Timeline | 1987: The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda was one of the best on the NES and established one of Nintendo's greatest franchises.

The Legend of Zelda was released in North America in 1987 (after the sequel had already been released in Japan). The top-down action adventure game that focused on exploration was an awesome experience on the NES. The franchise that it would establish has become the 'hardcore' cornerstone of Nintendo's franchises.

Zelda was also important in that it was one of the first NES games with a save function, it had 3 save slots and you could save the game, shut off the system and restart from the save point later thanks to a battery powered RAM chip inside the cartridge. The game also had a 'Second Quest' after beating the game which was a more difficult version of the game with an additional dungeon.

A screenshot of Link fighting Octorock on the overworld

The basic setting of Hyrule and some of the iconic locations within Hyrule (like Death Mountain, Lake Hylia, etc.) were established in The Legend of Zelda along with the main character (Link) and his search for Zelda. The Triforce was in the game and a focus, but was split into 8 pieces instead of 3 like in most other Zelda games. The Legend of Zelda is also unique in that it did very little to lead the player and left them to discover what they needed to know on their own (you even have to find your sword in the first cave or you will die very quickly).

Later Nintendo would release a sequel to the Legend of Zelda called Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link which is the only Zelda game not officially called 'The Legend of Zelda' with a subtitle, it is also the only Zelda game that comes after the original game in the official Chronology (the rest are either prequels or come in another branch of the timeline).

A nice table of the Chronology of the Zelda series from Wikipedia shows the original Legend of Zelda second from the last in the first column.

The Legend of Zelda was the first NES game (besides the pack in Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt) to hit 1 million sales, and would eventually go on to sell over 6.5 million copies. Other Zelda games would come on every Nintendo console and handheld up until today (with the only exception being the Virtual Boy I believe)

Further Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda_(video_game)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda