The Legend of Zelda for NES is great, but how was its board game adaptation from Milton Bradley? Well, also pretty great! Let's take a look.

Transcript of the video:

Hi, everyone. Kris from Stone Age Gamer here. And welcome back to Stone Age Gaming. I ever since I was a little kid, am a massive Legend of Zelda fan. But when I was a little kid, there really were just the two games. It was Zelda and Zelda two. And obviously as I got older, things like Link's Awakening, a link to the past, etc., etc. what would happen? But when I was a little kid, it was those two games and the cartoon, and that was just about it. Well, excuse me, princess, except one of my favorite Zelda games. This which is the Legend of Zelda board game. It's a little weird, but. Well, it's awesome. And I loved it as a kid, so let's take a look. 

[00:00:41] All right. Welcome to The Legend of Zelda. This is my Legend of Zelda board game that I have had since I was a kid. I'm pretty sure my parents bought this for me at Toys R US, but I could be wrong. It doesn't matter regardless. Wow. Where do we start? Let's look at the awesome box art here. I'm going to go ahead and take the lid off to get a little closer here. So there's Princess Zelda chillin in the back there, looking very different from her appearance in an actual official artwork. And then you got link here, not too terribly far off, very different face. This whole art style is so very different, but this is the stuff that really gets me. Look at the Zola's here, These guys look so awesome. And this tactile also looks freaking great. The the detail on this picture is just so cool. And you didn't see this much. This was such a different look than the the TV show or anything else at the time. I just think it's the coolest thing ever. This box art is amazing and I don't think it's ever been repurposed for anything else. So let's see what we got cooking on the back and thing of note. 

[00:01:53] Oh, here we go. We've got a picture of the board and dice and etc., etc.. Let's see here. Join our here a link on a Dangerfield dash through the monster filled maze trial through six mysterious worlds, battling beasts and collecting hearts. Link moves from world of world by finding hidden treasures. Where can they be hiding? Flip over a game board pile and look underneath. Oh, no. You've uncovered a creepy creature. Now all players must fight for their lives by rolling their attack Dice fail to defeat the monster and everyone loses a heart. Eat the beast. Enter in a heart. With a little luck, you'll defeat Ganon and capture the triforce of wisdom. Collect the most hearts to win the game. So I can honestly say that I have not played it this way. I don't know where the mighty instruction for these when I have a different understanding of the way this game is played than collecting the most hearts to win the game, that's never really made much sense to me. So. All right, I'm going to take out the board game and I'm going to show you how I play this game. So we've got all these bits everywhere. This is the piece. So this is link and this gets put into there is a little plastic bit supposed to be in here somewhere. I'll find it. I'm going to take all this stuff out. We're going to do a little video editing magic and fast forward until it's all set up. 

[00:03:11] So here we go. All right. To the this is the game board. So this is what the whole world looks like. It's got six worlds. Well, of course, the game had eight, but whatever. It's fine. It's a board game adaptation. We're going to we're going to give them some leeway now, every single stage. So here's the link on the little plastic thing I told you about. It used to clip on a lot nicer than this. But you know, this thing is pretty old, but it will put him right there at the start. And then you lay out these tiles on every single world, Right. So you've got an item that you need to get to the next world. So somebody needs to find the item in order to get to the next world. Or they can flip over one of these tiles like world one as Tech Heights. World, too, has Zola's and the Raft World three has more tech tights and more blends. These guys, I love the artwork on these things. They're so cool. Goblins and the water of life. Then we go over to worlds for which fights land. Molars can see them looking right. They are all cool and that gets you the key. And then we got World Five, which fights against pulse voices and Glocks, which are right there. And the item is the bomb. And when you get in the last room, which is just fighting against Ganon, and the item is, of course, Princess Zelda and the Triforce, which is right there. All right. So from the way I played this game as a kid was that whoever rescued Princess Zelda won the game, which is actually kind of silly because that means the only room that makes any difference is this last room. But playing for hearts is playing for hearts is a pretty good thing. What I always did was I played four items, which is the way I like to play this game. So basically what you do is you have to lay out these tiles upside out and whoever lays them out doesn't know where they are. Right. So you just kind of of course, whoever is laying them out, if they remember where the items are, is kind of cheating. So it's best to get somebody to either mix them up for you or whatever. But she lay them out upside down like this on all these little areas that aren't these dots and everybody takes turns moving link. 

[00:05:28] So you have here or die here just as a one or two or three and you roll it and you move length however many spaces, but you can go whichever way you want, so you can move them forward or backward, whatever, as long as you're moving two spaces. And the goal is to land on these yellow spots because a yellow spot means that you can turn a cart over and if you turn over the right card, it's like I turn over a tech type. If I turn over the fairy, then I would keep this very card. And the way I would play is whoever had the most item cards at the end of the game. One really, whatever works for you, you can just look up the instructions online and I'm just pulling this stuff from memory. So let's say we got the tactile here, right? And the yellow one, you got a tactile. These are your attack dye, right? Red means that you missed sword means that you hit this tech tight as one hit point. So all I have to do is roll one sword and one out of here. Hurrah! There. I rolled one sword. That tactile is dead, so throw them off to the side or something. But the other ones, you'll see, like say, look at this soldier here. He's got three hit points, so I would have to roll three swords in order to kill this guy. But if I do kill him, I get a heart out of the deal. And every time I don't, everybody starts with three hearts. I'm explaining this word right. I say, everyone starts with three hearts. And when you're rolling, if I say only rolled two swords, then this guy would still be alive and he would take a heart from me. But if I beat him, I get a heart back. So every round it takes to kill a guy that I don't succeed, I lose a heart until the enemy is defeated. 

[00:07:05] And that's basically the gist of it. You get the item, you move on and you keep rolling through and so you get the Ganon and then you tally up whoever has the most items at the end or items and hearts are you can play it whoever you want for a game which you like. But this is a really cool adaptation of the first game. I mean, it's got kind of the it really has the gist of it together, you know, getting the items to get through like on the wall, get a key through the door and use the the raft to get across the water and the soul is around. The water stays like never really put a lot of thought into making this a functional board game based on the original and Legend of Zelda. Like the whole going room by room thing. I think it's a I think it works really well. And I had so much fun with this. I know a lot about that. She's must've been a while ago, at least a year ago, I made a video on the Super Mario Brothers for a game, and that was pretty cool. But this one was where it's at. And this one I actually still play my kids still occasionally grab this one for us to all play together because, you know, it's not the most involved game, but it is pretty darn fun. And, you know, listen to some Zelda music while you're playing it. And that is that's the Legend of Zelda board game. It's sad that it doesn't exist in the world much anymore today, but I don't think it's super hard to find. And if you do, there's fun to be had, especially if you're a giant legend of Zelda nerd like me. 

[00:08:25] So there you have it. It's not the most exciting board game ever made, but boy, when I was a little kid, there was nothing quite like looking at that giant crazy box art and just anything else that took me into the world of the Legend of Zelda. Besides me, you know, grabbing a stick and playing in the woods was really something special. Kids today, kids these days, they don't know how good they have it, Right? But really, if I have this last Halloween, I saw kids walking around and link Halloween costumes, like official real link Halloween costumes. When I was a kid, my mom made me a link Halloween costume and every house I went to thought I was Peter Pan because all the stuff so much more popular now than it's ever been before. And that's wonderful in a lot of ways, especially for me looking at it from the perspective of knowing how small it was, even though it was still massive. When I was a kid, it was big enough to get a cartoon and everything. But now just seeing how much bigger that stuff has become, how much easier it is to find toys and games and stuff based on stuff like The Legend of Zelda is really exciting and well, video games are awesome, and that's why I'm here. It's why we're all here. And that's it. Everybody, thanks for watching. 

[00:09:38] If you liked what you saw here today, please follow comments like Subscribe and let us know down in the comments what you like about the Legend of Zelda board game. Do you have a Zelda Monopoly or something? Do you have other Zelda things that are really cool, or did you also have this Zelda board game when you were a kid? Did I get the rules completely wrong because I didn't look them up? I'm just going based off my memory or really whatever. I just want to hear everybody talk about Zelda because Zelda is awesome, and that's all I got. On behalf of all of us here at Stone Age Gamer, keep playing games.