The game that invented open-world exploration. The Legend of Zelda gave players an enormous world to discover and secrets to uncover without hand-holding, trusting them to figure it out themselves.
Complete The Legend of Zelda franchise guide — all 5 games in chronological order.
The game that invented open-world exploration. The Legend of Zelda gave players an enormous world to discover and secrets to uncover without hand-holding, trusting them to figure it out themselves.
Widely considered the greatest action-adventure game ever made. A Link to the Past perfected the top-down Zelda formula with its Light World/Dark World duality, 12 intricate dungeons, and a richly realized Hyrule.
A deeply personal and surprisingly melancholic Zelda adventure that sees Link stranded on the mysterious Koholint Island. Link's Awakening transcends its Game Boy limitations with clever design, a memorable cast, and one of the most emotionally resonant endings in Nintendo history.
Widely considered the greatest video game ever made, Ocarina of Time translated the Zelda formula into three dimensions with such perfection that it redefined what action-adventure games could achieve. Its Z-targeting system, time-travel narrative, and extraordinary dungeon design set standards that remain unsurpassed.
Nintendo's most psychologically dark Zelda game dropped Link into the doomed world of Termina, where a moon falls every three days, time loops endlessly, and the inhabitant cast need his help before everything ends. Majora's Mask is a meditation on grief, identity, and impermanence unlike anything else in the franchise.