The Legend of Zelda, a Nintendo classic that launched a decades-long series, also branched out into other media. Long before the latest Zelda-themed Monopoly reached store shelves, an interesting and mysterious board game went on sale in Japan. The Legend of Zelda: The Hyrule Fantasy was a 1986 attempt to recreate the iconic game in tabletop form. Though very hard to acquire a physical copy today, industrious fans around the world can now enjoy The Hyrule Fantasy thanks to a fan translation.
The Legend of Zelda series usually centers around Link, the hero of Hyrule, as he battles across multiple dungeons to acquire tools and magical items in order to vanquish the forces of Ganon. Along the way, he either helps or is helped by Princess Zelda and any number of other friendly NPCs. In The Hyrule Fantasy, four players each take on the role of a separate Link, preceding Zelda's underrated multiplayer games by quite some time.
The Hyrule Fantasy is quite detailed, playing like one of the dungeon-crawling board games that have become popular in the last few years. Players travel around the same overworld as the NES classic, each with their own monochrome Link miniature in the adorable original Zelda game's design, and encounter monsters and traps they must overcome. Each monster has a combat value, and Link must try to beat that number by rolling two special dice with faces corresponding to different weapons, like bombs or arrows. In dungeons, boss battles see players trying to roll a certain face on a number of dice equal to their hearts. As players defeat bosses, they earn pieces of the Triforce that can be used to explore more of the map, eventually leading to a battle with Ganon at Death Mountain.
How The Zelda Hyrule Fantasy Board Game Was Discovered
The fact that any of this is known outside of Japan is due to the hard work of a few diehard Zelda fans. According to Bell of Lost Souls, Evan Derrick, Sebastian Bludd, GlitterBerri, and Alberto Vitali all worked on various stages of scanning, translating, and designing an English version of the game. In March 2014, the project was finished, and an English print-and-play edition of The Hyrule Fantasy was made available to download, available from Vitali via MediaFire.
The game is pretty good for its age, aside from some overreliance on dice rolls. Some players on BoardGameGeek have made their own alterations to the game to correct its problems, even occasionally adding new art based on the rest of the best Zelda games. But the base game is certainly playable and enjoyable, and The Hyrule Fantasy is at least, if nothing else, a history lesson in both board games and The Legend of Zelda's expanded world.
Sources: Bell of Lost Souls