Without a doubt, the Zelda series is the greatest series in the history of gaming, so Miles is here to give us the full lowdown on how one Nintendo employees vision turned into gamings nervana.

"A long, long time ago the World was in an age of Chaos. In the middle of this chaos, in a little kingdom in the land of Hyrule, a legend was being banded down from generation to generation, the legend of the "Triforce"; golden triangles possessing mystical powers. One day, an evil army attacked this peaceful little kingdom and stole the Triforce of Power. This army was led by Gannon, the powerful Prince of Darkness who sought to plunge the World into fear and darkness under his rule. Fearing his wicked rule, Zelda, the princess of this kingdom, split up the Triforce of Wisdom into eight fragments and hid them throughout the realm to save the last remaining Triforce from the clutches of the evil Gannon. At the same time, she commanded her most trustworthy nursemaid, Impa, to secretly escape into the land and go find a man with enough courage to destroy the evil Gannon. Upon hearing this, Gannon grew angry, imprisoned the princess, and sent out a party in search of Impa. Braving forests and mountains, Impa fled for her life from her pursuers. As she reached the very limit of her energy she found herself surrounded by Gannon's evil henchmen. Cornered! What could she do? ... But wait! All was not lost. A young lad appeared. He skillfully drove off Gannon's henchmen, and saved Impa from a fate worse than death. His name was link. During his travels he had come across Impa and Gannon's henchmen. Impa told Link the whole story of the princess Zelda and the evil Gannon. Burning with a sense of justice, Link resolved to save Zelda, but Gannon was a powerful opponent. He held the Triforce of Power. And so, in order to fight off Gannon, Link had to bring the scattered eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom together to rebuild the mystical Triangle. If he couldn't do this, there would be no chance Link could fight his way into Death Mountain where Gannon lived. Can Link really destroy Gannon and save the Princess Zelda? Only your skill can answer that question. Good luck. Use the Triforce wisely."

The legendary world of Zelda all began a long time ago in an incredible magical kingdom. In a not so distant dimension a young boy in Japan enjoyed the wonderment of adventuring across fields and into caves. These ideas were so prominent in his mind. As he grew up he attended college and eventually settled down into a job at a Japanese company named Nintendo. This now young man's name was Shigeru Miyamoto. While working at Nintendo he had several ideas for games and before long the company had caught onto this. The concept of adventuring still stood in his mind for his career and he put them into action to create the very first Zelda game which lead on to form one of the most magnificant game series of all time.

The first game to be created by Nintendo and their newly appointed Head of Game Design, Miyamoto-San was named "The Legend of Zelda" and was to appear on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) as it was called in US and PAL regions or Famicom in Japan. The idea of the game was to rescue a Princess named Zelda and to recover her part of the "TriForce". The story had been developed into novel size proportions and the "TriForce" was always at the centre of the world in which you played a vital part in as a young boy called Link. The game was released in 1987 and proved to be a great success on NES.

Due to the success of the game and the sheer scale of the story and its potential to expand Nintendo decided to make a second game. "Zelda II - The Adventures of Link" was ready and released one and a half years later. Princess Zelda had this time managed to fall into a deep beauty sleep and it was your job to collect six pieces of a magical crystal and wake her from the sleep. This game proved to be a similar success as the first game but it was four years until Nintendo released the next game.

Between 1988 and 1992 a new Nintendo system had been developed using 16-Bit technology and was named the SNES or Super Nintendo Entertainment System. With the addition of the new technology it seemed the perfect way to advance the already developing series one step more. The graphics were enhanced, as shown on the advertisement by an American boy exclaiming , "Whoa, neat graphics man...!!!" and the story was made more complicated. In the US, April 1992, the game "A Link to the Past" was released. As expected Link was ordered to collect three Pendants of Virtue, seven crystal, defeat the mighty boss Ganon King of Evil and seal him him up in the Dark World. Many people consider this to be the best game on the SNES and was the most popular Zelda game yet.

In 1993 "Link's Awakening" was released for SNES and a DX version was later revised in 1998 for Game Boy Color. The job was to recover eight instruments of the "Siren" in order to wake the "Wind Fish". Once complete, peace and order was restored to the Island of Koholint. There was a 5 year wait before a new title was created back at Nintendo and many people wondered if it had been the last. Nintendo weren't going to stop at that considering the good feedback they had received.

Between 1993 and 1996. Nintendo developed, mentioned then released their next new system, Nintendo 64 codenamed "Project Reality". Able to perform 3D graphical physics it seemed that technology had forced Zelda to leave the 2D scrolling days behind. No one would really know if a 3D version of the game would actually be able to do the game justice although many other games had been able to. As information and screenshots began to leak from the very excited Nintendo HQ on the new game people forgot about any doubts. For this was to be the best game yet with such superior graphics. After a very long wait but a hugely anticipated launch, "Ocarina of Time" was on the shelves by the end of 1998 on a special gold cartridge if pre-ordered in the US.

When the time had come for people to play it they were completely overwhelmed and many critics and gamers world wide call it "THE best game of all time" The story was set as a pre-quel to the other quests and subjected Link to returning the TriForce to its rightful home in the "Temple of Time" by retrieving the three spiritual stones and freeing the remaining sages to enable you to infiltrate Ganon's Tower in order to defeat the King of Evil and end the dark age that plagued Hyrule. The game also saw abilities for the player to play Link as a young 10 year old boy or to be a 17 year old. This gave the game a whole new perspective with different abilities and such. The game was a huge success and broke many sales records.

In 2000, "Majora's Mask", set a few months after returning from Ocarina of Time adventures had an unusual plot and gameplay element where it was a race against the clock to stop the moon from crashing into the land of Termina and was a personal struggle as well to retrieve stolen items and help lots of people with their general occuring problems.

In 2001, both "Oracle of Ages" and "Oracle of Seasons" were released for Game Boy Color" as a joint game on separate cartridges as Pokémon was likewise. The evil Veran has possessed the Oracle of Ages, Nayru. Veran is using Nayru's powers to disrupt the flow of time in Labrynna, its up to Link to stop Veran before it's too late.

This brings us up to the infamous Spaceworld of 2001. With its absence at E3, a look at the new Zelda for Gamecube was planned for the Japanese show. And when they showed a teaser clip, they shocked us all. It was cel-shaded! Many Nintendo fans denounced their faith in the company and barraged Miyamoto, saying he'd lost it. But these people were left to eat their words after E3 2002, when Zelda was playable. The game looks absolutely terrific and is sure to be as good as previous efforts when we get it early next year. No doubt Zelda will stretch on and on...