The Legend of Zelda/TBL

The following article is a Text Table for The Legend of Zelda.

NPC Text

The game does not make use of lowercase letters. However, for reasons explained below, normal text is represented by lowercase characters for the purpose of text editing. The tilde (~) is used to represent an indenting space.

00=0
01=1
02=2
03=3
04=4
05=5
06=6
07=7
08=8
09=9
0A=a
0B=b
0C=c
0D=d
0E=e
0F=f
10=g
11=h
12=i
13=j
14=k
15=l
16=m
17=n
18=o
19=p
1A=q
1B=r
1C=s
1D=t
1E=u
1F=v
20=w
21=x
22=y
23=z
24=_ 
25=~
28=,
29=!
2A='
2B=&
2C=.
2D="
2E=?
2F=-

Some (probably most) messages in the game run more than one line. From the perspective of bytes, each character has three additional forms that tell the game to end the current line and start at the second or third line or terminate the string. These secondary forms are visually identical to their primary counterparts, but to make their presence obvious during text editing, they are represented here with capitals. For example, 0C means print a C, but 4C means print a C then proceed to the beginning of the second line before continuing to write. 8C means print a C then proceed to the third line. 8C means print a C, which is the end of the current string. This is best understood in terms of bits rather than bytes. Set bit 6 (equivalent to adding hexadecimal 40) to go to the second line and bit 7 (80) for the third line, and both to terminate the string.

Third-Line Forms:

80=0
81=1
82=2
83=3
84=4
85=5
86=6
87=7
88=8
89=9
8A=A
8B=B
8C=C
8D=D
8E=E
8F=F
90=G
91=H
92=I
93=J
94=K
95=L
96=M
97=N
98=O
99=P
9A=Q
9B=R
9C=S
9D=T
9E=U
9F=V
A0=W
A1=X
A2=Y
A3=Z
A4=_
A5=~
A6= 
A7= 
A8=,
A9=!
AA='
AB=&
AC=.
AD="
AE=?
AF=-

Story Text

The story text ("MANY YEARS AGO PRINCE DARKNESS...") uses additional characters and graphics mixed in with the text. In the table below, quotes are represented with an underscore (note that there are two different quote characters used in this game!), parentheses are used to represent the vertical parts of the "wreath", the less than and greater than sign are used for the horizontal parts of the wreath, and the number sign is used for the corner piece of the wreath.

00=0
01=1
02=2
03=3
04=4
05=5
06=6
07=7
08=8
09=9
0A=a
0B=b
0C=c
0D=d
0E=e
0F=f
10=g
11=h
12=i
13=j
14=k
15=l
16=m
17=n
18=o
19=p
1A=q
1B=r
1C=s
1D=t
1E=u
1F=v
20=w
21=x
22=y
23=z
24= 
25=~
28=,
29=!
2A='
2B=&
2C=.
2D="
2E=?
2F=-
E2 = (
E3 = )
E4 = <
E5 = >
E6 = #
F8 = _