The Legend of Zelda is one of the most popular video game franchises out there, and after 35 years of activity, it's also one of the oldest video game franchises out there. This classic Nintendo series first saw the light in 1986 in Japan on the Famicom Disk System and is still going today. Although many fans are waiting for the newest title to be released, one fan has decided to dig through the franchise's history instead and shared a hilarious description for the original Legend of Zelda in an old Sears catalog.
Up until 1993, Sears mailed out its catalogs to potential customers, advertising its wares and their prices. It may not surprise veteran video game fans to hear that the initial English release of the original The Legend of Zelda title appears to have been listed.
Reddit user MrCantPlayGuitar shared what appears to be a photograph of an old Sears catalog that lists The Legend of Zelda alongside several other old-school video games. This alone might be worth investigating, but the image also shows a brief summary of the game that has little to do with what The Legend of Zelda is actually about. According to the post's title, the 1985 Sears catalog described The Legend of Zelda as being about gathering unidentified crystals in order to stop unnamed warlords.
Since the original The Legend of Zelda game was first released in Japan in 1986 and the west in 1987 for the NES, it may seem unlikely that the Sears catalog in question is actually from 1985. MrCantPlayGuitar clarified in the comments that this listing was located in a copy of the 1987 Sears Wishbook, a massive publication used to advertise potential holiday presents. The listing states that the NES version of The Legend of Zelda costs $29.99, a price that appears to rise up to $37.99 with shipping.
As of writing, it appears that fans find this bizarre summary confusing and hilarious. Several users pointed out that there are no warlords in the NES version of The Legend of Zelda and the Triforce are not made of crystals. More users began jokingly sharing equally unhelpful summaries of the game, while another user noted that between the summary and the price, they probably wouldn't have bought The Legend of Zelda based on this listing. A second user noted that this confusing summary could have come from a mistranslation of the game's Japanese manual.