The Magic of the First Legend of Zelda

I'm sure you've heard this phrase before: "we're going back to our roots". Like, a developer makes a game about inching through a creepy mansion and then, several years later, that same series is now about jumping over a helicopter on a flippin' motorbike. Yeah. So, Capcom says "we're going back to our roots" and Resident Evil returns to claustrophobic corridors, hoarding herbs, and ruining your favourite jeans. It's all about identifying what made a series so great in the first place - and taking a good, hard look at a franchise to see if it still carries the essential DNA of its earliest games.

The next series to do this is, perhaps, my favourite of them all: The Legend of Zelda. For the next game, Breath of the Wild, Nintendo will be going back to its roots, by looking to the very first Zelda game for inspiration. Which, I think, is pretty exciting. Because despite its simple graphics and general retro clunkiness, Zelda 1 remains as one of the very best entries in this series - and it did things that no other Zelda game has done since.

Designer Shigeru Miyamoto made The Legend of Zelda to capture his childhood experience of exploring the Japanese countryside. He's said, "I went hiking and found a lake. It was quite a surprise for me to stumble upon it. When I traveled around the country without a map, trying to find my way, stumbling on amazing things as I went, I realized how it felt to go on an adventure like this". He wanted players to feel that same sense of adventure when they were exploring the fields, forests, lakes, deserts, mountains, and graveyards of Hyrule.

So, you definitely don't have a map in this game - there's just a grey box that shows your position in the world. And you aren't told where to go - the text crawl says that you need to track down eight pieces of the triforce, but how that happens is up to you. You're just let loose in a clearing, and told to get on with it. You don't even start with a sword - you've got to enter this cave to grab that. A way for Miyamoto to tell players that this game isn't going to hand them anything on a silver platter.

You're given a huge amount of freedom, from the very beginning. You can technically explore the entire world right now, perhaps striding off west and coming across a lake, or heading off east to squeeze through a canyon before you burst out onto a beach. Sure, games like Skyrim let you go anywhere you like - but in that game you make the choice between following a quest or freely exploring the map. There's no such choice in Zelda 1 - it's just all curious exploration, never knowing what you might come across next.

Maybe a shop. Or a secret. Or the entrance to one of the game's dungeons, which are these tricky underground mazes filled with treasure, bosses, mysterious messages, and one of the eight pieces of the triforce. The dungeons are numbered, but there's rarely anything stopping you visiting them out of sequence and accidentally stumbling into one of the last dungeons in the game. In Zelda 1, surprises lurk on every screen.

Part of what makes this game so enchanting is that it's mysterious and oblique. You're given no companion character to provide hints and assistance, and the few friendly faces in Hyrule offer up cryptic riddles that need to be deciphered. But they are intoxicating. I remember this guy, who said "did you get the sword from the top of the waterfall?" and I was like "No?!" and then found myself following the stream up into the mountains with giddy anticipation.

And this is a game that encourages experimentation, as much as exploration. Items like the blue ring and the piece of paper and the candle and the magic croissant are just added to your inventory without description. and you'll simply have to figure out what the heck they do. Zelda 1 just felt indifferent to the player's existence. It had whatever the opposite of hand-holding is. You know, you're just dropped into a world and told to explore it. It was, to sum it up in a single word, an adventure.

I'm sure it was mind-bending 30 years go but I played it for the first time... in 2017 and it still enraptured me so if you haven't experienced it yet and you think it sounds interesting - please go grab it and turn off this video because I'm about to spoil the crap out of it. Years later, Miyamoto said "We were very nervous since The Legend of Zelda was our first game that forced players to think what they should do next. We were afraid that gamers would be bored and stressed by the new concept".

Luckily, they weren't. The game was successful and led to a couple sequels. But I don't think he had any reason to worry, because - and this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who watches my stuff - but it's because Nintendo knows how to make video games. So, yes, Zelda 1 does offer a huge amount of freedom. You can go anywhere you like, and visit - though not necessary finish - the dungeons in any order you want. But the designers use some clever tricks to help guide you through the game, stop you getting lost, and make the world naturally open up, piece by piece.

For one, the world map just isn't that big. It's only 16 screens wide and 8 screens high, meaning you can learn most of the layout in a few hours. To make it feel bigger, the map is turned into a giant maze with winding pathways, dead ends, and chokepoints. Also, Zelda keeps some of the map away from you until you're more experienced with the game. Not through actual locks - only two screens and two dungeons are literally impossible to reach at the beginning of the game - But through, what you might call "soft locks", which discourage exploration of certain areas.

One of these, is challenging enemies. These centaur dudes, and screens filled with tricky foes, will quickly kill you if you only have a few hearts. And dying in the overworld sends you right back to the first screen so instead of trekking all the way back to where you just got pummelled into a fine pixelated mist, you're more likely to just try going off in another direction. Another soft lock, is information. To access this whole area over here, you either need the ladder from dungeon four, or you need to know the correct path through the lost woods. That's a maze that will keep turning you around if you don't know the right order to take its many exits - and to get the solution you need to find this woman, and pay her some rupees.

These locks also help you find the dungeons in a more sensible order. If you're just wandering around the main part of Hyrule, you'll only stumble upon the entrances for the first three dungeons. The remaining six are more hidden. The fourth dungeon requires the raft. The fifth is on top of the magic mountain, so you'll need another solution. The sixth is in that western area I just talked about. And the seventh, eighth, and ninth dungeons are just hanging out in Hyrule - but hidden away so you'll need special items and clues to find them.

Ah yes, the clues. Zelda is, like I said, a mysterious game, and not one to quickly give up its secrets or tell you where to go. But, if you listen carefully, you'll realise that these old men and women do give Link cryptic hints that actually detail almost everything you need know to get through the game. Some tell you about the boss's weakpoints. Others give you clues about finding more powerful gear. Some tell you stuff that doesn't make much sense... though, you have to remember that the game's English translation isn't perfect.

Zelda fans fevershly argue about the meaning of this clue, which says "eastmost pennisula is the secret", but it wasn't written by the game's designers. In the original Japanese version, that same man tells you that shooting arrows costs you money. Anyway, other characters tell you how to find the most hidden dungeons. In the fourth dungeon, this guy tells you to "walk into the waterfall" - where you'll find the hint you need to find dungeon number five. In the sixth dungeon, a man says "there are secrets where fairies don't live", which should help you find the entrance to seventh dungeon in the only pond without a fairy.

The clue for the eighth dungeon is more obtuse, I'll grant you. This guy tells you to look out for the tree at the dead-end - which I guess is referring to the entrance to dungeon eight? I mean that's how I took it, and ended up in the penultimate dungeon in my first hour with the game. But, maybe this is why I kept seeing that bogus claim that you need to burn every bush and bomb every wall to beat Zelda 1. Nah mate.

There are hidden rooms behind random bushes and walls, and they don't have telltale signs like big ol' cracks. But that actually makes them... secrets. So it's a genuine surprise when you find them. And you really want that stuff. Zelda 1 can be brutally hard, so any help - whether that's rupees or heart containers - is more than welcome. But it's all optional stuff, so you can beat the game without it. Of course, there were some genuinely tricky bits. I won't deny that. Especially in the dungeons, which I'lll cover in more detail in the NES episode of my dungeon design series, Boss Keys.

But, if you got stuck, all hope was not lost because Nintendo encouraged you to look beyond the game for help. There's the manual - which you are told to read in the opening text crawl. Both the main text, and the bonus tips that are hidden behind a protective seal, give you loads of help. It describes all the items in the game, reveals that there's a secret on almost every overworld screen, and gives up the locations of the last three dungeons. Though, the English manual is also filled with translation issues, like this erroneous claim that the warp whistle can take you to the ninth dungeon.

You could also ask a friend. Miyamoto purposefully designed the game to encourage communication between gamers, saying "I wanted them to talk with other Zelda players and exchange information, ask each other questions, find out where to go next. That's what happened - this communication was not a competition but it was a real life collaboration that helped make the game more popular". So The Legend of Zelda is a game that gave players the freedom to dictate their own journey through Hyrule, allowing for surprises and sequence breaking. And the game felt mysterious, with secret passages, weird items, and cryptic hints.

But I think the team used clever design to make a game that felt free, but didn't let you get lost. Mysterious, but far from inscrutable. And completely indifferent to the player - while secretly helping them reach their goals. But in more recent Zelda games, you no longer feel free, everything is explained, and that guiding hand is no longer secret. In more recent entires, the overworld is often restricted until you've hit certain points in the story, dungeons can no longer be completed out of order, and you're stuck with chatty companion characters who tell you what to do and where to go.

I mean, these games are all fab in their own way - well, almost - but none of them share Zelda 1's unrestricted sense of adventure. And you might think that this is just how modern games are. And that I'm just being a nostalgic old fart. But I'm not so sure. Well, I am a nostalgic old fart. But, games with that sense of freedom, mystery, and surprise still exist. Indie games like Hyper Light Drifter and The Witness are enchanting, wordless odysseys, which capture those feelings.

And games like Fez have arguably found even better compromises between mystery with accessibility - like these maps which point you towards secret areas, but don't completely give the game away. And everybody's already made this connection but Dark Souls definitely feels like a modern take on Zelda 1 - complete with secret walls, cryptic hints, and communication between players. So the question is not, "can you make a game like Zelda 1 today".

The question is, "can Nintendo make a game like Zelda 1 today". They made a bold start with the non-linear Link Between Worlds on 3DS. But the real test will be with Breath of the Wild. Just how much is Nintendo willing to go back to its roots, To give The Legend of Zelda that feeling of freedom, mystery, and surprise? We'll see. Hey, thanks for watching. Game Maker's Toolkit is, as always, powered by the crowdfunding website Patreon. If you like the show, consider throwing a few bucks my way. Just like these super brilliant people, who donate five bucks or more, per episode.

Breath of the Wild will be out in a week or two - and you can definitely expect a video on that game in the near future. Plus, I've got lots of other stuff in the works too so maybe tap the subscribe button, and the bell button, to get a notification whenever I put a new video out. Oh, and if you're still not sick of Zelda stuff then look forward to new episodes of Boss Keys. To be honest, I'm struggling to muster up the enthusiasm to replay these DS games but I started this ridiculous project so I shall finish it. Look out for that video in March, I guess?