The Essential 100, No. 30: The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past

When it debuted in 1992, many gamers simply saw A Link to the Past as a return to form for the Zelda games after the wildly different second entry, The Adventure of Link. The abandonment of side-scrolling platform action and combat alone made A Link to the Past an immediate favorite for many; the top-down style of the original game simply felt right for the series. What no one realized at the time was that Nintendo had just established the game structure that would define the Zelda franchise for decades to come.