This has long been one of my favorite, overall, series since I first started gaming. Back around 1990 as a real young kid, our family was gifted an NES in a box with Super Mario/Duck Hunt, a couple other games, and Legend of Zelda. I loved Mario, but Zelda was my true favorite as it was so different from the other games at the time. The whole adventure/fantasy setup, I could save my game, I could free roam and explore and find my way around, it basically cemented my love for open world gaming that I would get super into many years later with survival/crafting games, series like Fallout or Skyrim, and others.
My best memories of the original game in particular is that it's the only game that my Dad ever liked. He played it with me, we would learn the secrets, figure out where the dungeons were, and off and on we'd played it again till I started getting into whatever the newest games were at the time. Nearly 20 years later, my Dad is retired, we moved away from friends and family to a new state, he's not really physically able to do a lot of stuff, so he's stuck at home alot and we figured out that maybe he'd like to get back into Zelda. On his own computer, I put on an emulator, most of the 2D Zelda games, and he went at it. Over nearly 5 or 6 years, he played most of them, beating a number of them, even ones I don't think I did as there are some I never beat. He even got into the 3D games as I bought him a Gamecube and a small TV to put on his desk, and he played through Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, and Twilight Princess as they were all available on the system. One of his favorites ended up being Twilight Princess, which makes me happy as that one is also one of my favorites. Whenever he got lost, which was often, he'd be using guides online to get through stuff which was just funny and great to me as I was doing the same for some of the Zeldas I didn't have a guide for back in the day. I'd also do some of the harder bosses that would piss him off since he didn't have the gaming skills to get through them and he would both happy and super huffy about beating it like it was nothing lol
Sadly he had to go to the hospital right as the Switch and Breath of the Wild released, almost to the day, so he never saw the game and I would play it to keep my mind off things while he was there.
He passed away a few weeks later, pretty soon right after I had actually beaten the main story for BOTW and it hurts he never got a chance to experience it. Not to mention the Link's Awakening remake, the HD re-releases of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, to have a chance at Skyward Sword, a game he couldn't really play due to the wiimote, and the upcoming sequel to Breath of the Wild 2. This is why the series means so much to me. It has its ups and downs, it's not always perfect, but it's been there for most of my life and means a lot to me.
Sorry if this comes off as abit oversharing, but it just kinda cements why the series means so much to me and while I hope to be still playing it when I'm in my 60's like my Dad was lol
Feel free to talk about whatever you want with Zelda. Talk about your favorites, least favorites, funny stories, upcoming news (Whenever Nintendo decides to start sharing what they are doing beyond Skyward Sword HD), or just anything Zelda in general.