Zeldathon is running the whole week, collecting money for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Check it out and maybe leave a donation. This time it's digging deep into the 90s nostalgia and they even have SuperMCGamer back on board, who started the whole thing, but stepped down from his leadership role after Zeldathon 1986 two years ago. And that's making me nostalgic as well.
In The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom you briefly play as Link, before you slip into the role of Princess Zelda for the first time in the mainline series. Unlike Link, who still relies on his trusty sword, shield, bow and bombs, Zelda primarily fights by summoning echoes of monsters, while she can also freely steer entities around by binding them to her own movements.
Now, this is a great basis for another cooperative multiplayer Zelda game, following Four Swords, Four Swords Adventures and Tri Force Heroes, but this time tailored to two players. It would be perfect for pairs who are into Zelda, where Hazelight Studios has popularized this genre of games, with A Way Out, It Takes Two and Split Fiction.
This idea is as old as Echoes of Wisdom itself, but let's finally get into more detail here. Spoiler warning for the game's ending! Don't hit "read more", unless you have beaten Echoes of Wisdom or don't care.
GOOOOOO STAMP RALLY! As a fellow stamp enthusiast, why just collect stamps when you can collect stamps in a specific order? Isn't that some stamp-tacular idea? Yes? Let's doooo this!
Okay... So, in Echoes of Wisdom you get five stamp cards to fill, where each of them has five slots for stamps. And there exist five different stamp designs in the game, where each design has five designated stamp stands in the world. The game remembers which stamp was put in which slot, meaning that the stamp cards will look different at the end for a number of players.
Knowing this, you can plan ahead and fill out the cards in an order of your liking. And that's what I did when I was recently replaying the game. There are very different approaches you can take here, but if you want some order to your order, then you will either go for five different stamps on each card or five of the same stamps. Let's talk a little bit about this...
This is to inform you that a new review was added to Hyrule Blog, one for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Most of it got written back in late 2024, after I had first played through the game, so I decided to add it into the archive around the time, because it makes the most sense there historically. Here is the link:
All the screenshots were also taken during my first playthrough in 2024, but a lot of them didn't find their way into my Adventure Log. And here it's nice to show off some more, so they don't just rot on my harddrive.
At the time, I wasn't able to finish the article, because I was moving to a new apartment and therefore busy with other things. But it can generally be tough to write a review after I already have talked so much about a new game, because it feels redundant. Still, I find them to be very valuable, because they collect all my important thoughts from the play logs. But once some time has passed, I need to play the game again to refresh those thoughts, which is what I have done in this case (see here).
There are also half-finished reviews for both Age of Calamity and Imprisonment somewhere in my drafts, where hopefully I will get back to those one day. Sadly, for Breath of the Wild I only have an intro and some notes, while I didn't even bother with Tears of the Kingdom...
After replaying Ocarina of Time back in June, I was in the mood for some top-down Zelda goodness, where Echoes of Wisdom was on top of my list. It and Tears of the Kingdom are the two most recent Zelda games, where I had played and completed both of them only once so far. Well, this won't change anytime soon for Tears of the Kingdom, because I'm fed up on that game, but with Echoes of Wisdom it's hard to say no when it's so short and sweet, just like a good classic Zelda.
But there is more to it, because I was also able to experience the game in new ways. This time I played it from start to finish in Hero Mode, which I had ignored entirely during my initial run. And thanks to the free update for the Nintendo Switch 2, I was now able to play Echoes of Wisdom in 4K and fluid 60FPS. In addition, I've went through the game's dungeons in a completely different order. Hit "read more" to learn more about all of this.
Last week two curious entries appeared on IMDB, for unannounced Zelda remakes:
They are featuring different voice actors for Link: Mitsuki Saiga, who has voiced Link in the more recent top-down Zelda games and Hyrule Warriors, as well as Nobuyuki Hiyama, whose voice was used for adult Link in the Nintendo 64 era. It also lists Hidemaro Fujibayashi (the current director of the Zelda series) as doing mocap for Din, which is hilarious and teaches you all you need to know about the credibility of this information. I can only imagine him performing all those gracious dance moves.
Of course, anyone with the necessary rights can edit IMDB and add whatever they want, so this shouldn't classify as a meaningful leak in any book, unlike a certain Metroid game that has appeared in the news earlier this month... It's still weird how no one has bothered with removing this yet, or with checking any sources. Still, I appreciate the idea of this hoax, because Majora's Mask and the Oracle games are the exact remakes that I would love to see happen next, after Ocarina of Time.
"Majora's Mask HD" is a strange title, however, because the HD suffix implies that this is not a remake like Ocarina of Time, but an HD remaster of either the Nintendo 64 original, Majora's Mask 3D, or a mix of both. Maybe even still coming to the Nintendo Switch, because on the Nintendo Switch 2 this should be called "Majora's Mask 4K".
And that's not what I would want. I would want Nintendo to follow up on the Ocarina of Time remake and take their time with this. The Nintendo 64 Zelda games are siblings and always deserve to receive the same treatment in the same quality. Also, Majora's Mask has re-used a lot of the assets from Ocarina of Time and it makes all the sense in the world for a remake to do the same.
It's the same reason why I still want remakes of Oracle of Ages & Seasons to happen. It simply makes too much sense to recreate them in the same style as Link's Awakening, because they have borrowed so much from the original. Period.
At least, the IMDB entry got the right idea in this case. I like the simplicity of the title "Oracles", where this would be the first time for a Zelda game to receive a one-word subtitle. But it implies that this is going to unite the two Game Boy Color games into one experience, which is how it should be and refreshing to see.
Often you just find pure pessimism or rejection amongst the Nintendo and Zelda community when it comes to this particular remake. Some believe that this will never happen, because they were originally made by Capcom. And if they were to happen still, then Nintendo would never release them as one, because they are too greedy.
But Nintendo owns all the scenario rights for the four Zelda games developed by Flagship. Only the music rights could pose a problem. It's the main reason why you can find Stickers and Spirits based on these games in the Super Smash Bros. series, but no music. However, the music shouldn't be a major hurdle, because they can just compose new tracks...
And splitting Oracle of Seasons and Ages into two games again would defeat the entire purpose of such a remake. Sure, you wouldn't need to use passwords any longer, because they could just read each other's save files, but you would still need to connect these save files manually, making things needlessly complicated, whereas this could and should become a completely seamless experience. (See my Oracle of Worlds article for how this would work in greater detail.)
Plus, when they are effectively offering two Zelda adventures as one, then the full price that Nintendo is definitely going to charge won't feel as unreasonable. At least to some people.
In any case, I personally hope that the "Oracles" is GREZZO's current project, where this might even get released next year. A proper Majora's Mask remake on the other hand may take a couple of years to appear.
You've probably heard the news already, but this needs to be talked about. Microsoft has announced heavy layoffs in the video game branch earlier this week: 1600 people got fired immediately and 1600 are to leave later. They've tried to make it sound reasonable by talking about trimming down management, which is usually a good thing, but these changes also hit where it hurts.
One developer was hit particularly hard: id Software, the studio behind classics like Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake. An article from Kotaku shares insights into the extent of the cuts: 136 of 185 employees got fired, more than two thirds of the staff. This happened right after the launch of DOOM: Revelation, an expansion for DOOM: The Dark Ages, leaving the studio now crippled.
One of the affected people is Adam "SyncError" Pyle, who has been keeping their free-to-play multiplayer shooter Quake Champions alive for the last couple of years, with new maps, weapon skins, features, and lots of fixes. On his own admission, he did a lot of that in his free time, not because he had to, but because he deeply cared about the game and the franchise. He worked together closely with the community, who tested upcoming features and gave feedback.
If you have someone as passionate and talented as Adam Pyle working for your company, you don't let such people go. But Bethesda under ZeniMax Media under Microsoft apparently doesn't care about such talent – they only care about margin. And classic gaming franchises like Doom and Quake seemingly don't create enough of that these days, where it looks like their fate is sealed, unless Bethesda is planning to outsource them to other studios...
Of course, these aren't the first major layoffs in the industry in the recent years. There's a whole Wikipedia article about the topic, which lists pretty much every major publisher except one: Nintendo. The worst you hear about them lately is that they are killing one of their few mobile games...
I wouldn't even be surprised if some of the people who have worked for id Software now found their way to Retro Studios, helping out with the development of Metroid Prime 5. Both are located in Texas, in Richardson and Austin to be exact, which aren't that far from each other...
And just like Retro Studios spawned from Iguana Entertainment back in the day (the creators of the classic Turok games for the Nintendo 64), all this talent from id Software may open their own studio. If that happens, then that new studio will certainly have my interest, unlike Microsoft going forward.
