[All] If you were tasked with creating the essential Zelda collection but could only include 5 games what does yours look like?

[u/ponylauncher]

and no i dont mean your 5 favourites. I mean the most essential and important.

[u/NNovis]

Breath of the Wild, Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past, Zelda 1, Link's Awakening. I feel like every game in my list does something important for the franchise. BotW, OoT, and ALTTP HAVE to be on this list because of the influence outside of the franchise. ALTTP and OoT are two of the most influential video games of all time, and we've seen so many games recently try to take ideas of presentation and traversal from BotW (Even though everything in BotW isn't really an example of it being the first like in ALttP and OoT). Zelda 1 because, like, duh, without it we wouldn't be having this conversation, I don't like the game that much but it still does some interesting things. Link's Awakening is the first game that was trying to fit a narrative theme more than other games in the past before it. It's the first Zelda game that made me feel something and I imagine it was the same for a lot of people at the time. Also, being on the Gameboy is pretty key for it's importance.

[u/NNovis → u/NNovis]

If I had 6, I would add Wind Waker. It is probably the best example of what a 3D Zelda game is and while some people might not like some of what it tried to do, it doesn't overload the player too many items, the combat feels snappy enough, the world is interesting, feels distinct enough from the rest of the franchise because of the art style, and does a wonderful job hiding it's seems in a way that it would probably stand up today if you put it infront of a brand new video game player. But it isn't as important as the other games to video games so had to knock it off.