What Inspiration Nintendo Took from the Zelda Cartoon

Meme images, videos, forum topics aplenty: the Zelda cartoon stands just under the CD-i games as the most oft-mocked entry in the Zelda franchise. Well excuuuuuuse me, readers! But I’m here today to tell you that not only was the Zelda cartoon actually not that bad, but that Nintendo borrowed ideas from it to use later down the road.

Don’t believe me? Jump inside and see for yourself!

But first, some backstory.

Back when I was a wee lad, there existed only two Zelda games: The Legend of Zelda, and the just-released Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which was a direct sequel and continued the adventures of that very same hero in that very same land. There was none of this multiple timelines mumbo jumbo back then, nor multiple heroes across multiple eras. Just one Link. And he had brown hair. And he wore a basic tunic and long sleeve shirt, with no leggings or chain mail or embroidery on his clothes; this was a simpler time.

When the original Legend of Zelda game out, there were only two Triforces. There was a golden one comprised of eight smaller triangles called Wisdom, and then there was an upside down red one called Power. Yes, red. The Triforce of Power was red. Now, maybe the sprite is colored as such because–being that it is standing in Ganon’s destroyed remains–it is actually golden but coated in his blood (8-bit games got away with a lot more)… but that was beyond my ken as a child.

So when the Zelda cartoon debuted with its red Triforce of Power, that made sense to me. Why I didn’t have issue with the seemingly arbitrarily green Triforce of Wisdom, I cannot, however, explain. It also made sense that Link was a wisecracking smartass, because this the ’80s, and every male main character was just like that. We had no precedent at that point for the character of Link as it has come to be known today. He wasn’t the “silent hero” then because all heroes were silent. Mario never said a word in the first three Mario games, neither did Kid Icarus, nor Simon Belmont, nor Samus, none of the main characters said a peep in Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. So when cartoon versions of these characters came out, we just took it as gospel that the way they were portrayed in the cartoon was the way Nintendo meant for them to be.

But I’m getting sidetracked. We’re meant to be talking about which things Nintendo took from the Zelda cartoon and later used in the series proper.

Let’s first take a look at the cartoon’s portrayal of the Princess Zelda: she’s a brash, determined, sarcastic, adventurous, no-nonesense, young lady who would much rather just be the hero herself. She also happens to be very skilled at archery. Remind you of anyone? Years later in The Wind Waker we’re introduced to just such a character. She even exhibits her skill with archery for the first time, something the Princesses Zelda had never done outside of the Zelda cartoon. Even Tetra’s outfit is a near carbon copy of Zelda cartoon’s Zelda’s. The purple shirt, the blue vest, the white pants… could Nintendo have been any more blatant. This fact was not lost on me the first time I saw Tetra. I knew I had seen her somewhere before… and then it dawned on me: this old school poster I used to have hanging up in my room, there she is, in the upper left-hand corner, looking more Tetra than ever all the way back in the late ’80s.

So what else has Nintendo re-purposed from the cartoon? This one is a bit more conjecture, but I still feel it stands up. You see, as I mentioned earlier, the Zelda cartoon gave us an unusual take on the Triforce pieces. Rather than flat triangular golden shapes, we got six-sided prisms in green and red, and later blue for the third (as depicted in Captain N and the Zelda comic book series). So when Nintendo first introduced Force Gems into the series with Four Swords… I thought: “Gee, those look familiar!” But when they elevated them to objects of powerful magic, able to change the very terrain in Spirit Tracks, I was sure of it: Nintendo–either playfully or seriously–is saying something here: the Triforce pieces as seen in the Zelda cartoon are actually Force Gems.

And that’s not all! In the Zelda cartoon Link has an ever-present, persistent, chatty fairy friend who tags along on all of his adventures and is always offering him (often unwanted) advice. Ten years later Nintendo would re-use this idea for Navi.

Certainly each of these things can be considered coincidence. And certainly the Zelda cartoon was not made in-house at Nintendo, however it would be silly to assert that none of the Zelda team has ever seen it. Perhaps these later “borrowings” are subconscious decisions that accidentally happen to correlate with the cartoon only incidentally. If that’s the case, you can send me back to my Evil Jar.