It has inspired legions of fans and generated hundreds of millions of dollars for its creators, and according to a panel of experts, the “Legend of Zelda” video game series now ranks as the best of all time.
A PANEL OF WRITERS from Entertainment Weekly and gaming experts from G4, the cable TV games channel, have voted the “Zelda” series, from Japan’s Nintendo Co. Ltd. to the top of a list of the best 100 video games ever.
The “Zelda” series is a chronicle of heroic adventures in fantasy lands; the latest game, “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker,” features a character named Link who sails the seas searching for his sister and using a magic staff that can summon windstorms.
The list, which appears in the new Entertainment Weekly and will be broken down in a series of nightly specials the week of May 5 on G4, encompasses all genres of games and all systems, from classic arcade machines to today’s game consoles.
Second on the list was the 1993 PC game “Doom,” from id Software, widely hailed as a revolution in PC gaming both for its graphics and its often-gory violence.
Rounding out the top five were the classic puzzle game “Tetris,” the criminal adventure games “Grand Theft Auto III” and “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and “Madden NFL 2003” from Electronic Arts Inc.
Nintendo and EA combined for 20 of the 100 entries on the list, which comes just days before the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, the video game industry’s annual trade show in Los Angeles.
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