2024 – Year of the Princess

With the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 2023, we had a big year for the Zelda franchise behind us. It was such a massive game that you may have been playing it in 2024 still, so that rarely anyone expected a new Zelda game to follow this year... Especially not one that puts Princess Zelda in the role of the playable protagonist for the first time in the main series.

You could see the launch of Princess Peach: Showtime! in March as a foreshadowing, where Princess Peach got a game of her own as well. It wasn't her first, but it had been almost two decades since Super Princess Peach on the Nintendo DS. And she was setting an example here, giving a taste of what might follow in the later year.

But before Nintendo revealed the next Zelda game, they still had some open business with Tears of the Kingdom, which led to two announcements in May – the game was getting a nine-disc-long soundtrack later in 2024, and a more comprehensive artbook, called "Master Works". Both were also a thing for Breath of the Wild and are currently exclusive in Japan, however.

If you were looking for something completely different, then maybe the LEGO set of the Great Deku Tree had you covered. Announced in May and released in September, Nintendo's newest cooperation with the famous plastic brick company brought into the worlds of Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild, where you can recreate the Great Deku Tree from either game, alongside a variety of extras.

They had also announced the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition back in May, picking up the mantle of NES Remix, scheduled for July. Here you can compete in a large number of speed-running challenges in 13 different NES games, which of course includes The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II - The Adventure of Link.

The Zelda series also played a role in other releases by Nintendo throughout the year, mainly in the audio department. There is the Alarmo alarm clock, which can get you out of bed with the sound of Guardian lasers. And there is the new Nintendo Music app for smartphones, which currently features the soundtracks of Ocarina of Time, Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, among others.

In June then came the big Nintendo Direct, the only one of the year. We finally got to see Metroid Prime 4: Beyond for the first time, which likely will become Nintendo's last big game for the Nintendo Switch. But we also learned that a brandnew Zelda title had been in the making in the style of the Link's Awakening remake for Nintendo Switch, which came out five years prior, titled The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

It certainly left an impression, where the footage started off with Link fighting Ganon, only to be swallowed by a mysterious rift soon after. And then the player would take Zelda's role, which caused a lot of excitement all over the internet. This change came with a completely new gameplay idea for the series, where you can summon all kinds of objects and monsters to your aid. Nintendo kept this one close to their chest, where the game was already set to release three months later.

To entertain the Zelda fans in the meantime, Nintendo also released the Game Boy Advance classic A Link to the Past & Four Swords on their Nintendo Switch Online service, where it's possible to play this with friends online. This made the multiplayer game a lot more accessible than it used to be, so that some fans out there finally had the chance to experience it for the first time.

September 26th was the launch date of Echoes of Wisdom, where Nintendo also released the golden "Hyrule Edition" of the Nintendo Switch Lite on the same day. Otherwise the newest Zelda game entered stores without much fanfare – there was some merchandise to get, like a scroll, but no Special Edition of the game, no new amiibo, or anything else of the usual. But after Nintendo had done the full program with Tears of the Kingdom in 2023, this was a much needed break from straining the wallets of the fans.

The game itself offers the biggest world for a top-down Zelda yet, while giving a similar amount of player freedom like the recent 3D Zelda titles, thanks to its echo system. But it's still on a much more digestible scale, comparable to classic Zelda titles, which makes it just the right adventure after Tears of the Kingdom. It's also a perfect game to play after Christmas, before the year ends...

Got the F4F Daruk

This is what I got for Christmas, so I must have been a good boy. Mipha and Urbosa were already in my collection, where all of these have been presents from my partner, who is being quite generous here. But I already had a feeling when a big package arrived earlier this month and I was told to stay away from it...

Well, Daruk is certainly the most impressive of the bunch, who brings a nice weight with him and the largest weapon with his Boulder Breaker. It's the same as with his amiibo, only much larger, where the statue is roughly 29cm tall and the amiibo 9.5cm, so about three times the size. But the small Daruk could fit in big Daruk's fist.

Packaging was also much better than with the other two, because they used polystyrene foam to pad the backside and the plastic cover is simply put over the front. There is little risk of damaging anything this way and it's also much easier to put him back into his box.

I still need to keep them all in their boxes, because I didn't really have space for a big display cabinet in my old apartment. But these times are over and I will post pictures of all of them next to each other once I set everything up.

Echoes of Wisdom x Tetris 99

The 44th Maximus Cup is currently a thing in Tetris 99 and finally you can unlock a new Zelda theme, based on the most recent game in the series – The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. That's only the third Zelda theme in the game and the second Maximus Cup for a new Zelda title. The other was Skyward Sword HD in 2021, over three years ago...

While I'm still salty that they haven't done anything for Tears of the Kingdom, where the Zonai stuff would have been fantastic as a theme, the new one for Echoes of Wisdom is certainly nice. It plays the lovely overworld music in the beginning, then it goes into the Swordfighter form, and for the last 10 you will hear the dungeon battle music, which is also used in the Slumber Dojo. The game even ends on the same jingle.

So, the Echoes of Wisdom theme is worth it for the music alone and it's also a neat detail how it targets other players with Tri, or how the incoming garbage blocks have little Moblin icons. The only complaint is that your blocks looks completely generic, but at least it's easy to read.

This might become one of my favorite themes to use, the others being Game Boy, Ring Fit Adventure (no kidding) and Fire Emblem Engage. If you also want it, then you should hurry, because today is the last day to get this. And it generally takes very long until you are able to purchase old Special Themes with tickets, some have never even returned.

Zelda Calendar(s) 2025

The year is coming quickly to a close and it's high time to get some new calendars for your walls. If you want something Zelda-themed, you get to choose between two different companies again, which are Abrams and Danilo. I picked the latter, because their calendars are more easily available where I live and they are simply ahead of the competition.

Danilo's 2025 calendar is essentially a sequel to the one from this year. It's entirely focused on Tears of the Kingdom and uses exclusively the different characters arts for the game, but it's a different set for the next year:

You get Rauru, Yunobo, Teba, Hestu and the Captain Construct, which were all missing in 2024. And you also get the secondary artworks for Riju and Zelda this time, which is nice. However, the other five artworks are repeats, which is not so nice. Of course there aren't even that many character artworks to use, but there is still Yunobo's alternate art, as well as artworks for Purah and Mineru, which could have been included here. I didn't even know that some of these existed, like Hestu's for example.

At least the character variety is much better than it was this year. Only Zelda is seen twice and each of the sage descendants is featured exactly once. Ideally, they would have spread things out more, so that the 2024 calendar has no doubled characters except for maybe Link and then use the rest for 2025.

The overall design is fine. It's not the prettiest, but I appreciate that they were trying to do things differently for the same idea. The calendar by Abrams (not pictured) looks much cleaner with its backgrounds, but they are essentially just copying the competition from what they did last year, so they also are now doing a Tears of the Kingdom calendar with the character arts... At least they got the character variety right from the start, but this isn't the first time that they are just looking at the competition to make next year's calendar. This was also a thing when Pyramid was still around and it makes Abrams quite unappealing, because they always seem to be one year behind.

For 2026 I expect something that has Echoes of Wisdom in it... from both parties. But if you want some Echoes of Wisdom in 2025 already, you can try the free table calendar from My Nintendo.

My Nintendo Calendar 2025

Since I have lots of Platinum Points, I decided to give this one a try, which costs 300 in total. The quality is pretty much what you would expect, so it's just a bunch of thin cardboard sheets. And this isn't a purely Zelda-themed calendar, of course, but an overall Nintendo calendar:

At least there is some Zelda in there. You get artworks for both Echoes of Wisdom (in February) and Tears of the Kingdom (in July). This is the complete list:

• January - Mario & Luigi Brothership
• February - The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
• March - Princess Peach Showtime!
• April - Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• May - Splatoon 3: Side Order
• June - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
• July - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• August - Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
• September - Metroid Prime Remastered
• October - Splatoon 3
• November - Pikmin 4
• December - Super Mario Party Jamboree
  

The only real complaint is seeing Splatoon 3 twice... Which apparently they also had done for 2024. Speaking of, I actually like the 2025 design much more, it's less cluttered. Anyway, I would have swapped Splatoon 3 in October for Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, but otherwise this is fine. And that's how it looks when you put it together:

Nothing too fancy. It's like a small easel made out of cardboard, which you have to fold correctly. And then you put the cards in there. That's it. But I suppose you shouldn't expect something more stable and with metal rings from a gift. So, I'm not sure I will get this again... Maybe if the motives are really nice.

There is also a second My Nintendo calendar for the retro gaming selection, but I didn't get that one, because I didn't like it as much. It does feature A Link to the Past & Four Swords, though, which was my 2024 highlight from these online services.

My Nintendo Switch Year 2024

Nintendo is offering your year-in-review statistics once again, but it's actually not as interesting as last year, because unlike in 2023 there is no way of seeing the play times of all the games that you've played during the year, only the top 3. And my top 3 doesn't really contain anything new from this year.

I've been still very busy with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in the first half of 2024. But this already feels like forever ago, because we got a new Zelda game with Echoes of Wisdom in the meantime... It feels like I'm looking back at the wrong year. Though, I've spent only half as much time on the Nintendo Switch than in 2023, because it has been quite the busy year for me otherwise.

Luckily, you can also see how much you've played your games overall via your profile, even though it's rounded down to the nearest multiple of five, which you can use for new games in the statistic. So, I can compile a list that's a bit more comprehensive, with some links to the corresponding topics on this blog:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (192 hours)
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (98 hours)
3. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (57 hours)
   
4. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (55+ hours)
5. Game Boy Advance (40+ hours)
6. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (25+ hours)

Sadly, Echoes of Wisdom came in a close fourth – it would have been well deserved for the game to make it into my year's top 3. I don't even recall playing that much Smash Bros., though the new Spirits in the beginning of 2024 were an incentive to boot the game from time to time. And this ranking might change, because I was thinking about replaying Echoes of Wisdom in Hero Mode over the holidays. But Decembers don't exist in these yearly statistic by Nintendo.

My most active months, at least concerning the Nintendo Switch, were January and February. This is where I was finishing all side quests in Tears of the Kingdom, as well as searching for all those Hinox and Taluses for the medals and all of Addison's spots. And this took quite a while... I was left with completing the compendium, finding all Koroks, and discovering all recipes, which I did in April and May after a much-needed break in March.

Right after I had finally finished Tears of the Kingdom came two new Zelda highlights: the announcement of Echoes of Wisdom, already to be released in September, and the addition of Four Swords on the Game Boy Advance service. The latter let me finally experience the game in a four-player-set-up around June and July, but it also motivated me to replay both A Link to the Past and The Minish Cap on the same service.

The Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition then came after, in late July, which is a title I keep playing from time to time. I usually participate in the weekly championships, trying to score an S-rank in all of them, but I don't overdo it.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is another title that I keep playing, but this has died down from a daily to a weekly basis. During the year I finished collecting all insect and fish models, where now there is little left to achieve for me, other than filling out the Nook Shopping catalog, which is an insane task anyway and not worth the effort. But this will certainly stay on top as the most played game on my system, where it has been this virtual happy place for quite some time.

Anyway, there was a break in both August and November, where I had some other personal things going on. And between these two months my focus was on the new Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom, of course. It came out just at the right time.

This is all just for the Nintendo Switch, where otherwise I'm also gaming on the PC quite a bit. In March I was going back to Unreal Tournament 3  and currently I'm enjoying the original Unreal Tournament once more, where I have returned to a personal project from five years ago, the console map pack.

Also in March I've got into Lonely Mountains: Downhill, which is another title that I keep playing from time to time, with 64 hours by now, according to Steam. So, if I had played this on the Nintendo Switch instead, it would have been in the top 3 before Smash Bros. Ultimate and Echoes of Wisdom. It's very enjoyable if you're looking for something simple to play in-between. And I will continue playing this in 2025, for sure.

Last but not least, after my GBA nostalgia trip during the summer I checked out TUNIC for the first time, with 37 hours on Steam. If you like classic Zelda games, then this is also something that I can highly recommend.

Nintendo Music: Skyward Sword Added

Nintendo Music has received regular updates since its launch at the end of October, with a new soundtrack coming every Tuesday. This week we're finally getting a new Zelda title up in the lists with The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

This is based on the official soundtrack that was released three years ago, which offered 187 tracks in total. You may notice that the Nintendo Music release is one track short – that's the Wii Channel jingle that came at the very end.

They've also added four games to the search lists, where it simply links to an existing soundtrack:

• Metroid Prime Remastered (Switch) → Metroid Prime (GCN)
• Skyward Sword HD (Switch) → Skyward Sword (Wii)
• Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) → Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
• Breath of the Wild (Wii U) → Breath of the Wild (Switch)
  

That does make sense for the most part, since the music didn't really change between these releases. Only in case of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe they added a lot more, where they could offer a playlist that only has the Wii U music in it.