When was Zelda first released?
The Legend of Zelda
"The Legend of Zelda", the first game of the series, was first released in Japan on February 21, 1986, on the Famicom Disk System. A cartridge version, using battery-backed memory, was released in the United States on August 22, 1987, and Europe on November 27, 1987. The game features a "Second Quest," accessible either upon completing the game, or by registering one's name as "ZELDA" when starting a new quest. The Second Quest features different dungeons and item placement, and more difficult enemies.
Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda's name served as inspiration for Princess Zelda, the eponymous character of "The Legend of Zelda" series of video games. Series co-creator Shigeru Miyamoto explained, "[Fitzgerald] was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name. So I took the liberty of using her name for the very first "Zelda" title." New York City's borough of Manhattan's Battery Park's resident wild turkey Zelda (d. 2014) was also named after her, because according to legend during one of Fitzgerald's nervous breakdowns, she went missing and was found in Battery Park, apparently having walked several miles downtown. Of Zelda's legacy in popular culture, biographer Cline wrote, "Recently myth has likened Zelda to those other twentieth-century icons, Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana. With each she shares a defiance of convention, intense vulnerability, doomed beauty, unceasing struggle for a serious identity, short tragic life and quite impossible nature." In 1989, the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald museum opened in Montgomery, Alabama. The museum is in a house they briefly rented in 1931 and 1932. It is one of the few places where some of Zelda's paintings are kept on display.