Our great friends at Zelda Universe have come across an unusual find. A game is in development for portable Apple devices and may seem a bit too familiar to Zelda fans. While the game is not related to the Zelda franchise in anyway, it does share some common ground with a few games from the series. The all touch controls, cartoon style graphics, heart containers, and top down view of a young boy with a sword definitely brings Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks to mind.

The title of this Wind Waker look alike is Oceanhorn and aside from it borrowing a few aspects from the Zelda series, it looks like it would be a fantastic game for those who own an Ipad. Jump inside to read more and a watch some short gameplay footage.

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Zelda Universe’s 25 Years in 25 Days is winding down as we approach the Skyward Sword release this weekend. Today’s year is 2009 and not only did we see a brand new game for the DS, but we got to experience one of the most elaborate fan-made Zelda projects of the time. Spirit Tracks was released this year and although it fixed many of the problems that were found in Phantom Hourglass, fans still found things to be upset about. Many thought the game was too high-tech with the incorporation of the train system and others complained that it looked exactly the same as Phantom Hourglass.

Also, in 2009, BMB Finishes released a fan-made, full-length feature film that was loosely based on the story of Ocarina of Time. That film was known as The Hero of Time. Many fans were excited about this movie and it received so much attention that eventually Nintendo got wind of it. They decided that it was too big of a production and at the end of the year, they asked BMB Finishes to remove it from the internet. Finally, the last thing to happen in 2009 came during E3 when a picture was revealed of what was known then as Zelda Wii. Head over to Zelda Universe to read the entire article and to share your thoughts. If you happened to miss any of the previous articles, click here to read them all.

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Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are very similar, yet there are different opinions surrounding them. Some people thought Phantom Hourglass wasn’t very good for a Zelda game, and others thought, at first, that Spirit Tracks was too technological (although that opinion has deteriorated over time). They are considered by some to be among the lowest rated Zelda games. Regardless of these conceptions, the two are still quite different. In fact, many gamers prefer one over the other. This begs the question: “How could people like one so much more than the other?”

Similarities in these games range from gameplay mechanics, to the general method in which Link carries out his quest, to even certain enemies and background music. Even some characters and races are the same in both games, like Niko and Linebeck, and the Gorons and the Anouki. The fundamental design is also similar. In Phantom Hourglass, Link was required to journey to the Temple of the Ocean King in order to obtain the Sea Chart that would allow him to travel to the island where the next dungeon was located. Then, after clearing said dungeon, he would return to the Ocean King’s Temple to get the next Sea Chart, and the process would repeat itself. In Spirit Tracks, the quest is exactly the same, only there are towns instead of islands, rail maps in place of sea charts, and the temple Link must return to after each dungeon is the Tower of Spirits. Both hub dungeons contain the same thing as well: Phantoms, the guardian knights that stalk the hallways of the temple or tower. In both games, the Phantoms cannot be defeated upon first entry of the citadel. Read more…

Destructoid recently posted a new entry in The Memory Card. In this entry Chad Concelmo talks (for the third time) about The Wind Waker.  However, this time Chad focuses on the ending and how it established Zelda as more of a helping character that fights along side Link rather than stand hopeless on the sidelines.

The first half of the article sets the scene for the moment, detailing the final cut scenes leading up to the final encounter with Ganondorf. Chad believes that Zelda was much more of a helpful character in The Wind Waker as opposed to Ocarina of Time, and backs up his opinion in his post.

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Remember when Spirit Tracks was all the hype? The forums are looking back to that time and discussing if all of that hype was for the right reason. It’s commonly debated the Spirit Tracks is one of the lesser Zelda games in the series, and everybody is pitching in their own ideas. This week’s featured thread is Spirit Tracks Afterthoughts. What did you end up thinking about the game? Do you think it was over-hyped for what you ended up getting? Register on our forums and tell us what you thought about this portable Zelda. Here’s what some other people thought to get you started.

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Exactly one year ago to this day, Spirit Tracks was released for the Nintendo DS. Initially, it was met with a rather diverse set of reviews by many gamers. Many hardcore Zelda fans considered it a huge upgrade over the previous Zelda DS title, Phantom Hourglass. Many others thought it was in the same vein as Phantom Hourglass, a big disappointment. While others thought it was just another amazing Zelda title added to the series. So one year later, what does Spirit Tracks bring to the table?

From a critical standpoint, you could say that Spirit Tracks was a failure. Now of course, this is all very relative, as when I use the term failure, I’m comparing it to other Zelda titles, and not all DS games. At Game Rankings.com, Spirit Tracks scores at an 86.92%, and at a similar website Meta Critic, the game comes in at an 87. These are hardly bad scores, but when you compare them to the rest of the Legend of Zelda series, they are not up to standard. In fact, not counting the Four Swords Spin-Offs, or the original NES Zelda games which simply don’t have enough reviews, Spirit Tracks has the worst critical ratings of any main series Zelda title to date.

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Our friends over at ZeldaPower have recently updated their website with a 40-page Spirit Tracks Sheet Music book. The new page includes a listing of all 22 Songs that are available in the sheet music book. The sheet music is meant for piano players out there, but for those of you who are well versed enough in music, you can surely translate this music for various other musical instruments. The book was originally in Japanese and the folks at ZeldaPower are working on translating some of the song titles as well. It is definitely worth checking out if you enjoy playing Zelda tunes on your instruments.

In addition to just this new book, ZeldaPower has some other Zelda sheet music available at their website including a full download of the 192-page Best Collection, which has music from A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and the Wind Waker. Additionally, ZeldaPower has a 200-page Wind Waker Sheet Music download available. Plenty of goodies to keep any musical Zelda fan satisfied.

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The Legend of Zelda is the game series that we all know and love. Almost all of us hold the Super Mario series very close to us as well. For a lot of us, Super Mario 64 was our very first video game ever. I love them both, but has the Zelda series made decisions so that the games are stuck at a standstill? Read more…

One big subject that comes up when talking about the rise (or downfall, depending on how you look at it) of The Legend of Zelda is the concept of magic. Magic is obviously one of the things that defines the Zelda franchise and makes it exciting. Some games were filled with spells, while others made use of mysterious items with arcane powers. Fairies, Wizrobes, maze-like woods, and items that start with the word “magical” are all prominently in Zelda games. Bottom line: magic is awesome. But many fans have asserted that magic played a huge role in the early games, and that its use has gone down dramatically, only to be replaced by technology. Sounds alarming. I’d like to take you through this and give you my thoughts. Read more…

So which Zelda game did you prefer, Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks? Yesterdays post showed that Phantom Hourglass greatly outsold Spirit Tracks, but does this mean that it was necessarily a better game? The folks over at Twilight Lynk have recently put up a Game Spotlight where they look at both titles side by side and decide which they prefer is the better of the two. Here is what the author of the article had to say about each game.

Phantom Hourglass is an enjoyable game, but definitely not among my favourite Zelda games. The inclusion of The Wind Waker crew as well as the addition of Linebeck carried the story along for me, and the touchscreen controls and clever little gameplay mechanics were enjoyable. I’m glad we were given the chance to see where the Hero of Winds ended up after The Wind Waker.

Playing Spirit Tracks is an exhausting and disappointing experience for many reasons. With games you enjoy, you don’t mind that they end up taking longer than expected to finish because you don’t really want it to end. I’ve found that Spirit Tracks is the opposite for me… it just keeps on going when I want it to end so I can get it over with already!

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When it comes to sales, Phantom Hourglass was considered highly successful, having surpassed 4.5milliion units sold across the world. Spirit Tracks was its spiritual successor having used the same game engine, being a direct story sequel, and having been released just two years after Phantom Hourglass hit shelves. When Spirit Tracks was released late last year, it was given mostly positive reviews, and while its ratings were lower than many previous Zelda titles, it still had a collective score of 87% on Game Rankings.

However, even with more Nintendo DS systems out in the market and even after Phantom Hourglass was out in stores for years having been a success, Spirit Tracks simply did not sell nearly as well. After being on the market for just about six months, you can tell by the chart below exactly where Spirit Tracks stands and how Phantom Hourglass also stands. As you can see, in the next week or two Phantom Hourglass will have officially past Spirit Tracks in sales in terms of how many weeks it has been on the market.

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Thanks to Avenged, former webmaster of Zelda Dungeon, and current webmaster of Zelda Chronicles for sending in this news bit to us. In the latest issue of Nintendo Power, there was an interview with Spirit Tracks Director Daiki Iwamoto. Within the interview itself, there were quite a few interesting tidbits and shown below is one tidbit in regards to the items in Spirit Tracks.

“When coming up with items, our basic policy was to make all the items new ones, except for things that were a hit in the last game and things we might still be able to use to propose new ways of playing. We kept the boomerang, bow and bombs, and got rid of the grappling hook, Bombchus, and hammer. Then we started by thinking up three items to replace the ones we’d discarded. As much as possible, we specifically tried to think of things with DS-specialized functions, and things that could be used in a number of different ways. We come up with the puzzles not beforehand, but while we think up the item functions and examine the ideas those items give us.”

I liked the new items that they included and thought in general it was one of the high points of the game. It would have been nice to get a couple new ones as well, or perhaps more optional ones that could be used for fun or in side quests. The inventory was kind of small, much like Phantom Hourglass, but I thought the items were each done justice with the amount they were actually used. You can check out the rest of the interview of over at our affiliate Zelda Chronicles.

Spirit Tracks has really settled for most Zelda enthusiasts with many of us having already completed the game several times. Many Zelda fans were disappointed with Phantom Hourglass, yet they viewed Spirit Tracks as a form of redemption for Nintendo. One of the guys over at The Kartel has a much different approach and feels that Spirit Tracks was a big step back for Nintendo after what he thought was a very successful Phantom Hourglass.

“An optimistic view of Spirit Tracks might see it as nothing but a sophomore misfire. Hourglass taught that Stylus-driven Zelda can be great, and Tracks warned that it’s not inherently great. Hopefully the next DS Zelda installment will take the innovations of Phantom Hourglass and use them to craft an adventure that avoids the plodding mediocrity of riding the Spirit Tracks.”

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Over the last three months there has been dozens of Spirit Tracks reviews and the vast majority of them have been positive. However, now that the game has had time to settle in the minds of gamers, we can almost start looking back at Spirit Tracks in the past tense, rather than as a current game. Richard Poskozim of The Lantern has put together a recent review of Spirit Tracks and unlike most reviewers, he spends a heck of a lot more time focusing on the weaker points in Spirit Tracks, rather than its strong points. Below is a quick excerpt of his article.

Sadly, Link’s shiny new “spirit train” quickly becomes the game’s major frustration, easily trumping simplistic puzzles and ridiculous character design. Every traversable area of the game is only accessible by the tracks, and for the most part nothing happens on the not-so-scenic treks from one side of the huge world map to the other. There’s just enough annoying little enemies to blow away with a cannon to keep players from leaving their DSes on and getting a drink while they wait, but not nearly enough to keep things entertaining.

For me, I really did enjoy Spirit Tracks at release, but now that things have settled, there are numerous things that really bug me and I pointed some of them out in a video blog several weeks back. In general, I feel the dungeons and the music were just amazing, but much of the rest of the game fell short. It has its bright spots, but I think it has settled to where I think its placement on my favorite Zelda list is on par with that of its predecessor, Phantom Hourglass, if not lower.

What do you guys think of the review. Was it a fair look at Spirit Tracks? Did you enjoy the things that the writer was frustrated with? Where does Spirit Tracks fit on your lists of favorite Zelda titles? Read more…

Just the other day I was looking over at GameRankings.com, a site that offers links to all the various reviews of a particular game, and it combines them to form an aggregated score. In particular I was looking to see how the various Zelda games racked up against one another, and the results I found were a bit surprising. It was no shock that Ocarina of Time topped the list, but how the games fell in line afterwords, was a bit surprising.

Ocarina of Time – 97.66%
Twilight Princess – 95.29% (Gamecube)
The Wind Waker – 94.47%
A Link to the Past – 93.50% (Super Nintendo)
Oracle of Ages – 91.89%
Majora’s Mask – 91.80%
Oracle of Seasons – 91.50%
Link’s Awakening – 91.23%
The Minish Cap – 90.21%
Phantom Hourglass – 88.79%
Spirit Tracks – 86.76%

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