Grazza

Yes, very. I wouldn't mind a sci-fi Zelda at all, as I see the series as like Blackadder: the same characters reincarnated in different eras. Personally, I think the Zelda series needs to improve, but that's just like any other game. I also think it could do with a degree of streamlining, but obviously not too much. Here’s what I’d like to see: Overworld Fluid, seamless overworld. Dungeons should be simpler and shorter (lots of them, but more like mini dungeons), and more resemble the type of building they’re meant to be (the Forsaken Fortress and Ice Mansion were good starts). More of the action takes place in the overworld. Any item can be used in the same way in any location. No fixed 3D or 2D backgrounds, and you’d be able to switch between 1st- and 3rd-person whenever you liked. Whole overworld should be a playable, 3D area. Bosses could actively track you down, following you into villages or the field. Bosses and mini-bosses should not only be able to be defeated in their original environment (eg. Big Spider in TP). They can appear as minions in later areas of field, for you to possibly fight two or three of the same type at once. I loved those secret tunnels you had to crawl through in Wind Waker! Or how about long, underground tunnels that link areas of the overworld? Like the waterways between Lake Hylia and Zora’s Domain in TP, but ones you could walk through at your own pace, finding the occasional shop or dwelling along the way. The return of Great Fairies (ideally in their WW shell grottoes!) Flight. Using the Deku Leaf was one of the many highlights of Wind Waker! Imagine gliding down from a mountain in the centre of the overworld, landing anywhere without any loading times. Link could even grow wings later on in the game. Failing that, there could be several mounts, like boars, dragons or eagles. Items The return of Power Bracelets. One of the highlights of Ocarina of Time (and Wind Waker) was when you could finally throw anything aside! Link’s standard clothes could be automatically upgraded to an amphibious version, and then later to a light chainmail (which retains the amphibious qualities yet is also fireproof). The return of the Mirror Shield and shield control (should be possible with MotionPlus). I’d like to see less weapons in general, but it wouldn’t be the same without the hookshot, boomerang, bombs and arrows (upgradeable with fire, ice, light and bombs). I’m not so keen on the context-specific items like the Spinner (as fun as it was). Items and weapons should be automatically upgraded, like in Wind Waker, and ideally three versions of each item. Tingle. Oh yes, and the return of Moblins to their Wind Waker design!

I was trying to access Driving Miss Daisy!

I've still got: Wind Waker (+ Ocarina) Super Mario Sunshine Twilight Princess Zelda: Collector's Edition I can see me only keeping Wind Waker eventually. I've played more great games on GC than on anything else, but if I like a game, I tend to play it through twice then sell it, which I rarely regret. I think every console generation tends to surpass the games of the last.

You definitely didn't upset me. It's nice to have a debate! Twilight Princess is incredible. I think it's better than Phantom Hourglass (which I enjoyed very much) and is my 4th favourite Zelda because, quite honestly, I find the 3D ones more stimulating (loved LTTP and Link's Awakening at the time though).

You're absolutely right. The game ended up customised for the Wii, and so is probably better on that console. Well, Nintendo effectively used it to sell GameCubes with that 2004 trailer. And when you see the playable demo at the end of 2005, it's very hard to believe the game wasn't ready. The only noticeable difference in the Forest Temple, for instance, is the removal of the shield control. Personally, I wanted the version I'd been expecting, and that included camera control and the game world in the correct orientation. It's not just stubborness - one of the joys of Wind Waker was swinging the camera round whenever you liked. Why should people be so quick to accept the way Nintendo wanted to play it? I love the Zelda games; I don't "support" Nintendo as such. The GameCube, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were worth every penny, but I wasn't willing to buy their new machine for a game they'd promised on GC. Anyway, I agree with King V, Wind Waker introduced what a generational leap in horsepower could do for Zelda, and it was odd for TP not to feature all of those luxuries.

I didn't agree with as many of those points as I thought I would, actually (in the original article). Yeah, there was nothing like owning a Megadrive, and then the excitement of the early polygon games (Star Fox, Star Blade, Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing), but I honestly believe better technology allows better games. My favourite game is from this decade - Wind Waker. For me the main thing that has changed is what types of game are appreciated. When I was at school and we all had SNES and Megadrives, there was a true appreciation of the best games, like Zelda and Landstalker. Enter the PlayStation, and people would argue with me that Tekken, Ridge Racer and Time Crisis were better than their Sega equivalents, which I disagreed with. You couldn't argue with them though, because of the marketing. PlayStation was trendy. Today, all my colleagues spend their evenings on Xbox Live, on Call Of Duty 4 and such. They tell me to my face things like "There are no good games on Wii", "Zelda is poor" and "There has never been a good Metroid game". You can't really argue with ignorance like that!

Regardless, those changes were applied back to the GameCube version, such as the extra padding at the start of the game (2 hours?) It ended up taking too long to introduce the core gameplay. But it was in the playable demo just months before the planned release. Why take it out? I'd say it's also quite likely that they took out the Mirror Shield. After all, there's a big gap by the swords and armour where a 3rd (or 4th, technically) shield is missing. Straying into speculation, imagine if the item for one of the later dungeons was originally the Mirror Shield. If the designers decided this didn't work on Wii (due to no R-trigger), do you really think they'd leave it in the GameCube game? No, they ported all the changes back to make the versions the same. In the end, you couldn't even lock-on or draw your sword without the shield automatically being raised. They didn't even let you go into first-person view though. Same applied to the (deserted) passage between the town and castle. This is the first time since OoT this has happened in an outdoor area. In contrast to MM and WW, it didn't feel like you were in a fully-calculated 3D world.

I enjoyed Pikmin 2 much more than Pikmin, but I still think it needs simplifying for the third game. I'd go back to using just Olimar for single-player and probably reduce the different types of Pikmin back to three, losing the White and giving the Red Pikmin the strength of the Purple. Having to worry about which types could go through water, fire, electricity or poison was just a bit too much in the deeper caverns. Frankly, the series also needs a lot more horsepower and, ideally, HD. Zoom out and you can't see it as well as you might. Remember, it wasn't even possible at all until the GameCube. Other than that I'd have shorter, easier, more enjoyable caverns, even the later ones, and no boss should be as difficult as the last one in Pikmin 2. Again, this largely goes back to having five types of Pikmin and too many types of hazard.

I thought there were a lot of problems with Twilight Princess, generally in three categories: 1) Pure design flaws 2) Limitations of hardware (GameCube) 3) Porting it to the Wii (and porting it back to the GC). I feel no-one actually got the true game in the end. One of the biggest problems was that it didn’t feel like a fluid, 3D world. The GameCube version, at least, had terrible load times. You couldn’t run from one part of the overworld (or sections of Castle Town) to another without a good few seconds’ wait. This really ruined the illusion, and was a far cry from the fluid world of Wind Waker where you could sail up to an island, without a pause for the “action†to load up. The fixed, overhead view in Castle Town ruined my immersion, personally. It was almost like the 2D backgrounds in parts of Ocarina of Time, and felt like a step back from the full, controllable 3D of Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask. Why couldn’t they put the camera at Link’s level? I suspect it had something to do with the Wii not having camera control. If you stood on the balcony of one of the buildings (the one that the Gorons use as a temporary shop), you get a “fake†view of the market square. I feel this would have been a real-time view in Wind Waker, at least. Also in the “technical limitations†category is the “flat†feeling forest, which does not resemble the 3D forest of the 2004 trailer. But hey, if the GameCube couldn’t handle that in the end, it’s easy to accept. Then there were the unnecessary design flaws such as putting rupees back, descriptions of rupees etc. In truth, I wasn’t too keen on the wolf and twilight aspects either. The joy of the Zelda games is largely about controlling Link, a one-man army, and deciding which items to use whether you’re in dungeon, field or village: the antithesis of a disjointed RPG (or indeed, Zelda II). The huge circle of items, whilst not a big problem, could have been streamlined. I’d have preferred less items (scrap the spinner, ball & chain etc), but more customisation of existing items, such as fire, ice and light arrows. Improvisation is key. Speaking of items, my single biggest annoyance with the game is the lack of a mirror shield, not for its own sake, but for what that implies. There is a conspicuous gap after the wooden and Hylian shields. Now, in the September 2005 demo, when the release of the GameCube game was imminent, you could manually alter the angle of the shield, presumably by pressing the R-trigger and analogue stick like in OoT, MM and WW. The game was then delayed and this didn’t make it into the 2006 release, even on GameCube. Like the lack of camera control in Castle Town, I blame the Wii not having the necessary buttons. Sorry for the long post. Twilight Princess was an amazing game, just with far more problems than any previous Zelda (OoT and WW are essentially perfect; MM’s one “flaw†also makes it interesting). It’s the last game I was really excited about, and feel it would have been better as a pure GameCube game, without the year’s delay. Silly design problems can always be overlooked, but not so much when it was ruined for the sake of another console.