As time marches on inexorably - week after week, year after year - it should come as no surprise that The Legend of Zelda is 33 years old today. No, not the cartridge version - that wouldn't make an appearance until July '87 in North America - we're talking about the Famicom Disk System original.
The game also shares a birthday with the Famicom Disk System itself, the Japan-only console that plugged into the original cartridge-based Famicom and offered an improved experience over the base console. That console launched with The Legend of Zelda and a disk version of Super Mario Bros. - quite the one-two punch, wouldn't you agree?
There are lots of things you can do to celebrate this fine day. If you're stuck in front of a computer screen or sitting on the bus with your phone, why not head over to The Cutting Room Floor for a comprehensive examination of the differences between the disc and cartridge versions of the game.
Or perhaps Legends of Localization's analysis on how Nintendo has continually modified the game over its 33-year life would be more to your liking.
Alternatively, you could settle down with a nice Zelda tome like the Hyrule Historia or something of that ilk, or enjoy some of Nintendo's original design documents for the game in this very short video.
We'd argue, though, that the best option would be to fire up your nearest Nintendo console and dive into the classic game for an hour or two. The Switch version is convenient if you're a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber, and save states make the game vastly more user-friendly than it used to be.
Don't be afraid to seek out help if you need it, either - there's no shame in a little helping hand, especially if you'd otherwise chuck in the towel and miss out on a true gaming classic.
Have you gone back to this classic recently? Making you feel old, is it? Us to - feel free to commiserate in the comments.
Comments 19
Ahh. The days before I was born.
I have my FDS hooked up to my Top Loading NES, but I would like to get a Famicom so it looks so beautiful when hooked up. Maybe someday. Did the FDS perform well in Japan? Just curious why other countries never received the unit and wondered if it was because it underperformed in Japan.
@Nessjestic Well, when something becomes a year older, it's technically called an anniversary, no matter if it has turned 10, 25, 33, 41, or 549 years old.
@Steel76 I still remember bringing home my copy of the game from Caldor. I wasn't even sure what to expect. (Remember that odd commercial they had for the game? The one with the guy running around all crazy with the voices naming the enemies? That was the only thing I had to go on.) xD
@JohnBlackstar It was fairly popular, but it became obsolete pretty fast. Sure, the disks could hold more data than first gen cartridges, they could save easier and were cheaper to produce, but they were much less durable, had pretty long load times sometimes, and they couldn't build extra chips into them, and almost all later NES games had some that made them do things the Famicom/NES couldn't really do by itself. They made many disk games for like 2 years, but switched back to carts. In other words, by the time most big FDS games came out in the west, like Zelda, Metroid, and Kid Icarus, the disks were already being kind of phased out in Japan. Nintendo's biggest game in 1988, Super Mario Bros. 3 was on a cartridge even in Japan, for example.
I played through it again last summer, after a friend of mine brought an emulator on our vacation that had LoZ loaded on it. Still a very fun game.
Being born in '85 really helps me categorize my lifespan by Nintendo Systems. N64 years were as awkward as you would imagine, but I really caught my stride during the Wii era.
....let's not discuss the Wii U years... instead, let me turn your attention to the 3DS....
stop making me feel old nintendolife 😢
Maybe there'd be fewer anniversaries if you didn't choose an arbitrary number like 33.
Aaaw... same age as me.
@Solid_Stannis Fewer anniversaries? An anniversary is the day on which an important event happened in a previous year, no matter how odd or random the number might be for you.
To think I wasn't even in the process of being born back when this launched baffles me more than it should. I recently played this game again and it holds up pretty well in a lot of areas, but now seeing the remake of Link's Awakening, I'm interested in how they would interpret this game in modern times.
I was born the year The Legend of Zelda came out.
Seeing stuff I grew up with having 20 and 30 year anniversaries the last few years has been really weird.
33 years ago?!
Man.... I was 2 years old on that time. 😅
Since I've played Mario and Zelda since their first games, I feel like it's family-- We're all practically the same age lol.
Just bought ny first disk system today, and will now bye a copy of LOZ. Been playing Zelda since 1987, part of my childhood!
@kosterpeter Congrats on your purchase. It is too late I’m sure, but you will want to pick up a unit that has had its belt replaced recently. These rubber belts from the 80’s started becoming brittle in the early 2000’s and by now they probably have a 50% failure rate if not replaced. I had to get my drive’s belt replaced in 2002 if I’m not mistaken. It has held up since then, but I don’t play it daily either.
Just recently played through LoZ again. It's becoming a tradition. I appreciate it a bit more every time. I have this funny thing where I can do almost everything without a map, but I just can't get to Level 2, yes, TWO, by memory or even extended exploration. Something about the screen that leads to it just never gets me to go west. (I did cheat a little and look up the level 9 map and a couple secret shrubs to save time, this time, too).
Anyway, no excuse is needed to play it again, and it is a reminder of how some core qualities of great games could be expressed in very limited hardware.
Tnx, i got error 22 and 21. And i have order a new belt and a working game so i can test it.
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