Link obtains a piece of the Triforce in a dungeon in The Legend of Zelda for NES.
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Carrie Lambertsen
Published 57 minutes ago
Carrie is a Senior Writer at ScreenRant who previously managed Geek to Geek Media and wrote for SwitchRPG. She is particularly knowledgeable when it comes to WoW, Diablo, and cozy games. She has a passion for supporting the indies and always enjoys sharing her passions with others through her writing.
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The Legend of Zelda is easily one of the most iconic and recognizable video game franchises, and it all started with its original game back in 1987. Whether you've been lucky enough to experience that classic NES title or not, you may be surprised to find that one of its most obvious and helpful features was a brand-new addition to the gaming community at the time, and shaped the way nearly every game since then has worked.
The original Legend of Zelda game, with its shiny golden cartridge and maze-like world, which had my brother and me drawing maps on graph paper, is a nostalgia-filled piece of gaming history. There are many ways that Link and his adventure to save Princess Zelda have inspired games ever since, but one simple game mechanic truly changed the way video games worked from that moment on.
The Legend Of Zelda Had Multiple Save Files
Was The First To Introduce Battery Back-up Saving
Making a new save file in the original Legend of Zelda game
Despite being one of the best NES games of all time, unless you're a speedrunner or a very patient and dedicated player, The Legend of Zelda is too long to be completed in one gaming session. Though some games had used a password method of saving, that also wasn't practical for this large adventure.
Therefore, The Legend of Zelda offered a unique mechanic of saving directly onto the cartridge, something that was unheard of for the time. Zelda uses an SRAM chip that keeps the saved progress even after the console is turned off, using a coin cell battery. This is why if you purchase a used game cartridge, you get to snoop at old save files from the previous owner.
Another nice feature is that there are three save files for players to use in this classic version of Zelda. Although my brother and I typically played together, this allowed our dad to still have his own save file to enjoy the game without us getting in his way.
The save menu in The Legend of Zelda for the NES will only pop up when your character dies. However, the more sneaky players also discovered that if you pause the game using Start and then, on a second controller, hold Up while pressing A, you would open a secret screen to save whenever you needed.
Everyone Takes Saving Games For Granted Now
Autosaves And Easily Saving At Any Moment Are Common
Loading screen of save files for Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
These days, it's almost unheard of for a video game not to allow a player to save their progress. Even just having to wait until you can reach a checkpoint to save can cause many of us to get frustrated or annoyed, particularly in some of the extra challenging games like Hollow Knight: Silksong.
In most video games nowadays, in addition to allowing players to save the game frequently, there are autosaves to give a little bit of a backup for when we inevitably forget to save for several hours. There are so many games that would be all but impossible without modern save functions, so thank you to The Legend of Zelda for making gaming even more fun.
The Legend of Zelda
10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Action-Adventure Released February 21, 1986 ESRB E For Everyone Due To Mild Fantasy Violence Developer(s) Nintendo EAD Publisher(s) Nintendo Engine Havok Franchise The Legend of Zelda
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