The Legend of Zelda (video game)
| The Legend of Zelda | |
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North American box art | |
| Developer(s) | Nintendo R&D4 |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Director(s) | |
| Producer(s) | Shigeru Miyamoto |
| Designer(s) |
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| Programmer(s) |
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| Writer(s) |
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| Composer(s) | Koji Kondo |
| Series | The Legend of Zelda |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | Family Computer Disk System
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| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
The Legend of Zelda is a 1986 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo. The first game in the Legend of Zelda series, it is set in the fantasy land of Hyrule and centers on an elf-like boy named Link, who aims to collect the eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom to rescue Princess Zelda from Ganon. The player controls Link from a top-down perspective and navigates the overworld and dungeons, collecting weapons, defeating enemies and uncovering secrets.
Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, The Legend of Zelda was released in Japan as a launch game for the Family Computer Disk System in February 1986. More than a year later, it was released in North America and Europe on the Nintendo Entertainment System in cartridge format; the US version was one of the first games to include an internal battery for saving data. This version was released in Japan in 1994 as Zelda no Densetsu 1.
The Legend of Zelda was ported to the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, and was available via the Virtual Console on the Wii, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. It was also one of 30 games included in the NES Classic Edition system, and is available on the Nintendo Switch through the Nintendo Classics service.
The Legend of Zelda was a critical and commercial success. It sold over 6.5 million copies, launched a major franchise, and has been regularly featured in lists of the greatest video games of all time. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link was released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System less than a year later, and numerous sequels and spinoffs have been released since.