I never played a Zelda game in my life.

[novasonic]

Depends on what kind of games you like. Some are top-down view, some are 3rd person adventures, and one is mostly a 2D side scroller. Portable games are smaller in scale and have little to no focus on story. Console games tend to be very grand in scale and newer games (gamecube onwards) have a stronger focus on story than older ones did.

But really, you can't go wrong with a Zelda game. You can jump in pretty much anywhere and be happy with it.