Echoes of Wisdom ~ My Nintendo Store Goodies

Today Nintendo of Europe has announced that they will bundle Echoes of Wisdom with a wall scroll in the My Nintendo Store. It makes good use of the game's main artwork, which is also present on the cover, but not with the same height.

In addition, everyone who orders the game will get a small keyring for free. These bonus items are added to every order of the game, whether you will get the tapestry or not.

However, I still think that they will also make a Special / Limited Edition, which you won't be able to order together with the wall scroll, so that you will have to buy the game twice in order to get everything. With Tears of the Kingdom they had pulled the same stunt... Not exactly customer friendly.

Well, I do like the tapestry, however, so let's see. The keychain is nothing to be excited about, but it's a gift horse, so it's fine. I do prefer to order from the My Nintendo Store anyway, instead of Amazon or other big retailers, so I don't need necessarily need such incentives, but they are a neat extra nevertheless.

Seeds of Courage

"The Legend of Zelda: Seeds of Courage"

This is what I would call a remake of Oracle of Ages & Seasons at this point, mirroring Echoes of Wisdom in title. As explained in my Oracle of Worlds concept, which I wrote five years ago after the release of Link's Awakening for the Nintendo Switch, I would combine both of the Oracle games into one experience, where you travel between Holodrum and Labrynna via a portal inside the Maku Trees.

With such a combined experience, the game will need a new title, however. In Japanese this completely straightforward, because both games had the same subtitle, but they were divided into chapters. Oracle of Seasons is called "The Legend of Zelda: The Mysterious Seeds - Chapter of Earth", while Oracle of Ages is called "The Legend of Zelda: The Mysterious Seeds - Chapter of Space Time". So, if Nintendo were to remake both games into one, it probably would just be The Mysterious Seeds, without the chapter annotations.

Sadly, this isn't as simple for the rest of the world. You could name such a game "Oracles of Ages & Seasons", but then the title would get much longer and be a bit of a mouthful, while the triple plural isn't exactly nice either. Hence my proposal to call it differently.

And the title "Seeds of Courage" would do a number of things, all in one. As already mentioned, it would mirror Echoes of Wisdom, where wisdom stands for Zelda and the echoes are the main mechanic. While the main mechanics are different for the two Oracle games, they do share the importance of seeds. The Maku Seeds are the end goal, you plant Gasha Seeds all over the world, and then there is the Seed Satchel as one of the most important items. (Which I'd love to see expanded with Frost, Razor and Armor Seeds.)

"Courage" stands for Link, of course, highlighting that this would be his game again, for all those who may not have been happy with a playable Zelda. But it also stands for Farore, who would get a more important role in the remake, connecting the lands of Holodrum and Labrynna.

Finally, this is also a throwback to the unreleased third Oracle games, "Mystical Seed of Courage", where the other two games used to be called "Mystical Seed of Power" and "Mystical Seed of Wisdom", representing the Triforce. So, this should get some fans excited, though technically this won't come with a third Oracle game.

PS: When I first saw the trailer for Echoes of Wisdom with the scene where Link fights Ganon, I even thought for a second that they are going to make a third Oracle game, which takes place after the events of the first two games. "Oracle of Echoes".

Replaying A Link to the Past (GBA) on the Switch

Back on the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U, I was quite thorough with replaying all the Zelda games that I had on the Virtual Console, before Breath of the Wild came out. Now, eight years later, I haven't really made much use of the equivalent on the Switch – the Nintendo Switch Online classic game libraries. I've checked out some games that I've never played before, for which this service is great, but I was not really invested in beating or completing any of them.

The difference is that with the Virtual Console you've purchased single games on purpose, which then made me feel "obligated" to actually play it. Plus, these games were present right there on your home screen, waiting to be started. On the Switch, however, the emulated Zelda games are hidden amongst many games where I have no plans to ever play them. And it's also part of a service that will cease to exist eventually...

So, it wasn't until the recent re-release of A Link to the Past & Four Swords that I've finally come around to beat a game on the system's emulators. Well, I also had to pay extra for the Expansion Pack, so there was some obligation here to make better use of it, and I'm not sure that it will be worth it in the long run, because I really only got it for the Game Boy Advance library.

Anyway, this is the first time that Nintendo has re-released this version of A Link to the Past and this brings back memories, because this was also the version that I've first owned. Some people don't like it as much as the SNES counterpart, because you have a smaller screen and you get those Young Link screams with every sword strike, but for the most part this is the better version.

It incorporated the save system from Link's Awakening, where it puts you at the last exit / entrance and saving your game doesn't count as a "game over". The inventory menu was improved, because you get to keep the Shovel and the Bottles all have their own slot. There is an additional warp point at the equivalent to the Turtle Rock, which is a blessing in the later game. And the controls feel more intuitive, but that's out of necessity due to the lack of buttons.

In addition, there are a variety of smaller things that made the game more wholesome on the Game Boy Advance. For example, you get yellow counters when your Rupees, bombs, or arrows are maxed out. Or how you can break pots with your Golden Sword and with arrows. They even added Like Likes as a new enemy, which wasn't present in the SNES version. And Maple is in the game as the witch's apprentice:

There's more and I'm not going into every detail here, but there is only so much they were able to do with this on the Game Boy Advance. Some aspects of the game haven't aged so well in both versions, especially if you compare them to A Link Between Worlds and alike.

For example, I felt that it took too long to unlock the Flute / Ocarina for teleporting, where you need the Hammer for that and until then you had to rely on the whirlpool warp points. But that's also an issue in Ocarina of Time. And you get the Blue Mail for some much needed additional defense quite late, in the Ice Palace, where the increased damage in the Dark World is super annoying.

In A Link Between Worlds I will just go straight for the Blue Mail in the Swamp Palace to compensate this right away. But that's not an option here, because you will need at least the Hammer and the Titan's Mitt beforehand, ideally you also want the Hookshot, because it makes the Ice Palace much easier...

My biggest complaint, however, is how empty the world feels in comparison to its later iterations, which already starts with Ancient Stone Tablets. The Maiamais in A Link Between Worlds add so much, so that there is something to discover in every corner, not just the occasional Piece of Heart. Given that A Link to the Past is only the third Zelda game and its overworld was already so much more sophisticated and beautiful compared to the NES classics, it's not a major criticism of the game. But a remake with a new collectible could do wonders.

The Game Boy Advance version added some new content with the Riddle Quest and the Palace of the Four Sword, but you may have never experienced any of that, because it needed to be unlocked via Four Swords and this required at least a second player with the game. For me this took many years until I finally had that sorted out...

But of course this isn't as much of a problem on NSO, which is the main reason why I got the Expansion Pack and why I've replayed this version of A Link to the Past: I want to play Four Swords online with others after 21 years. And I did, where I was able to beat the game and obtain ten Medals of Courage, which are the requirements to get into the extra contents.

As for the Riddle Quest, that's a bit underwhelming, especially if you've already played it before and know all the solutions to the "riddles". But I also noticed how the Bug-Catching Net only really lets you capture things that are eligible as answers for those riddles.

So, for example, there are some enemies that you need, like the Sand Crab. And you won't be able to put any other enemies into the basket, only the ones in question. Or one riddle asks for a specific type of Rupee, where the net won't recognize any other colors or even other drops, like hearts or bombs. It's understandable that they've done it this way back on the GBA, but it makes this even simpler than it already is, because this excludes 90% of possible wrong answers.

I still like the idea and if A Link to the Past ever gets remade, they could improve this quite significantly by letting you capture everything and also by adding more questions. Oh, and there needs to be a warp point near the Lumberjack's house for this, because it always takes a while to walk back there. Luckily, many of the solutions can be found nearby, in the Lost Woods.

Off to the Palace of the Four Sword, I still remember how difficult this dungeon was for me when I first played it around 20 years ago. I used the "walk through walls" glitch going from Thieves' Town to enter the dungeon back then, since I was not able to unlock it with no one else around who had the game. And I had to do this several times over, because I needed refills for my Blue Potions after every boss...

Today it's significantly easier, both getting into the dungeon, where I'm now able to use the front door, and the bosses themselves, which are the toughest bosses in the game, but still not too tough. I suppose that after playing games like Death's Door and Hollow Knight I'm used to worse, but I already felt the same about this dungeon back in 2011, so that's not really it.

Though, this time I almost did the entire dungeon almost in one swoop, I only went for a refill before the final boss, which you can cheese with the Cane of Byrna quite easily. That item is so massively overpowered in this game that I don't know why it's there, especially since there is also the Magic Cape...

As for refilling your Rupees, that also never has been easier than on NSO with the rewind feature, because with it you can cheese the Treasure Chest Game at the Village of Outcasts very easily. Invest 30 Rupees and if you don't get at least 100 Rupees out of the chests, you rewind.

What I never knew before is that the contents of the treasure chests aren't fixed, like they are in A Link Between Worlds. What you get is chosen randomly whenever you open a chest. That's why you can always get two of the same. And if you rewind, you can simply open the same chests again for different results.

As for the rest of the NSO emulation, I still miss options to customize your controls, ideally for each game individually. In this case I had trouble with the inventory on the minus button, whenever I was playing in handheld mode. It's positioned in a way that I often accidentally hit the left stick when I wanted to close the inventory, which then caused the game to switch to the wrong item beforehand.

That was very annoying and I would have preferred to swap this with the L button. I know that you can change button mappings via the Nintendo Switch settings, but doing this for the whole system is also inconvenient, because then you need to constantly swap this for other games.

Anyway, this is it for A Link to the Past on the Nintendo Switch for now. I doubt that I will bother with the SNES version, since this was mainly about playing this alongside Four Swords. But it was good timing for this, where later this year we will return to this Hyrule in Echoes of Wisdom and I can't wait to find out how they've altered and expanded it.

Four Swords Online, Round 4

Problem already solved... Earlier today I left off worrying that I might not find anyone to collect Medals of Courage with, because there was simply not enough interest within the ZeldaChronicles community. I can already be happy enough to have found a round where we want to beat the entire game, and not just the simple Silver Keys level.

This is clearly not like the early days of Tri Force Heroes, where it was generally easy enough to find someone who wants to play and where people where genuinely interested in doing all the challenges and such. To be fair, Four Swords is not a new multiplayer Zelda game, it's over 20 years old. But being able to play this online on a Nintendo system is still a novelty, at least officially...

Now, I looked in other communities where I am or was active, but to no avail. Either people already had someone to play with or there was no interest at all. Finally, I hit pay dirt in the r/Zelda Discord community, which is quite active at the moment about seeking other players, and I was able to find someone there immediately. A guy named Carlos helped me to get my last two medals and now I'm happy.

Again, much thanks to Carlos (should you ever happen to read this)! I really appreciate it. And I will still hang out there in case other people need help as well. So, should you be in the same position as I was, where you need more medals, or generally looking for other players, check out r/Zelda.

(Update: People on this Discord are mainly from North America and playing the US version, so if you're looking for European players it still might be tricky. I was just lucky enough to run into someone else playing the EU version at the time when I joined.)

Anyway, I've cleared both the Riddle Quest and the Palace of the Four Sword right afterwards, so now I'm done with A Link to the Past (more on that in a separate post) and ready for the big finale.

Four Swords Online, Round 3

Today we had another stream of playing Four Swords together, which you can watch on Twitch. And we've made some good progress here, as you can see above, where we got two out of the three Hero's Keys by now: in the Sea of Trees and Talus Cave. So, only Death Mountain is left, but since the final version of Vaati's Palace is essentially all levels combined, we have saved those for the next time.

We had some connectivity issues early on, where the game really became hard to play due to the lag. Like, there was a part in Vaati's Palace where you have to carry a teammate onto platforms of your color from moving platform, which normally should be easy enough, but the delay makes you just run straight into the abyss...

We lost a lot of  health there, I can tell you that much. Luckily, the connection became more stable afterwards, because otherwise we probably would have aborted the session.

Then, after failing miserably with the Hero's Key at the Sea of Trees, there was a clear shift from competition to pure cooperation. Without Rupee Fever it's very difficult to reach the 5000 Rupees required and you really want to make the most out of it. So, we had to stop messing with each other and even save treasure chests until everyone was at full hearts. And we've made good use of the Rupee Wraith exploit, where you recollect the Rupees that it makes you drop and this gives you double the amount back (this was fixed in the DSi version). It's overall super satisfying to get enough Rupees in the end, it feels like a real accomplishment and good team work.

Despite moderately holding back, I still managed to snag three Medals of Courage today, only two more to go. Though, I would love to complete the Riddle Quest and obtain the Hurricane Spin Attack before the last stream next Sunday, because otherwise I won't have much use for it. I've also finished A Link to the Past in the meantime, except for the Palace of the Four Sword, where I want to have the Hurricane Spin for that as well.

Sadly, we haven't played in the other round a second time, because those two of the guys were too busy with Among Us. And the last one might not have any interest in continuing after the credits have rolled, I'm not not sure. So, now I'm hoping to find someone, anyone really, to help with those last two Medals of Courage, because I really want to finish this. But I seem to be the only one who cares about the A Link to the Past connectivity from the two groups that I've joined, so that will make things difficult.

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...

Tantalus Developed Luigi's Mansion 2 HD

Luigi's Mansion 2 HD was released on Nintendo Switch just yesterday and of course people have already seen the credits roll, confirming that the remaster was developed by Tantalus Media. The Australian studio is best known on this blog for their work on Twilight Princess HD and Skyward Sword HD.

Together with GREZZO they have supported the Zelda main team with such side projects, where both now have also worked on the Luigi's Mansion franchise in some form, since GREZZO has remade the first game on the Nintendo 3DS.

For a while I was worried that GREZZO is making the Luigi's Mansion 2 remaster as well, because I wanted some more top-down Zelda goodness from them, after their Link's Awakening remake became my absolute favorite Zelda game. And I got my wish, so I'm happy that these two studios are taking turns here. But of course there are Zelda fans who would have preferred to get Twilight Princess HD instead.

As for The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD on Switch, I believe that they became a victim of the postponement of Tears of the Kingdom. Originally, Nintendo planned to release the big new Zelda in 2022, but then they had to move it to 2023. In 2024 we're already getting the next Zelda game with Echoes of Wisdom, so there wasn't any real need for some filler releases. And Nintendo doesn't want to distract you from a new Zelda release with some remasters, which is why they have likely cancelled any plans of porting over the ones from Wii U. If there ever were any to begin with.

However, if Tears of the Kingdom's development had finished in time, we could have gotten The Wind Waker HD and/or Twilight Princess HD in 2023, just to have something for Zelda in that year. That wasn't meant to be, where Tantalus was available to develop else something else in the meantime... like Luigi's Mansion 2 HD.

But they are also available again now, where they might work on getting much requested Zelda HD ports out on the Nintendo Switch in early 2025. There won't be anything new in the foreseeable future for the Zelda franchise. They are apparently working on a remaster of Breath of the Wild for the next system (see U-King-O), but it will take many years to make new open world game. So, 2025 could become the year of remasters for Zelda.

I've said this before, but it still makes sense for Nintendo to port over the Wii U games onto the Switch, because on the next system they won't get away with mere ports, especially in the case of Twilight Princess. Time is ticking here.

As a side note, they did the Metroid Prime Remastered credits thing again, meaning that they only list the people who have worked on the remaster and not the original Luigi's Mansion 2. "Based on the work of the development team from the original Nintendo 3DS version."

Well, I get that the credits are already long enough as they are, but it's still disrespectful towards Next Level Games and everyone who has put their blood, sweat and tears into making this game. This new trend needs to stop. Credit where credit is due.