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The Top 3 Pixel Art Zelda Games
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.
3. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Some of you might already be thinking that it’s super bold and bizarre to put this game, which is arguably still the progenitor of all action adventure games that came after it, in the third spot on the list. But I’m doing it anyway!
That doesn’t mean I’m not super fond of it. I love this game, as do so many others. I’ll never forget booting it up for the first time over my spring school break in 1992. I took great care to gently ignore my family (some of whom were visiting from out of town) as a little eight year old to play this marvelous thing. The opening thirty seconds, with their fully polygonal Triforce pieces spinning down into the frame, are forever etched into my mind. The upgrades in challenge, complexity, and…
