30 years ago today, the video game “The Legend of Zelda” was released in Japan.
Here are some things you may not have known about the game.
First off, the playable character is named Link, not Zelda.
Link is a boy who ends up on a quest to gather eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom in order to rescue Princess Zelda from her kidnapper.
Along the way he fights several different types of creatures to find his way to nine underground dungeons. Each dungeon contains a piece of the Triforce. In the final dungeon, Death Mountain, he battles the boss Ganon.
If he defeats Ganon, he rescues Zelda and restores peace to the land.
The same game developers were working on “Super Mario Bros.” at the same time. This makes the vast differences between the games even more remarkable. “The Legend of Zelda” features an open world that Link explores at his leisure. “Super Mario Bros.” features linear gameplay that focuses more on completing the level than exploring.
According to a story on 1Up.com, the musical theme for the overworld scenes was written in one day after composer Koji Kondo realized that the music he planned to use, “Bolero” By Maurice Ravel, remained under copyright protection.
The Japanese version of the game was the first game available for Nintendo’s Disk System peripheral for the Famicon, the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was released in the United States about a year and a half later. The American version was the first game that had a save-game function due to the battery-powered RAM on the cartridge.
More than 6 1/2 million copies of the game have been sold. It has been selected as the best game of all-time by several publications.
Our question: Who is the character of Princess Zelda named after?
Today is Founders Day in the Boy Scouts, Independence Day in St. Lucia, George Washington’s Birthday, National Cook a Sweet Potato Day and National Margarita Day.
It’s the birthday of Senator Ted Kennedy, basketball legend Julius Erving, and “Saturday Night Live” announcer Don Pardo.
This week in 1986, the top song in the U.S. was “How Will I Know” by Whitney Houston.
The No. 1 movie was “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” while the novel “Lie Down with Lions” by Ken Follett topped the New York Times Bestsellers list.
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Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_22
http://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1986/hot-100
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1986_box_office_number-one_films_in_the_United_States