We all pulled a ‘Wait, Mario is how old??‘ last year as the prized plumber and the NES celebrated their 40th anniversaries, and what do you know, we’re about to do it all over again for little old Link.
Yes, The Legend of Zelda is 40 years old today (in Japan, at least). On 21st February 1986, Nintendo introduced the world to the fantasy land of Hyrule, complete with legendary princesses, magical triangles, evil pig men, and a little boy in a green nightcap. It was the first time anyone had heard Koji Kondo’s iconic title theme — apparently substituted in at the eleventh hour after Nintendo discovered Maurice Ravel’s ‘Boléro’ wasn’t up for grabs — or read the words “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this”. Without it, many of our favourite games of all time simply would not exist. So yes, we think this is a birthday worth acknowledging.
We’ve all heard the stories about Shigeru Miyamoto’s inspirations for the game, as he set out to replicate the feeling of exploring the woods and caves outside of his childhood home as a boy. And that’s exactly what he did.
Nintendo’s big player from the year before, Super Mario Bros., was all about moving from left to right, something that vaguely resembled the ‘quick fix’ arcade experience for a new home console generation, the culmination of everything Nintendo had learned to that point.
Zelda was different. Launching with the Famicom Disk System (also 40 today), there was an open world at your disposal, items waiting in every dungeon, and rarely any set instruction to ‘go here next”. It’s easy to overlook just how revolutionary and fresh the format was.
The story, by comparison, was something a little more familiar. Drawing inspiration from classic fairytales and high fantasy worlds established by the likes of Tolkien, Takashi Tezuka’s story of good overcoming evil is a timeless one. An elf-like boy embarks on a quest to collect some magic rocks, overthrows a power-hungry prince, rescues the princess and restores peace to the land. We’ve all heard it before, but you can’t knock its simplicity. And hey, did Tolkien ever write anything with a follow-up ‘Second Quest’ for those who have finished the first one? Oh wait…
Remarkably, it still feels good today. We’re not going to sit here and say that the original TLoZ packs quite the same open-world magic as a Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, or Red Dead in 2026, but play any of them after experiencing this first slice of Hyrule, and you’ll spot Nintendo’s fingerprints everywhere.
Fortunately, it’s always been pretty easy to get your hands on the original game in the four decades since its launch. Be it through re-released GBA or GameCube packages, Virtual Consoles, Nintendo Switch Online, special edition Game & Watches or Animal Crossing retro systems, we’ve never been too far away from a way to dive into The Legend of Zelda, and every format will be someone’s first.
And so, as we inflate our big ‘4’ and ‘0’ balloons, hang a banner, and let out a celebratory “HYYYYAAA”, we thought we’d throw the reminiscing to you lovely lot. The Legend of Zelda has been playable in so many different forms, but which was your first experience with it?
We’ve listed each and every platform variant in the poll below, from the Famicom Disk System all the way up to NSO. Let’s see where it started for everyone!
