Recently, Nintendo sent out a press release email, reiterating their plans for this year’s E3. For those unfamiliar: E3 is the big electronics expo held in early June in Los Angeles each year where basically all of the video games hardware and software manufacturers come together to show off to the media just what it is they’ve been working on and plan to release in the future.

What Nintendo had to say in the PR email was pretty much expected, but it does reconfirm a thing or two about the Wind Waker remake for the Wii U. Jump inside to read the quote!

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A few of the recent Favorite Zelda Moments posts I’ve written have covered fairly obscure moments that I’m not sure a ton of people would have considered one of their favorites — such as fricken’ Moldarach — but this one’s different; nearly everyone knows about the introductory portion of A Link to the Past and I’d be surprised if there were not a number of people who loved this part of the game.

This section is what the game starts off with. Establishing the now classic tradition of Zelda games opening as Link wakes up, Link is awoken from his slumber by a telepathic message from Princess Zelda, asking him to come save her. Disobeying his uncle and leaving the house, Link makes his way to Hyrule Castle through the rain to iconic music and sneaks inside (with more iconic music) to inherit a sword and shield from his dead or injured uncle and then save Zelda so they can make their escape.

Obviously this entire portion — finally ending when you reach the Sanctuary through the sewer passage — is quite excellent and very memorable. Who could forget an adventure game that begins with a dangerous nighttime infiltration mission through rain and castle, witnessing the death of their guardian, to rescue the princess? This is like literally the stuff of epic blockbuster movies, the kind of stuff that grips you and forces you to keep watching when you go see it at the theater, or that makes you cuss audibly for missing it because you had to go to the restroom while the movie started.

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Welcome to Majora’s Memes, where we bring you memetic madness weekly!

Like scouring Hyrule Field for bushes that hopefully contain Rupees or bombs or arrows, we search the Internet for Zelda-related laughs. It’s not always easy, but we always find something to showcase. We’ve got quite a few memes to present this week, so go ahead and hit the jump!
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Almost as divisive as The Wind Waker, the game we’re examining this week is a Zelda title that inspires partisanship amongst the fandom. There are those who will insist that Majora’s Mask changed Zelda in all of the right ways for the better and that no game since has bested it, but there seems to be an equal side who feel that Majora’s Mask strayed too far from the familiar formula for the worse. Like The Wind Waker, this game leads many people claim it as their favorite/least favorite for the exact same reasons, once again showing that we each have a different “recipe” as far as what makes a Zelda game.

This week I’ll cobble together some quotes from the forums and comments that have appeared on this editorial series about Majora’s Mask and try to show how the very same things that Person A loves about the game are what Person B think make it “un-Zelda”.

 
 
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I’ve said it as recently as my last article; bosses are one of my favorite parts of Zelda games. They can be impressive in size and design, but it is not uncommon to ultimately find yourself underwhelmed. When it comes to bosses, nothing is more disappointing to me than an absurdly easy battle. Even an extremely frustrating battle is eventually worthwhile due to the rewarding feeling you get once you claim victory. Now, there are certainly going to be bosses absent from the list that may surprise you, but keep in mind that there are several easy bosses in the series, and only ten available slots.

It was quite difficult for me to decide how I would rank these bosses. I find them all almost equally as pathetic. But in the end, I decided to judge overall ease mostly by how easy I found it to avoid each enemy’s attacks. Lengthier battles do not necessarily equate to higher difficulty, however. For example, I found Koloktos of Skyward Sword to be extremely easy, however the battle takes upwards of three minutes simply because of how the fight is set up. The difficulty in locating weaknesses was not considered because, let’s face it, the Zelda series has never been coy about this. One last thing considered is how far into the game an easy boss appears. For example, Hothead would have made a decent second or third boss in Link’s Awakening based on difficulty, but being the last one before the final boss knocks his threat level down greatly. A boss that far into the game should be much more challenging. Of course, the ease of a battle is all a matter of opinion and level of skill, but I think we can all agree that these ten (except for one that may surprise you) were among the most laughable “fights” in Zelda history.

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Sometimes things in video games are backwards. Often they’re intentionally backwards for ironic and comedic effect, and these are usually obvious to the player. Other times, though, situations in games can be backwards by accident, such as this example from Skyward Sword.

Alex from Corpse Run Comics seems to do a good job finding these kinds of things in the Zelda series, even if we may have all considered the ideas when we were playing.

Hit the jump to read the comic!

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Hello Zelda Dungeoners! This week’s Ocarina Time is for… Well, it is going to be late. But I have an explanation! Jump on in to see why.

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Sometimes fantastic action-adventure series don’t make it over to Nintendo consoles, leaving many Zelda fans–those most likely to devour such a game–completely unaware of their existence. This is unfortunate, but likely intentional: worried that Zelda will overshadow their games, sometimes developers will focus their releases elsewhere.

One such fantastic action-adventure series, Ys, has seen very few Nintendo releases. But with its battle system, puzzles, and cutely serious tone, I think many Zelda fans would be overjoyed with what these games bring to the table.

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The 3D Printer craze just got a lot more interesting. For those of you who haven’t heard about them, 3D printers are machines that are capable of taking a digital model and creating it in real life by adding layer upon layer of material in different shapes that correspond to the dimensions of the model. While people debate the possibility of making weapons with them, the Hyrule Foundry has created templates for 3D Printers to re-create the obtainable items from The Legend of Zelda for NES. Hit the jump to see what these items look like, and to learn where you can get them!
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There’s something to be said for variety.

Some would argue that the Zelda series has little variety. After all, with the exception of the second game, which could be called a failed experiment, the series has been following the same basic formula since its 8-bit inception. Each game represents a mix of action, adventure, and puzzle elements focused on item acquisition and exploration. The games have gotten increasingly linear and player-friendly, but otherwise, even someone without much knowledge of the series could boil its gameplay down to a set of predictable principles.

It strikes me as odd that I’ve seen this criticism leveled against the series, though, since I can think of few other successful series that don’t also follow a predictable formula with a predictable set of gameplay principles. First person shooters, for example, are a genre that has always followed trends, and while the modern FPS is very different from, say, Doom, the old and new eras have at least that much in common. If Dark Forces, for instance, was a Doom clone with its labyrinthine levels and solo protagonist, modern shooters, with their focus on, well, shooting, are clones of each other. You could say similar things about platformers in the 16-bit era, or RPGs in general, or even PC adventure games. Read more…

YES!!! It’s time to take a look at Nabooru! I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while now, partly because her presentation as a character is the same as those of past Sages, but done differently, which I really liked, but also because of her promise, which I’m really looking forward to hearing your theories, because there are infinite possibilities, some realistic, others being completely off the wall. With that said, I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t just get straight into this, so come on, let us find out what makes Nabooru such a unique character.

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In preparation for the upcoming re-release of Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, we’ve been working on our Oracle of Seasons Walkthrough. I’m happy to announce that this project has just about reached its completion and almost the entire walkthrough is now online. The only part not included at this point is the Linked Game section that happens in a second quest of Oracle of Seasons.

With Oracle of Seasons now completed, we are quickly working to bring up to date our Oracle of Ages Walkthrough as well. We’ve steadily been working on it behind the scenes and we will have the first several chapters available in just a few short days. We hope to have the entire walkthrough for Ages available when the game re-releases on the virtual console later this month. Stay tuned!

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Every now and again there comes one great person with a great talent that stuns people all around the world in one simple upload. Today is no exception. Today I present to you exactly what the title of this post says, the Zelda theme on an accordion app for the iPad. Music is such an integral part of the Zelda series that it’s almost refreshing to see the songs we love come back to the light in a different form. The video is after the jump and if you only want to see the Zelda theme skip ahead to 0:29. Read more…

Gameplay is without a doubt the most important feature of a Zelda game. Nearly every release has emphasized it over every other aspect — with the exception of Twilight Princess, which was designed to be a more cinematic experience — and rightfully so. Gameplay is the main feature of video games in general. The interactivity video games provide is something that no other visual medium can hope to recreate, making it an important factor in any video game, even if story is a major part of the identity of some games (such as the Metal Gear Solid franchise). There’s no way around it; if the gameplay of a Zelda game suffers, then the most fulfilling part of the experience is shot. This means developers must attempt to provide gamers with polished and fleshed-out mechanics when developing a new title. But what exactly does it take to achieve a goal like that? What must a Zelda game have in order to make its core gameplay a success? In this article, I’ll be presenting my thoughts on that very topic. I’ll be going over specific features that I feel Zelda needs the most for its core gameplay to be at its finest and will provide examples from various Zelda titles to help get my points across. I’ll start with what I feel is the most important thing for the Zelda series to get right.

Combat

First and foremost, the combat needs to have solid design. Stimulating combat is an absolute must-have for any game with lots of action in it, and Zelda obviously meets that criteria. There are two features that I believe need to be present for Zelda’s combat to be at its best, and they are as follows:

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An interview was recently conducted with Shawn Jackson of Precursor, the studio working on the new title, Shadow of The Eternals, the spiritual successor to the GameCube Cult classic Eternal Darkness. He was questioned about the upcoming game and what kind of characters would be in the game, the episodic format of the game and so on. Near the end of the interview he was asked if given the opportunity to work on any Nintendo franchise which one it would be, to which he responded “The Legend of Zelda!”

To see the full interview and more hit the jump!

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