Having the original gold cartridge in your hand was like carrying around a piece of the Triforce itself. I miss the cross-emblazoned shield and minimalistic game design the early titles had. Having grown up in the forest with a wooden sword, pretending that bushes were foul enemies, this titles "spoke" to me like no other game had. I knew I couldn't be a Bionic Commando, or Contra soldier, but I could BE Link.

This is THE game that made me feel that story telling was going to be a possibility in the future. Everyone in the schoolyard talked about this game. The save feature alone makes it rate higher. While I think LttP is a better game and is my favourite Zelda, this is the game that started it all and should be viewed as such.

Yeah, this game pretty much cemented me as a lifelong gamer. I loved my NES and many of the games back then, but Legend of Zelda (and probably Metroid also) were experiences to me, and not just games. 

This was also the first game I ever used a "hint" book (before there were extensive print guides) to beat. Of course as I recall the information in it was scant and I still struggled to finish the last few dungeons. I loved this game. In fact, there isn't any other franchise in which I played every subsequent release and or spin-off title. 

...is what I'll always remember about the era. No internet, no GameFAQs. Just people finding stuff on their own and letting their friends in on it.

I'll never forget first restarting the game once I realized the old lady sold medicine after getting the note. (Got the medicine from the old dudes instead of the extra hearts. Bad idea.)

is the secret.

Oh, the hours of my youth, gone...

"Even death and game over screens in Zelda communicated vital information a player could learn from and apply on their next tour through Hyrule."

Plz explain?!  I don't remember this, or I was too stupid to grock anything useful from the game over or death screens.  Are you being arty, here?  :P 

" "GaNNoN" -- whose name Nintendo used to spell with two n's back then, instead of one"   

Great article.  Love this new breed of VG journalist: the one that is 25-35 NOW and remembers these games the way I (27) remember them, from a child's perspective, which is quite a shift from at the time, being a child and reading about videogames from adult perspectives in GamePlayers, EGM, Next Gen, etc etc.

These are strange times indeed to be a gamer!  Cheers! 

...game.  I remember beating this one with a friend in elementary school on our way to a camping trip.  We played the entire game on the T.V. in his parents' van.  That is a great memory.  

Was it better or more influential than A Link to the Past?  I don't think so.  It was more revolutionary, almost solely for the fact that it introduced the "save game" feature it seems, but LttP improved upon the "prototype" tenfold and gave us the Zelda flavor we all know today.  

Great article, Jose.  I never caught that about the two N's in "Gannon."   

Do well at this game. I have it on the 3DS virtual console.  It is very hard without the map that came with it.  That being said this game was revolutionary.  It was the first action game with a scrolling overhead map.  Probrably the first with dungeons linked from an overworld.  Everything about this game was revolutionary.  If you look at the games at the time on the NES most were simple single screen affairs or side scrollers.  I guess there were some prior games that took the formula like Adventure and the sword quest games but none with the scope of this game and the large numbers of items and bosses. I'm going to try and play this again now on my 3DS XL to see if it plays better on it. Although I may need some GameFAQ help.

Ever since they made the jump to 3D, Zelda games have failed to live up to the greatness of the first three titles. A bit more exploration, a bit less handholding, and some reworking of a formula that's gotten a bit stale could make the next Zelda the best one in a long time.

funny how the second most important Zelda creator never beat this game.  He didn't really care for it, and thinks it was super hard.  I never beat it either!  But LTTP was the game that got him hooked though, which explains a lot.  Link to the Past is almost like the first true Zelda game, with the NES pair being the prototypes.  But really, this NES original is a whole different beast in many respects.  Like the author said, it does require a lot of experimentation and....friends. 

I feel that's how a lot of the Nintendo experiences used to be, especially without being created with the Internet and Casuals in mind.  The myriad of random secrets in SMW and SMB3 and Zelda and Metroid show this.  Even Pokemon experiences were mostly enhanced by kids socializing and sharing their experiences of encountering different beasts in different places.  Zelda typified this.  

That music, that save system, and that second quest.  Zelda brought a lot to the table.  At the Zelda symphony last week in San Jose, the host pulled out a Gold Cartridge of the original NES game, and the whole audience stared like it was some holy artifact....or maybe that was just me

...when I first rented this game. I beat a couple of dungeons and thought it was pretty cool. Took it back to the rental place and a week went by. A burning need to play it again gradually built over that week until I begged my parents to buy it for me!