When I was very young, my parents ended up buying me a Nintendo Entertainment System (a NES if you will), and my love affair for video games began (I'm sure my parents were hoping it was just a fad). It came with the combo cartridge of Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and International Track & Field. While I have plenty of fond memories with Nintendo's well-beloved plumber, the Light Gun, and that track pad that you ended up using your hands on, little did I know that the best game I will ever play would show up in a shiny gold cartridge.
This should be no surprise that I happen to love this game as much as I do...
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#1 The Legend of Zelda - First released (US) August 22nd, 1987 (NES)
From the opening title screen, you knew this game was going to be something special. The opening music, the waterfall, the dark color switch, the backstory, the driving heroic turn in the music, epic for the term "epic" was overused.
The game opens, the music kicks in, and you are off on your quest. Games nowadays take forever to get going (2 forevers for a game in the Metal Gear Solid series). You pick up your first sword (since "It's Dangerous To Go Alone" and all) and scroll through screens, kill enemies, and find the first dungeon.
By the way, Link was the first to prove you CAN bring a knife to a gunfight, as long as your knife is a sword that SHOOTS OTHER SWORDS OUT OF IT (if you are at full health...gotta read the fine print, always).
The game was full of secrets to explore, and this was a time before the internet, before GameFAQs, before cell phones that could spit out information at a moment's notice. If you a kid at this time you asked your parents to subscribe to the best magazine of the time: Nintendo Power, and looked for the answers in there. Of course now you can go to YouTube and watch a speedrun, or do a quick google search and print out the entire game map, but back then you had to check every pixel, bomb every wall, burn every bush, and push every rock, hoping to hear the "you figured it out" jingle. Also, Heaven help you if you got stuck in the mountains where the screen repeats itself until you figured out the right combination.
The Legend of Zelda was the beginnings of what would become a consolized RPG. While it's missing some core aspects of a typical RPG, such as experience gaining or leveling up, it did have many tropes of what we now refer to as an RPG; a Fantasy universe, collecting currency to purchase new weapons, potions, and upgrades, a vast, open world to explore (and die a lot in) to save the princess and the land of Hyrule.
What was also big for the game was the different monsters and enemies that you found different ways to defeat. The boomerang was my favorite thing to use since it stunned enemies, leaving you to run up and stab them with the Master Sword. The boomerang also killed those pesky bats and ooze drop things (I always thought they were chocolate chips) in one hit, so that was nice.
Then, of course, entering your name as "LINK" at the sign-in screen allowed you to play the more difficult second quest. Again, wouldn't have known that without Nintendo Power.
The game was really hard anyway, though I attribute that more to just finding out where to go, where the dungeons were found, and all the times I would inadvertently backtrack just to turn around and get hit by an enemy while I was at 1/2 a heart and die.
The video for The Legend of Zelda was a real no-brainer, It's the opening credits, which has since been permanently etched in every young gamers brain:
I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have played through this game. Whether it's via the eShop, the Wii Virtual Console, or my many MANY times through on the original NES, The Legend of Zelda is one of the greatest games ever made. That may sound like a bold proclamation for an 8-bit title from the late 1980's, but very few games have the impact on an industry like this one did. I love every playthrough and still boot it up every now and then to this day. The Legend of Zelda is my favorite game of all time, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
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Thanks for taking this road down memory lane with me and visiting my favorite games of all time. This list may end up changing this year with many blockbusters yet to come, and in the upcoming years, so be prepared for new entries. For now, though, I can go back to my regularly scheduled posts.
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