Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Is Legend of Zelda an RPG?
The player controls a boy who must save the world from the evil monsters and villains the roam the areas outside the villages and the dungeons. The game is considered to be an action-RPG similar to the "Legend of Zelda" and "Secret of Mana" style of video games. According to the story, the super-nation Millennium which had conquered the world before searches for the secret which had disappeared in one night. Up to three people can be in a party, these three party members are changed around depending on the part of the story that is being played.
"Zelda" was first released in the early 1990s along with the "Super Mario Bros." cartoon. It was produced in the form of two-episode VHS tapes in four volumes; the gold color of the VHS slipcases matched that of the original NES games. The series was released on DVD in two volumes by the animation company "Allumination FilmWorks" The first DVD, "Ganon's Evil Tower", was released on July 22, 2003, including three episodes of the "Zelda" cartoon and two of "Sonic Underground". The second DVD was released on September 27, 2005, titled "Havoc in Hyrule", containing a further five "Zelda" episodes.
In 1989, Nintendo signed a deal with Sony to begin development of a CD-ROM-based system known as the "Nintendo PlayStation" or the SNES CD to be an add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would allow for FMV and larger games. However, Nintendo broke the agreement and instead signed with Philips to make the add-on, which caused Sony to spin off their add-on into its own console called the PlayStation. Witnessing the poor reception of the Sega Mega-CD, Nintendo scrapped the idea of making an add-on entirely. As part of dissolving the agreement with Philips, Nintendo gave them the license to use five of their characters, including Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganon, for games on Philips's console called the CD-i, after the partnership's dissolution. Contracting out to independent studios, Philips subsequently used the characters to create three games for the CD-i, with Nintendo taking no part in their development except to give input on the look of the characters based on the artwork from Nintendo's original two titles and that of their respective instruction booklets. Philips insisted that the development studios utilize all aspects of the CD-i's capabilities including FMV, high-resolution graphics, and CD-quality music. Because the system had not been designed as a dedicated video game console, there were several technical limitations, such as laggy controls (especially for the standard infrared controller), and numerous problems in streaming-audio, memory, disc access, and graphics.
In 1989, Nintendo signed a deal with Sony to begin development of a CD-ROM-based system known as the SNES-CD (also known as the "Nintendo Play-Station", with separated words) to be an add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would allow for FMV and larger games. However, Nintendo broke the agreement and instead signed with Philips to make the add-on, which caused Sony to spin off their add-on into its own console called the PlayStation (with "PlayStation" as one word due to a copyright issue with the trademark "Play-Station" owned by Nintendo). Witnessing the poor reception of the Sega Mega-CD, Nintendo scrapped the idea of making an add-on entirely. As part of dissolving the agreement with Philips, Nintendo gave them the license to use five of their characters, including Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganon, for games on Philips's console called the CD-i, after the partnership's dissolution.
"Super Mario Bros.", for many years the best-selling video game of all time for a single platform, was Kondo's first major score. The game's melodies were created with the intention that short segments of music could be endlessly repeated during the same gameplay without causing boredom. Kondo's soundtrack to "Super Mario Bros." gained worldwide recognition, and is to this day the most well-known video game score. The main theme is iconic in popular culture and has been featured in over 50 concerts, been a best-selling ringtone, and been remixed or sampled by various musicians. Kondo's work on "The Legend of Zelda" scores has also become highly recognized. He produced four main pieces of background music for the first installment of the series; the overworld theme has become comparable in popularity with the "Super Mario Bros." main theme. After the success of "The Legend of Zelda", he provided the score for two Japanese-exclusive titles, "The Mysterious Murasame Castle" (1986) and "Shin Onigashima" (1987). He also created the soundtrack to "" (1987), which was later rebranded outside Japan as "Super Mario Bros. 2" in 1988.
Valtonen had previously written the "Legend of Zelda" arrangement featured in the touring concert act "PLAY! A Video Game Symphony", but was eager to create an arrangement that would be able to take advantage of the entire Zelda universe, from character themes, situations and emotional elements often found in the series. It took Valtonen about five months to create the arrangement, with three months used for researching the Zelda universe, and two months for the actual writing. Valtonen also expressed that he wanted the arrangement to create “discussion” within the Zelda fan base.
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres. Many adventure games (text and graphic) are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult. "Colossal Cave Adventure" is identified as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include "Zork", "King's Quest", "The Secret of Monkey Island", and "Myst".
Grandia is a role-playing video game, developed by Game Arts and published by ESP Software for the Sega Saturn console as the first game in their "Grandia" series. Released in Japan in 1997, the game was ported to the PlayStation in 1999, with an English version of the game appearing on the platform in North America in the following September by Sony Computer Entertainment, and in Europe in 2000 by Ubi Soft. The game was produced by much of the same staff who worked on the company's previous role-playing endeavor, the "Lunar" series, including producer Yoichi Miyagi and composer Noriyuki Iwadare.
There are a number of hybrid graphical adventure games, borrowing from two or more of the above classifications. For example, the "Ace Attorney" series of games, while presenting itself as a visual novel, includes elements of point-and-click adventure games. The "Zero Escape" series wraps several escape-the-room puzzles within the context of a visual novel. The "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" series has the player use point-and-click type interfaces to locate clues, and minigame-type mechanics to manipulate those clues to find more relevant information.
While most adventure games typically do not include any time-based interactivity by the player, action-adventure games are a hybrid of action games with adventure games that often require to the player to react quickly to events as they occur on screen. The action-adventure genre is broad, spanning many different subgenres, but typically these games utilize strong storytelling and puzzle-solving mechanics of adventure games among the action-oriented gameplay concepts. The foremost title in this genre was "Adventure", a graphic home console game developed based on the text-based "Colossal Cave Adventure", while the first "The Legend of Zelda" brought the action-adventure concept to a broader audience.
A is an interactive game genre, which originated in Japan, featuring text-based story with narrative style of literature and interactivity aided by static or sprite-based visuals, most often using anime-style art or occasionally live-action stills (and sometimes video footage). As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels.
Overall, the opinions of reviewers seem to have been summed up by Pro-G: "One day someone is going to combine the RTS with another genre and pull it off really well; "Rise & Fall" isn't that game. The basic RTS elements are sound, but the hero mode verges on awful, boat control is a nightmare, and the campaigns are dull... There are so many other games out there that offer a better all-round RTS experience, there's really no reason to bother with Midway's effort. Some praise must be given for trying something a little different, but Rise & Fall is another idea that falls a long way short of its potential."
"Dragon Quest VIII" was released in PAL regions in April 2006 under the title "Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King", dropping the Roman numeral. This marked the first time a main game in the series had been released in the PAL region. In an interview with Horii in London, he mentioned that the 2003 merger between Squaresoft and Enix (creating Square Enix) allowed the company to release more games in more localities, with producer Ryutaro Ichimura adding that "European tastes have changed because of the influence of anime and cartoons, so Europeans are more willing to receive this type of artwork."
Released July 15, 1983, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Africa and was Nintendo's first home video game console released outside Japan. In Japan, it is known as the "Family Computer" (or "Famicom", as it is commonly abbreviated). Selling 61.91 million units worldwide, the NES helped revitalize the video game industry following the video game crash of 1983 and set the standard for subsequent consoles in everything from game design to business practices. The NES was the first console for which the manufacturer openly courted third-party developers. Many of Nintendo's most iconic franchises, such as "The Legend of Zelda" and "Metroid" were started on the NES. Nintendo continued to repair Famicom consoles in Japan until October 31, 2007, attributing the decision to discontinue support to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts.
"Tomb Raider" (1996) by Eidos Interactive (now Square Enix Europe) is claimed by some commentators as a third-person shooter, and Jonathan S. Harbour of the University of Advancing Technology argues that it's "largely responsible for the popularity of this genre". Other commentators have considered it influential on later third person shooters such as "BloodRayne" (2002), "The Contra Adventure" (1998), "MDK" (1997), "" (1998), "Burning Rangers" (1998), and "" (2000). The game eschewed the popular first person perspective of games such as "Doom", instead making use of "third person" viewpoints, wide 3D environments and a control system inspired by "Prince of Persia". "Mega Man Legends" (1997) by Capcom is another early 3D third person shooter which took a different approach to the genre, mixing this with a role-playing game influence. Around the same time, "Deathtrap Dungeon" (1998) by Eidos Interactive and "MediEvil" (1998) by SCE Cambridge Studio (then "Millennium Interactive") were some of the first 3D games in the genre to include third person shooter influences in a fantasy setting, with fictional or alternative weapons achieving the same effect as a gun for the player. "Die Hard Trilogy" (1998) by Fox Interactive was met with critical acclaim at the time of its release, and the section of the game based around the first "Die Hard" film in the trilogy was another early take on a 3D third person shooter.
Forgotten Realms is a campaign setting for the "Dungeons & Dragons" ("D&D") fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers alike as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as a setting for his childhood stories. Several years later, Greenwood brought the setting to the "D&D" game as a series of magazine articles, and the first Realms game products were released in 1987. Role-playing game products have been produced for the setting ever since, as have various licensed products including novels, role-playing video game adaptations (including the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to use graphics), and comic books. The Forgotten Realms is one of the most popular "D&D" settings, largely due to the success of novels by authors such as R. A. Salvatore and numerous role-playing video games, including "Pool of Radiance" (1988), "Eye of the Beholder" (1991), "Baldur's Gate" (1998), "Icewind Dale" (2000) and "Neverwinter Nights" (2002).
"Final Fantasy Adventure" was featured in Nintendo Power when it was re-released in the United States. The game holds an aggregated score of 79.07% approval rating on Game Rankings based on seven reviews. IGN praised the Game Boy re-release version noting its strong story, graphics, and music. They additionally praised the game's puzzle elements as innovative and drew comparisons to "", though noted that its role-playing gameplay did not blend well with its action-oriented nature. RPGFan also praised the game stating it was "possibly the best thing that ever happened to Gameboy." RPGamer praised the game's plot stating,"The story is one where you can relate to the characters and also the world around them." Ndojo also gave similar praise to the game however noting it being vastly different from Final Fantasy stating, "If you’re expecting Final Fantasy in the traditional sense, you’re going to be disappointed. However, if you play the game for a while, you just might find that it’s equally entertaining in its own fashion."
First announced during an early July 1995 SoundLink Magazine broadcast of Hikaru Ijuin's , the official "BS Zelda" pre-release party was hosted by Hikari Ōta and took place during the August 3, 1995 SoundLink Magazine broadcast of Bakushō Mondai, and the first episode of "BS Zelda" was released on Sunday August 6, 1995 with new episodes broadcast every subsequent Sunday through the 27th. The game was re-broadcast on at least 4 subsequent occasions as reruns throughout the lifetime of the Satellaview.
Kondo was the third person hired by Nintendo to create music and sound effects for their games, joining Hirokazu Tanaka and Yukio Kaneoka. However, he was the first at Nintendo to actually specialize in musical composition. The first game he worked on was the arcade game "Punch-Out!!", although it was before he had officially joined Nintendo. Despite creating mostly jingles and sound effects, he was able to overcome the challenges of early arcade sound hardware. As the Famicom had become highly popular in Japan, Kondo was assigned to compose music for the console's subsequent games at Nintendo's new development team, Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD). Kondo also wrote an instruction manual on how to program Japanese popular music into the Famicom using the peripheral "Family BASIC". To conclude his first year at Nintendo, he created the music to "Devil World" alongside Akito Nakatsuka. In 1985, Nintendo started marketing the Famicom abroad under the name the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to capitalize on the 1983 video game crash that devastated Atari, Inc. He composed the music for the hit releases "Super Mario Bros." (1985) and "The Legend of Zelda" (1986), which helped the system to sell 60 million copies in total and established some of the most well-known melodies in the video game industry.
Some adventure games have been presented as interactive movies; these are games where most of the graphics are either fully pre-rendered or use full motion video from live actors on a set, stored on a media that allows fast random access such as laserdisc or CD-ROM. The arcade versions of "Dragon's Lair" and "Space Ace" are canonical examples of such works. The game's software would present a scene, and players would have to input the correct moves with a joystick and button to continue on, the choices leading to the game playing a new scene from the media. The video may be augmented by additional computer graphics; "Under a Killing Moon" used a combination of full motion video and 3D graphics. Because these games are limited by what has been pre-rendered or recorded, there is a lack of player interactivity in these titles, with wrong choices or decisions leading quickly to an ending scene.
The game was conceived in 1988 by Lucasfilm employee Ron Gilbert, who designed it with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Gilbert's frustrations with contemporary adventure titles led him to make the player character's death almost impossible, which meant that gameplay focused the game on exploration. The atmosphere was based on that of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride. "The Secret of Monkey Island" was the fifth game built with the SCUMM engine, which was heavily modified to include a more user-friendly interface.
There is no consensus on what the earliest open world game is, due to differing definitions of how large or open a world needs to be. Ars Technica traces the concept back to the free-roaming exploration of 1976 text adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure", which inspired the free-roaming exploration of "Adventure" (1980), but notes that it wasn't until 1984 that what "we now know as open-world gaming" took on a "definite shape" with 1984 space simulator "Elite", considered a pioneer of the open world; Gamasutra argues that its open-ended sandbox style is rooted in flight simulators, such as SubLOGIC's "Flight Simulator" (1979/1980), noting most flight sims "offer a 'free flight' mode that allows players to simply pilot the aircraft and explore the virtual world". Others trace the concept back to 1981 CRPG "", which had a free-roaming overworld map inspired by tabletop RPG "Dungeons & Dragons". The overworld maps of the first five "Ultima" games, released up to 1988, lacked a single, unified scale, with towns and other places represented as icons; this style was adopted by the first three "Dragon Quest" games, released from 1986 to 1988 in Japan.
"Computer Gaming World" in 1988 named the game as the best adventure of the year for Nintendo, stating that "Zelda" had been a "sensational success" in translating a computer RPG to consoles. In 1990 the magazine stated that the game was a killer app, causing computer CRPG players who had dismissed consoles as "mere arcade toys" to buy the NES. "Zelda" was reviewed in 1992 by "Total!" #2 where it received a 78% rating due in great part to mediocre subscores for music and graphics. A 1993 review of the game was printed in "Dragon" #198 by Sandy Petersen in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 4 out of 5 stars.
The successor to "The Legend of Zelda", "", bears little resemblance to the first game in the series. "The Adventure of Link" features side-scrolling areas within a larger world map rather than the bird's eye view of the previous title. The game incorporates a strategic combat system and more RPG elements, including an experience points (EXP) system, magic spells, and more interaction with non-player characters (NPCs). Link has extra lives; no other game in the series includes this feature. "The Adventure of Link" plays out in a two-mode dynamic. The overworld, the area where the majority of the action occurs in other "The Legend of Zelda" games, is still from a top-down perspective, but it now serves as a hub to the other areas. Whenever Link enters a new area such as a town, the game switches to a side-scrolling view. These separate methods of traveling and entering combat are one of many aspects adapted from the role-playing genre. The game was highly successful at the time, and introduced elements such as Link's "magic meter" and the Dark Link character that would become commonplace in future Zelda games, although the role-playing elements such as experience points and the platform-style side-scrolling and multiple lives were never used again in the official series. The game is also looked upon as one of the most difficult games in the "Zelda" series and 8-bit gaming as a whole. Additionally, "The Adventure of Link" was one of the first games to combine role-playing video game and platforming elements to a considerable degree.
Bill Johnson compared "Dragon Warrior" to modern RPGs and noted the game's complete lack of replay value, which is due as much to the requirement that almost everything in the game must be done to beat it as to its difficulty. Johnson noted the game's historical importance; he said: "[Playing "Dragon Warrior" is] a tough road to walk, but reaching its end will instill a new appreciation of what today's RPG's are all about." The 2009 book "Vintage Games" contrasted "Dragon Warrior" to the 1986 NES title "The Legend of Zelda"; it said, while both titles share common RPG elements, "Zelda" features a fantasy setting and magic but no level or turn-based combat system, and "Dragon Warrior" features both. "Nintendo Power" said the game's historical significance is its greatest aspect, and noted that "playing "Dragon Warrior" these days can be a bit of a chore". "GamePro" wrote that their favorite aspect of the game was the Elizabethan-English dialogue, and that they were disappointed by its removal in the GBC remake.
The second game, "", was released for the Famicom Disk System in Japan on January 14, 1987, and for the Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe in November 1988 and North America in December 1988. The game exchanged the top-down perspective for side-scrolling (though the top-down point of view was retained for overworld areas), and introduced RPG elements (such as experience points) not used previously or thereafter in the series. "The Legend of Zelda" and "Zelda II" were released in gold-coloured cartridges instead of the console's regular grey cartridges. Both were re-released in the final years of the Nintendo Entertainment System with grey cartridges.