With 2021 heralding 35 years of The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo has a full roster of games and events lined up to celebrate the landmark occasion. At the E3 2021 Nintendo Direct presentation, one of the most interesting and anticipated revelations is the Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda retro handheld product.
How similar is it to last year's Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. limited edition handheld? What's the price and when is it coming out? Find out everything revealed so far about this retro-cool Nintendo gaming gadget!
Not the First Legend of Zelda for the Game & Watch
The Game & Watch line of handheld devices were a huge part of Nintendo's early success in the video game industry. Debuting in 1980, there were literally millions of these LCD gaming units sold. Each Game & Watch unit had a different game.
An interesting anecdotal fact is that this is not the first time a Legend of Zelda game has been produced as a Game & Watch product. Simply titled Zelda, the Game & Watch game (model number ZL-65) was designed by Gunpei Yokoi and Nintendo's famous R&D1 studio. It is a dual-screen stand-alone game, chronicling a non-canon adventure with Link . The look of the LCD characters was inspired by Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, with a side scrolling format.
But that is only one part of the game. After completing the lower half screen which involves defeating Moblins and other enemies, the action shifts to the upper screen. Here, the gameplay is more like a dungeon crawler, with Link battling a dragon while dodging its flame breath and tail attacks. Once the dragon is defeated, the game ends and restarts to the lower half screen, but the enemies and actions speed up until all Triforce pieces are collected from defeating the 8 dragons. This pattern continues endlessly, though the high score is recorded.
