The Legend of Zelda

The Good
My personal favorite feature in this game was the music. The Overworld (main) theme was great, and the dungeon theme and the one for Ganon's castle were some of Kondo's (Koji Kondo) finest, and first, at that! This game set up a foundation for one of the best game series in all time. It was also the first game that I ever saw where one could be eaten by peanut butter sandwiches. (like-like's) This game featured some Japanese-to-English translation errors that are simply hilarious. An example: in the intro, it goes through all of the items in the game. A certain group of the items has a short text about who they belonged to before. If I remember right it says: "ITEMS THAT ONCE GANON". (please forgive the all caps, that's the way they did it on the NES...) Also, "LET'S PLAY MONEY-MAKING GAME". Truly classic. The Hidden content is also very well done, and the second quest option is quite a cool addition.

The Bad
Difficulty. This is a hard game, and that is one thing that I think Most NES games can testify to. It definitely takes mastery. Also the graphics were somewhat lacking in terms of colors, although it does add some perhaps unintentional humor when certain things have to turn Red or Blue when you get a new tunic. (sigh) such is the nature of the 16-color palette.

The Bottom Line
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The Good
It's amazing how many mainstays of the Zelda franchise originated with this game. From the enemies to the overall structure, it seems that the creators of The Legend of Zelda created a long-lasting formula from the outset.

Boss battles were interesting and not too difficult or unfair unlike so many other games of the time. While not a requirement, the game rewarded exploration and adventure.

In-game music was good if not varied. Similar tracks played at similar times throughout the game, but what was there was good.

The Bad
Playing the game today, the game's graphics are not the best but if you're into retro gaming, it's always interesting to see the choices made graphics-wise. There's a little frame rate lag when too much stuff is going on on-screen.

The game re-uses some dungeon bosses more than once. I don't know why, it seems like they should have come up with unique bosses per dungeon. But maybe it was a memory limitation or something like that.

The dungeons themselves are a little bit too similar. There's not enough variety in the layout of the dungeons, so things kind of blur together.

The Bottom Line
The Legend of Zelda is a classic retro game. It started one of the best video game franchises of all time. It had exploration, adventure and a new and interesting perspective on video games. I wouldn't say the graphics are timeless but if you are a retro gaming fan, you will enjoy your time with this one.

The Good
The game features many cool things: a large world, a good selection of weapons, a variety of enemies to fight, and fairly large dungeons with cool bosses.

I remember spending a large amount of time in front of the TV playing this game. It came with a map, so that was helpful in navigating in the game.

Pretty much this game is a "old man's game." By that I mean most of the us who played this game as a young child are currently in the 20s and early 30s. So when we play this game, we sort of put a smile on our face and remember the days when we were playing this game.

The Bad
The only issue was that you spent a lot of time wondering around since it was a tad bit hard to determine where you are going since the world was fairly large.

The Bottom Line
We have a semi-generational gap between current gamers and gamers who were around to play NES games. It would be truly a great thing if a modern gamer can take this game and appreciate all the fine qualities of the game without taking into context of the graphics and limited freedom compared to games in the last 5-10 years.