40th Anniversary of the Legend of Zelda

[Prowler]

The Zelda timeline has always been a fan theory kind of discussion. Nintendo making it official was unneeded and they mostly confirmed things most fans had already figured out, anyway. Namely the order in which game takes place in time.

Besides, it doesn't change the fact that most Zelda games are pretty much self-contained. Sure, they will have nods and mentions to something from a previous title, but it's not like you need to play Ocarina of Time in order to enjoy and understand Wind Waker. So what if the Hero of Time is mentioned in the prologue? Hell, you don't even need to play OOT in order to enjoy and understand Majora's Mask. And MM is a direct sequel to it.

Video games aren't movies or tv series, and therefore developers should make each installment easy enough for new players to the series to understand things, even if there's mentions and callbacks to previous titles. Especially in an old series like Zelda that has lots of games at this point in time. It would be an unfair and daunting task for a new player to be "forced" to play the series all the way from the OG NES game up until TOTK in order to understand the series.

Ocarina of Time... I can understand those who played it many years after it came out not "getting it", but it really was a cutting edge game back in 1998 for the action/adventure genre. A Link to the Past, though? It still hold up. That's peak 16-bit era retrogaming there.

A Link Between Worlds is similar to ALTTP for the reasons mentioned but yet, not a remake. The experience ends up being different. I liked it and all, but it took me a week at best to beat it and I don't have much desire to replay it again, quite frankly. I no longer remember a lot of it that well, in fact.

My problem with LA's remake is that the graphics and music don't hit as hard as they did on the DX version. The coloured version of the game on the GBC. Which even included an extra dungeon, that had a new version of NES Zelda dungeon theme. Gameplay wise though, LA's remake was great and added much needed QOL features to the game. But it doesn't have the same charm of the original art and music wise, IMO.