It just goes to show that turning Link into a drawing has nothing to do with the mythos of Zelda and everything to do with “oh my god, unique gameplay innovation!”  The cave drawing bothers me because it just doesn’t feel right.  It’s like trains or boats.  Why the hell is it in Zelda?

That image is even funnier because the water pack also had no place in 3D Mario.

Nintendo approaches the design of Zelda with an ideology of ‘what is the gimmick for this game?’ Then they attach what they *think* is Zelda to it such as the typical formula and story stuff.

Stephen Totilo is excited for the 3DS Zelda because he, too, is sick of Aonuma Zelda. Aonuma Zelda is that the skeleton of Zelda is ‘story’ and ‘puzzles’ with the action parts sorta a bridge between those skeletal parts.

I would like Nintendo to turn it inside out. Start with the action parts (Link running around slashing stuff with a sword). And then build the game around that. No one thinks Zelda is about the story. What does Nintendo think Zelda is? Final Fantasy? Hahaha.

This Puzzle/Adventure approach to Zelda is destroying the franchise. It’s just going to get worse. How do I know this? It is because Puzzle/Adventure games died for a reason. Should a game try to imitate Zelda’s Puzzle/Adventure formula (such as Okami), it gets slaughtered in the market. Contrast that to the earlier knock-offs which sold well.

Zelda is really about an arcade/RPG duality. In this way, Zelda 1 and Zelda 2 were not different but really very similar. LTTP also somewhat similar. Ocarina of Time was popular because it was the pre-Grand Theft Auto 3 of the day where people liked the idea of being able to run around and do anything. Most people didn’t even bother to finish the game (so much for Ocarina’s fabulous story or whoever was the crackpot that designed the dungeons such as the Water Temple. Who was that? Oh, that was Aonuma.)

I’m skipping this generation. You hear about Nintendo’s plans about the Virtual Console cross play of the 3DS and Wii-U? Nintendo deserves its financial losses.