Order of release

[Ryuzaki]

What order were the Legend of Zelda games released in? I can remember the first five (Legend of Zelda, LoZ II: Links Adventure, Loz: Link to the Past, LoZ: Links Awakening, LoZ: OoT), but after that I don't know any. I'm not a major Zelda fan (only played LOZ:LA and LoZ:PH; LA was awesome, PH put me to sleep... literally), but I'd like to play them anyway, just to see what the hell the hypes all about.

 

[Racheal]

Just going with the initial releases, I pulled this from 2 mins of research on gamefaqs:

Zelda: 1987
Zelda II: 1988
Link to the Past: 1991
Link's Awakening: 1993
Ocarina of Time: 1998
Majora's Mask: 2000
Oracle of Ages/Seasons: 2001
Wind Waker: 2002
Four Swords: 2004
Minish Cap: 2004
Twilight Princess: 2006
Phantom Hourglass: 2007

 

[Prexus]

The true Zelda experience comes from Legend of Zelda (NES), Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES), Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask (N64) and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GCN/Wii)

The other games, while good, are often sidetracks from the core games to test game-play and story concepts that don't mesh well with the core story.

 

[Cruelty]

a link to the past is the real deal. the rest of them are pretty boring.

OoT is okay if you've got 4 months of spare time to play it. it's a documented fact that the game never ends.

 

[Dopples]

a link to the past is the real deal. the rest of them are pretty boring.

OoT is okay if you've got 4 months of spare time to play it. it's a documented fact that the game never ends.

Wow, you must really suck at OoT, since I've seen people who've never played the game before beat it in maybe, 3 days.

 

[OdioOmnus]

a link to the past is the real deal. the rest of them are pretty boring.

OoT is okay if you've got 4 months of spare time to play it. it's a documented fact that the game never ends.

I dunno, I got bored of pretty much all Zelda games including Link to the Past, except for Oracle of Seasons/Ages which I played when I was about 12 or 13. I guess I'm not playing them in the correct mindset or something cause they all seem to play exactly the same between the 2D and 3D engines.

 

[Prexus]

The significant difference between the 2D and 3D versions is the combat and the level of difficulty of the dungeon puzzles, that's about it.

 

[Marcus]

The true Zelda experience comes from Legend of Zelda (NES), Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES), Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask (N64) and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GCN/Wii)

The other games, while good, are often sidetracks from the core games to test game-play and story concepts that don't mesh well with the core story.

where's wind waker, man?  that's the only 3D zelda other than ocarina that i actually enjoyed (although i slowly warmed up to majora's mask which had a lot going for it but did it kind of poorly).  wind waker was basically THE END APOCALYPSE of the zelda universe and that was awesome.

but yeah, difficulty took a huge hit in the 3D zeldas.  enemies taking off 1/4 hearts?  WTF is this?

 

[Prexus]

Wind Waker was.. well. It was. That's about the only nice thing I can say about it. It was clearly a Zelda game, following all the rules and guidelines set up by all of its predecessors but.. That's about as far as it goes.

 

[Marcus]

you mean it was different from every zelda game thus you were put off by it???

once i warmed up to the sailing, wind waker instantly became my favorite zelda from the art style down to the level design which had a lot more focus on environmental puzzles as opposed to "see block?  push it."