Small Updates to the Ocarina of Time Remake Posts

Earlier this month Nintendo has shown us lots of footage from the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake and I talked quite a bit about some of it, but I was by no means doing a thorough analysis. Still, there were a couple more things that I found interesting and was meaning to discuss, where I didn't get to them until now. But since this already felt like old news, I added them to the week of the Direct, also because it makes more sense within the chronology of this blog.

Mainly, the post about the world alterations got updated a bit, but I also added two smaller posts – one about a new NPC and the other about Big Poes:

• Ocarina of Time Remake: Altered World
• Ocarina of Time Remake: New NPCs?
• Ocarina of Time Remake: Better Big Poes?

This should be it for now... Let's see if Nintendo will show more in October.

Hyrule Blog: Updated Game Buttons

Echoes of Wisdom is just around the corner and thus this website needed a nice blog button as a shortcut to all posts about the game. However, since this caused a line break, I've also added buttons for Link's Crossbow Training and Cadence of Hyrule to even things out... and to show the spin-offs some more love (except for the Tingle games, for now).

In addition, the buttons for Four Swords and Twilight Princess got new backgrounds to add more visual variety, because too many buttons simply used the one of the blog. Now it's down to four. With Four Swords recently in the news, it's also nice to look at something fresher here.

Finally, there are more buttons for some indie Action Adventures in the spirit of Zelda and Metroid, where we're looking at Hollow Knight and Death's Door, which both have been featured on this blog in the recent years and really deserve the spotlight. But if you look closely, I've already prepared a button for another one... So, that's going to be a topic soon.

Hyrule Blog: Tears of the Kingdom Logo

 

Writing about Tears of the Kingdom the whole year while sporting a logo based on Breath of the Wild felt a bit wrong, so it was finally time to update it, which has also increased its size. I may improve it later on, but this blog has finally arrived in the next era of The Legend of Zelda.

In addition, I've updated the icon for Tears of the Kingdom, so it matches the one for Breath of the Wild. And I fixed the icon for A Link Between Worlds, while I was at it, because Link's hat from the Mario Kart icon was stuck on Hilda's staff and I hadn't notice until yesterday. (You can view all icons on the games page if you're on mobile.)

Get Ready!

It has been quiet on this blog for the last couple of months, but this is going to change very soon, because it's finally September! And you don't have to be some industry insider to predict that this means it's time for a Nintendo Direct. There has been a major Nintendo Direct in September of 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. And Splatoon 3 is going to be released on September 9th, where lately Nintendo has preferred to wait for the release of their next major title before they do another Direct.

There is still Pokémon Scarlet & Violet coming, of course, but those already got their own dedicated presentation, where Pokémon really is its own thing anyway. These still will play some role in an upcoming Nintendo Direct, but they won't be the focus. And we all know what the focus is going to be...

This will be the Nintendo Direct where they will finally lift the curtain on the sequel to Breath of the Wild. The actual title, the concrete release date, first gameplay footage, insights into new game mechanics... that's all going to be the highlight of the next Nintendo Direct and maybe even a Treehouse Live follow-up. I'm still expecting a March (3rd) release, so it's time for Nintendo to fire up their marketing machines.

If the game gets delayed even further, we might see potential ports of The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD to tie us over, but I'm not really expecting this after the recent comments by Tantalus. Though, it would be great to have all 3D Zelda games on the Nintendo Switch, before the sequel to Breath of the Wild comes out.

Meanwhile, I have been busy playing Hollow Knight for the last two months, where I fell in love with this game, which shares many similarities to Metroid and Zelda. I'm planning on doing a Hollow Knight special on this blog, ideally before the blowout of Breath of the Wild sequel news, but it's a lot to write, so I won't be stressing things.

Hyrule Blog: Rewind Reviews

This blog is 14 years old now as of this month and together with 36 years of The Legend of Zelda that's 50 years of Zelda goodness. Well, it doesn't really work like that, but nevertheless I have been preparing something for Hyrule Blog. Actually, the timing is more or less a coincidence, where I have been working on this particular project in the background for quite a while, over one year in fact...

Last year was the 35th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda and even if Nintendo wasn't in the mood for big celebrations, the fans found their own ways of honoring the series. With the 25th and 30th Anniversaries I did this by replaying the majority of Zelda games, where for my 30th Anniversary Replay List I've gone through all Zelda games that are playable on Nintendo 3DS and Wii U – which were all of them except for Four Swords Adventures. This undertaking ended right before Breath of the Wild was released and I came to a closure with the series at the time, where from now on I will be mostly sticking to the new releases on the Nintendo Switch, like Skyward Sword HD last year.

Instead, I've decided to revisit my past as a Zelda fan in a very different way: by translating my old German reviews (and previews) to English. As you may or may not know, I was writing for ZeldaEurope (now found under ZeldaChronicles.de) between 2011 and 2016 – mostly news and guides, but also some reviews.

For the most part this endeavor didn't clash too hard with this blog, because my work on ZeldaEurope was about sharing information, mostly the news, while this blog is more focused on my personal experiences, opinions, and predictions. A review is an informal opinion piece, however, where it fits both a news site and a blog rather well. Originally, it was even my goal to translate some of these reviews right away, but this felt like too much mindless busywork at the time, so I couldn't do it.

Now that several years have passed, however, it was actually interesting to revisit these texts and translate them. It's also a nice preservation of my work from that era, where the ZeldaEurope main page is already a relic and the original reviews can't be found there any longer (only in the forums)... Having it all together here on this site simply felt right for a nice collection and also filled some gaps in those years.

A few additions or adjustments were made to these articles whenever I felt like it was for the better or that something critical was missing. But it wasn't my goal to rewrite history here, so these opinion pieces still reflect what I thought of the games all those years ago and not necessarily how I feel now, though I'm still content with most of it.

Everything was also translated by myself. I know that I could have used DeepL or something similar to speed things up tremendously, where it even delivers some very good results, but I really wanted it to be my own words, for better or worse. After all, this was all about dwelling in the past.

The (p)reviews got posted on their original dates to this blog to preserve the history and to avoid putting them out of context. You can find them all under previews and reviews, but this post will also feature a complete list of what has been retroactively added to this site, for your convenience. Feel free to check any of it out in case you're interested. It's a lot to go through and it's old stuff, so I don't really expect anyone to read all of it, but I think that having such a large collection of reviews is certainly of good value for this blog.

In addition, I've also been updating the year reviews and year previews from that era, because the ones I wrote for ZeldaEurope were much nicer and more extensive. But that's not really as important as all the following...

Main Games:

• Skyward Sword (Preview)
  
• A Link Between Worlds (Preview)
  
• A Link Between Worlds (Review)
  
• A Link Between Worlds – StreetPass
• Tri Force Heroes
• Tri Force Heroes – Coliseum
  
• Tri Force Heroes – Den of Trials

Ironically, the Skyward Sword preview was first written for this blog, then got translated to German for ZeldaEurope, and now translated back again, because I removed the original and couldn't find it anywhere... Back then I wrote it here out of habit, without considering that I've only signed the NDA for ZeldaEurope and not this blog, so this is how this back and forth came to be. But now, almost 10 years later, it shouldn't really matter and it's good to have it back where it belongs.

Still, the preview for Skyward Sword might not actually be that interesting, but the one for A Link Between Worlds is, because it effectively describes my first journey through that game's Hyrule. Sadly, I haven't written a game journal for A Link Between Worlds, because I had an early review copy, but thanks to this preview I feel like the entire A Link Between Worlds section is a lot more wholesome now. I also went over some other posts from that time, adding images and such, while I was at it.

In case of Tri Force Heroes I have also added a collection of all Drablands Diaries easter eggs. Previously, I had only posted these on Miiverse, where I was too lazy to post it all a second time on this blog. It seemed redundant, but since the Miiverse is gone by now, it feels like a good thing to have it all here preserved. Coincidentally, there is a big overlap between the Miiverse era and my time at ZeldaEurope, where I made good use of my screenshots posted on Miiverse for some of the reviews and other posts.

Both A Link Between Worlds and Tri Force Heroes also have a small follow-up review for a bigger feature in the game, which seems to be a trend among top-down Zelda games, where the remake of Link's Awakening also got a separate Chamber Dungeon review on this blog.

Remakes & Remasters:

• The Wind Waker HD
• Majora's Mask 3D
• Twilight Princess HD

Ocarina of Time 3D was actually one of the first Zelda titles to get a review on this blog, so it's nice to finally have the follow-up present as well with Majora's Mask 3D, even though it had to receive a good amount of criticism. And the reviews of The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD might have some relevance in the future, should these two remasters ever get ported over to the Nintendo Switch. Then it will be very nice to have my reviews for them at the ready as a reference.

Similar to Tri Force Heroes, I've also added a guide from my Miiverse journeys in The Wind Waker HD, where this one is for the hidden Tingle Statues.

 

Virtual Console:

• Oracle of Ages & Seasons (3DS)
  
• The Minish Cap (Wii U)
  
• Phantom Hourglass & Spirit Tracks (Wii U)
• A Link to the Past (N3DS)
  

These aren't really reviews of the actual games, instead they are all about the different Virtual Consoles experiences on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Those are some short reads and I mainly did it for the free downloads at the time, not going to lie. Some of it may also be redundant from what I've already written on my blog at the time, so feel free to ignore these reviews.

Hyrule Warriors:

• Hyrule Warriors (Preview)
  
• Hyrule Warriors (Review)
  
• Master Quest Pack
  
• Twilight Princess Pack
• Majora's Mask Pack
• Ganon Pack

Translating all the reviews for Hyrule Warriors on the Wii U was a big chunk of the work this year, where the game got both a review and preview back in 2014 and also a review for every single DLC pack, which was absurd. Today I would probably review the Hero of Hyrule Pack as a whole, especially since Nintendo now prefers to only offer the entire DLC as a purchase option, like they did with the Expansion Pass for Age of Calamity. But it's still interesting to read how the game has slowly developed into what it is today with the Definitive Edition, where important features like a restart option for Adventure Mode battles got added piece by piece.

Other Reviews:

• Symphony of the Goddesses
  
• NES Remix & NES Remix 2
• The Legend of Zelda x Mario Kart 8
• Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
• Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

One of the very first reviews was actually not for a game, but for an event: the Symphony of the Goddesses in Berlin. Though, this was more of a report, not a real review. I posted about the event on this blog as well, specifically about the merchandise, and promised to add a short English summary later, but I have never delivered... until now. Sorry! Well, to make up for it I've translated the whole thing.

The rest are all titles that were released in 2014, Zelda's "Year of Crossovers", where this was the big focus next to Hyrule Warriors, which came out in the same year. And these reviews are definitely mixed, where I wasn't very fond of the new Super Smash Bros. titles at the time. The most positive one is for Mario Kart 8's DLC, which certainly beats the lackluster Booster Course Pass. And NES Remix is one of those curiosities that I've been completely ignoring on my blog, where now it's nice to have at least something present.

Hyrule Blog: New Game Buttons

Finally, I took some time to beautify this blog a little bit, where I've updated the buttons for the various Zelda games that you can see on the right side, if you're viewing this page on a larger screen. The buttons provide a shortcut to a search for all posts concerning the respective title or set of games.

The new versions have improved in quality quite a lot, where their resolution has doubled, they now use the pretty Triforce font and there are nice pop-out effects on most of them. I'm very happy with the result and I hope you like them as well.

I've also combined the Oracle games back into one button and added a new button for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which will certainly see some use in the near future. Some other buttons are gone for now, where there used to be buttons for Link's Crossbow Training, the Tingle games and Unreal, which all were – frankly put – not that important any longer and probably never were. Metroid will be back, I promise, but right now it would have created an orphan line at the end.

The order also isn't strictly chronological, as you might have noticed, because I've swapped The Minish Cap and The Wind Waker. I did this because I wanted the Capcom Zelda games to be all on one line, as well as all the GameCube Zelda games. It also puts The Wind Waker right above Phantom Hourglass, which feels good.

Anyway, enjoy!

33 / 22 / 11

Sometimes there is a certain poetry to how time progresses. I was born the same year as the Zelda series, in 1986, 33 years ago. 11 years later, on Christmas Eve 1997, exactly 22 years ago, I got my first Zelda game. It was The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the GameBoy, as the Nintendo Classics edition, this one:

I wished for this game as a Christmas present, after it had really fascinated me in a Club Nintendo article in 1997, and it has made me a Zelda fan for life. You can read all about my journey in my 20th Anniversary article from two years ago, which spans the following 11 years.

In 2008, 11 years ago and 11 years after my first Zelda game, is when I've opened this blog, which has been a part of my life as Zelda fan ever since. And it's only fitting that now, after 11 more years, the remake of my first Zelda game has been released for Nintendo Switch, as if it were to close a circle.

2019 truly has been the year of repdigits for me: 33 years alive, 22 years as a Zelda fan and 11 years of Hyrule Blog. And all of this brings back a lot of good memories. Maybe today, some child will find The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening under the Christmas tree, which will start a cycle of its own.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Welcome Back!

Like Ganondorf in the recent teaser for the sequel to Breath of the Wild, this blog finally awakens from the dead!

Well, technically it hasn't been dead, just hidden underground for over a year, ever since the new data protection regulations caused quite the risk and burden for owners of simple, personal websites. I've kept writing this blog in secret, like I would have normally. In the meantime I was hoping that Google would support bloggers on Blogspot to deal with this mess, but all they did was providing a cookie banner (still better than nothing), so it took me a while to do the rest myself and find the courage to bring this site back online.

As you can see, this page has now a Privacy Policy, which apparently you should read, even though it makes no difference whatsoever. This blog wasn't monetized and never used any third party plugins, so outside of comments and Google's rough, built-in statistics, there isn't really much to cover here.

During the last months I've already gave some people access to this blog, either friends or former regular readers or both, but now I wanted to take the big step and make this site open to the public again. I really hope this works out and I won't have to hide this site yet again...

Anyway, what did you miss? Well, luckily the Zelda series was on a hiatus in 2018 (with the exception of the Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition) and the only big topic was Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. So, you didn't miss anything of importance last year on this site.

Earlier this year, however, the remake to Link's Awakening was announced and I've already made many excited posts about the topic with opinions, suggestions, predictions, ideas and everything about the new version. June 2019 has been the biggest month in over two years on Hyrule Blog, where it's filled with posts about the remake and more are to come. Needless to say, I'm really excited for Link's Awakening and I wanted my thoughts about it out there. And of course there is the sequel to Breath of the Wild as well, which will certainly keep my busy at a later time.

So, have fun catching up!

Hyrule Blog Historia III

Today Hyrule Blog is celebrating its 10th Anniversary, where this blog was created exactly 10 years ago with a post about the Future of Zelda.

Sadly, it's not a time for celebration, because this blog is currently offline due to the GDPR situation. But it might come back in the future, where in this case it would be even sadder, if it didn't get a proper post for its 10th Anniversary. So, let's do this.

Actually, in the past two years there were already two similar landmark posts, which covered different topics. The original Hyrule Blog Historia explained the origins of this blog, how it all started. And Hyrule Blog Historia II gave an overview over the different article series on this site.

This time I wanted to talk about my top 5 predictions over the years. Part of the fun with this blog is predicting what future Zelda games might bring and often I'm wrong. But I'm not always wrong and I want to feature some of the most solid predictions as some vaunt here.

1) A Second Nintendo DS Zelda Game

This goes back to the aforementioned first post of this blog, the Future of Zelda, where in mid-2008 I gave a brief overview what might be in the store for the next years. And most of it was wrong. Master Quest never made it to the Virtual Console, there were no Zelda WiiWare titles, there was no fishing spin-off game (though this was meant as a joke anyway) and Skyward Sword wasn't played in first person. But I also predicted that Phantom Hourglass would get a sequel in late 2009, even before the new Wii Zelda game.

This wasn't the most popular prediction at the time, because most fans simply wanted that new Wii Zelda game. And frankly speaking, Skyward Sword appeared way too late in the Wii's life cycle. But Spirit Tracks would bridge some time and use the engine of Phantom Hourglass to create something new after two years, similar to what Majora's Mask did after Ocarina of Time.

2) A Zelda to the Sky

In an article about Zelda Wii, which would later become Skyward Sword, I made the suggestion that the game should utilize Wii MotionPlus (a no-brainer) and take place in the sky with various sky islands. This turned out to be true, but sadly it wasn't as ambitious as originally expected, since the focus was still on the individual realms on the land, while the sky was just a simple hub. Skyloft was nice, though.

3) Four Swords DSiWare Singleplayer Mode and Extra Stages

After Four Swords was announced as a DSiWare title at E3 2011, I played through the original again and made a proposal for how a singleplayer mode could work based on the game's two-player experience, which was based on my attempts of playing the game alone with two GameBoy Advance systems. And this became a reality exactly the way I described it with the Four Swords Anniversary Edition.

This was followed by another suggestion that the game should get additional levels, where you can get the unlockable sword moves, the Sword Beam and the Hurricane Spin Attack. Originally those techniques were gotten via A Link to the Past and there had to be a way to get them in the new version. I even made the suggestion that these levels could be super-challenging. And all of this became a reality, much like the singleplayer...

4) The Bow of the Wild

Back in 2013, I dubbed the upcoming Zelda game for Wii U The Bow of the Goddesses. Based on the Battle Quest mini-game in Nintendoland, I thought that the Wii U GamePad would lead to a higher importance of the bow, much like the sword became very important in Skyward Sword.

While it didn't become the "main gimmick" and the bow was just one of many, many big changes in Breath of the Wild, the bow finally became much more prominent in this game, getting the same status as sword and shield. The first trailer even showed Link fighting exclusively with a bow.

5) Four Swords 3DS

This is my favorite one. Already back in August 2013, even before A Link Between Worlds was released, I predicted that the game should be followed by a Four Swords Online game based on its engine. Before E3 2015 I made another post that this is now the time for an online multiplayer Zelda game. And this is where Tri Force Heroes then was announced.

It wasn't exactly a Four Swords game, more like "Three Swords", and it didn't get a full single-player experience, just the typical "play the multiplayer levels alone" mode, but it was another multiplayer game based on the engine of A Link Between Worlds, using the Energy meter for its items and fully playable online. It wasn't perfect, but I still had a blast with the game!

...

To be honest, I don't have the most impressive track-record here, but it's all about the fun. It's not so much as about making the right predictions, but showing the possibilities, like I did with The Future of Zelda on Switch. And maybe some of those predictions even come true the day after tomorrow, when Nintendo announces future Switch games at E3 2018. Let's see...

Starting Silence Mode

From today on this blog will run in "private mode", where the outside world won't have any access... at least for now. This is a reaction to the current GDPR mess and might take a while to be solved.

Today Google updated the Blogspot cookie banners, which is the first real sign that they are still interested in keeping things. If Google puts more efforts into this and the GDPR jurisdictions turn out to be okay for small websites like this one, this blog might have a chance of coming back. So, I will keep this going in silence for now.

It feels really weird, to be honest. While this was always a personal blog about my favorite video game franchise(s), which I mainly use to process my thoughts about Zelda and the like, I've always written it with an audience in mind. With no audience there, it takes the wind out of the sails. It still will help to process my thoughts, however, and I do like to read my contents from the past. But the hope that this might be read by someone other than myself in the future is still there.

Closing Hyrule Blog

In a three days time the moon will crash on the world this blog will shut its doors. It will be set to "private", where only I will be able to read any of it.

This is to "comply" with the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which will be enforced starting May 25th. Chances are that you've heard about in the last weeks, because most online platforms are updating their privacy policies because of it. It affects almost everything that potentially has some sort of data from Europeans, which goes as far that certain sites and firms will effectively shut off Europe from their servers just to avoid it. Which won't work, because proxies are a thing. But the reaction is fully understandable, because the fines are astronomical and existence-threatening.

At its core the GDPR means well and is probably long overdue, but the execution is so flawed that conspiracy theorists may view it as an open attack on the free web and on free speech in the Internet, disguised under the name of data protection. The main issue of the GDPR is that its regulations seemingly aim at the big firms like Google or Facebook, but they are so vague that they apply to everyone and everything on the web, making any site a target for warning fees.

The big firms with their armies of lawyers and IT experts can prepare for this accordingly. But small companies and private persons will struggle with the current legal maze. Blogs, wikis, boards, homepages, online school projects... everyone needs to comply and mistakes are costly.

And as an individual it's quite the effort to deal with all this and chances are that you are still making some mistakes, even if you go as far and hire a lawyer. So, starting May 25th it becomes quite a personal risk to run a website of any kind.

...

And this is where I stand. For me this always has been a harmless hobby. This site never generated a single cent and I just did it for the fun of it. Blogspot was the platform of my choice, because it was completely free and I didn't have to take care of anything here. I could just start a blog, modify the layout and start posting. It was simple, carefree and fun.

But as a blog owner you're now becoming a "data controller" and are forced to do all kinds of things, including setting up a lengthy Privacy Policy, which only lawyers are ever going to read, and even making "data processing contracts" with Google, where Google has yet to offer them directly to their bloggers in some form of automated process.

Probably the biggest issue, however, is that the GDPR forces you to make your address and phone number public for everyone to see at any time... There's some gigantic irony here that I would need to disclose my full personal data in the name of data protection. Who's protecting my data here? Certainly not the law. And I don't want any part of this.

So, the only sane thing to do is to not take any risks and close this blog for now. With some luck it won't be forever. The problems of the GDPR currently show and protest is there, where things might get loosened for small websites like this one... Maybe over time it will get a lot clearer and easier to make a Blogspot blog compliant. But for now I will need to stay quiet and observe the situation. When the smoke clears and I can just keep doing what I love without any personal risk, Hyrule Blog will return. Otherwise this will really be the end of it.

...

The last days I've been publishing quite a few posts - stuff that I still wanted to write, as long as someone can read it. And this shows how much this hobby actually means to me - I love writing this blog and there won't be a real replacement for it, because what I'm doing here would be an overshoot for community boards and even other Zelda news blogs, since it's simply too personal. So, this isn't an easy decision and it currently feels like a big part of me is dying...

I might keep writing this blog in private, so in case that it can return, there won't be a massive gap without any posts. But despite the fact that I've been writing this blog mostly for myself to process my thoughts about my favorite video game franchise(s), with no one there to read any of it, it probably won't be the same anymore and I might lose the motivation to go on.

All of this is especially sad considering that next month would have been the 10th Anniversary of Hyrule Blog and the next E3 with interesting new topics. And the Future of Zelda currently looks brighter than ever, where I'm really excited for what comes next in the franchise...

In the meantime you can follow me on Twitter, where I probably will become more active as a result, but naturally I won't be writing any lengthy posts there. (This is of course part of the GDPR irony, where I'm driven to a large social network, instead of writing my own blog...) But if a Smartphone Zelda is happening next, as I'm currently hoping, Twitter might be a good platform to share my thoughts about the game and my current progress on the go.

Thanks to everyone, who has been reading and supporting this blog over the years! Hopefully you will be reading it again soon.

Back from the Wild

For the past two months I have been dedicated to my Adventure Log series for Breath of the Wild, where I have been playing the game and blogging about it in great detail.

For all this time this blog has been on shutdown mode. It was important to me and still is that I figure everything out on my own and that I'm not told by others what to do in the game or how the game works. Even if I struggle to find stuff or misunderstand things, it was all part of the experience. I know that people might only mean well, when they are trying to help, but for me it's only a true classic gaming experience, if I have to discover it all by myself.

The only things that I had looked up were the ghost chests, because this had been driving me crazy, and the amiibo rewards, because I'm not very patient with random stuff. I've also learned some things from Skype contacts and got occasionally spoiled on Twitter (e.g. someone showing the completed Key Items menu), but that couldn't be helped. Otherwise I have been going "blind". No guides, no GameFAQs, no nothing. And it was a blast!

Now I'm close to completing this game, "only" about 250 Koroks left to find and a hand full of minor tasks. And it's finally time to return back to business with Hyrule Blog, where I want to talk about the game in other ways. I want to speculate about the (2nd) DLC, suggest small improvements and review the game in various ways. Originally I wanted to wait, until I've did everything except for the 900 Koroks, but it seems like Nintendo didn't want to wait as long, because they dropped the bomb about the first DLC today, revealing all its contents. So, I suppose, it's time to get back to normal, whether I want to or not!

The Adventure Log series will continue nonetheless, even if posts will be less frequent.

Breath of the Wild: Preview Phase Begins

It seems like Nintendo will now let the media run wild with the game. Because I don't want to get spoiled any further, I will avoid Twitter, Nintendo news feeds, gaming forums and the like for the time being. Comments are also disabled for now just to make sure. Please understand.

In the meantime I will try to finish my 3D Zelda sprint with Skyward Sword. Starting March 3rd I will dive into Breath of the Wild with my "Adventure Log" series on this blog, where I share my experiences with the game on a daily basis. Comments will return after I've beaten the game.

Update:
I originally posted this on February 13th, but it was a false alarm. The real preview phase begins now, one week before the release. That's super close! And it seems that the review embargo is on March 1st, two days before release. So, Nintendo really kept the game close to their chest, which is nice.

They handled this really well this time. I know very little about the game outside of the Great Plateau stuff that was shown at E3 last year. And most of the other things came out of the two new trailers, which only gave us small glimpes. With Skyward Sword Nintendo already had showcased the entire game at this point...

And ignoring the gaming media for one week is an agreeable time frame. Since some people might already have the game right now, because their GameStop let it slip early or whatever, you have to be careful anyway. Don't get spoiled! I won't read any previews or reviews, because I'm getting the game anyway and I will experience everything fully on my own, without any bigger knowledge or expectations.

Only one week left!

Hyrule Blog & Breath of the Wild: Spoilers, Adventure Log

Breath of the Wild will be released soon, in six weeks to be exact, and we got a major outlet about the game one week ago with the Switch Presentation Trailer. Ideally, Nintendo will just let us have the game now without any further spoilers, but that's not how things usually go down.

So, how will Hyrule Blog proceed from now on? I will keep analyzing the materials, which Nintendo has shown us so far, so there will be more posts incoming with observations, speculations and theories for a little while. If you feel like the latest trailer has already shown too much, then you'd might want to stay off this site for now, though I will hide any major leaks and reveals under spoiler buttons.

I'm not sure, if I will look at anything that Nintendo might show from now on. With Skyward Sword they had the bad habit of showing pretty much the entire game in advance with the exception of the final dungeon. But even the final boss was there in the form of some artwork. It looks like they've learned from their mistakes and only want to show the early game, but we can't be sure right now. It's still fun to analyze the trailers and images, so I'm not entirely sure, if I will really avoid all of it. You'll see.

But I will definitely want to avoid any press materials. This is usually the really bad stuff, because these sites want clicks and to show as much as the NDAs allows them to. This was a disaster with A Link Between Worlds, where the press was allowed to show everything except for the final dungeon (again) and you could find all Lorule dungeons online in video form, before the game was out. How Nintendo could allow this, was beyond me. Previews might be coming up soon and reviews hopefully won't be published before the release week. But this is the phase, where I want to shut myself off from the media and don't want to learn anything new. Comments on Hyrule Blog will be disabled for that time.

Good news is that I will be able to take a vacation from March 3rd to March 13th - that's 11 days, where I can solely focus on playing the game and blogging about the experience. I will call this the "Breath of the Wild Adventure Log", which will be happening on a daily basis. During that time I might still keep the comments disabled or I will simply ignore them to avoid spoilers. And hopefully 11 days will be enough to explore most of the world and to beat the whole story.

Hyrule Blog Historia II

This is the 1000th post on Hyrule Blog.

(Disclaimer: This number might not be accurate in the future due to retroactive changes to this blog, e.g. adding some translated reviews or deleting silly posts. But as of now, this is exactly the 1000th post.)

This year in June I was already celebrating the 8th Anniversary of Hyrule Blog, because I felt like doing so right before E3 and there was also a nice total of exactly 888 posts at the time. But both Breath of the Wild and all the Hyrule Warriors - Legends DLC gave us a lot to talk about, so we already accumulated 112 more posts in the meantime.

Seriously? That's a lot!
A lot! A lot!!!

With 1000 posts in total there really is a lot to read on this site, if you ever get bored. But with this post I want to give an overview of the different article series that happened over the course of these 1000 posts. Most of them will be game journals, where I shared my impressions while playing a new Zelda game or replaying old ones. But there were other interesting series as well.

Feature Article Series

• The Future of Zelda
  This was the name of the first post on Hyrule Blog, which spawned a series of posts about what could be next for Zelda in the upcoming years. This was running until 2012, at times where you couldn't really do anything else but speculate, because nothing much was known about Nintendo's future plans for the Zelda. The years after always gave the Zelda fan community something to look forward to, so the "Future of Zelda" series was put to sleep. But I might return to it after Breath of the Wild...
  
  
• Zelda Year Reviews
  At the end of each year I look at all that's happened for the Zelda franchise and sum it up with a nice graphic. These posts may vary in quality, but right now I'm preparing a good one for 2016.
  
  
• Zelda and Multiplayer
  Long before Tri Force Heroes was a thing, in early 2010 to be exact, I've written a series about the various multiplayer outings of the Zelda games and the frustrations that came with them. It's essentially a cry for Tri Force Heroes, which in the end also didn't do everything right and probably deserves another "Zelda and Multiplayer" entry.
  
  
• Zelda Manga Journey
  I do like Manga & Anime (mostly One Piece, but also some other stuff like Akame ga Kill!), so it was inevitable that I would review the entire Zelda Manga series by Akira Himekawa at some point. This was during the 25th Anniversary in 2011 and nothing much has happened since then, except for the new Twilight Princess manga, which was just released in Germany two weeks ago.
  
  
• Excuse me, Episodes
  Believe it or not, I do enjoy watching the cheesy Animated Series for The Legend of Zelda. And this year, as a countdown to E3 2016, I was having a little fun with each individual episode.
  
  
• Let's Update
  This is a newer series, where I think about, how the newest Zelda games could potentially benefit from getting updates and DLC. This includes improvements over some issues, as well as new features and content.

You might also find some additional highlight posts in my Zelda Articles section, but this has been very loosely labeled and it might be missing a few...

Game Journals

• Mystic Quest
  This was quite the weird entry to this blog back in 2008, but Mystic Quest (a.k.a. Final Fantasy Adventure or Seiken Densetsu) was one of my favorite Action RPGs and thus one of my favorite games on the GameBoy next to Link's Awakening. I never did beat it back in the day, though, which is why in this series I'm returning to this gem to finally conquer it. That's the only game that hasn't to do with Zelda, which has gotten a journal series on this blog, but I've also occasionally talked about other games that I like in individual postings.
  
  
• BS Zelda Tour
  The Zelda games for the BS-X Super Nintendo add-on are wildly unknown, which is why I made it my mission to bring more attention to them here on Hyrule Blog. I gave detailed insights into all the different episodes with my original "BS Zelda Tour" back in 2009, while also replaying the games with newer and improved versions over the past years, including the dubbed versions of 2016.
  
  
• Spirit Tracks Rail Diary
  Spirit Tracks was the first Zelda game to be released during the run of this blog and it was also the first time, where I blogged about my progress and my impressions while playing the newest Zelda game on a daily basis. It's one of my least favorite Zelda games, but I still had some fun with it back in the day.
  
  
• Replaying the Zelda Games
  In this long-running and probably never-ending series, which essentially started with the 25th Anniversary in 2011, I go through all the Zelda games again and again and share my impressions. Sometimes I try to achieve something new that I have never done before. Sometimes it's just been a while and feels good to return to the games.
  
  
• Four Swords Rounds
  Four Swords was for the longest time the one Zelda game that I couldn't finish, until I managed to finally find someone to play it with me in 2011. Afterwards the Anniversary Edition was also released, which gave me additional access to the game thanks to the new singleplayer mode.
  
  
• Ocarina of Time 3D Quest Log
  The first of many 3D Zelda Remasters was welcomed by me with a series of eight posts, where I go through both the normal game and Master Quest.
  
  
• Skyward Sword Blade Journal
  After Four Swords and Ocarina of Time 3D it was finally time for the big new game, the game of the 25th Anniversary, filled with amazing moments, but also quite some disappointments. My 12 day journey, as well as two Hero Mode entries, can be read in this series.
  
  
• The Wind Waker HD Logbook
  Two years after Skyward Sword we arrived on the Wii U system and are playing the next remaster with The Wind Waker HD. Besides the lack of any new content, it was quite enjoyable. Lots of fun with Miiverse posts and Tingle Bottles!
  
  
• Majora's Mask 3D Daybook
  After skipping both A Link Between Worlds and Hyrule Warriors, because I got review copies for these games roughly one month ahead of release and couldn't talk about them while playing, I finally returned to my journals with yet another remaster. This one is mostly about the changes and sidequests, with a focus on the new fishing feature, where I even made a separate Majora's Mask 3D Fishing Journal.
  
  
• Twilight Princess HD Diaries
  Sadly, after also skipping Tri Force Heroes, because I was too busy playing it with other people, my next journal was again about - you guessed it - a Zelda remaster. In a total of six days I take a look at all the smaller changes that the Wii U version has encountered this year in March. I even plan to return to this series, when I play the new Hero Mode.
  
  
• Hyrule Warriors Impressions
  After Hyrule Warriors was released in 2014, this blog essentially changed from "Hyrule Blog - The Zelda Blog" into "Hyrule Blog - The Hyrule Warriors Blog". There are tons of posts about Hyrule Warriors on this site, where otherwise we wouldn't even be close to the 1000 yet. The above series highlights some of the finer posts, where for the most part I take a look at the various additions that came with Legends and all the DLC this year.

I especially regret not having journals for both A Link Between Worlds and Tri Force Heroes, because I really like these games and would love to read my initial thoughts about them. But it can't be helped. I can only try to keep doing this with upcoming games, where Breath of the Wild would be the next target.

Anyway, I hope that with this overview you may find something to browse in the history of 1000 Hyrule Blog Posts. Or feel free to use the archive on the right side to look around. You might discover something interesting.

Off to 1000 more posts!

New Hyrule Blog Logo

After this Blog's little Anniversary and the introduction to the new era of Zelda, it's probably time to say good-bye to the old Torvus Blog LOST logo and present this blog under something more fitting.

The site's background always has been reminiscent of what Breath of the Wild will be all about: standing on a cliff in front of a massive Hyrule for you to explore. This classic viewpoint has been the ideal of Hyrule Blog from the start, so only the small change of the logo was required to have this site enter the new era visually.

Welcome to the new Hyrule Blog!

Hyrule Blog Historia

8 Years. 888 Posts. 8 Triforce Shards. 8 Instruments of the Sirens. 8 Bit. Since 08.

Hyrule Blog is now exactly eight years old. The very first post with the fitting title "The Future of Zelda", which would lead the way for years to come, is dated back to June 10th, 2008 at 10PM. In those eight years exactly 888 posts have been made here. That's a lot of Eights and to celebrate I want to share an interesting screenshot of this blog in its first year:

It's quite familiar, yet very different, isn't it? It already had the same background image and the logo had the same design, but I was talking about LOST, instead of Zelda... How weird!

In case you didn't know, this hasn't been "Hyrule Blog - The Zelda Blog" from the start. It was called "Torvus Blog" in its first year, named after the Torvus Bog region from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes as a pun. But it wasn't a Metroid Blog either, it was simply my blog, where I talked about all the franchises and things that I liked, video games and TV shows alike. Zelda was just supposed to be one of many different categories on this site, as you can see in the image above.

And that's understandable, because in 2008 there wasn't much to talk about Zelda. Phantom Hourglass came out the year before, we didn't have any Zelda news at the time and the only thing related to Zelda in 2008 was the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. In the same year I also discovered the Metroid franchise for myself. I liked it so much that I even named myself and this blog after areas in the Metroid games. But now imagine, if I really would have kept this as "Torvus Blog - The Metroid Blog"... It probably would have been eight boring years.

Anyway, at the time I literally felt "lost" with what I was doing with this site, so I decided to aim at a new direction in July 2009, to give this whole thing a focus and to turn it into a blog about The Legend of Zelda, because this struck me as the most promising topic. Other things like TV shows I can always discuss in my favorite forum, but with Zelda there's usually so much for me to talk about that a forum wouldn't cut it...

And as it turned out, this was certainly the right choice. The last years have been exciting as a Zelda fan with many different releases. After Spirit Tracks in 2009, we had the 25th Anniversary in 2011 with Ocarina of Time 3D, Four Swords Anniversary Edition and Skyward Sword, as well as many other Zelda goodies like Hyrule Historia or the Symphony of the Goddesses. 2011 has also been the strongest year for this blog with 236 posts in total.

After the 25th Anniversary we were going through another void in the year 2012, but from early 2013 on there always was something to talk about for Zelda fans. At the time they announced the new big Zelda game that will be showcased next week on E3, but during this long development phase Nintendo really wanted to keep us entertained in the meantime: The Wind Waker HD, A Link Between Worlds, Hyrule Warriors, Majora's Mask 3D, Tri Force Heroes, Twilight Princess HD and Hyrule Warriors: Legends... There was always something on the horizon.

Some of these things were especially exciting for myself. An online Four Swords game is something that I always have been talking about on Hyrule Blog in all those years, which finally became a reality with Tri Force Heroes. A Zelda action game, where you can play as other characters besides Link, has also been an idea I had back in 2005 (based on Unreal Championship 2), which became a reality in 2014 with Hyrule Warriors. This has been very exciting for me and I still have a lot of fun talking about the big Zelda spin-off, predicting the next characters, their weapons and so on. This site is called "Hyrule Blog" after all, so it's only fitting that I'm obsessed with the one game that actually has "Hyrule" in its title.

But don't worry, The Legend of Zelda will continue to be the focus of this blog and for the next big Zelda games I always had one thought in mind: "Make Zelda less linear again! Go back to the roots!" And this wish has been heard as well, it seems, where I'm excited about the new game, which will hopefully lead us all into a great new era for the Zelda franchise and to many more exciting topics on Hyrule Blog.

As you can see from its roots, the intention of this blog was always to be a platform, where I can write for myself and go beyond the scopes of a forum. I make all these posts, because I often got thoughts and ideas about Zelda in my head, where writing them down gives me closure, like some kind of Zelda diary. The more I'm thankful for everyone, who's actually following this site and reading my thoughts!

Special thanks go to all of you, who regularly have been posting in the comments over the last years: angelday, Eduardo Jencarelli, Eren Jaeger, K2L, Lankelink, Marandahir, Skullvic and more...! Thanks to you all! It's nice getting some feedback here and then.

Zelda Game Buttons Extended

Another small improvement on the this blog following the label expansion. Since the sidebar with the game buttons is one of the few visual highlights on this site, I decided to extend it into full glory.

Now each Zelda game has its own button. Before today certain games were combined into one (the NES Classics, the Oracle games and the Four Swords games). Those got split and Link's Crossbow Training now also got its own button, which got put between Twilight Princess and the Tingle spin-off(s). That one might not seem all that important, but it arranges an even row, because I tried to group games that are connected somehow. For example the Four Swords saga is on its own row (Update: not anymore, see comments), as well are the games from the Nintendo DS and Wii era. It all turned out pretty well.

I also redesigned some existing buttons including A Link to the Past, Skyward Sword, Tri Force Heroes, Hyrule Warriors and Tingle's button. Press F5, if you don't see the new graphics yet.

Zelda Game Labels Extended

This is just a small update to this blog.

Last night I refined the labels, which you can find on the right side bar and beneath each post. Previously multiple Zelda games were put under the same label, e.g. Zelda NES Classics. This is still in tact, but I also added labels for the individual games, whenever you want a more accurate search.

I also added labels for remakes and remasters, but these posts are still marked with the label for the original game. So, if you search for Twilight Princess you still get all posts about Twilight Princess, including the ones about Twilight Princess HD. With the Twilight Princess HD label on the other hand you will only get the posts specifically about the remaster. And of course there's still the Twilight Princess HD Diaries series from March, probably continued in Winter or whenever I decide to play Hero Mode. These posts have all three Twilight Princess labels, so it's a gradual refinement.

There's currently no way to filter posts that were only about the original game, not the remakes / remasters, but I feel like this won't be necessary. Whenever a new version gets released, it becomes the focus of this blog anyway.

The list of labels now might look a little bit long and cluttered, but that's what you get after eight years of blogging. Since it's on the bottom of the right side bar and ordered alphabetically, it hopefully shouldn't bother anyone. If you have ideas for additional labels, just let me know.

Goodbye, ZeldaEurope!

I've been writing this blog now since 2008 and I will probably continue to do so, as long as I'm alive and interested in Zelda. Now, for the past four years I've also been writing news, guides and reviews for ZeldaEurope.de, a German Zelda website and community. And this ends now.

There are multiple reasons for this decision. ZeldaEurope was never my site, but it certainly had become my responsibility over the past few years, because I was alone with my tasks for the most part, managing the whole site on my own. I was never happy with the situation and it was a hobby that went wrong, because everything Zelda turned into obligations. I couldn't fully enjoy news about Zelda anymore, because news about Zelda resulted in work. Voluntary work, but work nonetheless. And with the upcoming Legend of Zelda game for Wii U I want to be able to enjoy everything as a normal fan again, without the journalistic treadmills in my back, which I have experienced ever since Skyward Sword.


What does this mean for Hyrule Blog?

It certainly won't be a bad thing, since this blog becomes now my focus for anything Zelda. However, it's not like this blog heavily suffered from my work on ZeldaEurope. The way I handled it was doing two quite separate things on each site. ZeldaEurope is were I processed new information and this blog is where I put my personal experiences, thoughts, opinions and predictions. This worked out quite well for the most part and my activity on ZeldaEurope wasn't really taking that much from Hyrule Blog. The only big exception might be the reviews, which basically moved from this blog (the last one was for Skyward Sword in early 2012) to ZeldaEurope. I hate redundancy, so I usually avoided writing the same thing on both sites just in different languages.

Reviews may or may not come back. I certainly want to write one for Hyrule Warriors: Legends, but with new Zelda games I basically reviewed them here during my daily game diaries, where I then put all those thoughts together in one post for my German review on ZeldaEurope. I was also thinking about doing a feature called "2nd Reviews" here on Hyrule Blog. Like with a 2nd Quest, I would go through the game again and write a new review, where my opinion might have changed over time or due to some DLC updates.

I'll see about that, but one thing is for sure: no obligations. Everything I write on this blog will be here, because I wanted to write it and not because I felt obliged to. I won't start making news posts here - you got sites like ZeldaInformer for this. But I might share thoughts about news more regularly now, since I won't "process" them anymore via ZeldaEurope.

In any case this feels like the right decision. This blog won't ever be as popular as ZeldaEurope and Nintendo's PR agencies probably won't be knocking on my door here, but that's okay, because this is my own site and here I'm free to write what I want to say. I'm still happy about everyone, who's following this blog, and you can be looking forward to more.