Am I a dreamer?

Initially, this piece was going to be known as “Animal Crossing on the GameCube is blatantly higher than Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom“. My plan was to take a 4/seventh severe stance on the subject, not not like this previous essay on why I favor Advance Wars to Name of Obligation: Superior Warfare.

It’s an apples-to-oranges comparability and inherently farcical, however the honest fact is that most of the issues I grew up loving about Zelda (significantly its first 3 sequels) have been finest translated to polygons within the unique Animal Crossing title. The grid segmented map, the sensation that each display screen may need a simple-to-find secret hidden in a tree or behind a rock, the small however versatile set of instruments, the inviting villages, the simplicity; they’re all  key features to what made Adventures of Hyperlink, Hyperlink to the Previous, and Hyperlink’s Awakening so nice.
Maybe most significantly, the unique Animal Crossing stored issues cozy. There’s no complicated crafting system, no large world that takes hours to traverse, no damaged weapons (besides the axe, however getting a golden one is simple sufficient), and by no means the sensation that you’ve an enormous, tough job to do. In actual fact, the very first thing that occurs within the recreation is you get fired out of your job. It’s a full escape from the “civilized’ world. And perhaps you need to be there on the time to really feel this fashion, however when the primary Animal Crossing got here out, it got here off like a direct sequel to the Animal Village part of Hyperlink’s Awakening. For those who’ve performed them each, then you understand the similarities between them are about as delicate as a speaking bear asking you to arm wrestle.

No Hyrule Nation for Outdated Farts

Since Hyperlink’s Awakening and the primary Animal Crossing , each the Zelda and Animal Crossing franchises have blown up in an enormous means, when it comes to each recognition and scope. Consequently, I bounced off of every of them onerous. It made me suppose that perhaps Nintendo simply doesn’t make video games for 46-year-old weirdos like me anymore.

And that was going to be the piece! However what would which have executed for you, expensive reader? Just a few of you like-minded outliers on the market really feel would really feel rather less alone, and the remainder of you’ll have simply been glad that I’m now not the goal demographic for Zelda video games. Besides, and right here’s the kicker, perhaps I nonetheless am! It was solely a few years in the past that Nintendo made a “new” recreation for folks like me. It was a remake of Hyperlink’s Awakening, and hey—it didn’t promote that unhealthy! Final depend put it at a little over 6 million bought. That’s removed from what Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing: New Horizons did, however it’s nonetheless higher than most video games ever do.
All of it offers me hope that perhaps after Tears of the Kingdom breaks gross sales data, wins a GOTY on the Recreation Awards, and all of the mud has lastly settled from it’s launch, Nintendo might give me what I really need: a brand new Hyperlink’s Awakening.

The Zelda Upscale/Downsize Cycle

It might sound like an absurd concept for Nintendo to go backwards like that, given how far more Breath of the Wild bought than each different Zelda recreation. The core viewers for the sequence clearly needs them to maintain getting larger and freer. However once you have a look at the historical past of the sequence, a sample emerges that factors to the subsequent Zelda to launch after 2023 to be one thing that goes in a distinct route. Beginning with Ocarina of Time, each different dwelling console Zelda has taken a step again from making issues larger and extra open. Ocarina was, after all, the primary Zelda recreation to function a completely 3D world, and it made an enormous effort to point out off how spacious and sprawling it may very well be. Its direct sequel, Majora’s Masks, had you spending a variety of time in small city city and different little areas, studying in regards to the folks of the world and utilizing empathy to assist them to forestall the apocalypse.

After that there was Wind Waker, which went massive once more with a large ocean to chart. That was adopted up by 4 Swords Adventures, which was about small-scale multiplayer motion puzzle fixing. Then got here Twilight Princess, which expanded issues once more, then Skyward Sword, which took after each Majora’s and Monster Hunter, plopping you in quite a lot of bite-sized environments the place attending to know the trivialities of how every little thing suits collectively was the one option to win.

Toy Hyperlink Returns?

Then got here Breath of the Wild, which Nintendo mentioned is 12 occasions larger than Twilight Princess. That’s too massive for me. I give up the sport after 20 hours, having actually loved the completely linear half the place it’s raining so you possibly can’t simply climb your means out jam, and as a substitute must combat a bunch of lizard folks earlier than hanging out in a shark man’s home. However the remainder of the sport was a nap fest for me, simply a variety of work. I had hoped that Tears of the Kingdom would take the identical strategy that Majora’s Masks took with Ocarina, scaling issues again a bit and specializing in the little issues, however from the seems to be of it, that gained’t be the case. Initially, I believed that meant that the sample of Nintendo making each different Zelda smaller, sillier, and stranger than the final was over.
However then I remembered that the Hyperlink’s Awakening remake, which got here out after Breath of the Wild, technically counts as a brand new Zelda recreation, with it’s Dampe’s Dungeon “Zelda Maker” mode and different little particulars that make it greater than a 1:1 recreation of the unique. Nintendo even created an entire new model of Hyperlink for the remake (nicknamed Toy Hyperlink on the time). Then he received his personal amiibo. It might be unusual for them to simply by no means use this model of Hyperlink once more, proper? Each different model of Hyperlink (Grownup, Younger, Toon, and uh, “Blue Shirt”) has gotten no less than two video games to star in. How might you say no to extra of this face?

A hyperlink to gaming’s previous

The one factor that makes me uncertain is figuring out how a lot trendy Nintendo follows developments. Endlessly replayable open world video games with user-created content material like Minecraft and Roblox are essentially the most profitable video games on the earth proper now, so it’s not stunning that Tears of the Kingdom might take after them much more than its predecessor did, with extra customized stuff to construct and different bait to encourage user-created content material. I nonetheless see Breath of the Wild trick movies on Twitter. I haven’t seen any signal of the Hyperlink’s Awakening remake on my timeline in years. It’s clear which one was a greater return on Nintendo’s funding, each when it comes to gross sales and when it comes to longevity within the public eye.

However I additionally must keep in mind that Nintendo is marching out Pikmin 4 in just a few months, and that the large promoting factors for that recreation up to now are: Pikmin manufactured from ice, a canine with no nostril, and “one thing scary occurs at night time, most likely.” Nothing about that’s prone to go viral on TikTok or YouTube for the subsequent 5 years. From the seems to be of it, Pikmin 4 isn’t going to attempt to be a “phenomenon.” It’s going to attempt to be a enjoyable little videogames, similar to the three different numbered Pikmin video games that got here earlier than it. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel, it’s simply trying to give it one other spin.

Outdated canines, previous methods

And that’s true for lots of Nintendo’s widespread video games currently. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-boot Camp is simply the primary two GBA video games with new graphics and remixed music, and it’s been a high vendor on the eShop for the previous two weeks. New Pokémon Snap was primarily the identical as the primary recreation however with superb graphics and new Pokémon, and other people went bananas over it. Metroid Dread didn’t have multiplayer, mining or crafting mechanics, or a 3D world to discover, and it turned the best-selling recreation in that franchise’s historical past. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is, by all accounts, simply an excellent JRPG, doing little to maneuver the subgenre ahead, and final report as was near 2 million models bought. Splatoon 3 is simply extra Splatoon, and it set data in Japan. The checklist goes on.
For old-heads like me who suppose gaming peaked a very long time in the past, it’s heartening to see. And extra pertinent to this explicit essay, it makes me really feel that Toy Hyperlink (and hopefully Toy Gannondorf) will tread new floor in 2024. In actual fact, the longest we normally go between top-down Zeldas is three to 5 years.  Tri Power Heroes was 2015, then each Cadence of Hyrule and the Hyperlink’s Awakening launched in 2019. Earlier than that, the wait between the 2D-style Zelda video games was normally about 2 years, aside from the large drought between Hyperlink’s Awakening in 1993 and, uh, Hyperlink’s Awakening DX in 1998.

So we’re about due, and any potential Nintendo not-E3 showcase this summer time may be simply across the nook. I’m not saying that I’m positive they’ll announce Hyperlink’s Awakening 2 there as a swan music for the now 6-year-old Swap, however stranger issues have occurred. 5 seasons of them in truth, with a sixth on the way in which. If that sequence of small-town shenanigans can preserve going in spite of everything this time, then why can’t Toy Hyperlink, Wart, and the Wind Fish?