The History of Zelda - Part 1 Comments by Keza MacDonald

Great editorials, these are.

OMG!!! a look into Zelda's Past and EG's imminenent review... i can't even tpye properloperly.

Zelda fans beware this is not something you'd want to remember

When it's done!

Never played any of them.

Does that make me a bad person?

I remember playing LTTP and OOT over the Christmas period, '92 and '98.

Get up at midday, eat some lunch, start playing Zelda with my mate. 18 hours later, go to bed at 6am.

Repeat the above for days to finish each one.

Two of the best games I've ever played.

And, Twilight Princess sounds as if it will have exactly the same effect.

This is why I play games, for the pure enjoyment of it.

I remember the agonising, interminable five-year wait that we all had to endure before Ocarina of Time eventually made it to the UK.

Yeah...some things never change :/

The Zelda Clip Spaceworld 2001 anyone remember that?

That's a friggen 5 year wait for Zelda TP as well.

..... Awakening and Ocarina, unbelievable... loved when you travelled through time in Ocarina and realised you were only scratching the surface.... kind of like the opposite of Wind Waker were it ended up being shorted lived and shallow...

/I'd say the reviews done now?

I remember buying an N64 second hand just to play OOT...

Fantastic game, sold the N64 right after I'd finished it though.

Yes it is impressive that a game that everyone wanted on the Gamecube since the console was announced on the backdrop of Zelda Ocarina of Time and space world sells so well as a launch title for the wii.

I've got Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mark as well as Link to the Past on a Collector Edition disc for the GameCube (the manager in GAME gave me a copy); will I still be able to play those on the Wii?

Like Pooley,Ocarina of time provides one of my fondest memories of console gaming,like him I was on that title for an obscene amount of hours over the first few days of owning it(12+ without a break),it was just so immersive with such impressive graphics.
Infact I think I could say it's probably my favourite game of all time,but stupidly I don't want to go back to it incase it hasn't held up too well over the years. :/

Damn straight. ;)

Hang on are you sure a link to the past is on a collectors disc?

The only collectors disc i got was the one with Zelda, 1&2, Majora's Mask and Zelda OoT with Master Quest and all i had to do was buy the Mario Kart double dash bundle.

That was the best damn Nintendo bundle i ever seen it even topped the Super Mario Allstars bundle i got with the Snes... including Super Mario World. :D

Come on Zelda Review!!!!

When does the Wii NDA expire, this Friday? I'm sure I heard somewhere say there was a UK NDA, reviews pending.

Whats happening to the GameCube version of TP?

Btw never give Link a voice!

Apart from Haaaaaaaa!

It's quite funny because in the GC version of Soul Calibur 2 Link has about 37 different voice sayings. o_O

huh
Hwuah
AAAAAAAAAHHHH
Doin

I still wish I liked the Zelda games. Feel like I'm missing out on some sort of gaming heritage. = /

@ Captainrentboy

My mate played OOT again on the 'Cube when he got the Collectors Edition disk. He found it just as much fun the second time around.

These two will probably be in the Virtual Console section on the Wii soon, if not planned already, and will definitely be a necessary purchase.

BTW, the rumble on OOT was about the only time I felt that rumble was done properly in any game. Using it to locate hidden areas, brilliant idea.

Ocarina holds up really well even today rentboy, still the best game i have ever played , truly astonishing title. here's hoping TP delivers half of that experience and by almost all accounts it does exactly that.

"Link's Awakening...was the first to feature the lengthy and convoluted trading sequence that is now a series staple."

If only it was a staple - to my mind it's only Link's Awakening and OoT that have actually bothered :-(

Also... god I love Zelda games.

I've seen a video version of a similar round-up to Zelda on gametrailers.com... The similarities are amazing...

What's not to like about the Zelda series? It's simply the best game series ever made...

But from the screenshots I think Twilight looks an awfull lot like Ocarina and Majora. I just hope they can bring something new and refreshing to the game because all the other titles (apart from the gameboy versions) did. Apart from the Wii controller...

It's 6 years since I played Majora's Mask.

I'd be quite happy to play a similar game again now. More of the same would be quite welcome.

.... i hope they get the difficulty balance right, not too easy....

I think it's still meant to be pretty easy, unfortunately.

thats a pity.... well as long as they haven't done a Wind Waker on it with the whole padding (sailing) thing....

OoT is the 2nd best game I have ever played! LttP was pretty good too. Recently I have been enjoying the delights of the Minish Cap and can't wait to Twilight Princess!

I think I am broken. Played LTTP for three hours. Got insanely bored, turned off. Play OoT for about five hours, got insanely bored, turned off. Played Wind Waker, fell in love, played it for months, finished it, adored it. Went back to OoT to see what I'd been missing. Got insanely bored, turned it off.

Are there any other games that get/deserve this kind of treatment in anticipation of the next iteration? What other IP is out there with such astrong history and identity?
Mario has about as a long a history, quite a bit longer if one includes the Donkey kong games, will we see such retrospectives about the plumber before next year's release of Super Mario Galaxy?
Metal Gear has been around since the MSX as far as I know. Would it be unlikely to have a retrospective of it's amazingly convulted history for the release of the forth one in it's Solid Snake series?

If only it was a staple - to my mind it's only Link's Awakening and OoT that have actually bothered :-(

Windwaker has the very convoluted Gorons-in-disguise trading quest

Hang on are you sure a link to the past is on a collectors disc?

Well, it's not on my collector's disk, that's for sure...

Chtulie it seems EG will be looking into the past of such games when they're about to be released like the Final Fantasy history when Final Fantasy XII got released.... in the US.

Can't wait for the Zelda review.

*cough* been done before *cough*

Excellent article.

One thing about the series that this article mentions, but many people seem to forget, is the sheer diversity and variety in all of the games. They truly are all-in-one games, with adventuring, exploring, puzzle solving, slashing, collecting, fishing all rounded into a cohesive whole. The 3D GTAs may have heralded sandbox gaming but they are still flawed, whereas in something like OoT everything seems to work perfectly.

Also... the games have character, more than any other game series I've played. Not through long cut-scenes, or voice-acting, but through simple expressions, body language and gibberish sound. I'm replaying Majora's Mask now, and it's beautiful as well as dark, with some real sad and tender moments. That, more than anything else, is why I love the Zelda games.

K

I've just started playing Minish Cap again as it goes. Superb game and annoyed I forgot about it leaving it unfinished. Portable Zelda fTw

Link to the Past is still my favourite. I can still whistle the flute tune....

The collectors discs are actually two...

One launched with Mario Kart Double Dash
And one with The Wind Waker

The former has
- The Legend Of Zelda
- Zelda II
- The Ocarina Of Time
- Majora's Mask
- A 15 minute timed Wind Waker Demo

The latter has:
- Ocarina Of Time
- Ocarina Of Time: Master Quest
- Various videos of other games (F-zero GX and stuff)

Oh, I wish it wasn't so boring to say that Ocarina of Time was hands-down the absolute best game I've ever played, because that's all I can say about it. I'm not even going to bother to try and qualify that, because I won't have anything to say that hasn't been said many times before.

I find Zomoniac's point interesting though...I do think that every new generation of Zelda game is tailored to a new group of players. As much as I love OoT, and all the Zeldas since, I never could REALLY get into previous ones, not even LttP, as much as I respect it...they aren't games that date at all if you go back to them even ten years after you first played them, but if you come into an older Zelda game ten years on from fresh, I think it's a different story...

pretence: To be honest, I've kind of given up on ever finding a Zelda game particularly hard ever again, I'm just too used to how they work now, but from what I hear, TP is unquestionably longer, more challenging and less padded than TWW. 50-70 hours is what I usually hear, with a similar number of dungeons to OoT, an overworld five times bigger, and nothing comparable to WW's hated Triforce map quest. I'll settle for that.

"If only it was a staple - to my mind it's only Link's Awakening and OoT that have actually bothered :-(

Windwaker has the very convoluted Gorons-in-disguise trading quest"

I was under the impression that it only involved about 3 different people and was over very quickly, resulting in a highly shit and useless item.

Fantastic game, sold the N64 right after I'd finished it though.

Your loss as the machine had many games that easily rivalled it in terms of fun.

Damn you, Keza !

You have now made me want to drag out my Cube and slap on the version of OoT all over again - it really *was* that special, wasn't it.

The cables strewn across the room tonight will be your fault EG ! ;o)

link to the past is still the best game of all time.

Prof - the WW one was a bit shit, as it involved the same three people over and over again. In the end you got a piece of heart, as well all those lovely statues that you could plant all around town.

OoT one was best though, you at least got an item that was actually useful.

K

@ Muddtallica. Tis true.... The mechanics are too familiar to be as difficult ... unless they completely changed all his skills.... 70 hours game play!! ... Sounds like fun! Tis a metaphorical onion of a game so it tis or maybe a cluster of small onions of which you start in one all wrapped in a world encompassing onion.... Ahem.... something like that....

/tries to remember the last time was as excited about a game...

/.... remembers HL2 trailers

Zomoniac: Actually I liked Wind Waker most out of all the Zelda games as well, as you'll see when part 2 goes up. It's hardly a popular view, especially among Zelda diehards, but there was just something about it that captured my imagination, even more so than OoT. It seemed very genuine, somehow. Beguilingly so.

As for the GameTrailers retrospectives: honestly, I found them a little light...

Agreed.... tis a bit harsh having to wait an extra year... what are you going to do?.... I suppose I could not by the game in protest.... that would show them...;)

Not sure what "just as ghey as Sony means"?

@Keza Where you not disappointed at the low number of dungeons and tacked on last dungeon, it just seemed so rushed?

I'm sure the delay has been well spent by the devs...
I'm pretty convinced it'll be worth the wait...

Mudtallica: Although my first discovery of LTTP was through the GBA port, your claim that "they aren't games that date at all if you go back to them even ten years after you first played them, but if you come into an older Zelda game ten years on from fresh, I think it's a different story" isn't the answer in my case, as I played OoT on N64 when it first came out and found it mindnumbing then.

Perhaps it is that art style matters to me more than most. Wind Waker was so painfully charming that it would draw me in, it was an absolutely perfect example of cel-shading, and this big cartoon world was a joy to behold. But that's what it felt like, it was a fun and entertaining, cartoon-esque game, and that's why I enjoyed it. Why else would I enjoy it? The controls are standard 3rd-person fare, nothing groundbreaking, the fighting mechanic is archaic, and I hear talk about the "gripping story" and "epic quests". OoT might have been big, but to me it just felt pathetic, the story was throwaway drivel and the first five hours contained nothing resembling an epic quest, and a lot resembling tedium. Wind Waker suffered from all these flaws, but because I was so taken aback by the beauty of it, I didn't care. And that is why, many years later, after trying and failing to "get" OoT, finishing Wind Waker and putting the bonus disc in the Cube, I was still left bored and underwhelmed.

I've ordered TP, and I'll play it for a while, if only to see how the controller works on a non-tech-demo/mini-game-compilation "proper" game. But from what I can see and what I have heard, it's far more like OoT than any of the others, which is perfectly logical as that's what the majority of people want, but it doesn't appeal to me.

Oot made me a gamer all over again,

I can't see any game ever been so superior than its peers ever again.