The Legend of Zelda has been around for as long as I’ve been aware of Nintendo, and I was a bit of a dork when I was a kid. (If you’re curious, I started playing Zelda around Ocarina of Time, and yes, it is still excellent. I’ve been playing Nintendo for about as long as I can remember.) Most Zelda fans and probably a good chunk of nonfans have probably heard rumor of the short-lived cartoon series. They have probably heard rumor of it because it is really fucking terrible, in the best possible way.

Each episode runs for about fifteen minutes, and there’s thirteen of them. Watching more than a few at a time tends to be kind of painful, but one or two can be hilarious.

Link is an obnoxious slobby teenager who goes out of his way to shirk his responsibilities (which, for some reason, include cleaning up the castle), and is constantly demanding that Princess Zelda give him a kiss. He shoots laser beams out of his sword. He and Zelda spend most of each episode trying to thwart the latest evil schemes of Ganon, the evil pig-wizard, whose idea of a clever scheme is to send a single easily defeated minion to attempt to kill or kidnap our heroes. It’s noteworthy that the single greatest threat to Hyrule is incapable of cooking up a scheme that can’t be thwarted in a fifteen minute cartoon.

Ganon has at his disposal some really powerful magic, however–in one episode, he uses a thought-control amulet on Zelda. Unfortunately, instead of using the thought-control amulet to install a puppet ruler on the throne of Hyrule and usher in an era of corruption and bring Hyrule to slow ruin in that way, he instead uses the power to have Zelda almost marry him. He also ruins any chance of subtlety by abducting her in plain view of Link, the kingdom’s sole defender.

On the plus side, this Zelda is actually kind of a badass, if you can ignore the fact that she’s stuck in the worst possible television series and is wearing the distilled essence of the late 80′s as her princessing attire. She fights and does flips and actually does more than get abducted constantly. That would get old real quick.

You could definitely find worse things to do on a boring Sunday afternoon than hunt these down and watch them. And if you feel the need for a bad movie but only have fifteen minutes to spare, I can’t think of any better suggestions.