14 mainline entries1986 — today
The Legend of Zelda
A princess, a kingdom, and forty years of reinvention.
The story of the series
Born in 1986 from a boyhood exploration of the hills above Kyoto, The Legend of Zelda turned the action game into a map of curiosity. An old man hands you a sword and offers no instructions — and from that single gesture, a series was born that has spent four decades teaching the medium what an adventure really is. Each era of Zelda is a thesis statement about how games should feel: the open map, the 3D transition, the motion experiment, and finally the complete surrender of control to the player. No series has reinvented itself so often while keeping its soul.
Every release
The release timeline
From the first cartridge to the latest entry — every mainline game in the The Legend of Zelda series, in the order it reached players.
- 1986 · NES
The Legend of Zelda
The first open world. No manual, no map on screen, no hand-holding — just a cave, a sword, and a kingdom drawn on graph paper.
- 1987 · NES
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
The black sheep: a side-scrolling RPG with towns, experience, and lives. The series never tried this shape again, but its NPCs and magic lingered.
- 1991 · SNES
A Link to the Past
The template. Two parallel worlds, eight dungeons, and the structure every top-down Zelda would borrow for a decade.
- 1993 · Game Boy
Link's Awakening
A dream outside the canon — strange, sad, and self-aware, proving Zelda could be intimate and weird.
- 1998 · N64
Ocarina of Time
The 3D blueprint. Z-targeting, context buttons, and a time-travel story that taught an entire industry how to move in three dimensions.
- 2000 · N64
Majora's Mask
A three-day apocalypse loop. Dark, experimental, and built from scraps in a single year — the series at its most fearless.
- 2002 · GameCube
The Wind Waker
A cel-shaded ocean that divided fans at launch and aged into a classic. Sailing as a mood, exploration as poetry.
- 2006 · GameCube / Wii
Twilight Princess
A darker, more realistic Ocarina. The wolf form and the gloom leaned into the epic, away from the playful.
- 2007 · DS
Phantom Hourglass
A touch-controlled sequel to Wind Waker, shrinking the ocean adventure to a stylus and a handheld.
- 2009 · DS
Spirit Tracks
Trains replace boats. The handheld line keeps experimenting with movement and control schemes.
- 2011 · Wii
Skyward Sword
Motion controls as combat. The origin story of the Master Sword — and, for many, the moment the formula began to feel heavy.
- 2013 · 3DS
A Link Between Worlds
A return to A Link to the Past’s map, but you can merge into walls. Rent items in any order — a quiet revolution in dungeon design.
- 2017 · Switch / Wii U
Breath of the Wild
The great unshackling. Climb anything, go anywhere, and let physics and curiosity replace the checklist. A series reborn.
- 2023 · Switch
Tears of the Kingdom
Build, fuse, and ascend through the sky and depths. The sandbox philosophy pushed to its joyful extreme.
How it changed
What changed across releases
The The Legend of Zelda series never stood still. Here is how it reinvented itself, era by era.
The open map (1986–1991)
The first two games established a world you explored on your own terms. A Link to the Past then codified the dungeon-and-item loop that defined the series for fifteen years.
The 3D translation (1998–2000)
Ocarina of Time invented the vocabulary of 3D action — target-locking, context-sensitive buttons, a hub world — and Majora’s Mask immediately used that vocabulary to tell a stranger, sadder story.
The style pendulum (2002–2011)
Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword swung between cartoon, realism, and motion control, each reacting to the last. The formula grew more guided and cinematic, and fatigue set in.
The systemic rebirth (2017–today)
Breath of the Wild tore out the checklist and replaced it with physics, chemistry, and total freedom. Tears of the Kingdom added construction. Zelda stopped telling you where to go and started trusting you entirely.
