Topic: NWR's Top 10 Zelda Games: A Link Between Games

[NWR_Neal]

After much adventuring, stone-collecting, and Triforce-mongering, we determined our collective favorite Zelda games.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/35505

With the next month or two being a banner year for Zelda games, including an HD remake of a beloved GameCube classic and a sequel to one of the greatest Super Nintendo games, we figured it would be fun to get together and determine what the best Zelda games was, at least in our opinion.

20+ staffers submitted their personal Top 10 lists, and we tabulated all the votes to determine our collective Top 10 list was. There were some surprises and some no-brainers. Likely, you'll disagree with our ordering, but isn't that the magic of Top 10 lists? Sometimes you'll get Nayru's Love, and other times you'll get Din's Fire.

[Chariblaze]

The entry for Minish Cap is the same as Four Sword Adventures's. :P

[Leo13]

Thank-you for putting Four Swords Adventures in (even if it is only at #10) My wife and I played this game together and I LOVED it. It was such a great concept. This game is actually the main reason I bought the Wii U I'm hoping for more games like this were multiple screens are used to give more freedom to co-op play.

[Mop it up]

Hm, 10 and 9 are both Zelda games that I have not played. I think these two are the only official Zelda games I haven't played though, if I'm counting right. Well, plus the anniversary edition of Four Swords also, which I downloaded but barely played since it's no fun without others and no one else has it. I also have Minish Cap from the 3DS Ambassador program, just haven't tried it out yet.

[Leo13]

Mop it up, you mentioned the anniversary [size=78%]Edition of four swords and how no one has it. That aggravates me. I bought a 3DS early enough that I was able to download it, but then I bought an XL and it works because my wife and I both play so we kept the old 3DS. Now we’re getting 2DS for my 2 kids for their birthday in a couple of months, but we still can’t play this game multiplayer because we only have 1 copy of the game. I wish they’d re-open it. I’m even willing to pay for it this time so that we can actually play the game.[/size]

[UncleBob]

Agreed on the Four Swords issue.  The fact that you can't even buy it now is freaking stupid.  On the plus side, I downloaded it on my DSi, my wife's DSi, my DSiXL and my 3DS... So I got some copies I can transfer to new systems when I get them.

[NWR_Neal]

Sorry for the duplicate entries! Copy/paste fail on my end. It's remedied now.

[MagicCow64]

So there's basically never going to be a way to play Four Swords Adventure again, right? I wanted to back when it was released, but it seemed pointless without at least another person, but nobody I knew had GBAs and whatnot.

[Leo13]

Well, Magic Cow, If you still have your gamecube or a Wii that plays gamecube games then of coarse you can still play. For some odd reason Four Swords Adventures wasn't a very popular Zelda game. My wife and I bought it and the 2 needed cables in 2009 for a pretty good price. Turns out the game is even cheaper now and if you don't have 2 GBAs already they are really cheap too. I checked out ebay for you


Here's a copy of the game that comes with 2 cables

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Legend-of-Zelda-Four-Swords-Adventures-with-2-Link-Cables-/111175171081?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item19e28e7c09


Here's someone selling 2 GBAs
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Game-Boy-Advance-/261290650299?pt=Video_Games&hash=item3cd622eabb


Here's someone selling a single GBA
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-Game-Boy-Advance-Black-Handheld-System-/271279282382?pt=Video_Games&hash=item3f298158ce


I'd guess you could be playing this game pretty easily and pretty cheap considering what's all required. And no you don't need 4 players to enjoy this game, but you do need at least 2 I wouldn't recommend playing it by yourself.

[Adrock]

Four Sword Adventures was definitely more fun with my brother than alone. I don't believe I've played it with more than one other person. Nintendo could rerelease an updated version on 3DS.

[Leo13]

I agree it could work on the 3DS of even the Wii U for that matter, but it would require more work than most Virtual console games.
Of coarse if they did it on the Wii U it would only be up to 3 players (1 on TV and 2 on Gamepads) so the 3DS is probably a better option.

[ejamer]

I grabbed Four Swords Adventures and the required extra equipment (used) for a song early in the Wii lifecycle. Glad to have found it, because the experience is very different than any other Zelda game.


Getting the hardware to play isn't that hard or expensive now... but finding friends with time/interest to join in can be a challenge.  Based on my limited experience playing with a group, it's totally worth the effort.  Decent played solo, great with friends.




Shame about the DSiWare version of Four Swords. Nintendo giving it away was an awesome surprise... but limiting access to a game that requires multiple players to be enjoyed fully wasn't really a good idea. I'd gladly give up the "exclusive" factor in exchange for having more people to play against.

[Ian Sane]

Both of these games were ones I "powered" through, in that I enjoyed them so much I spent every free moment I had playing them until I beat them.  Typically I might take a break from a game and play a different one or do something completely different but with these I wasn't going to do any other leisure activity until I beat them.  Games like that are special.

Four Swords Adventure is truly one of the Gamecube's best games.  I played it with my brother and only got to expand to four players once (if that; I had four people with all the equipment to play with but don't remember if I actually got all four playing at the same time) but it was still really fun with two people.  Sadly it really does provide a great example of how out of touch Nintendo can be.  Here they had this GBA-GC connection and they hyped this up like this was their ace in the hole.  But then the big showcase titles for the concept all required four players.  One GBA is doable but FOUR?  Oh, but a lot of people had GBAs.  True, but no one had the damn cable!  If they packed one in with every GBA then we would have been sitting pretty but they didn't and how do you get your friend that does not own a Gamecube to buy a cable that is only useful to him when he's at your house?  And of course the whole concept is perfect for online play with headsets but, no, Nintendo decided not to go online with Gamecube but then gave us games like this to remind us that, oh yeah, that online stuff would be lots of fun if Nintendo supported it.  Here they're trying and failing to sell the GC-GBA connectivity concept with what would be an online killer app.  All our problems with not being able to find enough people to come over with all the right equipment and the whole thing would be solved if Nintendo just supported the online functionality they designed the Gamecube to support in the first place!  And now Nintendo is online and it's the perfect situation to make Four Swords games and they DON'T, aside from that limited DSiWare version that's been mentioned.

But at least Four Swords Adventures turned out to be an awesome game so Nintendo got the most important part right.  Because of it's inaccessibility it has to be one of the most hardcore Nintendo games ever made, the closest Nintendo would ever get to something like Steel Battalion.  But if you can make full use of it, it's totally worth it.

[NWR_Neal]

#8 and #7 are up! http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/35507

[MagicCow64]

Well, Magic Cow, If you still have your gamecube or a Wii that plays gamecube games then of coarse you can still play. For some odd reason Four Swords Adventures wasn't a very popular Zelda game. My wife and I bought it and the 2 needed cables in 2009 for a pretty good price. Turns out the game is even cheaper now and if you don't have 2 GBAs already they are really cheap too. I checked out ebay for you


Here's a copy of the game that comes with 2 cables

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Legend-of-Zelda-Four-Swords-Adventures-with-2-Link-Cables-/111175171081?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item19e28e7c09


Here's someone selling 2 GBAs
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Game-Boy-Advance-/261290650299?pt=Video_Games&hash=item3cd622eabb


Here's someone selling a single GBA
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-Game-Boy-Advance-Black-Handheld-System-/271279282382?pt=Video_Games&hash=item3f298158ce


I'd guess you could be playing this game pretty easily and pretty cheap considering what's all required. And no you don't need 4 players to enjoy this game, but you do need at least 2 I wouldn't recommend playing it by yourself.

Thanks for the info! I'm sorely tempted to collect these devices, as my Wii's Gamecube drive still works (though not the main console), but without an online option in a re-release it's a near impossibility to get anyone to jump on this with me. I had the social options to play it when it was released but not the money for the equipment, and now I have the money for the equipment but little chance that I could talk another 28-year-old in my social world to spend 15 hours on this. Ah, what will never be! Plus Pacman Vs.!

[StrawHousePig]

Aw man! Twilight Princess got robbed! 

Easily one of my favs, if not number 1. I enjoyed it the first play through, but going through again? Blown away by how many indelible memories this game has. It's not just huge in physical scale. This is the true successor to OoT.

[Pixelated Pixies]

On my personal list I would have placed Twilight Princess a lot higher. I think that game is much more interesting than people give it credit for. Sure, it was slow to get started, but the dungeons (particularly the City in the Sky), visuals (those crazy dream sequences were frightening), music, and even the story have really stuck with me (Zant and Midna were far more interesting to me than Ghirahim and Fi).
 
I would also take the vistas and feeling of cohesiveness that Twilight Princess offers over Skyward Sword's segmented over world any day. It's a personal preference I guess.

[Adrock]

Twilight Princess was a fairly by the books Zelda sequel. It didn't attempt to push the bar though O think that was the whole point. For people who complained about The Wind Waker, Nintendo went back and made Ocarina of Time 2. Still, Twilight Princess is my favorite post Wind Waker Zelda for three reasons. First, Wii Remote aiming was very intuitive. Second, the spinner was awesome; it didn't make sense as an item, but it was awesome nonetheless. Third, and most importantly, Imp Midna was one of the best characters in the series for just having personality, depth, and a true character arc. She's bitchy and selfish when Link meets her, but she warms up to Link. Sure, she kind of falls apart at the end, but collectively, it's hard to fault Midna's character. I really wish she would show up playable in Smash Bros. with or without Wolf Link. I won't hold my breathe though.

[Leo13]

For me, I disagree with you 2. I like four swords adventures better than twilight princess. However I know I'm in the minority so I'm just happy that four swords adventures made the list.
I am glad, however, that of my top 5 zelda games only 1 is already on here so it sounds like the other 4 will be high on the list.

[Ian Sane]

In a vacuum Twilight Princess could be considered the best Zelda game around but if you've played Ocarina of Time it just feels too familiar.  In the Gamecube version (ie: the proper non-flipped version) the map layout is almost identical to OoT.  Once I picked up on that I could guess all the unidentified areas on the map and that really hurt the exploration from then on, which for me is the whole damn hook of Zelda in the first place.  The only difference is that Zora's Domain and Lake Hylia are flipped, which I assign more to Nintendo's lackluster attention to continuity than an attempt to make things unique.  My reaction to it was "oh so Nintendo can't even copy the world from another game right without goofing it up".  Either they did that or they did the absolute bare minimum imaginable to make the game world unique.

But that all relates to my experience being hurt due to my familiarity with the other games in the series and that's become a problem with ALL new Zelda games as the tropes are too visible to longtime fans.  If someone had never played Zelda, Twilight Princess is the game I would recommend, though with the 3DS remake available, OoT may now be the better choice.  N64 games didn't age that well and I figured a newcomer would be turned off by the blocky visuals but that would't be the case with the 3DS version.  TP is the ideal console choice though.

I've always suspected that Twilight Princess was made the way it was as an intentional "**** you" to those that didn't like Wind Waker's graphic style.  Like Nintendo made the game as unoriginal as possible as a personal protest against what they perceived as backlash against change.  It would also give them something to point to whenever the fans protested a change.  "You don't like change?  But you didn't like TP so you fans don't know what you want!"

Now I disagree with Nintendo on that criticism of change can be criticism of a specific change, not the concept of change.  If you painted my bedroom neon green I would be upset that you chose a colour I didn't like, not that the room was painted a different colour in the first place.  And the Wind Waker backlash was all because Nintendo showed us a DIFFERENT graphic style first!  It's their own stupid fault and they have no right to be even slightly miffed at the fans about that.  You show us one graphics style, let us get all hyped about it for a year, and then show us a new style that is the exact opposite of the old one?  That's a bait-and-switch, plain and simple.

[Adrock]

I'd argue that Majora's Mask was a bigger departure than Wind Waker. If you look past the graphics, it's almost straight up Ocarina of Time. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. However, if that was Nintendo's idea of change, I feel like they missed the point because with Wind Waker, they made a closer sequel to Ocarina of Time than the one they made before it, albeit with gorgeous cel-shaded graphics that honestly still hold up today even with a remake filled with bloom lighting out now.

[Ian Sane]

I think MM is vastly different largely because it reused the graphics of OoT.  Nintendo probably figured that the reused graphics would be a hard sell so they made damn sure to make MM stand out as unique.

The fact that WW had backlash but MM did not demonstrates that the fans don't hate change in general, but just weren't happy with the specific change regarding WW's graphics.  And frankly if that "realistic" Zelda footage from Spaceworld was never shown then there wouldn't have been nearly the same level of backlash.

[Luigi Dude]

The last time Nintendo gave numbers, Twilight Princess was at 7.1 million worldwide just a few years ago.  The best selling Zelda is Ocarina of Time at 7.6 million.  At this point, Twilight Princess could be even closer or have even surpassed Ocarina of Time in sales.

This is why it's funny when people on the internet complain about Twilight Princess being too similar to Ocarina of Time when in reality, that's exactly what the general gaming audience wanted.  People didn't want a sequel with a 3 day time system or a sailing adventure with cartoon graphics.  They wanted a bigger version of Ocarina of Time with a bigger world and bigger dungeons.  This is what Nintendo gave them and they were rewared with the best sales since Ocarina of Time.

This is why I suspect the upcoming Wii U Zelda will be like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess again in both look and gameplay.  Yeah they might allow some dungeons to be done out of order like Aonuma hinted at, but everything else will be closer to those games then the others.  An HD Zelda is going to probably be the most expensive game Nintendo has ever done and so they'll want something that can sell over 7 million, which only Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess have.

I think MM is vastly different largely because it reused the graphics of OoT.  Nintendo probably figured that the reused graphics would be a hard sell so they made damn sure to make MM stand out as unique.

The fact that WW had backlash but MM did not demonstrates that the fans don't hate change in general, but just weren't happy with the specific change regarding WW's graphics.  And frankly if that "realistic" Zelda footage from Spaceworld was never shown then there wouldn't have been nearly the same level of backlash.

Majora's Mask was hated by a huge number of the fanbase when it came out.  The 3 Day time system and focus on side quest angered a lot of the Ocarina a of Time fans because it isn't what they wanted at all.  Going from 7.6 million to 3.4 million in only two years shows that much of the fanbase indeed hated the idea of change.

[Pixelated Pixies]

Goddamn it I love Majora's Mask! Is it weird that I adore both Twilight Princess and Majora's Mask? They are arguably the most and least conventional Zelda games respectively, but I love them both. Maybe not equally (Majora's Mask is clearly the better game) but still...

[Adrock]

This is why I suspect the upcoming Wii U Zelda will be like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess again in both look and gameplay.

Good, in terms of look.

Ideally, I'd like to see the more realistic look for 3D games and the cel-shaded look for top down 2D games. It worked so well in Four Sword Adventures. More of that please, thanks.