The Top 3 Pixel Art Zelda Games

You should probably just play all of them

Link rides a horse up to a castle in the opening moments of The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages. Nintendo Switch screenshot captured by the author.

Nintendo’s long-running Legend of Zelda series is one of those rare gaming franchises where nearly every installment is a best-in-class contender, more than worthy of your play time and a long legacy of critical praise. You could line them all up on a board, throw a dart at random, and no matter which title you hit you’ll land on one of the best action-adventures ever made.

In spite of numerous lore updates, art style reinventions, and design innovations over the years, the series is still at its core a peerless adventure, setting and refining genre standards for all other games.

Now that I’ve got all those disclaimers out of the way, I will admit that writing goofy and potentially divisive lists is one of the most enjoyable things about being on the Internet. So, I shall now plunge into that time-honored tradition and rank the un-rankable. I personally group these games in my head by both art style and play style, so today please join me as I rank my personal top 3 pixel art Zelda games.

Yes, I know that Zelda II: The Adventure of Link doesn’t play like any of the other pixel art installments and thus might not be a fair inclusion for this comparison. Don’t worry, it’s not on the list.