The Legend of Zeldameans more to most Nintendo fans than their own middle names.
There has been no shortage of quests.
Then they kindly let Philips prove them right with theZeldalicence.
They were released simultaneously, cutting their own potential markets in half.
Philips would have been better off selling photocopies of their contract with Nintendo.
But that only allowed it to fail harder.
And that was still nowhere near the worstZeldagame.
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Zelda Monopoly
Zelda Monopolyis something Satan would make to destroy the concept of happiness.
He was like the Santa Claus of quests.
Because kids still enjoy smashing things to pieces.
That is the exact opposite of every lesson ofMonopoly.
The player spent most of their time scanning codes that could have been digitized in less than a kilobyte.
Not a kilobyte per code.
A kilobyte for every card.
Which is why so many people grow up to work in offices.
Nintendo gave Epoch the right to makeMarioandZeldagames.
Which meant printing stock art of the characters on thin strips of cardboard and charging more money for them.
The answer is even worse than the question.
Tingle isnt his name, its how his body feels when people look at his skintight bodysuit in public.
Tingle used to be a bored but ordinary 35-year old man.
A demon called Uncle Rupee tricks him into gathering money to buy a paradise.
The curse doesnt break!
Hes stuck like that forever!
The game was entirely built around the idea of four players.
Even the person who owned the GameCube.
Its much less fun and sort of misses the point, though.
One of the best games of all time.
It could replace the Voight-Kampff test as a way of measuring if someone can feel human joy.
This is one of the most important games in 3D gaming history.
BecauseOcarinas record as one of the best games ever made is still unbroken.
But Nintendo decided to fix it anyway.
They madeMajoras Maskdarker and more doom-laden, proving that Nintendo can make anything excellent.
Even the modern urge to roll everything bright and shiny in grit for more money.
Except they did it back in 2000 and then never did it again.
They upgraded the time-travel aspect toGroundhog Dayplot, pitting Link against the MOON ITSELF.
People make jokes about Nintendo having only a few games.
And they might be right.
But thats because Nintendo makes those games amazing over and over and over again.
And making it three.Wind Wakerfollowed the shadowy doom ofMajoras Maskwith a younger and brighter Link than ever before.
As usual, hordes of nay-sayers and autocritics complained, and as usual, they were revealed as idiots.
Everyone else was too busy playing the game to listen to their complaints.
Wind Wakerbroke up the usual landmass into an archipelago, spacing action sequences with almost spiritual sailing breaks.
Which is what most of us would do if we could time-travel like Link.
A huge world you didnt just play, you explored.
Its still our link to the past.
To a time when new games were better than we could have imagined.
When games worked when they were released.
When AAA titles didnt spend half their time trying to sell you more stuff.
It was a high point of pretty much everything about gaming.
The audio was unprecedented.
The adventure was incredible.
The game was and still is one of the best anyone will ever play.
Luke McKinney is a freelance contributor.
