Miyamoto Says Zelda Was Nintendo’s Controller-First Answer To Old-School RPGs
Before open-world games became the default AAA flex, The Legend of Zelda was already doing something pretty wild: dropping players into a mysterious land and trusting them to figure things out.
In comments from a Q&A included with the 1994 audio CD The Legend of Zelda: Sound and Drama, recently highlighted through Retro Gamer’s 40 years of The Legend of Zelda issue, Shigeru Miyamoto explained how Nintendo viewed Zelda during development. According to Miyamoto, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda were being made around the same period, and once Mario wrapped up, some of that team moved over to help finish Zelda.
That detail alone is kind of mad when you think about it. Nintendo was shaping two completely different pillars of gaming at once: Mario as the clean, readable side-scrolling platformer, and Zelda as the stranger, bigger adventure that asked players to poke at the world and discover its rules.
In Japan, that difference also affected the hardware. Super Mario Bros. launched as a standard cartridge game, while Zelda released on the Famicom Disk System, which used floppy disks. Miyamoto said the team was keen to use what the Disk System could do, including player names, improved audio, saving progress, and other ideas that were harder to fit into a simpler cartridge format at the time.
For Malaysian and SEA players who mostly know Zelda through Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, or Switch-era discussions, this is a nice reminder that the series’ DNA was already there from day one. The original Zelda was not just “old game difficult” for the sake of it. It was Nintendo trying to build an adventure where the controller mattered more than menu commands and long conversations.
Miyamoto said traditional RPGs usually moved forward through dialogue, but Nintendo wanted players to understand the world by moving through it, interacting with it, and clearing dungeons with a straightforward mapping approach. That sounds normal now, but in the mid-80s, it was a sharp design choice.
Of course, Zelda 1 can still be absolutely savage. Miss the cave at the start and you can wander off without a sword. Some progression depends on bombing walls that are not exactly obvious, and bombs are limited. No quest marker, no glowing trail, no NPC screaming “go here bro.” Just you, a map, enemies, secrets, and pain.
Miyamoto admitted the team was concerned players might feel lost right from the beginning and reject the game. Fair worry, honestly. Even today, plenty of modern players bounce off games when the objective is not clearly spoon-fed. But that uncertainty became part of Zelda’s identity: curiosity, experimentation, and that “wait, can I do this?” feeling.
This is why the original Zelda still matters to SEA fans now. A lot of us came into Nintendo late because PlayStation, PC cafes, mobile games, and affordable Android gaming dominated the region for years. But Zelda’s influence is everywhere: open-world discovery, dungeon logic, environmental problem-solving, and games that reward players for being nosy.
Breath of the Wild later pulled heavily from that first-game spirit, giving players freedom again instead of locking everything behind a strict route. So when people say modern Zelda “changed” the formula, the funnier truth is that it also circled back to what Miyamoto wanted in the beginning.
Zelda was Nintendo’s answer to RPGs, yes — but not by copying them. It answered with movement, secrets, danger, and the belief that players are smart enough to get lost and still find their way.
Source: GamesRadar
