craigb
Well, that explains why I've never played the game! Bummer...
You can play the original (and some of the sequels) online on some of those flash based gaming sites. There was a good one that had a ton of the old titles.
Difficulty... it's requires a highspeed connection and a reasonably decent computator or else the lag is unbearable. Also... Flash (and sometimes Java... yuck) is needed. Pretty cool though if you can get the games running smoothly.
Better off with the PC/Nintendo emulators though I'd imagine (where everything is stored locally so no intertubey lag is introduced). I haven't used those but would like to try them out.
Of course this release will not be available... but those online/emu versions are for the old 8/16bit vintage games.
Me and my cousin were total Zelda/NES hounds when we were kids. The original was the best out of the original series. Haven't played any of the newfangled ones (past the 16bit SNES era) because I dropped gaming once I became a moody teenager and started playing guitars/getting fuzzy feelings in my draws when gurls were around.