Every Zelda Game On Nintendo Switch

The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo's most popular and enduring series. Mario may be Nintendo's most recognizable mascot, but Link, Zelda, and the villainous Ganondorf are likely a close second. It's also one of Nintendo's best-reviewed franchises, often receiving critical acclaim for their inventive ideas, ingenious puzzle, and affecting lore.

The vast majority of the series can be found on the company's current best-selling console. The Switch enjoys a wealth of games built from the ground up for the hybrid handheld-console, along with remakes and remasters of older games, and even classics brought back through the Nintendo Switch Online library.

The latest game in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, finally puts Zelda herself in a starring role. Instead of the series' traditional sword-and-shield combat, Zelda has the power to summon "echoes" of objects and enemies for creative problem solving in both puzzles and combat. It's an elegant marriage between the classic top-down dungeon design and the more recent, free-form creativity of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

Zelda games tend to be large adventures, some consisting of dozens of hours of gameplay. That means the Zelda games available on Switch could keep you occupied for quite a while. From recent masterpieces like Tears of the Kingdom and Echoes of Wisdom to classics like the original Legend of Zelda to spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors, here are all the Legend of Zelda games you can enjoy on Nintendo Switch.

One of the Switch launch games and still one of its all-time best-sellers, Breath of the Wild reinvented The Legend of Zelda for a modern age and inspired a parade of imitators. The free-form, open-world format was a radical change from other 3D Zelda games. Its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, has firmly established that this is a new template for 3D Zelda games going forward, but Breath of the Wild will always be the originator of this radical new direction.

Read our Breath of the Wild review.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was a fan favorite for the Game Boy, and it received a masterful remake for the Nintendo Switch. The new version featured a total visual overhaul with characters who look like Rankin-Bass figurines, and it sported a few small quality-of-life features along with a simple dungeon creation mini-game. The core of the game remained intact, though, telling the sweet, melancholy tale of Link's quest to wake the dreaming Wind Fish.

Read our Link's Awakening review.

The Wii game Skyward Sword got a new lease on life on the Nintendo Switch with an HD remaster. This version features 60fps along with quality-of-life tweaks like optional Fi hints, the ability to skip dialogue boxes, and item descriptions only appearing the first time you find them. The game itself lets you use the Joy-Con controllers to imitate the feeling of a Wii remote and nunchuck, or simply use a traditional control scheme with the sword-swipes mapped to the right analog stick. Skyward Sword is widely seen as the last (so far) in a lineage of 3D Zelda games that began with Ocarina of Time, before Nintendo made a radical open-world shift with Breath of the Wild.

Read our Skyward Sword review.

One of the only times Nintendo has allowed another developer to touch some of its most valuable characters, Cadence of Hyrule is a musical take on the Zelda series from the studio behind Crypt of the Necrodancer. The game largely works the same as that roguelike rhythm game, albeit with Zelda enemies and tunes to groove to.

Read our Cadence of Hyrule review.

A spin-off from Koei Tecmo series Dynasty Warriors, this combat-focused Zelda game takes familiar heroes and places them on sprawling battlefields filled to bursting with monsters. Like any Dynasty Warriors game, you're overpowered compared to the average grunt and you take them down en masse with a single strike, but it also introduces elements like contextual equipment. Hyrule Warriors a big wild hack-and-slash mash-up of various Zelda games.

Read our Hyrule Warriors review.

A follow-up to Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity was declared a companion story (of sorts) to Breath of the Wild set in the same era. As a result, you get a lot of BotW's familiar trappings, including appearances from major characters and gameplay elements like environmental puzzles and paragliding. This is still a hack-and-slash like its predecessor, so most of your time will be spent tossing around hordes of Bokoblins like ragdolls.

Read our Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity review.

This direct sequel to Breath of the Wild is one of the few games in the Zelda series to retain a predecessor's world, so the map is largely the same as that game, but its inventive mechanics make it feel fresh and new. Tears of the Kingdom features a host of new building mechanics, letting you craft your own solutions to puzzles, build your way through platforming challenges, and even make working vehicles to traverse the landscape. Meanwhile, it tells an affecting story that spans the entire history of Hyrule, making it a can't-miss for Zelda fans.

Read our Tears of the Kingdom review.

For the first time in canon a Legend of Zelda game actually stars Zelda. Echoes of Wisdom is her own solo outing, marrying the overhead style of classic Zelda games with the creative, flexible problem-solving of Breath of the Wild. As Zelda, you can capture "echoes" of more than 100 items in the world, summoning them to create your own solutions to puzzles and combat encounters. The visual style is a direct successor to the Link's Awakening remake on Switch, with the same beautiful Rankin-Bass-like figurine art style. It's an excellent marriage of two eras of Zelda game, and not to be missed. The game is also releasing alongside a special golden Hyrule Edition Switch Lite.

Read our Echoes of Wisdom review.

The pioneering game that started it all. The original Legend of Zelda is almost wordless in its storytelling, and evokes the feeling of a grand, strange fantasy adventure. It can be difficult to find your way to all of the dungeons, some of which are very well-hidden, but all the pieces are here. Sprawling dungeons, enemies like Stalfos and Moblins, relics that help find your way through, and even a special Master Sword. This is the prototype for everything that followed.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

The first sequel in The Legend of Zelda series is also one of its most radical departures. The Adventure of Link ditched the overhead view for a side-scrolling action game with RPG elements. The result was a game that's more difficult than much of the rest of the series, and experimental elements that were never used again. That said, it was the first Zelda game to feature townsfolk with their own dialogue to enrich the world, and it introduced the Shadow Link enemy that would come back several times in later iterations.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

The only Super NES iteration of Zelda was also one of the most significant for the series. After the experimental Zelda II, this one went back to the classic formula but expanded it greatly. The story was more detailed, the visuals were given a bright and colorful cartoon aesthetic, and the items had more variety than ever before. Just when you seemed on the cusp of victory the quest expanded greatly, throwing you into a twisted Dark World with its own dungeons. The interplay between the Light and Dark Worlds was an incredible feat, and an idea that Nintendo has riffed on with similar concepts several times since.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

Link's first adventure on Game Boy was later revised for the Game Boy Color, and that's the version available on Nintendo Switch Online. Link's Awakening was a smaller adventure set on the island of Koholint, as a stranded Link fought against a band of Nightmares to wake the Wind Fish. Disconnected from most other Zelda continuity, the story is haunting and pensive, while also being playful with elements like Goombas from the Mario series. The DX version adds color as well as a special Color Dungeon with its own color-based puzzles to retrieve a special piece of equipment.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

The second and third Game Boy Zelda games were created by Capcom, and followed the relatively new and novel formula of releasing two complementary games simultaneously. Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons were unique from each other, with world and dungeon design focused on time and the four seasons, respectively. Ages was also made to be more puzzle-focused while Seasons was more action-oriented. But their most creative hook was that completing each one granted a code to be used in the other, which then told a complete overarching story. These were among the last games to be released for the Game Boy Color, and still among the best on the GBC.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

Considered by many to be one of the most influential games of all time, Ocarina of Time was the series' big transition to 3D. A massive world split between time periods, you explore dungeons as both young and adult Link, all while on the trail of the nefarious Ganondorf, the king of thieves. Many of the elements that became standardized in later Zelda games, especially the lock-on combat system, originated here. While it can be a little harder to go back to than some later Zelda titles, this still stands as a remarkable achievement and a view of where the second era of Zelda design began. Ocarina later received a port for the 3DS with some notable enhancements, but this version on Switch Online is the original N64 classic without the frills.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription.

The follow-up to Ocarina of Time was not what anybody was expecting, but it's gone down as a classic in its own right. Whereas Ocarina of Time spent the majority of the adventure following adult Link, Majora's Mask centered squarely on the kid incarnation, as he donned a series of masks to gain new powers like that of the Goron or Zora people, among many others. It was also much more focused on villager quests than Ocarina, with an inventive time-looping mechanic to learn the rhythms of everyday life and discover when and how to intercede to change the fates of the villagers.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription.

For the Link to the Past port on Game Boy Advance, Nintendo added a new quest that introduced multiplayer to Zelda. Up to four players could venture through dungeons to solve cooperative puzzles and collect gems to empower the magical "Four Sword." The original used Game Boy link cables, but the version for the Nintendo Switch Online service lets you play online.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription.

Having worked on the Oracle games for the Game Boy Color, Capcom went on to make The Minish Cap for Game Boy Advance. This time Link was assisted by a talking hat that perched atop his head, and his adventure was centered around shrinking to micro-size. The GBA gave the ability for more detailed pixel art than ever before, and the shrinking and growing mechanic let you see the environments differently. The dungeon design was as clever as ever and took advantage of the shrinking ability as well.

Available with a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription.