The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo’s greatest and longest working franchises. Every Nintendo console has acquired no less than one mainline entry or spinoff, however although The Legend of Zelda is a family title, its title has brought about lots of confusion through the years.
For those that have by no means performed a Legend of Zelda recreation, the sequence’ predominant character is a younger boy (or man, relying on the entry) named Link. He is, with out fail, a mute hero with bottomless pockets and much more bottomless braveness. And but regardless of being the face of the franchise, each recreation is called after one Princess Zelda, whose position, notably within the early video games, usually boils all the way down to “damsel in distress” (she’s gotten higher materials in more moderen installments, fortunately). Gamers can solely play as Zelda in 5 titles, all of them spin-offs, but she at all times will get prime billing since her title is within the title, not Link’s. Why?
Before we proceed, it’s in all probability a good suggestion to catch readers up on some frequent recreation developer logic: Titles ought to relate again to an vital recreation characteristic or side. Otherwise how will audiences join the title to the expertise? Occasionally, video games flip into franchises and evolve previous the weather that helped create their names. For occasion, Resident Evil began off in an evil residence however expanded to zombie-ridden cities, but regardless of the shift in surroundings, the sequence by no means deserted its title. The Legend of Zelda defies this logic, which has resulted in quite a lot of unlucky instances of mistaken identification.
It’s no secret that The Legend of Zelda is the brainchild of legendary Nintendo artistic lead Shigeru Miyamoto. Sure, the sport was a crew effort, however Miyamoto got here up with the sport’s preliminary idea and its give attention to exploration. He was additionally the developer who gave the sport its title. But as an alternative of naming it after the protagonist or the fictional land it passed off in, Miyamoto took inspiration from… an American novelist of all sources.
