This year is not only the 25th Anniversary of the Zelda franchise, but also the Oracle games are celebrating 10 years of excistence by now (and 20 years of A Link to the Past, but I'll come to that later). The games were released today ten years ago in Japan, on May 14th 2001 in the US and on October 5th 2001 in Europe. I can't believe that it's already been ten years ago, sometimes it feels like yesterday that I went into the store to pick these games up. My first Zelda game was Link's Awakening, so I was really excited about Oracles back then, because it's basically just "more of Link's Awakening".
What makes these games so special is that they can be be linked together. They were basically the Zelda pendant to the Pokémon Red & Blue editions. The difference was that these were two entirely different games, which would get a common thread by linking.
They were also the first Zelda games not directly developed by Nintendo, but by team from Capcom called Flagship. At first it was declined by Nintendo, but after Capcom showed many efforts they eventually gave in. Originally six Zelda Game Boy games were planned, which then got reduced to the "Triforce Trilogy". Capcom started by remaking the first The Legend of Zelda game in the style of Link's Awakening. You can still clearly see that in the finished products, especially in Oracle of Seasons. The first dungeon, the Gnarled Root Dungeon, is a remake of the Eagle dungeon. All the bosses from the original Zelda game are present, the overworld map has similar structures and there are small nods, like old men hiding in a cave under burnable trees.
The third game would have been about color or daytime puzzles, but it got scrapped later, because the linking of three games was too complicated. That's a shame, because not having three games was the problem, but the linking itself, which is the major flaw of the Oracle games.
The order in which you play the games is quite important. You can't get and experience everything by playing the games just once, but you can start a simple 2nd Quest and use it to complete your ring collection while playing in the other direction. So, you can either start a normal game, a linked game, a 2nd Quest or a linked 2nd Quest. That's four ways of how to play the game!
They should have made the linking in a way where the order of the games doesn't matter, or even so that you can play through the games at the same time. Just use the passwords (or the link cable connection) to add stuff in the other games. Unlock the Hero's Cave in one game by finishing another. Unlock the Twinrova scenario in all games by beating all the games once. That way the linking would be less complicated, it would be more enjoyable to play through the games and it would even allow to have three or more games...
The animal buddies were another problem, because you can only choose one per playthrough. Each buddy changes a part of the environment, so if you want to see all possible environments, then you will have to play through the games at least three times. If they would have simplified the linking and made three games, it probably would have been better to have one animal per game.
But it's too late for that, and it's of no use to celebrate the 10th birthday of the Oracle games by discussing their flaws. But I already summed up their strength with the statement "more of Link's Awakening", because that's what these games are in the end and they did a great job with that. They offer a lot of cool quests, dungeons and items all in the lovely style and sometimes quirky ways of Link's Awakening.
With the 25th Anniversary of the Zelda franchise this year and Oracle of Ages & Seasons celebrating 10 years, there might be a chance that both games will appear on the 3DS Virtual Console later this year. Around October 5th would be a good choice.
