Every Time You Actually Played as Zelda Before Echoes of Wisdom

Wait, Zelda Was Playable Before?

When The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom dropped, Nintendo hyped it as a landmark moment — the first mainline Zelda game where you actually control Princess Zelda instead of Link. And that's true, technically. But if you think Zelda has spent 40 years as a background damsel waiting to be rescued, you're missing some genuinely bizarre gaming history.

Polygon's deep dive traces Zelda's playable appearances all the way back to the notoriously awful Philips CD-i games from the early '90s — the ones Nintendo barely acknowledges exist. Yes, before she ever got a proper mainline starring role, Zelda was already a controllable character in some of the strangest, jankiest titles ever licensed under the Nintendo name.

From CD-i Curiosities to Smash Bros. Icon

The throughline gets a lot more respectable once you hit Super Smash Bros. Zelda (and her alter ego Sheik) has been a fighter since Melee, giving millions of players their first taste of controlling her directly — magic projectiles, teleports, and all. That's decades of Zelda being playable in one of Nintendo's biggest franchises, just not in her own games.

There's also Zelda's turn as a playable racer in Nintendo crossover-style spinoffs, cameo appearances, and various handheld oddities that let fans control her in limited capacities. Put it all together and you get a scattered, inconsistent, but surprisingly long list of moments where Nintendo let players step into her shoes — just never in a full-length, mainline Zelda adventure until now.

Why Echoes of Wisdom Still Matters

So why does Echoes of Wisdom get to claim the "first" title? Because it's the first time Zelda headlines a numbered, canon entry in the core series with her own abilities, her own quest, and her own agency — not a side mode, not a fighting game moveset, not a CD-i fever dream. It's a genuine shift in how Nintendo treats one of gaming's most recognizable characters, decades after fans started asking for exactly this.

The history is part goofy trivia, part legitimate industry commentary on how long it took a AAA publisher to let its title character actually be the hero of her own story.

The Takeaway for Fans

If you're diving into Echoes of Wisdom expecting a total first, know the fuller picture. Zelda's road to protagonist status was longer, weirder, and more fragmented than the marketing suggests — and that makes her current starring role feel even more earned.