The Legend of Zelda
Constellation Triforce
The Legend of Zelda shipped on the Family Computer Disk System in February 1986. It was the first console game built around exploration with a save file — the gold cartridge, when it came to the US a year later, contained a battery to remember where you'd been.
The hills around Kyoto
Shigeru Miyamoto has said the overworld came from his childhood: walking through woods near his home in Sonobe and finding caves, lakes, and one summer a hole that turned out to be the entrance to a small cavern. He wanted players to feel that.
Hyrule as a series
Zelda games have ranged from top-down dungeon crawls to symphonic open-world epics, but the through-line has stayed the same: you wake up somewhere, you find a sword, you go look. The Triforce is just three triangles that mean: courage, wisdom, power.
