Liking or even loving The Legend of Zelda series is not a
unique claim on the internet. For those of you unaware (side note: how the hell
did you end up on a blog about video games?), The Legend of Zelda series is one
of the most popular and well-received game franchises of all time. On the list
of best-selling game franchises it’s currently only 20th place [source].
I know, surprised me too, but I’d guess quantity has a lot to do with it, as
well as games selling more in general as time goes on. Since these games started
coming out in the mid-80s, before aggregate sites like Metacritic existed (for
better or worse), it’s impossible to get average review scores across the whole
series. However, I would be willing to bet money that if you could take average
review scores from each Zelda game and then averaged the whole series, it would
be better received than any other game franchise (with at least a few entries,
because averages) in history.
Put another way, I don’t
think there is a single series of video games more universally beloved than The
Legend of Zelda. There are series that sell more, series that get more
publicity, and plenty of individual games that score as well as it. But many of
the other biggest game series are divisive. Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, Grand
Theft Auto, Sonic the Hedgehog...these are all series of games that have people
who really like them and some who really despise them. But I’ve never really
seen people hate The Legend of Zelda.
Oh, such people exist, sure. No need to show me examples, I’ve been on the
internet before. But at worst, people typically just seem ambivalent towards
it. And at best people really, really love
it.
Why am I explaining this
to you? I’m telling you because I love The
Legend of Zelda. It is quite possibly my favorite game series of all time. I am
a person who owns and has played several hundred games, many of them regarded
as fantastic masterpieces. And yet if you asked me what my favorite games of
all time were, I guarantee that multiple Zelda
games would be near the top of the list. But despite this, I haven’t actually talked
about Zelda games much at all in my time writing for this blog. Why is that?
Was it alien
tampering? I bet it was alien tampering. It’s the only rational explanation.
