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The Legend of Zelda series is a lot of things to a lot of people. Almost everyone has an opinion on it; what makes it great, when it peaked, or when it lost its way. Which version of Zelda is the best and what is going on with its branching timeline now that we’ve seen both the beginning and end of Hyrule. As someone who has played nearly every entry in the series, I’m still captivated by the gameplay, the music, and the scale of The Legend of Zelda. Nearly 40 years ago, it changed what I thought was possible in a video game.

This isn’t to say that there wasn’t great music before The Legend of Zelda landed on American shores in 1987. No one can deny how brilliantly catchy the Mario theme is, but nothing could compare to how I felt loading up the golden cartridge of The Legend of Zelda and hearing that original opening theme fire up. As much as anything else, it offers the promise of adventure and hints of mourning. There is joy and wonder in that theme that no other game had managed to deliver at that time.

I remember being a kid, too young to really be playing video games and certainly too young to really understand what I was doing, sitting and listening to that song. It was the moment I fell in love with video games. I’d played sporadically up until then, mostly just grabbing random NES games from my stepdad’s collection and popping in the cartridge for something to do, but this was the first time I had a visceral, emotional reaction to a game. My four-year-old self sat there and, without realizing it, a whole new world opened up to me. 

That feeling of high adventure continued through the rest of the game, which was revolutionary for its size at the time. The map felt endless; intimidatingly so for a kid like me, and I never got very far into The Legend of Zelda until I was much older and figured out how puzzles worked. Still, I spent hours walking from one end of Hyrule to the other, not trying to advance the plot or save the princess but just exploring. Taking the world in and marveling at the sights and sounds delivered to me.

Maybe that is why I loved Breath of the Wild – and later, Tears of the Kingdom – so much; it felt like the closest we’ve had to that unbridled freedom from the first game. There is no pesky fairy urging us on to the next objective. There is just an open, wild, untamed land, full of mystery and danger and treasure to find. It was the first game that I felt captured that sense of wonder and encouraged us to explore the world in the same way. The music helped with that, delivering notes of the original soundtrack without it being the focus. Suddenly I was back in my old bedroom, exploring Hyrule, as though three decades hadn’t passed.

Fast forward to the present day and I can draw a direct line between The Legend of Zelda and my current obsession with gaming, one that both occupies my waking thoughts and has become my profession. Since then, I’ve played nearly every entry in the series. It has become a defining part of me. I know that later entries have improved on the formula presented in that first game; there are better narratives and more engaging gameplay and, yes, even better music, but I wouldn’t be here, with a sprawling collection of video games and consoles, without that first Legend of Zelda game. 

It opened my eyes to the potential of video games as art and gave me a glimpse of what the future held for the industry.

You don't need to beat the game to prepare for the next one—here are all the major new and upcoming games coming our way.