BotW is closer to the 1986 Legend of Zelda than any other Zelda game

In Kyoto in the mid-1980s, Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka and their team designed two very different games: one a headlong, linear obstacle course, the other a nonlinear maze of exploration. Super Mario Bros. became a phenomenon; The Legend of Zelda sold far fewer copies but set out a bold, unruly vision for playable adventure.

Later Zelda sequels tended to channel that spirit into more ordered designs, using gear-gating systems to shepherd player progress. 2017’s Breath of the Wild ripped up many of those conventions, returning to Zelda’s original nonlinear philosophy and outselling its predecessors by a wide margin.

It even became the first Zelda to outsell a contemporary Mario game, a sign that the world was finally ready for the kind of open adventure Miyamoto and Tezuka imagined 31 years prior. The 1986 game itself feels startlingly spare.

botw, zelda, shigeru miyamoto, takashi tezuka, super mario, 1986, open adventure, nonlinear design, gear gating, nintendo