Remaking The Legend of Zelda

A week ago the original The Legend of Zelda has entered its 40th year of existence, and maybe Nintendo is about to give fans a whole new way of experiencing the classic to celebrate this special anniversary. So, let's take a deeper look of how this could look like.

Of course, a remake always has been a possibility, but one that got dismissed by this blog several times. And there have been good reasons... The NES classics are rather bare-bones and if you start infusing elements from later Zelda games, you will eventually end up with a re-imagining, instead of a remake. And then this may as well become a whole new game of its own.

That's exactly what has happened with Oracle of Seasons. When Capcom was working on Zelda projects for the Game Boy Color, they first had pitched a remake of the first game in the style of Link's Awakening. But before you knew it, you were able to ride on a Dodongo and the project evolved into something else.

Source: VGMaps.com

You can even see where the idea of changing the seasons may have come from, by looking at the game's world. There is this Akkala-like area of autumn trees to the southwest, while the graveyard to its north is surrounded by white trees and rocks, almost like it has been snowing there. And this sudden change of scenery could have been an inspiration for the game's core mechanic.

Anyway, this perspective has changed with the Link's Awakening remake, which is currently leading to whole bubble of potential follow-ups. There are even rumors that GREZZO has been busy with a third game already for a while now, a project called "Bernard", following "Richard" (the Link's Awakening remake) and "Edward" (Echoes of Wisdom). But we have no idea what "Bernard" actually is, where there are a number of possibilities, like a new coop Zelda game or even a dungeon maker.

But on top of the list is certainly a remake of the two Oracle games, which turned 25 years old just yesterday. However, Echoes of Wisdom came out only one and a half years ago and remaking two whole Zelda games since then is rather ambitious. Maybe a little too ambitious to make it in time for the 40th Anniversary. And that's why they could have considered something simpler: the original The Legend of Zelda.

Now, remaking the first Zelda in the new Link's Awakening style makes sense for a number of reasons. There is the aforementioned history of how Capcom was trying to achieve the same on the Game Boy Color, where this could be finally be realized. It could even serve as an interim step for remakes of Oracle of Ages & Season, since they could re-use new enemies (like the Bubble) and all of the bosses, where Aquamentus, Gleeok and co. were featured in the Oracle games as well.

It also makes sense in the context of Link's Awakening alone. While the Game Boy classic was originally meant to bring A Link to the Past to the handheld, it also looked back at the NES original to make it happen. You have the same screen-transitioning system, and as a result dungeons were constructed in a pattern of square rooms, which ultimately led to the Color Dungeon in the DX version as a homage and the whole Chamber Dungeon feature in the remake. Certain enemies, like the Pols Voice, Vire or even Gohma, also returned for the first time since the original.

And by re-using the assets of the Link's Awakening remake, as well as Echoes of Wisdom, they could actually cover quite a lot already. Most of the normal enemies would already have models. Items like Bombs, Boomerang and Bow have already been implemented before. And they could even re-use the meat echo for the bait item... The more you think about it, the more it feels like the game is halfway remade already.

Keep in mind, though, that such a remake would mainly be about modernizing the visuals and the combat in the current top-down Zelda style. But this alone would already make it much more accessible and fun. Some enemies, like Darknuts or the Wizzrobes, could become less aggravating, while others may even become more challenging, first and foremost the Lynels.

The world and the dungeons should stay the same, however, as it was intended. The overworld would become seamless, just like with Link's Awakening, and they may add some visual clues as to what trees you can burn and what rock walls can be blown up, because nobody got time for that nonsense today. But there is no reason to fill it with stuff that wasn't there before, unless they want to go down the same route as Oracle of Seasons.

You would also now be able to assign items to both the X and Y buttons, while the letter and potions may even work fully automatically, so you don't have to put them on a button at all. And for the remaining seven items the game could make use of the Breath of the Wild quick select, without it being a pain, since there are only so few.

One of those items could even get a dedicated button, where the best candidate is probably the Candle. You needed it all the time in dungeons to light up the dark rooms and this could get annoying very quickly, because it forced you to swap items every so often. Also, the screen-based usage of the Blue Candle won't make any sense when there are no transitioning screens any longer, so it may simply have a cooldown, which gets shortened by the Red Candle. And it should create a sphere of light around you inside dark rooms when you haven't used its fire yet, so you can still see a little bit.

The Bow could also be overhauled to use actual arrows as ammunition. And the shops that offered you an arrow now simply sell bundles of them for a refill. However, to still offer the classic functionality, the Magic Book now also upgrades the Bow (in addition to the Magical Rod), so that it still uses up Rupees when you're out of arrows. Kind of like how the Magic Armor in various Zelda games lets you deplete your Rupees instead of your health.

On the overworld the Clock power-up would probably freeze all enemies in sight or within a certain radius, like it does in Hyrule Warriors on the Master Quest map. And with the Bait it would be nice if you could carry more than just one at a time, so you're not just keeping it to bribe certain Goriyas.

Finally, the Compass would be another good candidate for a revision, because all it did in the original was showing you the location of the Triforce in a dungeon. It should still do that, of course, but it could also give you a signal in dungeon rooms that have a key, just like in Link's Awakening. Or it may even give a general signal whenever there is a secret related to defeating all enemies in a room.

And that's pretty much it. No fuzz, no nonsense, just the original game modernized. However, to make this a bit more interesting and to offer something new for most fans, this should also come with the maps and dungeons of the first BS-X Zelda game, released in the 90s for the Satellaview peripheral for the Super Nintendo. It was essentially a 16-Bit remake of the original, but it got broadcasted like a TV show with time-based events, where in each episode you were playing two dungeons.

Because of their unusual nature, these games have never been re-released by Nintendo in any way or form, but they still could remake the two maps and their unique dungeons without any of the event stuff. Fans have done it before, so it's entirely possible. In the remake it could look like this:

When you start the game you get a choice between four different quests. The "Classic Quest" is the game as you know it. The "Second Quest" lets you play the devious altered version of the original, without naming yourself "Zelda" or beating the normal game first. And the "Lost Quest", which comes in two variants, would bring you to the maps from the BS-X Zelda.

This could even be seen as difficulty modes. The Classic Quest would be the normal difficult, the 2nd Quest hard, while the Lost Quests would be a lot easier, because their overworlds are only half the size and the dungeons were meant to be cleared within a short time. 

Of course, GREZZO could also add the usual Hero Mode option for those who are looking for a bigger challenge. But this probably should be implemented in the same way as in Echoes of Wisdom, meaning that you can just turn it on and off at any time.

Also like in Echoes of Wisdom, outfits could give Link a different appearance, to add some variety and novelty without altering the gameplay. This is where amiibo could come into the equation. For example, the 8-Bit Link could give you something like the Timeless Tunic from Tri Force Heroes, so that Link appears in a retro voxel style (and the music changes to the classic chiptunes from the NES). Or there could be a variant based on A Link Between Worlds, so he looks more like the classic Link, in case you don't like the toy style.

They should call this remake "The Legend of Zelda: The Hyrule Fantasy" to distinguish from the original – at least in the west, since this has been the subtitle of the Famicom Disk game in Japan. It should be available on the Nintendo Switch, but with a free upgrade for the Switch 2. And maybe this could even be something that they will simply shadow-drop at the end of a Nintendo Direct, where they will offer a physical release later on, similar to Metroid Prime Remastered. You know, as a surprise for the 40th Anniversary...

Replaying The Legend of Zelda via NSO

Last weekend was the beginning of the 40th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda and that's a great reason to revisit the NES classic. Last time I played through the entire game was over nine years ago, on the Wii U, where I had made it my mission to play through most Zelda games again during the 30th Anniversary and before Breath of the Wild came out, starting a new era for the series.

Of course, it's not like I have had no contact with the game since then. I played a bit on the Game & Watch system that was released for the 35th Anniversary. And it was my favorite part of the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. But this was really about going through everything from start to finish again, both in the 1st and the 2nd Quest.

For this I was using the Nintendo Switch Online version, which brings one major novelty with it: you can now rewind at any time. Well, this has been a thing for many years now, so I'm a little late to the party, but it makes replaying the NES games a lot more forgiving and fun.

I wasn't using any guide maps at first, so I was simply guessing from my memory where I could bomb walls and burn trees, but my memories were a bit hazy. Luckily, you can just quickly rewind to not having wasted your bombs or having to go back and forth between screens to reload the candle.

The best usage in the early game turned out to be the money-making game, however. Make a pick and rewind whenever it was the wrong one. It is predetermined when you enter the cave, so you can just look at the result, rewind one step and then pick the positive value. This completely erases the need to farm Rupees in this game, making items like the Blue Ring quickly accessible.

Technically, all of this was already possible with Restore Points on the Virtual Console, but it was much more of a manual effort, because you needed to create a new save state every single time. Rewinding is so much more convenient that it makes me want to re-explore some other Zelda classics later this year, just to see what can be done with it.

Most importantly, it lets you quickly undo mistakes. You need to defeat a Dodongo, but only have exactly two bombs left? Not a problem any longer... Or in the 2nd Quest you will often go through one-way doors, where the other side is basically a trap that forces you to backtrack through the whole dungeon. Again, this isn't a problem any longer...

Speaking of the the 2nd Quest, here I was mostly following my "guide" from when I had played the game on the Nintendo 3DS right for the 30th Anniversary. The main difference was that I went through all of Level 8 right away, making it the second dungeon to complete.

Thanks to the rewind feature, all those triple Dodongos became rather trivial. And getting the Magical Key early was also a relief, because the keys are not evenly distributed throughout the 2nd Quest dungeons, where this can create annoying dead-ends, unless you have purchased keys in advance.

The 2nd Quest's Level 8 doesn't have any Blue Darknuts or Wizzrobes in it, making it easier in comparison to Levels 6 and 7. And I also often used the rewind when fighting those annoyances to minimize damage.

By the way, you can save your game (without it counting as a death) by activating a second controller and then pressing Up + Select on the second controller in the item menu. This works just fine with the Nintendo Switch Online version. I've only used this once, right at the very end of the 2nd Quest, because the Restore Points are more convenient for saving, but I wanted to have actual save data present to get a sense of completion.

Oracle of Ages & Seasons: 25 Years

Today is Pokémon Day. And 25 years ago, on February 27th 2001, Nintendo and Capcom released a different spin on the "Blue and Red" formula with The Legend of Zelda: The Mysterious Seeds, which got divided into two chapters released as two separate games. They would later be known as Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons to the west, and instead of being two different versions of the same game, they were two unique games in the same scope of their Game Boy Color predecessor, Link's Awakening DX, with the twist that you could connect their stories and worlds via passwords.

So, two new Zelda games came out on the same day and you had to decide which one to play first, where depending on this choice certain events in the games will play out differently. It was a fairly new concept, which adds a lot of replay value to both games, because you have to play each of them at least twice to experience all of the story and collect all of the items. (And at least four times to experience absolutely everything, due to some other choices you can make.)

It wasn't the only thing to let these games stand out within the Zelda series, even to this date, as their titles may indicate. Oracle of Ages brought the time traveling ideas from Ocarina of Time to the next level, where can swap between past and present on the spot with hundreds of years between, while small changes in the past may have big effects on the present. And Oracle of Seasons lets you alter the world's time of the year, where lakes freeze in winter and dry out in summer.

These games were quite ambitious for Game Boy titles and you can already experience them on the Nintendo Switch, via the Nintendo Switch Online offerings. However, the password system is far from intuitive, which is why this blog has been a strong advocate for a remake, ever since Link's Awakening was announced for the Nintendo Switch. You can read all about this idea in the Oracle of Worlds article from 2019, which I later renamed into Seeds of Courage, following the release of Echoes of Wisdom.

But the concept is quite simple: same engine and look as the new Link's Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom, one single game, no passwords. You start by choosing either "Holodrum" or "Labrynna" as the starting point of Link's adventure and everything unfolds naturally from there. After beating the first story chapter, you will then be transported into the other land, but the Maku Trees are now connected via a portal, so that you can easily travel back and forth both lands without switching between games.

That's the short version, but my ideas from 2019 have stayed mostly unchanged. After Echoes of Wisdom, however, it makes sense to revise the Magic Rings to work in the same way as the accessories, meaning that you should be able to equip multiple rings at once and carry them all around. This would make a number of rings a lot more useful in certain situations, which you otherwise probably would just ignore.

Now, this title would become a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive and there may even be a good technical reason for this. Switching between the ages and seasons isn't as simple as switching between screens in the original, because you would have to load a whole other world. And maybe on the Nintendo Switch 2 this can be achieved without major loading times.

In any case, such a remake would be the perfect way to celebrate both the 25th Anniversary of the Oracle games, as well as the 40th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda in the year 2026. After all, Oracle of Seasons was half a remake of the NES classic. Maybe they could make use of that fact and feature the classic enemies and bosses in new ways that re-explore the original Zelda... Or maybe they will remake the first game first and then re-use those assets for the Oracles afterwards.

40th Anniversary of Zelda

On February 21st 1986, ゼルダの伝説 (The Legend of Zelda): THE HYRULE FANTASY was released for the Famicom Disk System in Japan. 40 years later the game has left a legacy like rarely any other, with a succession of 20 more titles, half of them remastered or remade, a rich variety of different art styles and gameplay ideas, and even an ongoing spin-off series with Hyrule Warriors.

The Legend of Zelda is the reason why this blog exists, though I was still in the making myself when the original came out. But Europe had to wait until November 1987 anyway to get their NES version.

When you first played the game you were presented with a choice: will you go left, right, up, or down into that cave? Well, you won't get very far if you don't go into the cave first, but that's a lesson for you to learn and it's really up to you. It is your adventure. And it's this level of freedom that later inspired Breath of the Wild to go in a bold new direction, where even the rocky walls aren't an obstacle any longer, bringing the series to a whole new level of popularity and success.

Despite that, Nintendo had decided to skip over celebrating the 35th Anniversary in 2021, save for a Game & Watch system. And to be fair, 35 years are an odd anniversary, where it doesn't necessarily scream for attention, but that's different in the case of four whole decades. Nintendo won't let this opportunity for marketing slip away, especially when they have a whole Legend of Zelda movie coming out next year (even though the series will be 41 years old by then).

But don't hold your breath just yet. They are still in the middle of advertising the 40th Anniversary of Super Mario Bros., where Mar10 day is coming up, the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and of course the Super Mario Galaxy Movie on April 1st. We shouldn't expect to hear about the Zelda anniversary from its creators before that's all behind us. And this also has been true in the past, where they have waited until June to announce something for 25th and 35th Anniversaries and even until September in case of the 30th.

So, at this point we can only speculate and here it's easy to bring up a number of ideas from the past, like those for the 35th Anniversary that weren't meant to be at the time:

• A game collection
• Special-themed hardware
• A dungeon / shrine maker 

Giving us The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD in a collection is still on top of many fan wishlists, where similar to Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 this could run on both the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, offering something for the fans who have yet to migrate to the new system. However... it's probably more in Nintendo's interest for those people to move on and also to subscribe to the Expansion Pack of the Nintendo Switch Online service, which gives you access to GameCube games on the Switch 2, including The Wind Waker. They will certainly also add Twilight Princess at some point, maybe even this year, and an HD collection would only make such offerings less interesting.

By the way, it will also be the 20th Anniversary of Twilight Princess, sitting right in the middle of the franchise's history. There won't be any better timing to bring this game back, but this may come down to releasing Twilight Princess as part of the NSO GameCube library and finally adding its soundtrack to Nintendo Music. We can anticipate this to happen in the very least.

As for Special Editions of the latest hardware, that's a strong possibility, since the Nintendo Switch 2 doesn't have much to offer yet. Resident Evil Re9uiem will be the first game to come with a themed Pro Controller and that's really it. We could also see a Pro Controller for the 40th Anniversary, or some Joy-Cons, or maybe even a whole Nintendo Switch 2.

But Zelda-themed hardware usually launched alongside a new game, like Tears of the Kingdom and Echoes of Wisdom in the more recent years. It's a bit early for a brandnew Zelda game, though. If we're getting some release in 2026, then it will likely be a side project.

One such side project could be the equivalent to the Super Mario Maker, which became a thing during the 30th Anniversary of Super Mario Bros., more than ten years ago. And it's time that Zelda gets something of its own here. This could be a top-down dungeon maker experience, or a Shrine Maker based on Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Both could have realistically been in development at Nintendo / GREZZO for many years now, in parallel to the latest games.

Something simpler would be the Zelda World Championships, which is like the Nintendo World Championships, where you play short slices of the games and try to solve tasks as quickly as possible. But instead of different games from one system, this would be focused solely on the history of the Zelda series, featuring the two NES classics, A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening DX, Ocarina of Time and more.

Alternatively, we could be looking at a remake. The internet is currently obsessed with the idea of remaking Ocarina of Time again, which will happen eventually, but it needs the right studio for the job. And GREZZO, the developers behind Ocarina of Time 3D, effectively became the top-down Zelda team over the last decade. Speaking of, a remake of Oracle of Ages & Seasons may actually be the more likely candidate.

Of course, it hasn't even been two years since the release of Echoes of Wisdom, so this is a bit too hopeful, but they can re-use a lot of assets from both the Link's Awakening remake and Echoes of Wisdom, which could have sped up the development significantly. They also wouldn't have to create new environments and scenarios, just recreate old ones and mash them together in a more satisfying package.

Well, such a remake doesn't necessarily have to do anything with the ongoing anniversary. In fact, they rarely ever do. Ocarina of Time 3D was tied into the 25th, but this happened retroactively. Meanwhile, both Twilight Princess HD and Skyward Sword HD came out in the year of an anniversary, but weren't marketed as such.

Yet, the Oracle games are in a more unique position, because their development started out as a remake itself – a remake of the very first Zelda game, the one we're all celebrating today. As a result, nearly all of the game's enemies and bosses can be encountered in the GBC classics, which are also seeing their own major anniversary in less than a week: it has been 25 years since their launch on February 27th, 2001.

If they were to remake Oracle of Ages & Seasons, then those assets could theoretically be even used for a remake of The Legend of Zelda. Nothing too crazy, just the original game in the Link's Awakening style, as it was once intended by Capcom. This would be a throwback to a throwback and the ultimate deal for the anniversary, which also could be released for both the Switch and the Switch 2. Maybe they will even have focused on such a project first, because it doesn't require as much development effort, before moving on to the Oracle games in the next step.

Otherwise, Nintendo could also repeat some of things they had done for past anniversaries:

• Start a new symphony orchestra tour
• Launch some more Zelda amiibo
• Release a new book 

The simplest option are amiibo, where they already have been some trustworthy rumors earlier this year that Nintendo will be breathing them in 2026. We're still waiting for the amiibo of Mineru's Construct, but that one will be entirely separate. (Or maybe it launches alongside that Shrine Maker?) For the 40th Anniversary they could just go over the entire series and fill some gaps: Zelda from Ocarina of Time and Echoes of Wisdom, or Din, Nayru and Farore as the Oracles, or Twili Midna, Fi, Linebeck, Ravio...

But it wouldn't be Nintendo if they didn't come up with something special, something that no one is expecting or even talking about. It could be a new cooperation with another video game franchise, some unique merchandise or events, or introducing Rupees as an actual currency in Japan. Let's wait and find out, though the Nintendo of late has been playing it quite safe and by the numbers. However, after the two lackluster anniversaries in 2016 and 2021, which paled in comparison to their Super Mario counterparts, it would be nice to see some more attention on our favorite franchise.

 

Happy 40th Anniversary, The Legend of Zelda!