THE LEGEND OF ZELDA (NES) REVIEW

by: Brady Prevost

                 The legend of Zelda is an all time classic with one of the most constantly good video game franchises. Zelda is a series that defined and continues to define what adventure games can be. The story’s, the worlds, the characters have all resonated with fans for decades, and I’m sure it they will continue to do so for decades to come. But all of that began on the original Nintendo Entertainment System with the Legend of Zelda.

                The original Legend of Zelda does a lot right but has definitely aged in a lot of places. However, the core of the game is still good. Now the news is not known for is graphics but some amazing stuff has been done on that hardware, just take a look at Super Mario Bro’s 3, a fantastic game with a great a art style, unfortunately I don’t think Zelda is much of a looker with most of the game being very, very plain unfortunately. Most of the environment are very boring to look at with nothing much interesting, due to NES’s limited colour pallet the only thing we really see is gray, green, blue, brown, tan, and a little red here and there. Which I think is boring and is a result of the era this game realised in. The character design however, I think is fantastic, epically for Link and Ganon even if their designs are simplified. Overall, well the game itself doesn’t look necessarily bad, I think it could have looked a lot better.

                Now on a gameplay front the game is fun, but not great simply due to how locked in place your movement is. Only 4 directional movement no diagonals, which does kinds of suck, again not that its bad or anything but the limit movement options really hinder your ability to dodge enemy attacks because unlike you they can move in diagonals. The combat is fun, especially the boss fights, there tough as nails but a rewarding time, in my most recent playthrough on news I died 60 times and in the time it took me to beat the game, it averaged out to about one death every 6 Ish minutes which is rough, but most of those deaths were inside dungeons where you respawn inside of the dungeon. The biggest issue with this game however is all the things you need to find that the game doesn’t tell you how to find them, there are bushing you need to burn and walls you have to bomb but the game doesn’t tell you what walls are bombable or what bushes burn, there are a bunch of strange choices that make playing this game with out a guide really annoying. 

                Hustle this is about all I have to say about Zelda 1 it’s an alright game that definitely ages worse than the Mario games on nes, but not as bad as most other news games. So, on the Bardy Report review scale I am going to give The Legend of Zelda a 62/100. Not bad not amazing just good, I personally love this game, but I can’t say its any higher than what I gave it.

                Anyways thank you for reading, let me know what you think and as always make sure to, PLAY LOUD, LOTS & TOGETHER :)