twilight Princess moved from being simply a late-gen GameCube exclusive to serving as a multiplatform release and Wii launch title.

We all know that the move paid off, but there were considerable risks that had many questioning the decision. After all, do you really want to advertise just how similar your last generation hardware is to your new system? And wouln't it somehow cheapen the Wii's hook if motion control was just adapted to a game that wasn't made with it in mind in the first place? These questions swirled when the announcement was made, but history has proven Nintendo right once again.

Twilight Princess proved to be the killer app the Wii launch needed, and quickly became the system's top selling stand-alone title for months on end. The GameCube version arrived a few weeks later with a more tepid response, but both versions together went on to sell well over six million copies, positively decimating the sales of Wind Waker. The play to the American audience and the older fans paid off, and put the series back on top.

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Touch Me – The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS, 2007)

It was now time for the Nintendo DS to reach out and touch Link. The Phantom Hourglass was an effort to blend aspects of Wind Waker with elements of the old 2D Zelda games. It continued the story of Wind Waker directly. Link and Tetra (wink, wink) continue their journey, exploring the world's seas, but when they encounter a ghost ship, the princ . . . er, pirate finds herself in peril once again.



The look and story may have been similar, but the design had evolved a bit. While Link still had to sail the oceans to reach new islands, the seafaring element had been rethought. Instead of freely exploring, players charted a course for the boat that it could follow on auto-pilot, leaving the player free to concentrate on action until they arrive.

It seems Nintendo just loves to stir up controversy, and the gaming community was abuzz once they heard that Link's DS debut would be controlled exclusively with the touch screen. The idea was to make the game more accessible to casual gamers, but fans bemoaned that such a system wasn't really appreciably simpler or more accessible than traditional controls.

Despite the completely different input method, the gameplay remained characteristically Zelda. Many critics did question why Nintendo wouldn't give players a control style option as they did with Twilight Princess, but ultimately gave it high marks all the same. The game went on to outpace Minish Cap, selling more than four million copies.

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All Aboard! – The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (Nintendo DS, 2009)

Following the success of Phantom Hourglass, Nintendo wasted no time getting a Nintendo DS sequel on track. Now that Nintendo had proven that the touch screen was a perfectly acceptable way to control Link and survive treacherous dungeons, it concentrated on selling a new concept – train travel. In Spirit Tracks, Link got around not by boat or horse, but by riding a magical locomotive. Getting from one end of the kingdom to the other was as simple – in theory – as drawing a path on the screen.



Spirit Tracks further refined many of the concepts and gadgets used in Phantom Hourglass, such as a central dungeon you return to time and time again. The Spirit Tower played a central role in Spirit Tracks as someplace Link must return to again and again to unlock more of the world map. This mystical location is also where Zelda herself became a key player, infusing her spirit into fearsome suits of armor (the Phantom Knights, a hold-over from Phantom Hourglass) to also help tame the wild tower.

But what really divided Spirit Tracks from Phantom Hourglass was difficulty. Many gamers complained that while Phantom Hourglass was certainly an enjoyable play, it was a hair too easy. Spirit Tracks ratcheted things back up to Super NES-level difficulty, presenting some incredibly tricky dungeon puzzles and boss battles.

Spirit Tracks was embraced right away by gamers and sailed to sales of over two million. According to Nintendo, Spirit Tracks sits at a nice 2.6 million sold. That's not as many as Phantom Hourglass – but it's also a number many developers would sell their souls (or spirits, rather) to achieve.

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Point to the Sky – The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii, 2011)

And at last we come to the Zelda series' most recent adventure. Nintendo made us wait for this one. Twilight Princess' positioning as a Day 1 Wii launch title gave us a taste of how motion control could benefit the venerable franchise, but, in the end, support for the Wii Remote was too shoehorned into that game to really satisfy. It would be a full five years later when refined 1:1 swordfighting combat finally became a reality through The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.



Slashing with your arm from side-to-side triggered an instant horizontal cut on the screen. Swinging your hand up and down, likewise, activated a vertical slice. Diagonals came into play too, and Nintendo leveraged every possible angle imaginable in the all-new combat engine, forcing players to face off against enemies that could only be harmed with accurately-positioned attacks – simply swinging wildly just wouldn't work.

Motion control came into play elsewhere in the design as well, as players gained the ability to roll bombs like bowling balls, direct the flight of an item-grabbing mechanical beetle and physically pull back on the bowstring with the latest version of our hero's archery equipment. All in all, motion control defined the Skyward Sword experience and set it apart from Link's previous decades of adventures.

Control wasn't the only thing different about Skyward, though – the game also made fans fall in love with Hyrule all over again with a beautiful watercolor-esque visual style that rendered the land with a painter's touch. And, storywise, Skyward Sword was positioned as the new "earliest" game in the series' chronology – meaning the Link and Zelda featured in this story pre-date all the others. The resonance with 25 years' worth of sequels was palpable for longtime fans, and most would probably agree that it was well worth the long wait it took for it to finally arrive in stores.

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25 Years of Adventure

And there you have it, friends, IGN's History of The Legend of Zelda. Now, understand, this write-up has not been wholly comprehensive. We could very well have gone on for pages and pages more discussing even more aspects of the Zelda franchise – there are spin-off titles like Link's Crossbow Training to consider, or we could talk about Link's many appearances in the Super Smash Bros. series, or, if we were really crazy, we could devote some space to 35-year-old fairy man Tingle's rupee-hoarding spin-off series.

But our hope for this article was to give you a broader walk down memory lane, or, if you're totally new to the series, an overview of the core games that have made Zelda such a household name today. The series has now passed its 25th anniversary, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Nintendo marked the milestone with a 3D re-release of Ocarina of Time, free Zelda game downloads for fans and even a symphony concert series taken on a worldwide tour. The future looks bright for Link as well, as the company is hard at work developing new installments in the on-going series for the 3DS and Wii U even as we speak.

Yes, The Legend of Zelda is truly one of the video game industry's most powerful and enduring franchises. And we can't wait to see where the legend will lead us next.



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