The Legend of Zelda is one of the greatest series in videogame history, with nearly every game being a classic in its own right. So, mostly just to get the internet really upset about something, we asked you to vote for your favorite Zelda game of all time. And after nearly 200,000 votes (you can see the full results here), you (well, a bunch of people who voted, which may or may not include you) have decided the top 10 games in the Legend of Zelda series, which has done pretty well for a series starring a kid who never speaks and doesn't even have his name in the title. So take a break from trying to figure out how the new Link to the Past game will affect the Zelda Timeline and read about the top 10 Zelda games of all-time.
0. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Somewhat narrowly beating out the Oracle games (also developed by Capcom), comes the Honey, I Shrunk the Link entry of the Zelda series, The Minish Cap. The basic twist of the game was Link could put on a hat that turned him into an ant-sized hero as he went around searching for medallion halves and doing somersaults as he rolled around Hyrule.
The game is notable for being the first entirely new Zelda game produced for the Game Boy Advance, and one of the few Zelda games to be developed by someone other than Nintendo. Other than that, The Minish Cap is mostly just a colorful and well-made entry in the Zelda series with some solid puzzle-solving, although a Rick Moranis cameo would have been totally welcome.
9. The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords
The idea of a multiplayer Zelda title was once simply a fool's dream – the Zelda series was meant to be played alone, with your only companions being a bunch of junk food and an NPC fairy that wouldn't shut up. Then Four Swords came around – allowing four GBA's to connect and play out an adventure with four multi-colored Links battling through randomly-designed dungeons.
The result is one of the most unique games in Zelda history (a series not particularly well-known for really unique entries) – since you HAD to have at least one other player to play the game. Granted, this version also came with A Link to the Past, so that helps sweeten the deal, but the Four Swords portion is probably the most interesting, if only because it gave GBA owners a reason to have a link cable other than Pokemon battles.
8. The Legend of Zelda
The original, the first, the Legend of Zelda that started it all (well, unless you're real into the Zelda Timeline, in which case this game is actually one of the last in the series). While not as deep or complex as later games, the groundwork is all beautifully laid out here. And it can't be underplayed how unbelievably huge this game was at the time – it was one of the first games to have actual save files on the cartridge. Imagine having to start this game over EVERY TIME you played it. On top of that, the gold cartridge was a pretty neat feature.
All that being said, one thing that is very notable about this game was how hard it was (both figurativelyAND literally, since it could take a lot of whacks against a table while you blew into it and prayed to god to make it work). The game doesn't hold your hand at all – some creepy old man who lives in a cave gives you a sword and you're on your own. No directions of how to navigate the maze-like environment, no helpful hints about how to use your items, and and no explanation about how the hell you're supposed to know which part of a wall to blow up.
Then again, no companions were screaming in your ear all the time either, so maybe it evens out.Next
7. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
One of the weirder entries in the series, and one of the best: Link's Awakening stranded Link on an island to wake up a psychic whale/fish that was creating the entire island in its dream (which, on an unrelated note, would have been a better ending to Lost). What's truly incredible about the game is that it is a full-fledged, huge Zelda game that somehow fit into the Game Boy's extremely-limited software capabilities.
Also, this is the game that introduced fishing into the Zelda series, leading to the deaths of untold hundreds of innocents as Link fished away the days while Ganon and his minions led Hyrule through multiple reigns of darkness.
6. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
The most recent Zelda game met with a lot of criticism – over Fi (who somehow surpassed Navi in the eyes of many as the most annoying companion) and the motion controls (that achieved 1:1 with the Wiimote), amongst others – as well as a lot of acclaim. It's not too surprising, considering this game came out in celebration of the Zelda series' 25th anniversary – after 25 years of some of the most consistently incredible and genre-defining adventure games, things start to feel a little dull, so you have to complain a little (although, really, the tutorial portion of the game makes you long for the days when a crazy old man would just hand some kid he never met a sword and shoos you out into a nightmare labyrinth crawling with monsters). 25 years is a long time for Nintendo to be pumping out games of this quality on a regular basis, which is an impressive feat in and of itself.
Still, there was a 100% chance that Fi was annoying as hell.
5. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
A lot of people on the internet were angry when Wind Waker came out. I mean, "just watched an episode of the Zelda cartoon series"-levels of pissed, as many felt that Wind Waker was "too cartoony" for their tastes. They thought that Ocarina of Time was an indicator that – as console graphics got more and more powerful – the Zelda games would get more realistic and dark. So, in attempting to go in the complete opposite direction of Wind Waker, Nintendo answered with Twilight Princess.
Twilight Princess is (despite having most tween-sounding title of any Zelda game) probably the darkest Zelda game, in both the literal and figurative sense – there's a lot of actual darkness in the game (as in "the absence of light"). Despite the commitment to realistic graphics and a darker storyline, the game was still recognizably Zelda through and through, with plenty of par-for-the-course weirdness like Link turning into a wolf and a strange being named Midna riding him and acting as a more personable Navi replacement.
It's also notable for being released for both the Gamecube and the Wii at the same time, since the Wii was in desperate need of decent launch titles at the time. Unfortunately, the game was developed with Link holding the sword in his left hand (since he's, ya know, always left-handed), which presented a problem for the Wii, since the vast majority of players would use their right hands with the Wiimote motion controls. Nintendo's decision of how to deal with this was to literally flip the entire game, as if you were playing it in a mirror. For a game series so devoted to puzzle-solving, it's hard not to be impressed by such a stupidly brilliant solution.
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