All The Links

Looking back on 1986's The Legend Of Zelda from a modern perspective, it's amazing how hostile and uncompromising it was. For modern gamers used to somebody holding your hand throughout a game, being dropped into Hyrule for the first time can be daunting. Link, only described as a "brave lad," is on his own in a massive, sprawling world. Many of the hero's most famous weapons and tools date all the way back to the first game in the series, including the Master Sword, the boomerang and the bow & arrows. And, of course, the last boss is the wicked piglike Ganondorf.

After the huge success of the first Zelda game, Nintendo decided to capitalize on it by changing almost everything. In the modern world, making a sequel that was so totally different from the original game would be commercial suicide, but these were simpler times. Zelda II features a top-down overworld like the original, but whenever Link enters a town or a dungeon, the game changes to a side-scrolling action stage with a large Link sprite and a more complex battle system.

By the end of the 80s, Nintendomania was in full swing, and it was time for Link, Zelda and the rest of the gang to make the jump to the boob tube with a Legend Of Zelda cartoon. Airing every Friday on The Super Mario Brothers Super Show, the series was fairly well-animated for the time and followed Link as he battled Ganon across the continent of Hyrule. His continual failure to extort a kiss from Princess Zelda, no matter how good his deeds, was the show's only running joke. Alas, it was cancelled after just one season, but you can get it on DVD.

In 1990, upstart publisher Valiant Comics licensed some of Nintendo's most popular characters for American comic books, and the five issues of The Legend Of Zelda that they released were... not so good. Having more in common with the goofy Link of the Philips CD-I games and less of the bold young swordsman that we know and love, the series was pretty pathetic and stopped publication after less than a year. The best thing about the book was that some covers promised "HOT NINTENDO ACTION!" inside.

Five years after the last Zelda game on the NES, Nintendo made the Super Nintendo a must-buy with the release of The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past. This 16-bit update returned the game to its original top-down interface, but what it really did was polish and refine every single aspect of the first game. A prequel to the first two games, it opens with young Link being awakened by a telepathic message from Zelda and sets him on an epic adventure through Hyrule. Nintendo had to innovate a new 8MB cartridge to hold the whole game, and it showed. Still one of the best of all time.

Shotaro Ishinomori, creator of the smash hit manga Cyborg 009, was hired by Nintendo to do a full-color Zelda serial comic in Nintendo Power to coincide with the release of A Link To The Past. It's pretty great, full of visceral action and lots of Hyrulian secrets. It also predates the character of Navi from Ocarina Of Time with Ephemerelda, a lovestruck fairy who helps Link in his travels. This was collected into one volume, and it's worth tracking down.

So it was the advanced technology of the Super Nintendo that made A Link To The Past such a great game, right? Not so, because Link's next appearance was on the humble four-color Game Boy with Link's Awakening, and that game's just as good. At this point Nintendo had mastered the essential elements of the Zelda series, and Link's Awakening takes him out of his comfort zone in Hyrule to wander the world only to wind up stranded on a mysterious island. It was developed as a lark before being turned into a full product, but the quality is uniformly high. A color remake was released for the GBA as well.

The Philips CD-I is the only non-Nintendo console to have a Zelda game on it, but that's probably a good thing. The machine had three licensed games, but only one starred Link. Faces Of Evil features side-scrolling gameplay much like Zelda II but with fancy hi-res graphics. But what this game is most remembered for is the absolutely ridiculous cutscenes, which were animated on the cheap by a Russian company. Full motion video was one of the biggest selling points of the CD-I, but this didn't really help matters much.

The SNES classic Super Mario RPG, one of the systems last great games, is full of a ton of hidden secrets, Easter eggs and fun things for an enterprising player to discover. One such thing is in the inn in Rosetown after you beat Bowyer in the Forest Maze. Napping in one of the beds upstairs is Link, and attempting to talk to him will trigger a classic sound effect from the Zelda games. Alas, he won't ever wake up and join you on your quest.