Am I a dreamer?
Originally, this piece was going to be called “Animal Crossingon the GameCubeis blatantly better thanLegend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom“. My plan was to take a 4/7th serious stance on the topic, not unlike this old essay on why I preferAdvance WarstoCall of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison and inherently farcical, but the sincere truth is that many of the things I grew up loving aboutZelda(particularly its first 3 sequels) were best translated to polygons in the originalAnimal Crossingtitle. The grid segmented map, the feeling that every screen might have a simple-to-find secret hidden in a tree or behind a rock, the small but versatile set of tools, the inviting villages, the simplicity; they’re all key aspects to what madeAdventures of Link, Link to the Past,andLink’s Awakeningso great.
Perhaps most importantly, the originalAnimal Crossingkept things cozy. There’s no complex crafting system, no massive world that takes hours to traverse, no broken weapons (except the axe, but getting a golden one is easy enough), and never the feeling that you have a big, difficult job to do. In fact, the first thing that happens in the game is you get fired from your job. It’s a full escape from the “civilized’ world. And maybe you have to be there at the time to feel this way, but when the firstAnimal Crossingcame out, it came off like a direct sequel to the Animal Village section ofLink’s Awakening. If you’ve played them both, then you know the similarities between them are about as subtle as a talking bear asking you to arm wrestle.
No Hyrule Country for Old Farts
SinceLink’s Awakeningand the firstAnimal Crossing, both theZeldaandAnimal Crossingfranchises have blown up in a big way, in terms of both popularity and scope. As a result, I bounced off of each of them hard. It made me think that maybe Nintendo just doesn’t make games for 46-year-old weirdos like me anymore.
And that was going to be the piece! But what would that have done for you, dear reader? A few of you like-minded outliers out there feel would feel a little less alone, and the rest of you would have just been glad that I am no longer the target demographic forZeldagames. Except, and here’s the kicker, maybe I still am! It was only a couple of years ago that Nintendo made a “new” game for people like me. It was a remake ofLink’s Awakening, and hey—it didn’t sell that bad! Last count put it at alittle over 6 million sold. That’s far from whatBreath of the WildandAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsdid, but it’s still better than most games ever do.
It all gives me hope that maybe afterTears of the Kingdombreaks sales records, wins a GOTY at the Game Awards, and all the dust has finally settled from it’s launch, Nintendo may give me what I really want: a newLink’s Awakening.
The Zelda Upscale/Downsize Cycle
It may sound like an absurd idea for Nintendo to go backwards like that, given how much moreBreath of the Wildsold than every otherZeldagame. The core audience for the series clearly wants them to keep getting bigger and freer. But when you look at the history of the series, a pattern emerges that points to the nextZeldato launch after 2023 to be something that goes in a different direction. Starting withOcarina of Time, every other home consoleZeldahas taken a step back from making things bigger and more open.Ocarinawas, of course, the firstZeldagame to feature a fully 3D world, and it made a huge effort to show off how spacious and sprawling it could be. Its direct sequel,Majora’s Mask, had you spending a lot of time in small town town and other little areas, learning about the people of the world and using empathy to help them to prevent the apocalypse.
After that there wasWind Waker,which went big again with a massive ocean to chart. That was followed up byFour Swords Adventures, which was about small-scale multiplayer action puzzle solving. Then cameTwilight Princess, which expanded things again, thenSkyward Sword, which took after bothMajora’sandMonster Hunter, plopping you in a variety of bite-sized environments where getting to know the minutiae of how everything fits together was the only way to win.
Toy Link Returns?
Then cameBreath of the Wild, which Nintendo said is12 times biggerthanTwilight Princess. That’s too big for me. I quit the game after 20 hours, having really enjoyed the totally linear part where it’s raining so you can’t just climb your way out jam, and instead have to fight a bunch of lizard people before hanging out in a shark man’s house. But the rest of the game was a snooze fest for me, just a lot of work. I had hoped thatTears of the Kingdomwould take the same approach thatMajora’s Masktook withOcarina, scaling things back a bit and focusing on the little things, but from the looks of it, that won’t be the case. Initially, I thought that meant that the pattern of Nintendo making every otherZeldasmaller, sillier, and stranger than the last was over.
But then I remembered that theLink’s Awakeningremake, which came out afterBreath of the Wild, technically counts as a newZeldagame, with it’s Dampe’s Dungeon “ZeldaMaker” mode and other little details that make it more than a 1:1 recreation of the original. Nintendo even created a whole new version of Link for the remake (nicknamed Toy Link at the time). Then he got his own amiibo. It would be strange for them to just never use this version of Link again, right? Every other version of Link (Adult, Young, Toon, and uh, “Blue Shirt”) has gotten at least two games to star in. How could you say no to more of this face?
A link to gaming’s past
The only thing that makes me unsure is knowing how much modern Nintendo follows trends. Endlessly replayable open world games with user-created content likeMinecraftandRobloxare the most successful games in the world right now, so it’s not surprising thatTears of the Kingdommay take after them even more than its predecessor did, with more custom stuff to build and other bait to inspire user-created content. I still seeBreath of the Wildtrick videos on Twitter. I haven’t seen any sign of theLink’s Awakeningremake on my timeline in years. It’s clear which one was a better return on Nintendo’s investment, both in terms of sales and in terms of longevity in the public eye.
But I also have to remember that Nintendo is marching outPikmin 4in a few months, and that the big selling points for that game so far are: Pikmin made of ice, a dog with no nose, and “something scary happens at night, probably.” Nothing about that is likely to go viral on TikTok or YouTube for the next 5 years. From the looks of it,Pikmin 4isn’t going to attempt to be a “phenomenon.” It’s going to try to be a fun little videogame, just like the 3 other numberedPikmingames that came before it. It’s not looking to reinvent the wheel, it’s just looking to give it another spin.
Old dogs, old tricks
And that’s true for a lot of Nintendo’s popular games lately.Advance Wars 1+2: Re-boot Campis just the first two GBA games with new graphics and remixed music, and it’s been a top seller on the eShop for the past two weeks.New Pokémon Snapwas essentially the same as the first game but with amazing graphics and new Pokémon, and people went bananas over it.Metroid Dreaddidn’t have multiplayer, mining or crafting mechanics, or a 3D world to explore, and it became thebest-selling gamein that franchise’s history.Xenoblade Chronicles 3is, by all accounts, just a very good JRPG, doing little to move the subgenre forward, and last report as wasclose to 2 million unitssold.Splatoon 3is just more Splatoon, and itset recordsin Japan. The list goes on.
For old-heads like me who think gaming peaked a long time ago, it’s heartening to see. And more pertinent to this particular essay, it makes me feel that Toy Link (and hopefullyToy Gannondorf) will tread new ground in 2024. In fact, the longest we usually go between top-down Zeldas is three to five years.Tri Force Heroeswas 2015, then bothCadence of Hyruleand Link’s Awakening launched in 2019. Before that, the wait between the 2D-styleZeldagames was usually about 2 years, with the exception of the massive drought betweenLink’s Awakeningin 1993 and, uh,Link’s Awakening DXin 1998.
So we’re about due, and any potential Nintendo not-E3 showcase this summer might be just around the corner. I’m not saying that I’m sure they’ll announceLink’s Awakening 2there as a swan song for the now 6-year-old Switch, but stranger things have happened. Four seasons of them in fact, with a 5th on the way. If that series of small-town shenanigans can keep going after all this time, then why can’t Toy Link, Wart, and the Wind Fish?
