How many ‘Zelda’ games are there?

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It’s been a long journey since that first game in 1986 introduced us to Link and asked us to go on a pixelated adventure to save Princess Zelda and Hyrule itself from the evil warlock Ganon. Now — with more than a dozen installments and almost four decades of game design experience backing it up — Nintendo has just released the latest installment in The Legend of Zeldaseries, titled Tears of the Kingdom, and achieved unanimous acclaim from critics and gamers.

Zelda might remain a humble game in its bearings, but don’t mistake that modest exterior for anything other than pure, unadulterated fun. While Nintendo may have originally set out to depict a high-fantasy story — and succeeded at it to a large extent — the true spirit of Zelda games is in all the fun you can have in their worlds. And even now, were you to pick up a much older game with outdated mechanics, you’d still have as much fun.

Which is why we’ve decided to give you a complete rundown on the franchise from its conception in the mid-80s to 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom.

Through more than five generations of home video game consoles, The Legend of Zelda has remained a relevant cultural phenomenon, starting all the way back with the eponymous 1986 video game. This was a game that never took itself too seriously, so despite building upon fantasy elements, it also incorporated a ton of incongruous features that made the gameplay experience more fun.

In time, those features became a staple of the franchise, and The Legend of Zelda took a life of its own both within the gaming community and outside of it among high speculative fandoms.

Nintendo followed that first game with a number of sequels in the form of 1987’s The Adventure of Link, 1991’s A Link to the Past,