Tag: Wind Waker Week

At The Wind Waker’s climax, Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf gather atop Ganon’s Tower for a final confrontation that will determine the fate of Hyrule and the Great Sea. Having the upper hand, Ganondorf summons the Triforce which will grant the wish of one who touches it. As Ganondorf stretches forth his hand, he is cut off by King Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule, the King of Hyrule, with his hand on the Triforce, shouting, “Gods of the Triforce! Hear that which I…

Don’t judge a book by its cover.  Looking at the GameCube cover of The Wind Waker, it shows a cartoony Link sailing on an odd boat, with a wave swelling beneath it. The composition gives a sense of adventure, of excitement, and Link’s expression creates a feeling of cheerfulness. The actual game maintains those cartoony graphics and is full of saturated colors. Perhaps blinded by these appearances back in 2003, journalists and gamers alike decided that The Wind Waker “was…

I didn’t realize The Wind Waker was a controversial game back in 2003. Once I began to get online years later, fans of the series that were older than me told me that they actually hated The Wind Waker‘s art style, and when I researched further, I found that a lot of fans and journalists in their age range felt similarly. I was quite shocked at that revelation, because I had nothing but praise for the game and its art…

When I was a child, life was bliss. Aren’t those youthful days like that for most of us? We live life innocently and are ignorant of the deeper issues of the world. When we see a problem, we might worry about it for a moment, and then happily move on and refocus our attention on our favorite teddy bear, Barbie doll, or video game (I still turn to the latter these days, mind you). Then adulthood sets in. In the…

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker opens with Link being awakened from an afternoon nap by his sister, Aryll. After a brief conversation, Link slowly descends the ladder from his lookout perch and makes his way towards grandma’s house, and then you see him… Snot Kid.  Snot Kid (apparently his name is Zill) is an energetic, inquisitive young lad from Outset Island who has a massive glob of snot hanging from his nose like a Christmas stocking on a…

A world of water with islands scattered across it, hosting only a handful of inhabitants settled amongst them, without a country to unite them. When our hero awakes, it’s not into a medieval land filled with castles, dark forests, and sprawling green fields to ride horses across, but a tropical ocean as far as the eye can see. Link isn’t thrust into an adventure to save a princess from the get-go; there’s only a simple request to meet his grandmother…

The Zelda series is one that bleeds with themes of destiny, birthrights, and submitting to the designs of a higher power. Through the protagonist Link, as well as other characters, we often see a type of heroism that involves a call to action via this idea of destiny. The hero Link is fated to save Princess Zelda by defeating Ganon, a triangular formula that has equated to a consistently successful chain of adventure games. Although the formula has its fair…

Twenty years since its release, The Wind Waker remains one of the most iconic games in the Zelda series. While the game retains many of the gameplay elements that made Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask successful, the dramatic change in art style, improvements in gameplay, and the new mode of transportation helped The Wind Waker stand out. Overall, I would argue that the choice to put The Wind Waker‘s direct sequel (Phantom Hourglass) on the Nintendo DS resulted in…

This year marks the 20th anniversary for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the GameCube’s first original Zelda title. Though the game initially sparked criticism for its cartoony art style, it has since received overwhelmingly positive reception and has gone down as one of the landmark titles for the Zelda series, a timeless classic. The Wind Waker presented a major shift from series norms by taking the classic Zelda formula we had seen in games like Ocarina of Time, A…

Welcome back to another edition of “Storytelling Through Sound,” a series of editorials dedicated to the analysis of the main themes from every Zelda game. In honor of Wind Waker Week, we’ll be taking a look at the game’s nautical main theme and discussing its various musical elements. Every time I start The Wind Waker again, I always take a minute to sit and listen to the title theme again. The scenery of Outset Island paired with this beautiful music always…