When I woke up and signed on to IGN this morning, I was appauled to discover the following:
http://wii.ign.com/articles/116/1166380p1.html
Seriously guys? Wind Waker over the one, and only, original Zelda? Did some of you just not realize what you were choosing between? Were there hanging chads inovled? Did the digital levers get stuck? Please, someone give me a logical explanation to rationalize how this travesty could have occured.
Maybe a few of you need to go back, blow the dust off your NES, and pop in that giddiness-inducing golden cartridge and have your memories refreshed. Or if you aren't that old, boot up the vitual console version (it's one of the few Nintendo downloads that's actually worth its asking price}. At the very least, go stream some Zelda gameplay on Youtube.
That opening title screen with that glistening sword? The scintilating sound of its magical blasts. The gorgeous implosion of enemies as you obliterate them with its power.
But enough nostalgia. What of the game's barebones? After so many iterations since the series' first appearence, surely enough improvements have occured to make a game like Wind Wakersuperior?
Not so. In fact, the very idea that Zelda could be improved rests on a devious assumption: that gaming has a linear history where progress marches on uninterrupted.
At the time of its creation, the developers utilized everything that was available to them technologically, while also revolutionizing what 8-bit exploration could mean, raising what players expected from games to new heights. The original Zelda had a well defined mark and hit it dead on. The puzzles could be complex, the items hard to find, and the dungeons not always easy to locate. Yet the limits placed on gameplay mechanics, the boundaries of the map, and the refined repetition of certain obstacles and solutions made the game adventurous and beatable despite its challenge.
Who could remain untouched by delicious excitement when a torched bush revealed a secret cave? And after making this discovery, this adventure tactic could be added to the arsenal. How about the first time you bomb your way through a mountain to an extra heart, or through a dungeon wall to a secret room? And what about the first pushed block? Your first raft ride? All of these secrets greeted the player with surprise and a foreboding melody, and became part of a checklist for proper exploration.
I admit, was it fun hunting for buried treasure? Yes. Am I a sucker for beautiful cell shading and playful pastels? Of course. Wind Waker is a great game and should sit proudly next to its fellows in the Zelda hall of fame. It broke out of many traditions while maintaining essential qualities and the Je ne sais quois that is what makes Zelda, Zelda.
But the intentions of both games, their missions, and their goals, differ. And herein lies the rub, and the reason why the first Zelda surpasses its younger, seafaring sibling. What the first title attempts is sublime but precise. Working within the strict possibilities of its time, Zelda articulated a well formed and cleanly defined player experience. It might be considered minimalist by today's standards, but if anything , it is all the better for it, benefiting from the purity enforced by those very limitations.
On the other hand, Wind Waker came out of a more complicated time with many demands placed upon it, surrounded by a higher level of expectation. With more complex gaming mechanics, larger maps, and a plethora of ornamental content aimed at enriching the gaming experience, Wind Waker is a looser title that doesn't completely realize itself. Some of the game's elements are fantastic, others are superfluous, and a few disappointing. And in this aspect, the dynamic between its design and execution, Wind Waker does not quite reach the level of the original Zelda. It contains more "stuff" to be sure. More story, more characters, more secrets, more everything. But like a good spirit, games must be refined, removing more and more of their impurities each time, until the experience is distilled into those elements, and only those elements which the game is designed for.
Like the first cave painting or epic poem, Zelda as an historical artifact and aesthetic creation cannot be judged on the same scale as later versions. But that also doesn't mean that simply because it came first, Zelda must win by default. Simply being revolutionary does not make it a better game. Rather, what makes it a superior achievement is the tightness of its mechanics and the way these elements interact with the boundaries of the game's design to yield and finished and fully imagined player experience.