I choose a few events in my long-running relationship with the Legend of Zelda series of games as my “digital experiences with design” to create a timeline for. My thinking was, instead of concentrating on a specific interface or even technology, I would reflect on the changes within my own lifetime in how games are “played” and the dynamics of the associated interface framing of them as a result.

I make that distinction, the quotations around played, because they have transitioned from a an experience of me alone with the game to, by the end of the timeline, having moved from the platform the game was originally released on to a purely digital experience: instead of pressing buttons on a gamepad, I was using a keyboard at a computer that was acting as input device and game console all virtually rolled into one.

When The Legend of Zelda (after which the series is named) first came out, it was for the Nintendo Entertainment System. You plugged in the cartridge, which contained both the ROM and RAM, and the system ran it. The game itself existed wholly on some hardware and was “played” in so much that it had to be connected to the system itself. They ran as a unit together.

Later, jumping nine years or so into the future for Ocarina of Time, the system now ran its own software. The game still needed to be plugged into the system, yes, but it was an extra component and not as symbiotic as the NES was to its cartridge. The system existed outside of the game and, in fact, wrapped around it in places, supplying functionality not exclusive to it.

This trend of layering software became even more apparent for the last two items on the timeline, too. For these, I played them via emulation. Beyond simply extending the game itself through software, the “console” used to play the game existed virtually. Some software was running the system software that was, in turn, running the game. The “system” of the console was now just a component itself, an interface between, among, and for other interfaces.