The Legend of Zelda is the first game in Nintendo's successful Zelda series. It was initially released in the United States on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back in 1987. This game included two separate quests with a large overworld, eighteen dungeons in total (nine in each quest), clever puzzles, creative enemies and a large number of items to locate. Not to mention a great soundtrack and a battery back-up feature allowing you to save your progress and pick up later. The success of this title led to numerous sequels and spin-offs that appeared on the NES and other systems from Nintendo that followed it.

In 2004, The Legend of Zelda was reissued on Nintendo's portable Game Boy Advance system as part of the "Classic NES Series" line. This review will be focusing solely on that particular conversion and how it compares to its NES counterpart.

The truth is that this Game Boy Advance version is at least as good, if not better, than the original NES cartridge. This port of The Legend of Zelda is picture perfect when compared to the NES version. The original graphics, music and gameplay are 100% intact. Everything you remember is there, including the second quest which you can either earn by finishing the game or you can access it from the outset by naming your character "Zelda." What are the drawbacks? Well there is nothing new added to this port. No extras, no bells-and-whistles, no graphical or musical enhancements. However this is the way it should be. There is no reason to mess with a good thing.

What makes this Game Boy Advance rendition better than the original NES release? To start, it is the simple fact that you can now play The Legend of Zelda on the go using a portable. The top-down view and screen-to-screen travel translates very well to the Game Boy Advance, since you can clearly see everything going on around you. Another benefit of this particular port is that the saving system is a little more convenient if you need to quickly abandon your game. On the NES, you could only save when Link died or by plugging in a second controller. On the Game Boy Advance, you can simply access the subscreen and input a brief button sequence to save your game at any point.

Something else about The Legend of Zelda that allows it to translate well to a portable is the amount of hours needed to finish the game. The later games in the Zelda series became more complicated and required a lot more time to finish than this first installment. The Legend of Zelda can easily be beaten by a seasoned gamer within a single day, assuming they know where everything is. As a result, this is a great pick-up-and-play title for your Game Boy Advance if you need to kill 15-20 minutes during a lunch break, at a doctor's office or anywhere else where a Game Boy Advance might come in handy. Plus the Game Boy Advance is a great format to introduce a younger or more casual gamer to The Legend of Zelda if they have never played the original game before. It is certainly more convenient to use this portable version on your Game Boy Advance than hooking up the NES.

The Game Boy Advance port of The Legend of Zelda is highly recommended to anybody with interest in the Zelda series. This purchase is a no-brainer.

Before anyone suspects that I am picking on Zelda, note that I am not! After looking at Evil Lincoln's review, I do agree that charging over 20 bucks for a retro game with same graphics and gameplay is wrong. Unlike Mario Allstars for SNES, Zelda never remade any games from the NES/SNES vaults until about a few years ago, and what pissed me off is that they did it, one at a time with sky-high prices. I also heard that this and Zelda II remakes did'nt do any improvments with the graphics or effects like Link To The Past did (Four Swords) or the re-retroed NES/SNES Mario Games (e.g. All Stars, Mario Advance Series)!

I grew up on this game and its one of the best NES games ever and I can write a three page review on why. Nintendo decided to re-retro this game to give a younger target market a history lesson on how it was started (back to the old school), because they know little to nothing about the NES, meaning that they don't know how they were getting ripped off. Gamers aged 21 to about 40 who actually owned the NES in the past refused to get suckered in. Many of us still have our NES (if we don't anymore, then we can get the complete system off eBay or amazon for as low as $25). Nintendo was'nt thinking when they released this for GBA with the same graphics and gameplay as NES version. If you still have your NES, do not waste $23 on this game when you can get the original NES version for 1/3 of that on eBay and here. I know this is a Gameboy game that you can take anywhere, but wait for the price to go down to less than $10, if you want it for the GBA that bad.

I bought this for my nephew so am sure he loved it. He has one for the Sega system.