Spirit Tracks: Multiplayer and Bow confirmed

There's tons of new artwork and you can find all of the new artwork here. The two most interesting ones are the following:



So, looks like I was wrong and there is a multiplayer mode. It seems to be a variation of the Phantom Hourglass multiplayer mode, where everyone plays with Link. This will be for four players, but Miyamoto already said this at E3 ("like Four Swords without swords"). You probably have to collect Force Gems while running away from Phantoms.

Update: But there's no online Wi-Fi mode. The multiplayer mode is going to be local only (Source), which totally sucks, because I have absolutely no one with a Nintendo DS or even interested in playing this among my friends. The advantage of Phantom Hourglass's multiplayer was definitely, that you could play it online. There will be items to trade as well, which means something like the random treasures is back, but of course you can't trade them online any more. And it doesn't sound like I will be missing out too much. I mean, running away from Phantoms AGAIN? Come on, Nintendo... where's your definition of fun multiplayer when it comes to Zelda?



This one confirms the return of another Phantom Hourglass item, the Bow. Boring, I was hoping for something different here, maybe a crossbow or a slingshot. Also, there aren't many slots left open and I was hoping for some surprises. We already have four of the six action items confirmed, Bombs are also a safe bet. In case we don't get a shovel (Update: we won't, there will be a treasure digging song), there's only one unknown item left. It might be, that the Spirit Pipes use that slot, but I think the pipes will be a menu icon like the Cyclon Slate in Phantom Hourglass. The boss looks cool, though he does have the typical eye as a weakpoint thing going on. Not cool, Nintendo, not cool. You can't give the Zelda veterans anything, if you do the same stuff over and over again, so the eye of this boss better be not its weakpoint.

There's more artwork, one shows another bad guy called Byrne, who has a robotic arm and assists Cole. And another artwork shows a photographer, could be a sidequest similar to the one in Link's Awakening DX, but I fear it could have to do with the DSi camera. If this is true, it means that the news saying there won't be any DSi enhancements are wrong, too.

In addition, I guess you all have already seen this video, which shows two mintues of ingame footage. Two interesting things here, first of all the music is really nice. The music in Phantom Hourglass was really uninspired, so hopefully Spirit Tracks will be better in that department. And then there's the treasure, which Link gets at the end of the video. It looks like a red version of the Zora Scale and could be one of those Dragon Scales, which you are supposed to collect.