The Legend of Zelda

     The first installment of this prolific series has had long lasting effects.


     I remember when I first received the game.  It was donated from one of my father's friends.  I can't be sure now who it was, and the mystery of this previous owner only added to my sense of purpose.  The cartridge was silver and relucent, so starkly different from the muted gray of every other game I owned.  And inside the weathered box was a map, the signs of use in the wrinkles and tears mended with stotch tape.     Most importantly, there were notes scattered around the map: I could find meat hidden here beneath this rock; the entrance to another dungeon across this bridge, 100 rupees to buy the raft to get from that bridge to the other shore---beneath this bush.
     I was continuing an unwon quest.  The map contained every screen of the over-world landscape.  It did not show the under-world, the dungeons.  On the back of the map, there were spaces for the player to complete their own maps of these dungeons, and only a few had been filled in by this mysterious ancestor player.  It didn't matter that the notes were sometimes wrong.  This only added to my belief that I would be the one to complete this journey.
     I didn't complete the journey; not in my parent's basement anyway.  This game required an immence amount of patience, and the tasks were not always clear.  The player must be prepared to wander, and search with no results.  Added to this was the unpredictability of NES cartridges after several years of use.  My friends and I never assumed that we would play the game we wanted on the first try.  Part of the experience was getting it to work.  We would run through teh list of cleaning methods we had accumulated: No, you must blow this way; No, you must put teh cartridge in this way; No, it isn't the game---It's your system!  (That one always hurt.)
     I took my NES and games with me to my freshman dorm.  And surprise! I wasn't the only freshman nostalgic for the original Nintendo.  A friend of mine finally beat the original Mario, and I beat it myself sometime later (believing now that it was possible).  And with my map, I completed Zelda, guided by the notes of that mystery owner, the notes I left as a child, and the notes I filled in as I completed the game.