Today, August 22nd, marks the 27th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda’s release in North America.
When it arrived on the Nintendo Entertainment System it had already been out in Japan for over a year on the Famicom Disk System peripheral. The add-on used floppy disks that players had to take to kiosks and write games to the media as a rental.
Released on a gold cartridge in the West, The Legend of Zelda was the first home video game to use an internal battery for save data.
It went on to sell over 6.5 million copies and was the first NES game to sell over a million.
Nintendo recently revealed its next Zelda game for Wii U, simply called The Legend of Zelda for now. It’s currently scheduled to be released next year.