Summary
One fan ofThe Legend of Zeldaseries took it upon themselves to separate and organize the entire franchise into six separate but distinct eras based on the console generations they were released in and shared their handiwork with fans on social media. Following the post, someZeldafans chimed in to compliment the organizer for their work and added some feedback over a few games that could have been placed in more than one category.
Ever sinceThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Timeopened the way for the series to have diverging timelines,theZeldaseries has had a notoriously convoluted timelinedepending on the fate of Link in that game. But, that has not stopped fans from either trying to make sense of what Nintendo has offered or from creating their own timelines and eras that could better fit the franchise. While some fans have classified games based on Link’s confrontation with Ganondorf inOcarina of Time, a few other gamers have taken a more practical approach to dividing and organizing the franchise. One player decided to use the latter and offered some explanations.
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On Reddit, a user named Scdsco dividedThe Legend of Zeldafranchise into six eras in a post on theZeldasubreddit. The OP listed the series as the Foundational era (1987 to 1993), the Ocarina era (1994-2001), the Toon era (2002-2005), the Motion era (2006-2011), the Transitional era (2012-2016), and finally named the current era the Open era (2017-2023). Furthermore, the OP explained that each era coincided with a console generation, starting with the NES and the SNES during the Foundational era. Plus, each era was anchored by at least one ofthe most influential games in theZeldaseries, with the Transitional era being an exception due to the fact that the series was in a strange spot at the time.
In the comments section, otherZeldafans praised the OP for organizing the eras into concise ways that were easy to understand, and some fans chose to list their personal favorite eras based on different criteria. However, one Reddit user jokingly pointed out that the OP left out a “Forbidden” era that would have consisted of the much-malignedZeldagames on the Philips CD-isuch asThe Wand of GamelonandZelda’s Adventure.
With the success ofBreath of the WildandTears of the Kingdom, thecurrent open-world era of theZeldaseriesis showing no signs of slowing down. It remains to be seen what Nintendo will do in the future, and what fans will make of it.
