It’s been 25 years since Nintendo launched their second grand flagship franchise; a free-roaming action adventure about an elf in a floppy green hat and his quest to collect a triangle and stab a pig. The Legend of Zelda series has earned countless fans through the past quarter-century. While many are celebrating this grand anniversary with the latest Wii entry in the franchise, us Windows/Mac/Linux folks can look back and remember how it all began, and wonder what might have been if they’d expanded directly on the original NES release.

Zelda Classic has been around for a long time. Six years, to be precise, but it’s still being actively developed (find the latest builds here), improved and refined. More features, more tilesets, and more fans producing dozens more full-length adventures for 8 (or 16-bit) elves to dig into. At it’s heart, it’s a direct port of the original 1986 NES adventure minus the limitations of the original console hardware, but it’s also far more than that.

In addition to including the original NES version, Zelda Classic includes a further three alternative adventures, and a full editing suite. The fanbase has produced over 200 full adventures to be downloaded from the ZC Quest Database, each taking you through a full set of dungeons, bosses and more. Some even use alternate rules, tweaks and sprite-sets to bring the experience more in line with the later SNES titles, or perhaps even other games entirely – there’s Metroid and Mega Man adventures lurking in the archives as well.

The Legend Of Zelda is a seminal gameplay template which has inspired countless imitators over the decades. Even with all the years of graphical improvements and new features stripped away, Zelda Classic is still entertaining in its own right, and the vast number of fan-made alternative quests will keep fans coming back for ages. It’s well worth the download – no better way to celebrate a major anniversary with a well aged game. It’s good for your Elf, y’know.

[Zelda Classic]