The Legend of Zelda: Nintendo's spearhead

While Mario is Nintendo’s most iconic franchise (and arguably that of the entire video game industry), Nintendo’s true spearhead is The Legend of Zelda. It is quite simple: every new major instalment is an event for video game fans. And, generally, critics follow suit. In 40 years of existence, the action-adventure series starring young Link, saviour of the kingdom of Hyrule, has shown impressive consistency, to the point that several of its instalments rank among the best-received games of their generation. On its own, a Zelda game can sell a Nintendo console. Nintendo is celebrating this status in grand style this year, notably with the return of Ocarina of Time on Switch 2 as a remake from 5 November 2026, but also with a special edition of the console in the colours of Zelda’s 40th anniversary, released a few days earlier, on 29 October.

Zelda also belongs to that rare category of franchises that Nintendo uses to experiment with new forms of play, from the move to 3D to the systemic openness of Breath of the Wild.

But the franchise’s importance does not rest solely on its innovations or its critical success. Over the decades, its universe has built an imaginary world powerful enough to reach far beyond video games.

And since we do have to talk a little about law, this ecosystem has obviously not been built without rules. Nintendo jealously protects one of its most valuable intellectual properties: copyright, trademarks, patents, technological protection measures, and actions against illegal copies or certain fan creations all follow the same logic. As the Zelda universe expands, the question is therefore no longer only how Nintendo maintains and develops its franchise, but also how the company intends to keep control of it.

I. The Legend of Zelda: Nintendo’s prestige

A. The pursuit of excellence

Zelda is to Nintendo what Lexus is to Toyota: a flagship of prestige, a symbol of know-how and a product whose value goes well beyond its sales figures alone. The Legend of Zelda is certainly the franchise through which Nintendo most willingly displays its creative, technological and artistic ambition.

Launched in Japan in 1986 by Shigeru Miyamoto, also the “father” of Mario, the series went on to accompany almost every generation of Nintendo consoles.

But it was in 1998, with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, that it truly changed dimension.

The first instalment to bring Hyrule into 3D, Ocarina of Time was preceded by enormous anticipation, and its reception exceeded expectations. In 1999, it won six awards, including game of the year and console game of the year. Nearly three decades later, its Metascore of 99/100 remains the highest ever achieved by a Nintendo game on Metacritic. Satoru Iwata, former president of Nintendo, would later consider that Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time had largely laid the foundations of the modern three-dimensional video game. More than just a particularly successful Zelda, Ocarina of Time thus became one of those rare games whose reputation exceeds that of the franchise it comes from.

Its direct successor, Majora’s Mask, took a darker and more experimental path two years later without losing critics’ favour. This consistency would become one of the series’ most remarkable features: Majora’s Mask has a Metascore of 95, The Wind Waker 96, Twilight Princess up to 96 on GameCube, Skyward Sword 93, Breath of the Wild 97 and, the latest release at the time of writing, Tears of the Kingdom 96.

Over nearly a quarter of a century, the main 3D Zelda games have thus enjoyed an exceptional critical reception.

On Jeuxvideo.com, The Wind Waker even received the maximum score of 20/20, as did Breath of the Wild in 2017. On that occasion, the site pointed out that in twenty years of existence, only two games had received a 20/20 from its editorial team: precisely these two instalments of The Legend of Zelda. This consistency is all the more remarkable given that Nintendo does not hesitate to take radically different directions: The Wind Waker had puzzled part of the public with its cel-shading (a technique that gives 3D models a cartoon look), while Breath of the Wild would, fifteen years later, profoundly challenge the series’ traditional structure.

Finally, this prestige is a particularly valuable asset for a manufacturer that sells its own consoles. Twilight Princess accompanied the launch of the Wii in 2006. Ten years later, Breath of the Wild became one of the main selling points of the Switch: Nintendo stated that the game had contributed to the console’s sales and estimated that by the end of March 2017, nearly 90% of Switch buyers had also bought the title¹.

A major new Zelda instalment therefore does not just have to sell well: it has to meet the high standards that the series itself helped to set.

B. Zelda, Nintendo’s game design laboratory

The series has also been built on a recurring desire to rethink the way the player interacts with video games. As early as 1986, the first instalment already relied on an unusual freedom of exploration, a philosophy to which Breath of the Wild would return three decades later.

Ocarina of Time was of course the first great upheaval. The move to 3D forced Nintendo to rethink movement, camera and combat. The famous Z-targeting system notably allows the player to lock onto an opponent while keeping the camera pointed at them, a principle that has since become extremely common in 3D action games. Navi, the fairy guiding Link, is herself closely tied to this targeting system, on top of guiding Link with memorable cries of “Hey! Listen!”. The ocarina is another stroke of genius: music becomes a genuine mechanic for calling Epona, influencing time, teleporting or interacting with the world. Ocarina of Time therefore does not simply transpose Zelda into three dimensions: it helps invent the tools needed to play it.

The second great break came with Breath of the Wild. Nintendo then deconstructed some of the conventions accumulated since Ocarina of Time. The largely signposted progression of earlier instalments gave way to a world the player can explore almost freely. Above all, fire, wind, electricity, materials and temperature obey systems that can interact with one another. Rather than imposing a single solution to each problem, Nintendo sets rules and lets the player experiment.

Tears of the Kingdom pushes this philosophy even further; in this instalment, Link has several abilities. Ultrahand lets him assemble elements of the scenery to build vehicles and machines; Fuse allows weapons, shields and objects to be combined, sometimes with unexpected properties. The player almost becomes a designer within the game, producing solutions that Nintendo has not necessarily foreseen individually but that its systems make possible.

Not every Zelda has revolutionised the industry with the same intensity, of course. But from the freedom of exploration of the first instalment to the 3D of Ocarina of Time, and then to the systemic worlds of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, one constant remains: Nintendo regularly uses Zelda to experiment with new ways of playing before some of them, in turn, become benchmarks.

II. The Legend of Zelda: an imaginary world turned ecosystem

A. Building an instantly recognisable universe

Over its 40 years of existence, The Legend of Zelda has built an instantly recognisable imaginary world. The series draws on the codes of medieval fantasy and of Celtic and Norse mythologies (kingdoms, castles, enchanted forests, fantastic creatures), while developing its own mythology around Hyrule, the Triforce and the trio of Link, Zelda and Ganondorf. The strength of this universe lies precisely in its ability to reinvent itself without losing its identity: the eras, the incarnations of the characters and the art directions change, but certain motifs (rupees, certain mythical places, the Goron people or the Zoras) span the generations.

Music is the other great glue of this imaginary world. Thanks to Koji Kondo’s compositions, Zelda has acquired an instantly recognisable repertoire, from Saria’s Song to Gerudo Valley, by way of Song of Storms and Great Fairy Fountain. This sound identity has come to take on a life of its own, notably through the symphonic concerts organised by Nintendo. For the series’ 40th anniversary, a new world tour, The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Concert, will begin in 2027 in Japan and North America before reaching Europe from April.

This imaginary world now reaches far beyond video games. Manga, artbooks, encyclopaedias, merchandise, LEGO sets and, soon, a live-action film adaptation (with a worldwide release scheduled for 30 April 2027) extend the world of Hyrule to other media.

Zelda is therefore no longer just a series of games: it is a universe coherent and recognisable enough to become a genuine cultural ecosystem.

B. A universe extended and appropriated by its players

The Zelda ecosystem is not, however, limited to what Nintendo itself organises. The franchise is kept alive by particularly active communities, which document, analyse and reinvent its games.

Music is probably one of the most visible examples of this appropriation. Zelda’s themes are the subject of countless covers on piano, guitar or by orchestras, but also of genuine collective projects. Launched in 2004, Zelda Reorchestrated (ZREO) set out to reorchestrate the music of the entire series².

This appropriation can go much further when players intervene directly in the games. Mods, fan games, unofficial ports and recreations make it possible to modify or modernise works that Nintendo sometimes no longer sells in their original form. The Unreal Engine recreations of Ocarina of Time by Giuseppe Macula, aka CryZENx, are a particularly spectacular illustration of this community appropriation.

These initiatives undeniably contribute to Zelda’s cultural longevity. But they also reveal a fundamental tension. Culturally, Hyrule has long been a creative playground for its players, who cover its music, transform its games or recreate certain elements of them. Legally, however, neither passion nor the scale of the work accomplished makes Nintendo’s rights disappear. It is precisely when tribute becomes reuse, adaptation, modification or reproduction that the community ecosystem runs into the limits set by intellectual property.

III. The Legend of Zelda: a kingdom under control

A. Protecting the universe, down to the game mechanics

Players’ appropriation of Zelda comes up against a more prosaic reality: Hyrule, its scenery, characters, music and creatures are all protected elements. Copyright notably covers the original components of the games (code, graphics, music and audiovisual elements), while trademarks protect certain signs identifying the franchise.

Fan creations regularly illustrate this. Nintendo obtained in 2017 the removal of Breath of the NES, inspired by the first Zelda and Breath of the Wild, and then in 2023 had Link’s Awakening DX HD, a PC recreation of the Game Boy game, taken down. The fact that a project is free or made out of passion is therefore not enough to override the rights holder’s exclusive rights.

The story of CryZENx’s Ocarina of Time project is even more unusual in this respect. Since 2015, Giuseppe Macula had gradually turned what initially looked like an Unreal Engine demonstration into a genuine playable recreation of part of the game, with modernised environments, characters, combat and cutscenes. Several demos were made available to the public free of charge, and development was also supported by a community on Patreon. CryZENx himself acknowledged Nintendo’s rights and stated that he did not intend to fully complete his recreations without its authorisation. Yet, unlike other Zelda fan games, no known public cease-and-desist letter ever interrupted the project. It was ultimately its author who decided to stop it in June 2026, after Nintendo announced its own remake of Ocarina of Time³.

The case is legally instructive. A fan remake by definition reuses many elements of a pre-existing work and therefore comes up against the rights holder’s exclusive right to authorise, in particular, its adaptations, subject to the applicable exceptions. But the existence of this right does not mean that Nintendo systematically pursues every community creation. The story of CryZENx thus contrasts sharply with that of Breath of the NES or Link’s Awakening DX HD: for more than ten years, an extremely ambitious project was able to develop without any known public legal intervention from Nintendo, although this lack of action cannot be equated with authorisation.

Music illustrates another path. Simply uploading the original soundtracks does not benefit from Nintendo’s sharing rules, but covers can be the subject of authorisations and licences. The fan project ZREO: Second Quest, for example, now exploits arrangements of Zelda compositions, expressly stating that it has obtained the necessary mechanical licences. Community creation is therefore not necessarily condemned to exist in a zone of conflict: the law can also make it possible to organise its exploitation.

Finally, Nintendo goes as far as protecting certain technical innovations developed for its games. Tears of the Kingdom gave rise to several patent applications covering systems associated in particular with Ultrahand, Fuse or certain interactions with moving objects. In the United States, one of them resulted in September 2025 in a patent covering, among other things, a process for combining an object with a weapon⁴. This is obviously not about monopolising the abstract idea of “combining two objects in a video game”, but about protecting the precisely claimed technical processes. The symbolism is nonetheless strong: some of the mechanics underpinning the freedom offered to the player themselves become objects of industrial property.

B. Controlling the circulation of and access to Zelda

The control Nintendo exercises over Zelda does not only concern what players can do with its works: it also concerns how they circulate. This is a particularly sensitive issue for a franchise whose every major new instalment is the subject of carefully orchestrated communication. Tears of the Kingdom is a remarkable illustration. In February 2023, nearly three months before its release, more than two hundred pages of the artbook accompanying the collector’s edition were circulated on the internet, revealing characters, enemies and environments that were still being kept secret.

Nintendo began by sending several notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to Discord to obtain the removal of the images and of the links giving access to them. But the company did not stop there. On 7 April 2023, it went to a federal court in California under § 512(h) of the DMCA to obtain a subpoena compelling Discord to reveal the identity of a user suspected of having taken part in their distribution. Nintendo specifically requested their name, addresses, telephone number and email address.

The case is particularly revealing of the value attached to the event status of Zelda. It was no longer just a matter of preventing the lasting exploitation of an infringing copy: Nintendo was seeking to keep control over the moment when the public discovers its game and its universe. Preserving the secrecy surrounding a new instalment thus itself becomes an intellectual property issue. A few weeks later, the full game itself was leaked before release, its ROM starting to circulate on 1 May when the official release was only scheduled for 12 May⁵. In its later complaint against the developers of Yuzu, Nintendo would claim to have counted more than one million downloads before the game went on sale.

Control continues after release. In France, Breath of the Wild was among the games at the heart of the dispute between Nintendo and DStorage, operator of the 1fichier.com service. Nintendo had notified it of links giving access to unauthorised copies of the game; for failing to remove them quickly enough, the Paris Court of Appeal held the hosting provider liable and ordered it, in particular, to pay Nintendo 442,750 euros⁶. In February 2025, the French Court of Cassation confirmed that the obligation to remove or block the identified copies, imposed for six months, was a targeted and temporary monitoring obligation rather than a general monitoring obligation⁷.

From leaks of unreleased information to the hosting of complete copies, Nintendo thus seeks to keep control over the circulation of Zelda before, during and after its release. For a franchise whose rarity and event status are precisely part of its value, controlling access to the work also means protecting the way it enters the public sphere.

And of course, we are eagerly awaiting the official release of the Ocarina of Time remake.

Notes

1. Nintendo Co., Ltd., Financial Results Briefing for Fiscal Year Ending March 2017, April 2017, p. 4 ↩

2. https://zreosq.com/ ↩

3. Time Extension, “‘I Think I Have Made History With My Remake’ – Fan Remake Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time ‘Officially Stopped’ After 10 Years”, 22 June 2026 ↩

4. https://patents.google.com/patent/US12415137B2/en ↩

5. KultureGeek, « Zelda Tears of the Kingdom est déjà disponible en téléchargement illégal, attention aux spoilers », 1 May 2023 ↩

6. Paris Court of Appeal, division 5, chamber 1, 12 April 2023, No. 21/10585 ↩

7. French Court of Cassation, 1st civil chamber, 26 February 2025, No. 23-15.966 ↩

Faris MELAHILawyer in intellectual property and audiovisual law, certified DPO

https://lexludica.com/en/articles/zelda-nintendo-spearhead