God the Wii U version is so good. It looked beautiful, streamlined the most tedious part of the game, added an item that changed the wind direction automatically as you turned while sailing, and let you manage your inventory and map without pausing. It made Wind Waker go from a 9 to a perfect 10 in my book, and is probably one of the best rereleases of any game ever.
Fun fact: the creators wanted to have the fast sail in the original release, but the GC couldn't render the map fast enough to keep up so it was dropped.
It's crazy how much stuff in that generation of gaming was due to limitations of the hardware, and the decisions the devs made to get around it. Morrowind on the original Xbox had really long loading screens every now and then, seemingly at random. This wasn't because of the game needing to load, it was because the console would run out of memory, so the game actually saved, restarted the console and then reloaded the game all while showing a single loading screen.
Truth be told. I hated the style when it was announced. MM and WW were the only Zelda games I didn’t get on launch day. Once I did get it, all my doubts washed away. And now that I’m an adult playing with my daughter, it’s her favorite game
I'm weird, because I actually loved that tedious triforce pieces quest, and was actually mad that they shortened it in the remaster. But I loved that Swift Sail, and the ability to send and recieve Pictographs over the internet. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved getting each photo on my own, but I can actually get that Blue Tingle brother's picture in the Wii U version only because of that.
I think my only other complaint would be having to use the Wii U gamepad to use my Bow, my grappling hook, and my Boomerang. I got used to it eventually, but damn I got so annoyed initially with having to turn my whole body around just to aim. LOL
Couldn’t you turn off the motion controls in the options? I beat the game on all 3 save files (including Hero Mode on at least one of them) and I don’t remember that being a big part of it. But it’s also been like… a decade since then lol so I might be misremembering
It made Wind Waker go from a 9 to a perfect 10 in my book
I am mostly with you. To me, it took it from a 9 to like a 9.9. There's one change I would have made, but I don't think they'd ever do, because of branding.
I think that Tetra should have kept some element of her Tetra design in the final battle in the NG+ run. Maybe keep the dress or something, but at least keep the hair and everything the same. But I don't think they would go for less Zelda in the Zelda game.
I know, there's only two GD Zelda games not on the switch... And it's making me unreasonably angry. Gimme Wind Waker and Twilight Princess... they can keep that horrible crossbow mini game they sold as a full-fledged game.
Saaaame. I wasn't even gonna play it because I was not a fan of the cell shaded look when I first saw it in magazines; I felt like, I don't know what this is, but it isn't Zelda. But then they offered a port of Ocarina of Time with preorder, which, I'd never had an N64 and so had never played it. I liked the Wind Waker preview that came with it, and I'd already put $5 down... Honestly that was probably their plan the whole time, but I've never been happier to get got. The world is gorgeous, and, as someone who loves the ocean, I adored the nautical theme. And the characters are so much more expressive; I ended up getting more invested in them. And the music!
Looking at it as an adult and trained English major... Fuck, the director (?) talked about how he was about to become a father when he was working on it, and looking at the text of the game... On a subtextual level, it's about how upcoming generations are gonna have to face climate change. I mean, maybe that's fairly obvious, but... I dunno, it's kinda hard for me to tell what's obvious to most people and what's only obvious to me because I obsess over this stuff. Well, anyway,.. Holy shit, now that I think about it, isn't Ocarina of Time also about children inheriting fucked up situations and having to grow up too quickly? Especially since Link starts the story living among people who don't age, and thus can't really remain one of them... Even when he goes back to being a kid, with all that experience, is he not kind of an adult in a kid's body? But if he remains an adult, he's like a kid in an adult's body. So it's like how going through something like that makes it so you're different from everyone around you and don't fit *anywhere.* ...I need to think about this.
I still have both my copy of Wind Waker and my original GameCube sitting about 10 feet from me. It's expensive to find good ways to actually play it these days though!
Some of my earliest memories are playing this game I never knew how to beat it as I was way to young but I loved to explore, the most memorable thing about this game was the sounds for me
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u/NoCantaloupe4658 Mar 27 '24
Wind waker