Portable Pedigree: The Legend of Zelda

Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series has shifted in excess of 50 million units since it first appeared in 1986 and to many gamers represents one of the most consistently excellent video game franchises in existence. The fact that the lead characters showcase ears pointier than your average Lord of the Rings protagonist is merely a bonus.

During the history of this illustrious series we’ve seen Link - the ever-present hero of the Zelda universe - venture onto portable system several times, and each entry has retained the brilliance associated with the home console editions, which by rights should make this one of the most positive Portable Pedigree features we’ve done thus far.

Read on for a detailed game-by-game breakdown of each legendary instalment.

Link’s first excursion on a portable format followed hot on the heels of 1991’s superlative SNES entry Link to the Past and Nintendo somehow managed to take the appealing visual style of the 16-bit game and shoehorn it into the humble hardware of the Game Boy.

Thankfully, the monochrome graphics present no obstacle to Zelda’s intrinsic charm – the sprites are packed with character, the locations are both detailed and varied and the entire visual package makes an incredibly positive impression, even by today’s standards.

Sonically, it’s also a top-notch experience, with the Game Boy’s usually painful audio hardware being coaxed into producing many memorable tunes.

It’s no exaggeration to call Link’s Awakening the first truly epic handheld RPG; incredibly, many fans consider it to be superior to Link to the Past, which is about as high a commendation as you can possibly give.

To coincide with the launch of the Game Boy Color Nintendo took the original Link’s Awakening and spruced it up with colour graphics and an all-new dungeon exclusive to this particular version.

To hardcore fans it was something of a disappointment, as many had been optimistically expecting an all-new Zelda adventure to celebrate the release of the new hardware.

However, for those new to the Game Boy, this was an awe-inspiring introduction to the franchise and is the definitive version of what is unquestionably one of the finest portable games ever produced.

Those fans hankering for an all-new GBC Zelda had to endure another 3 years of waiting before Nintendo finally relented and gave them what they wanted.

In fact, the company went one better and actually released two original adventures, both built using the same game engine.

Oracle of Ages focuses on time travel whereas Oracle of Seasons showcases backgrounds that alter according to the seasons. The quest in each game is different, although the two could be linked using passwords.

It was also possible to play one game as the ‘sequel’ to the other; this would result in slight differences to the main quest as well as a ‘complete’ ending once both titles had been triumphed over.

Interestingly, the development of these two titles was handled not by Nintendo but by Capcom and Flagship – a small studio established via the joint efforts of Nintendo, Sega and Capcom. Flagship would go on to produce other entries in the series.

The launch of the Game Boy Advance in 2001 finally gave gamers a console that was capable of matching the legendary SNES – a fact that wasn’t lost on Nintendo, as the company quickly began recoding a series of classics 16-bit titles for the machine, of which Link to the Past was just one.

Despite the fact that the original game was over a decade old in 2002, it succeeded in making 99 per cent of the GBA’s catalogue look painfully amateur in comparison. Unsurprisingly, many Zelda aficionados class it as the apex of the franchise.

Casting an eye over it today reveals a piece of software that is worthy of being branded ‘timeless’. It hasn’t lost a single ounce of its charm and brilliance, and is a truly essential videogame in anyone’s book.

As if giving GBA owners one of the finest Zelda games available wasn’t enough, Nintendo also included Four Swords, which was a multiplayer adventure with all-new visuals. By linking up with other GBA owners it was possible to jump into various dungeons where team work was essential to progression.

Four Swords would later get a full-blown sequel in the shape of the GameCube title Four Swords Adventures, in which players could use the Game Boy Advance as a controller thanks to a link-up cable bundled with the game.

Realising that it was sitting on a goldmine of brilliant 8-bit titles Nintendo decided to release a range of ‘NES Classics’ on the Game Boy Advance in 2004, and the original Legend of Zelda was one such game picked up for publication.

A perfectly emulated version of the 1986 title, it looks painfully dated when placed alongside games such as Link to the Past, but you’ll be surprised by how much of the core gameplay was in place all those years ago.

It won’t take you long to complete but it’s jolly good fun while it lasts and is well worth investigating, if only to see where this highly esteemed line of videogames started.

Also part of the ‘NES Classics’ range was this 1987 sequel. Of all the games in the Zelda linage, The Adventure of Link is perhaps the most contentious. Fans are still bitterly divided on its merit; many regard it as a brave move by Nintendo to take the series in a slightly different direction but others view it as a pointless and abortive step backwards.

The action is viewed primarily from a side-on 2D perspective, which makes the game feel more like a traditional platformer than an action-RPG (although when moving between towns the game adopts a top-down view).

Zelda II shares more in common with the Sega Master System title Wonderboy III: The Dragon’s Trap than it does with other games in the Zelda range, but it’s still head and shoulders above most other NES releases from the same era and is certainly worth rediscovering in its GBA guise.

The next portable Zelda instalment again saw Flagship and Capcom taking the reins and borrowed visual inspiration from Four Swords, adopting a soft and tremendously appealing graphical style.

The biggest innovation here was the introduction of the titular Minish Cap, a sentient piece of headgear that grants Link the ability to shrink in size, thus opening up many possibilities for puzzles; for example, a seemingly inconsequential patch of grass is turned into a massive jungle when Link is reduced in stature.

The game is literally packed with content and is full of rewards for the player willing to seek out all of its hidden secrets, which is a positive thing as the actual quest itself isn’t as long as you might expect when compared to other Zelda instalments.

Still, as a swansong for the GBA (the DS was launched not long after The Minish Cap hit store shelves) you can’t really get a game better than this.

Nintendo made some pretty bold claims when it was promoting the release of Phantom Hourglass: much was made of the fact that the game would utilise an entirely stylus-driven interface and boast fully 3D visuals.

Those members of the video game media that were keen to see Nintendo come unstuck gleefully sharpened their knives, but (predictably) the game turned out to be nothing short of amazing.

The initially preposterous touchscreen controls actually work like a dream, even managing to become more blissfully intuitive than a traditional ‘pad and buttons’ input.

Also, despite the graphical limitations of the host hardware, the visuals are sublimely realised and successfully replicate the cute cel-shaded style of the GameCube release The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

Like its home console forerunner, the game takes place mainly at sea, with the player moving from island to island in an attempt to uncover the mystery behind a ghostly pirate vessel.

Those of you unimpressed with the ocean-going tomfoolery of the GameCube game will probably find the lack of traditional land-based exploration irksome, but for everyone else this is an essential DS purchase.