Most Legend of Zelda games are instant classics that have and will continue to stand the test of time. They mostly score high reviews and leave very little room for criticism in the mind of your average gamer. However, despite all of this, there are a handful of cases within the history of the Legend of Zelda that has left gamers frustrated and just wondering why.
This article, and day two of our Top 5 Week of Zelda will take a look at the 5 biggest mistakes in the history of the Zelda series.
Twilight Princess Coming Soon…or Not
Remember when Nintendo showed the first trailer for Twilight Princess at E3 of 2004? When Link made his appearance in the trailer everybody in the room erupted in cheers of joy. Reports coming from E3 have said that there were people in the audience crying with joy. This was the Zelda that we had all been waiting for….and wait we did.
Delay after delay pushed the released of Twilight Princess back to late 2006. That is more than 2 years after the first trailer was shown at E3. The wait was so long that I actually took my reservation off of the game since it was pushed back so much. I was beginning to think that I would just be out 5 dollars for a game that would never be released.
So why is this a problem? As Miyamoto has said, and I am paraphrasing, it is better to delay a game and to make it great than to release it to quickly and have bad quality. While that is certainly true, there is such a thing as over doing this. The hype that Nintendo built up from the first trailer and onwards left fans expecting more than Nintendo could ever deliver. The first trailer after all was filled with incredibly epic music, an army of enemies on the horizon, and more.Yet in the end, we got nothing more than what was basically an expansion of the Ocarina of Time. Some new items horse combat, and a couple of wolf segments that many fans did not even like. There was not even an orchestrated sound-track which puzzled many fans who expected it since the game spent so much time in development. In the end it became obvious that Nintendo merely delayed the game to release it on both the Game Cube and their newly launched Wii as a way to increase sales.
So, Nintendo’s inability to control the hype for Twilight Princess, or the release date for that matter, gets our number5 spot.
And for those of you who do not remember the E3 trailer or reactions, here is the video for your viewing pleasure.
The Adventure Link Would Rather Not Repeat
After the success of the original Legend of Zelda game on the NES, Nintendo decided to follow it up with something new. The final product, the Adventure of Link, ended up being nothing like its predecessor. The Adventure of Link, for the first and only time (not counting cd-i) in the series, Link would be fighting in a side scrolling environment.
I myself have completed the Adventure of Link and I respect and even liked some of the aspects of the game, but its untraditional game-play for the series keeps it from being one of my favorites. You see, in this game, Link travels across Hyrule in a distorted over head view and when he runs into an enemy icon (yes an icon, not an enemy itself) the game changes to a side view where Link can either fight the several enemies in the space or just exit on one of the sides.
Reviews for the Adventure of Link were mostly positive for its era, but time has not been too friendly on Link’s second outing. Most gamers now find the Adventure of Link to be the black sheep of the series and will not touch it with a ten foot pole.
I’m So Hungry I Could Eat an Octorok
Many of us have heard about the infamous CD-I Zelda games, but few have gotten the chance to play these delightfully bad games. For those of you who are oblivious I will explain. Back in the 90’s Nintendo decided they wanted to release a CD playing device. Originally Nintendo was working with Sony but decided to bail on them (you can thank Nintendo for the Playstation) and go with Phillips instead. The end product was the Phillips CD-I.
Three Legend of Zelda games would then be produced for the CD-I, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda’s Adventure, and The Wand of Gamelon. The games were produced with a tiny budget and for the first time by a third party developer. Big mistake Nintendo! The end product was three horribly designed, glitchy, slow, and just laughable games.
To this day, Nintendo does not recognize these three games as being part of the series. And though most people have not played them, they have gotten a following thanks to the god awful YouTube Poop videos, that use the terrible voice acting of the games, to make several minutes of stupidity.
If you have ever heard any of the following phrases you can thank the CD-I Zelda games.
- MAH BOI!
- I’m so hungry I could eat an octorok
- Scrub all the floors of Hyrule
Bleeping Water Temple
Ask any Zelda fan what temple they hate the most and they will be quick to respond with the Water Temple from Ocarina of Time. This infamous temple leaves gamers puzzled and frustrated even to this day. The dungeon was already more difficult then your average Zelda temple, but a combination of bad userbility design left us all seething in anger.
The primary theme of the Water Temple was that Link had to raise and lower the water levels by playing an Ocarina Song. This caused a lot of back and forth exploration and water adjustment. To make matters worse, Link was not able to simple swim through the water for more than a couple of seconds. To get through a large portion of the temple, gamers had to constantly equip and un-equip the Iron boots to make Link sink and float respectively. But here is the kicker. The Iron Boots were not a regular item that could be activated and deactivated with a click of a button. To do so gamers had to pause the game, go to their equipment menu and manually equip and un-equip it every single time.
More than ten years later Nintendo recognizes that this was highly frustrating and has promised to fix this problem for the Nintendo 3DS remake of the game.
All Aboard the Magic School Bus
Our number one choice is Nintendo’s decision to make not just one but three games focusing around vehicular transportation. In the Wind Waker, Link does the majority of his overworld exploration and transportation on a talking red boat that goes by the King of Red Lions. In The Wind Waker the boat exploration was actually a nice change of pace and was well done. Though a bit slow at times, it allowed for an advancement of game-play.
However since then, Nintendo decided it was necessary to find new modes of transportation on a regular basis. In Phantom Hourglass, the sequel to The Wind Waker, Link was again finding himself on a boat, but this time it was on an even lamer boat and in a less open world with little exploring to do. The only reason the boat was so great in The Wind Waker was because it allowed for you to explore almost every inch of the over-world.
By shrinking the world down and removing all the exploration based features Link was basically left afloat with no purpose.Then to add insult to injury Nintendo made your already worthless boat customizable with different parts that could increase its functionality for practically nothing.
But wait there’s more! In the next game, a sequel to Phantom Hourglass Link is stuck in a train for transportation. And this time Nintendo found a way to further limit the train’s purpose. By making the train unbearably slow and weak many gamers found themselves bored when they were forced to jump on board. Exploration in Spirit Tracks was virtually gone in the over-world. Since a train is obviously confined to train tracks, gamers were not able to explore the land around them and were stuck killing pigs with bombs from the safety of their locomotive.
The Legend of Zelda series has always been all about exploration so why did Nintendo choose to go this direction so many times? Coming soon – The Legend of Zelda: The Whimsical Double Decker.
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