The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite video game series and I've been interested in going back to the first entry several times over the years. I've played through parts of the first Zelda many times and beat it once during the Wii Virtual Console era. After recently playing through Oracle of Ages, which was my first time playing a 2D Zelda in a few years, I did get interested in going back to the original Legend of Zelda again. What piqued my interest this time is that while I did finish Zelda 1 many years ago, I never actually engaged with the game's Second Quest; an additional journey through Hyrule that becomes available after the credits roll. As a bit of a Zelda "completionist", I wanted to make it to the Second Quest and give it a fair shake!
From what I remember of when I played the game during the Wii era, I remember Zelda being enjoyable enough, but an experience that had aged. To give Zelda 1 a fairer shake this time around, I first decided to engage with it in the way that players in 1987 would. Back in those days, reading the manual was critical for learning the ropes of a new game! And sure enough, while the Legend of Zelda drops you into its world with no direction upon booting it up, the manual provides a ton of useful information to help get your bearings. There are descriptions of the game's key items, enemies, an unfinished map of the overworld, and hints nudging you towards the game secrets.
With this information in hand, I began another playthrough of the First Quest and I loved my time with it. One of the defining features of the Zelda series going forward would be its exploration and puzzle-solving. What's unique about this first entry is that the puzzle-solving is based on navigation. In the overworld, this takes the form of seeking out the different dungeon entrances, item shops, and secret caves. While there are many criticisms to be found of Zelda being too obtuse due to needing to "burn every bush on a screen" or "bomb every wall", I found this to not be the case. Besides one heart container, most of the caves beyond a bush or wall don't hide anything critical to the quest. The two dungeons that are hidden behind a wall or bush are pretty well telegraphed in my opinion. As long as you pay attention to the world map and retain a sense of curiosity about the world, the overworld exploration is very rewarding.
The second aspect of Zelda's game design is its dungeons; my favorite spaces in the game. In each dungeon, the puzzle of navigating a space is made more direct as you fight through gauntlets of enemies and puzzle out how to find a dungeon's special item and proceed to the boss. What made this playthrough of Zelda more special is that by the fourth dungeon of the game, I took the manual's advice and began to draw my maps for each space. The feeling of mapping out a dungeon and using it as a reference for finding secret bombable walls was a very memorable experience.
Once I was able to work my way to the credits, it was then time to begin the Second Quest. The Second Quest may seem similar to the First Quest when you start, but it is quite different. Every dungeon entrance except the first is shuffled to a new location, each dungeon has an entirely new layout, and there are new modes of traversal introduced in the dungeons. Shops and caves are also shuffled around to different locations. The Second Quest is harder, but was incredibly satisfying to puzzle out as it plays off your knowledge of the first quest. While you may not find what you expect, notable locations from the First Quest will usually hide something useful in the second quest. Mapping out each dungeon also proved to be just as critical in this second run of the game.
All in all, revisiting Zelda 1 was more rewarding than I expected after engaging with it on its terms. It's safe to say that it's now become one of my favorite games. The nature of the game design makes it easy to pick up and play, and the loop of overworld exploration feeding into dungeon exploration is incredibly satisfying. It's incredible how much of the format of future Zelda games was nailed here before being further refined in A Link to the Past!
Funnily enough, I think I also had a better experience this time around since I was using a better controller. When you want to play a game from 1987 that utilized a D-pad, it turns out that you want to use a modern controller with a good D-pad! The Switch Pro controller D-pad and Joycon D-pad options for this are...not great. I ended up using the 8BitDo Pro 2 controller which has an excellent D-pad. The game felt more responsive and I imagine is closer to the experience players had in 1987 with the NES controller.
Favorite Tracks:
Normally, I'd take the opportunity at the end of a post to highlight some of my favorite music in the game. Zelda is a funny case in that the entire soundtrack is less than 10 minutes. What is there is excellent, but there just isn't much of it! The overworld theme is iconic and has been re-interpreted many times over the years. And the Labyrinth theme is one of my favorite tracks in the series and one I wish was re-interpreted more often in future games!
Instead of picking and choosing tracks, I thought it would be fun to highlight that the soundtrack has a slightly different sound depending on whether you play the NES version or the Famicom Disk System (FDS) version of the game! The FDS has six sound channels compared to the NES' five. This sixth channel made more sounds available to composers for their music. You can see this change when comparing the title theme of the two versions. The FDS version has a fuller sound with some additional "instruments"!
NES Title Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMKWJ5e1kg
FDS Title Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0wMU2c1MvY
Not in the game, but this symphony arrangement of the dungeon theme is one of my favorite arrangements ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WrgY2O6xHE
From what I remember of when I played the game during the Wii era, I remember Zelda being enjoyable enough, but an experience that had aged. To give Zelda 1 a fairer shake this time around, I first decided to engage with it in the way that players in 1987 would. Back in those days, reading the manual was critical for learning the ropes of a new game! And sure enough, while the Legend of Zelda drops you into its world with no direction upon booting it up, the manual provides a ton of useful information to help get your bearings. There are descriptions of the game's key items, enemies, an unfinished map of the overworld, and hints nudging you towards the game secrets.
With this information in hand, I began another playthrough of the First Quest and I loved my time with it. One of the defining features of the Zelda series going forward would be its exploration and puzzle-solving. What's unique about this first entry is that the puzzle-solving is based on navigation. In the overworld, this takes the form of seeking out the different dungeon entrances, item shops, and secret caves. While there are many criticisms to be found of Zelda being too obtuse due to needing to "burn every bush on a screen" or "bomb every wall", I found this to not be the case. Besides one heart container, most of the caves beyond a bush or wall don't hide anything critical to the quest. The two dungeons that are hidden behind a wall or bush are pretty well telegraphed in my opinion. As long as you pay attention to the world map and retain a sense of curiosity about the world, the overworld exploration is very rewarding.
The second aspect of Zelda's game design is its dungeons; my favorite spaces in the game. In each dungeon, the puzzle of navigating a space is made more direct as you fight through gauntlets of enemies and puzzle out how to find a dungeon's special item and proceed to the boss. What made this playthrough of Zelda more special is that by the fourth dungeon of the game, I took the manual's advice and began to draw my maps for each space. The feeling of mapping out a dungeon and using it as a reference for finding secret bombable walls was a very memorable experience.
Once I was able to work my way to the credits, it was then time to begin the Second Quest. The Second Quest may seem similar to the First Quest when you start, but it is quite different. Every dungeon entrance except the first is shuffled to a new location, each dungeon has an entirely new layout, and there are new modes of traversal introduced in the dungeons. Shops and caves are also shuffled around to different locations. The Second Quest is harder, but was incredibly satisfying to puzzle out as it plays off your knowledge of the first quest. While you may not find what you expect, notable locations from the First Quest will usually hide something useful in the second quest. Mapping out each dungeon also proved to be just as critical in this second run of the game.
All in all, revisiting Zelda 1 was more rewarding than I expected after engaging with it on its terms. It's safe to say that it's now become one of my favorite games. The nature of the game design makes it easy to pick up and play, and the loop of overworld exploration feeding into dungeon exploration is incredibly satisfying. It's incredible how much of the format of future Zelda games was nailed here before being further refined in A Link to the Past!
Funnily enough, I think I also had a better experience this time around since I was using a better controller. When you want to play a game from 1987 that utilized a D-pad, it turns out that you want to use a modern controller with a good D-pad! The Switch Pro controller D-pad and Joycon D-pad options for this are...not great. I ended up using the 8BitDo Pro 2 controller which has an excellent D-pad. The game felt more responsive and I imagine is closer to the experience players had in 1987 with the NES controller.
Favorite Tracks:
Normally, I'd take the opportunity at the end of a post to highlight some of my favorite music in the game. Zelda is a funny case in that the entire soundtrack is less than 10 minutes. What is there is excellent, but there just isn't much of it! The overworld theme is iconic and has been re-interpreted many times over the years. And the Labyrinth theme is one of my favorite tracks in the series and one I wish was re-interpreted more often in future games!
Instead of picking and choosing tracks, I thought it would be fun to highlight that the soundtrack has a slightly different sound depending on whether you play the NES version or the Famicom Disk System (FDS) version of the game! The FDS has six sound channels compared to the NES' five. This sixth channel made more sounds available to composers for their music. You can see this change when comparing the title theme of the two versions. The FDS version has a fuller sound with some additional "instruments"!
NES Title Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMKWJ5e1kg
FDS Title Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0wMU2c1MvY
Not in the game, but this symphony arrangement of the dungeon theme is one of my favorite arrangements ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WrgY2O6xHE