The Spin-Off Debate

The upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom features a playable Zelda as the main protagonist for the first time and a completely new gameplay mechanic, where both fans and gaming journalists were quick to call this game a "spin-off" to the Zelda series. And it's far from the first Zelda game to be treated that way, where the most prominent examples are the multiplayer-centric episodes, like the recently re-released Four Swords.

But are these games truly spin-offs? And what is even a spin-off to begin with? Let's start by answering the second question. According to Giant Bomb a video game spin-off is the following:

A game that takes gameplay mechanics, characters, or story elements from an existing series in a separate and different direction, sometimes changing genres along the way.

That's a very loose definition and here it's easy to see why fans and professional journalists alike may classify Echoes of Wisdom as a spin-off. You play as Zelda and fight with summons, which is a different direction from the rest of the Zelda series, where you've always played as Link and primarily fought with weapons, so it can really be seen as its own thing. The Tingle games are spin-offs after all, because you play as Tingle, right?

Well, it's not as simple. The Zelda series has always been highly experimental and gimmick-based to a degree where you could identify many of the games as a spin-off somehow, because they do something extraordinary, which makes them stand out within the series. You may look at Majora's Mask as a spin-off, because there is a clock running at the bottom of the screen. And some fans do. Some fans also consider all handheld games to be spin-offs, because they were made for inferior hardware... Heck, there are even fans who think of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom as spin-offs, because the open world direction isn't a traditional Zelda.

Luckily, Nintendo has made it easy to identify which games are part of the official The Legend of Zelda series and which games can be considered as spin-offs. All mainline Zelda games do the following:

• Their title starts with "The Legend of Zelda".
• Their story is part of the official timeline.

There is one exception to the first rule and that is Zelda II - The Adventure of Link. But keep in mind that it is called "The Legend of Zelda 2" in Japan, so this mainly due to the translation for the west. If this game were to come out today, however, it likely would be treated as a spin-off, since it falls into the Action RPG genre. But it would be unfair to do this retroactively, because when the game came out, the Zelda series wasn't truly established yet. That didn't happen until A Link to the Past came around...

As for the official spin-offs to the Zelda series, we are then left with the following:

• Game & Watch: Zelda (LCD)
• BS The Legend of Zelda (BS-X)
• BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets (BS-X)
• Freshly Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (DS)
• Tingle's Balloon Fight (DS)
• Link's Crossbow Training (Wii)
• Too Much Tingle Pack (DS)
• Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love (DS)
• Hyrule Warriors (Wii U)
• My Nintendo Picross: Twilight Princess (3DS)
• Hyrule Warriors: Legends (3DS)
• Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Switch)
• Cadence of Hyrule (Switch)
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Switch)
• Game & Watch: Vernim (Zelda version)

The Broadcast Satellaview games are probably the ones closest to the main series when it comes to gameplay, where the main difference was the division into playable episodes as part of a live broadcast. But fans have proven that Nintendo could remake these games into proper Zelda titles, if they wanted to.

In addition, there is the first Tingle game, Rosy Rupeeland, which also emulates the classic Zelda Action Adventure formula, even offering a set of dungeons. The later Tingle games on the Nintendo DS all fell into different genres, however, where the sequel was more of a classic Adventure and Tingle's Balloon Fight was a Wind Waker-themed reskin of the classic Balloon Fight.

And this is what most of the Zelda spin-off games have in common: they fall into different genres. Link's Crossbow Training and the My Nintendo Picross are a shooter and a puzzle game respectively, both based on Twilight Princess. The Hyrule Warriors games are Hack and Slashs. And Cadence of Hyrule combines your classic Zelda Action Adventure with a rhythm game.

What's also of note is that these spin-offs often have the potential to spawn a series of their own, like the BS-X and Tingle games. We also have two different Hyrule Warriors games by now and there will likely be more in the future. And even though we never got one, the My Nintendo Picross concept could have featured other Zelda games, e.g. one based on Skyward Sword. But we may a get a Cadence of Hyrule 2 one day, eventually.

Of course, this is far from what the Super Mario series has done with its many Mario Karts, Mario Parties, other sports games, RPGs, and so on, where this is way clearer, but in general this still holds true with the few spin-offs that Zelda has seen.

And would someone honestly expect The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom to spawn a new series? If anything, it will pave the way for a playable Zelda and other playable characters in future installments of the main series, just like how Four Swords also was followed by two more Zelda games focused on multiplayer. Or how A Link Between Worlds let you get all main items at the start of the game, which became a new trend.

However, this doesn't mean that it couldn't. With Super Mario we even have examples where main games are also the first game in a spin-off series. The first Wario Land was labeled as Super Mario Land 3. And Yoshi's Island was labeled as both Super Mario World 2 and Super Mario Advance 3. So, it could happen that we get more games focusing on a playable Zelda, which really do their own thing and also have a different title. But Echoes of Wisdom will still be a part of the main Zelda series in that case.

And honestly, playing as Zelda is not that much of a deviation from the Zelda core gameplay that it justifies making a different series out of this. And the echo mechanic is really this game's unique gimmick, which will probably never return, like the three-day time loop, turning into a wolf, or the Ultrahand...