You really have to hand it to Miyamoto and his band at Nintendo. To make one of the greatest and most important video games of all time, in the shape of Super Mario Bros, was one thing. But to repeat the same trick just a year later, and in a completely different genre, is just incredible. In fact, there isn't even a year between Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda. There were only five months between the Japanese release dates of each game, yet the latter represents a giant stride from the former in terms of game design. Where Mario was brilliantly simple, placing you at the start of a linear journey and merely asking you to move a little plumber to the right, Zelda offered a world of possibility by comparison.
Starting off in the middle of the vast land of Hyrule, it put you in control of an elf-like boy named Link, with three possible exits standing before him, and then… did nothing. No instructions, no dialogue and no hints. Just the promise of adventure and an invitation into the unknown. Which way should you go? Well, that was entirely up to you, and that was the entire point of the game. There was an ultimate goal, of course - to collect the eight scattered pieces of the Triforce Of Wisdom, defeat the evil warlord Ganon and rescue the titular Princess Zelda - but it was the open nature of how you approached this task that really made The Legend Of Zelda so compelling.
