A Link to Zelda’s Past

Samuel Claiborn of IGN has recently put out a new article that discusses several aspects of past Zelda games that he’d like to see return. In particular, the author points out six different things and explains why they rocked back then, and why they should return in the future. The 6 choices include items such as Roc’s Cape and the Pegasus Boots, a pair of Adventure of Link exclusive features, the addition of a more challenging second quest, and my personal favorite, time travel. You can check out the full article over at IGN, but shown below is a quick peak at the portion that relates to Time Travel.

Jumping between “flooded” and “dry” Hyrule could be an extremely awesome twist on the series’ “parallel worlds” theme. Additionally, it’s high time a pair of Links met — with so many of them running around with they’re bound to meet some time.

Jumping in and out of flooded Hyrule sounds like fun, but time travel in general is just sweet. It sure would create quite a paradox if multiple Link’s from different time periods did run into one another. Taking a hint out of the Back to the Future story, it would make for a sweet sidequest if Link needed to accomplish a goal in an alternative time period, all while avoiding running into his “other self” that exists in the same time period, in order to prevent a paradox. The possibilities are truly endless!

In Ocarina of Time seeing the changes over the seven years were great. It was cool to see characters move from place to place as time went on, such as the Carpenters, Talon, and many of the people from the Castle Market. Time travel also played a huge role in Oracle of Ages where it was required for many puzzles throughout the game. It was more instantaneous than its Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask counterparts as you can travel through time in mere seconds. Puzzles required you to push beanstalk seeds to certain locations and upon arriving in the future, you’ll see that the simple seed has blossomed into a huge vine that Link could climb. It made for some very cool optional and required puzzles throughout Link’s quest.

Perhaps one of the few downsides to including time travel, or any of the five things that Samuel mentioned in his article, is running the risk of being too similar to prior Zelda titles and lacking much innovation. To that I say, who really cares? Oracle of Ages is a prime example of a game that used so much from previous Zelda games yet it still was absolutely amazing. It had alternate worlds along with time travel, similar to that of A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. Many of the enemies and items in the game were very similar to that of its Link’s Awakening counterpart. Also just like in Link’s Awakening, you had to collect eight items from eight different dungeons in order to accomplish part of your overall goal in the game. Also, many of the characters in Oracle of Ages were people that we had seen before in previous Zelda titles, but they played slightly different roles in Oracle of Ages. The point being, Oracle of Ages was not an overly innovating game but critically it was still a major success and remains one of my favorite Zelda titles to date.

There are so many goodies from past Zelda games that seem to have been lost over the years. It’s nice to see Nintendo reach back and bring some of these aspects to some of the newer games, while also innovating the gameplay with new features and new ways to play. I think there is middle ground that can be reached between innovating, while also bringing back many of the memorable features from the older games in the Zelda series. Who knows, maybe the Pegasus Boots and Roc’s Cape both return in a way, but in an innovative way like the idea of a flying horse that I speculated a few weeks back. Perhaps Zelda will but more of an emphasis on magic like it did in the past, and even include more spells like we saw in Adventure of Link. Perhaps in the future a Second Quest could be possible in the form of downloadable content well after a game has been released. Nintendo surely has options in the future and it seems likely that we’ll see many of the six things that Samuel listed, but perhaps in a new shape or form. Only time will tell.

So what do you think? Are there certain aspects of old Zelda games that they should bring back? Certain gameplay elements? Items? Characters? Let us know what you think by posting in the comments below.

Check out the full article over at IGN.