I've been playing it recently and I've really been feeling how much the modern Elder Scrolls games have in common with it.
You've got this open wilderness that you can traverse more or less freely, tons of stuff you can do before tackling any dungeons, which you can take in more or less any order. Lots of random secrets you can find basically anytime you want. Dungeons hold items, but most of the time they're unrelated to the completion of the dungeon itself, and you could easily go on without the majority of them. You even have a minor NPC-based sidequest, when you bring the letter to the old woman to buy potions. One thing it lacks is dungeons unrelated to the main campaign progression, but I see that as due to technical limitations more than anything else. They didn't have room on the cartridge for small side-dungeons, so they just made them all one-room caves.
If Nintendo had decided to follow up the original Zelda with a focus on the open-ended overworld exploration aspects, rather than on the dungeon-based story progression, by today you'd have a series that looks a heck of a lot like Elder Scrolls. And if you tried to go back and make an early NES version of Elder Scrolls, you'd come out with something looking a heck of a lot like the Legend of Zelda.
haven't played the elder scrolls games but buying a 360 soon, this is making me more hyped for skyrim. zelda 1 is conceptually superior to the more recent games in the series, TP and WW BADLY needed a serious injection of "it's dangerous to go alone"
eh, I'd still say modern zelda is better than the original zelda because of everything else that has improved, LoZ was just much much better than games like OoT or TP conceptually, open world exploration lends itself to a feel of adventure better than linearly running through a bunch of dungeons with an overworld that has little reason to exist
Every area in the original Zelda had a purpose and function, even if it was optional. TES games are full of worthless indistinguishable caves and ruins that exist only so Bethesda can pound on their chests and say LOOK WHAT A HUGE WORLD WE MADE.