Don’t get me wrong — I’m pretty darn excited for a Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. But boy, I would have been so much more excited for a sequel instead.

If you’ve somehow missed it, at the most recent Nintendo Direct, we saw a brief teaser for a Switch 2 version of Ocarina of Time. Admittedly, the brief trailer is light on details — merely showcasing a cinematic intro for the iconic adventure with some voice acting and vastly improved graphics over the Nintendo 64 original — but the promise to return to Hyrule later this year has left many (myself included) ecstatic with the hope this is Zelda’s Resident Evil 2 Remake equivalent.

Anyone who has touched Ocarina of Time knows why it’s regarded as one of the best games ever made. It perfectly translated the previously 2D-only series’ sense of adventure into a 3D world, and even close to three decades later, Ocarina’s Hyrule is a delight to explore — with its dungeons to solve, monsters to slay, and songs to learn.

A return to this world with a graphical and gameplay overhaul — taking learnings from titles like Breath of the Wild — would be the perfect way to revisit the classic, and introduce it to a new generation.

More to the story

Though it doesn’t quite hold a candle to its direct sequel, Majora’s Mask.

The darker tone and the repeating three-day cycle create a claustrophobic aspect that pairs perfectly with the game’s expansive world and its various branching stories. You don’t have time to solve every problem at once, so you have to slowly piece together each puzzle through what you learn in previous cycles, and the items and abilities you unlock.

Majora’s Mask could easily have been a mess, but instead it pioneered the Groundhog Day-like genre, setting the bar for what time loop games should deliver.

Everything is perfect… but ultimately unfinished too.

Majora’s Mask picks up where Ocarina of Time ends, with Link on a quest to find his fairy companion Navi after she leaves him at the end of the first game.

While he does save yet another realm, his inciting quest doesn’t have a conclusion, as Majora’s Mask ends with Link venturing on once more to find his fairy friend.

While the Zelda series has had plenty more entries since these two games, it has long felt like there should be a third story in the Ocarina of Time duology — one that ties up this loose end adventure in some way.

So while I’m excited for a new Ocarina of Time, I am left desperately wishing we were getting a fresh follow-up instead, one that finally concludes this long-time Zelda series mystery rather than simply being the fourth Ocarina of Time re-release.

Why not both?

My mixed feelings aside, this remake doesn’t rule out the possibility of a sequel. In fact, it could make one more likely as players are refamiliarized with the game’s story and finale.

Adding to my hope (read: cope) is that we’re coming up fast on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s 30th anniversary — which lands at the tail end of 2028. Concluding this mystery would be quite the birthday treat for longtime fans of this game.

Now that would be quite a swift turnaround time, but the Zelda series does comfortably hit one entry every couple of years — since 2023, the franchise has actually had a release every year if you count the Switch 2 Editions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

We’ll have to wait and see what Nintendo has up its sleeve, but as I play through Ocarina of Time on my Switch 2 later this year, I’ll be desperately hoping a brand-new sequel to it is just around the corner.

• The Legend of Zelda Movie's release date has been changed
• Nintendo confirmed as much on social media yesterday (May 13)
• The live-action film was set to arrive in theaters on May 7, 2027

Eyes up, Nintendo fans — The Legend of Zelda Movie's release date has been tweaked, but don't worry, it hasn't been delayed.

Indeed, the highly-anticipated live-action film, which was set to land in theaters on May 7, 2027, has actually been moved up by a week. It's now set to debut worldwide on April 30, 2027.

The announcement comes courtesy of Nintendo legend and president Shigeru Miyamoto. Indeed, in a statement posted on the videogame giant's social media channels yesterday (May 13), Miyamoto-san revealed The Legend of Zelda's movie adaptation would be with us earlier than expected.

"This is Miyamoto," the post begins. "We have decided to change the worldwide theatrical release date of the live-action film The Legend of Zelda from May 7, 2027 to April 30, 2027. In order to deliver it to everyone even one day sooner, the team is united in advancing production. It's less than a year until release, but please wait just a little longer."

It's unclear why one of next year's most exciting new movies is coming out earlier than anticipated. However, with filming reportedly wrapping on the project last month, it appears its production is going smoother than even Miyamoto-san might have predicted.

What do we know about The Legend of Zelda Movie so far?

Truth be told, not a great deal. Indeed, aside from its new launch date, the ever-secretive Nintendo has kept its cards close to its chest regarding the movie's cast, plot, and which of the franchise's many beloved games it's drawing inspiration from.

On the cast front, only two actors are officially involved in The Legend of Zelda Movie: Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who'll play Link, aka the Hero of Time, and Bo Bragason, who'll portray the titular princess of Hyrule. Severance actor Dichen Lachman was believed to have been spotted on set as Zelda's protector-in-chief Impa, but Lachman's involvement is still a rumor at this stage.

Meanwhile, fans believe they know which game's story is being adapted for this flick after Nintendo released the first official images for The Legend of Zelda Movie in November 2025. Again, though, this is purely speculation, and it won't be until Nintendo releases the film's first trailer that we'll be able to decipher which game(s) it'll be inspired by.

While we wait for more concrete news, find out everything we know so far about The Legend of Zelda Movie.

On this day back in 1986, something happened that would change the trajectory of gaming – The Legend of Zelda was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

No, that's not just me being hyperbolic; as well as starting what is now a 40-year-old, frequently record-breaking game series, it was also the first game to introduce save files stored on the game cartridge, revolutionizing how games were played and saved.

Many such accolades adorn the halls of fame for The Legend of Zelda, though it's the games themselves and how they've evolved that take precedence for me when I'm asked why the series is so beloved and successful. And I am frequently asked why I have such an impassioned love for it.

Is it just nostalgia? Yes, in part; many of my earliest memories involve watching my Dad try (and fail) to complete the Ocarina of Time water temple, running away screaming every time the Deku Kid mask animation played in Majora's Mask and repeatedly finding myself stuck in Link's Awakening because I was too young (read: impatient) to realize the dialogue was actualy trying to tell me what to do. In fact, barring The Sims, Zelda titles made the majority of my gaming collection until I was in my late teens.

Still, to boil down the storied success of the series to emotional attachment alone is a disservice not just to The Legend of Zelda, but also to you, dear reader. Instead, I'd much prefer to analyze it as a work of art; here's why I think the adventures of Link and Zelda stand the test of time. Quite literally, in places.

What's in a name?

If I had to label it, I'd say the 21 main Legend of Zelda titles broadly fall into what I'll call the "puzzle-solving adventure" genre, constantly straddling the line between action and exploration. However, I'd be reluctant to label it at all, as the series's ability to adapt and innovate is seemingly boundless.

A big reason behind its popularity, I think, is that Nintendo has not limited itself to a specific formula; you know when you play a Halo game that it'll broadly consist of jumping around and shooting stuff, or that GTA 6 will mostly involve driving around and hurting innocent civilians.

The Legend of Zelda is not so caught up by minutiae; all you know going into a game is that there will likely be some form of "rescue the Princess" main mission, but how it will actually play is entirely down to the thematic principles of any given Zelda game.

That said, there is one thing that does tie together all of the games in The Legend of Zelda series: not one of them plays exactly like another. Okay, barring a few of the sequels (where repetition is to be expected).

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Zelda games are often experimental with mechanics, to a degree where I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they're established long before any story, artwork or thematics are decided upon. That’s how you end up with seafaring adventures such as Wind Waker, railway exploration with Spirit Tracks, and motion-controlled swordplay in Skyward Sword. It’s a gamble that doesn’t always pay off – and I’d personally use the latter as an example of that – but it keeps the series feeling fresh.

Even the tone (and, subsequently, age restrictions) vary wildly. Some games, like Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess, are quite thematically dark, while others are more kid-friendly; some are more linear compared to more recent open-world adventures such as Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Everyone has a different favorite, and fans can be quite fierce in defending them.

The same goes for the art style, which varies wildly across almost all of the games, as well as the music; while tonally and thematically consistent, Nintendo is not afraid to shake up everything we expect from Hyrule.

The Lord of the Rings of gaming

That's right, I said it; The Legend of Zelda is to gaming what The Lord of the Rings was to mid-century literature. As a huge fan of both, it's a compliment both ways, but more specifically references the fact that Takashi Tezuka himself has cited Tolkien's work as inspirational for The Legend of Zelda. Tezuka was responsible for the narrative and world-building of the first game and has worked on many of the best Zelda titles since, meaning that Tolkien's world-building and storytelling run deep in the franchise's DNA.

The narrative cues are quite obvious in places; there's a Heroic quest with a fundamental battle between good and evil at its core, and both create complex and varied characters with differing motivations, especially in more recent character-driven Zelda storylines. Putting on my literary nerd hat, both are also works of mythopoeic literature; Hyrule, like Middle-earth, is an entirely fictional world with its own rules, cultures, and regions. For the uninitiated, that means there's a whole lot of lore.

As such, both worlds are incredibly immersive and rich, often toying with themes of apocalypse, the brutality of war, and the consequences of greed. Alongside these darker undertones, though, are the desperate attempts to preserve pastoral beauty; much like Tolkien found inspiration in the turn-of-the-century rural English countryside, Shigeru Miyamoto's childhood adventures in nature are deeply embedded in the world of Hyrule.

Where the fork in the road appears in this comparison is simple: The Lord of the Rings strove to create folklore where Tolkien felt England lacked it. The Legend of Zelda, unbeknownst even to itself, became folklore. By creating a narrative that spanned characters in an endless cycle of reincarnation, Nintendo created a modern epic told through video games and fandom.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

This is where the magic comes into play, and it's all down to people like you and me. Creating such a vibrant and varied narrative spanning generations across centuries is a total honeytrap for the player's imagination.

It's the reason I'm so drawn to the series; sure, they're a lot of fun to play, but each game presents an opportunity for analysis. For instance, there are iconic motifs that repeat and evolve throughout the series; the three goddesses who created Hyrule, the Great Fairies, and the Master Sword – each new game introduces fresh history and meaning to the last. Sometimes, information even conflicts across games. Over the course of the series, such inconsistencies formed a kind of oral tradition in online forums and among content creators, with fans acting as the mouthpiece for various theories and connections between different games. Like the Arthurian legend, one never quite knows who told each tale, nor how much of it is true to history, but we all know the heroes.

This most famously manifested in the 2011 official Hyrule Historia, which confirmed the existence of a canon timeline that weaves each game into a complex, three-pronged timeline spanning centuries and different realities. Fans had theorized such a document existed for years, although others assume Nintendo just ran with the idea after seeing how popular it was with fans.

By now, I hope I've convinced the uninitiated that worldbuilding and fan theory are key components of The Legend of Zelda's success, but equally important is the bridge between the two: Link. His name is no coincidence; he is the literal link that bridges the real world and Hyrule. A blank, unspeaking canvas upon which we can imagine ourselves a hero of old.

It's a huge part of his character, but also his design. There’s even an air of androgyny to Link — something Eiji Aonuma has actually discussed in an interview with Time as an intentional choice. Perhaps that’s why The Legend of Zelda seems to have a pretty strong contingent of female fans compared to other long-running series — I certainly thought Link was a girl for a fair few years.

With The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo managed a pretty impressive juggling act; it built an expansive world, created a wide-reaching and engaged community and remained laser-focused on keeping that audience captive. Today marks 40 years of continued, largely successful juggling, and even if you're not a fan of the series, that deserves some respect.

Times are a-changing

With all eyes on Nintendo's social accounts today (in fact, by the time I've hit publish, they may have already dropped some news), one can only hope we get a celebration befitting this huge milestone. For its 25th anniversary, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time's 3DS remaster, the Hyrule Historia, and even a touring Legend of Zelda Symphony.

Ports and remakes are increasingly available, but whether you like it or not, Nintendo’s iron-tight grip on its intellectual property does create a scarcity; that’s why right now, fans are going pretty feral, waiting to see what Nintendo has up its sleeve for this anniversary.

I'm matching my anticipation with a looming sense of dread. In what has been an otherwise glowing review of 40 years' worth of creative game-making, I come to an anxious juncture: what on earth is next for The Legend of Zelda?

Personally, I’m hoping for a Wind Waker or Twilight Princess remaster for Nintendo Switch 2, but in all likelihood, I’m sorry to say we’ll probably just get a new trailer for the upcoming live action The Legend of Zelda movie and maybe an announcement for a remaster or a Nintendo Switch Online port today.

Nintendo took a huge swing with Breath of the Wild, effectively retconning its own timeline and starting a new cycle for Zelda games. It was a risk worth taking, as was its sequel Tears of the Kingdom, but one so lofty I worry Nintendo will confine itself too readily to a set formula moving forward, and I'm not sure the open-world adventure genre allows for the kind of continued creativity and whimsy I've always loved from Zelda titles. Echoes of Wisdom did little to ease my nerves, given it wasn't technically a from-scratch new game. So, we'll just have to see as the year goes on what's in store next for our favorite hero and his beloved Princess.

• The next mainline Zelda game could be inspired by Koei Tecmo's Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
• The Legend of Zelda producer, Eiji Aonuma, has teased the next Zelda game, saying he's gained inspiration from Koei Tecmo's spin-off entry
• "The inspiration we've gained from collaborating with Koei Tecmo like this may be reflected in the next Zelda we create," Aonuma says

The Legend of Zelda producer, Eiji Aonuma, has suggested that the next entry in the long-running series will be inspired by Koei Tecmo's Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment.

Speaking in an interview with Japanese publication 4Gamer (via VGC), Aonuma teased the next Zelda game and said that his team has gained inspiration from Koei Tecmo's Nintendo Switch 2 spin-off title.

"Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is the first Zelda title on Nintendo Switch 2," Aonuma said. "To be honest, we wanted to be the ones to release the ‘first’ one ourselves (laughs).

"Still, the inspiration we've gained from collaborating with Koei Tecmo like this may be reflected in the next Zelda we create. As you play Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, we hope you’ll imagine those possibilities and look forward to our Zelda."

Age of Imprisonment is the third game in the Hyrule Warriors series, and depicts the events that lead up to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The previous game, Age of Calamity, also does the same by telling the story of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's history as a prequel.

Nintendo hasn't announced the third game in its new Zelda series, but I'm curious to see if Aonuma will use Age of Imprisonment's blend of action mechanics as inspiration for the next entry.

In TechRadar Gaming's Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment review, hardware editor Rhys Wood called the game "a huge improvement over Age of Calamity", offering "more characters with interesting move sets, decent performance, and a story that doesn't relegate itself to being a meaningless 'what if' scenario."

The Legend of Zelda Movie is officially in full production. Cameras have started rolling on the highly anticipated film, which is based on Nintendo's fan-favorite videogame series namesake, ahead of its May 2027 launch.

While much of it is shrouded in mystery, we're starting to get a sense of how it'll bring The Legend of Zelda game franchise to life. Consider this guide to be the equivalent of Navi, the game series' fairy aide, in telling you about the biggest and most recent news surrounding the live-action fantasy flick.

Here, then, is everything you need to know about The Legend of Zelda Movie.

The Legend of Zelda Movie release date

The Legend of Zelda Movie will debut in theaters on May 7, 2027.

Initially, the Nintendo and Sony Pictures feature had used the Tri-Force to conjure up a March 26, 2027 launch. However, as the above X/Twitter post points out, it'll arrive a few weeks later than planned.

Principal photography began in New Zealand on November 4, 2025. According to the Film and Television Industry Alliance website, it's due to wrap production on April 7, 2026.

The Legend of Zelda Movie trailer: is there one?

No. And considering it won't be released for another 18 months (at the time of this article's initial publication), it'll be a long time before we see one, too. Once a trailer is released, I'll update this section.

The Legend of Zelda Movie cast: confirmed and rumored

Possible spoilers follow for The Legend of Zelda Movie.

So far, only two actors have been formally announced as part of The Legend of Zelda Movie's cast:

• Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link
• Bo Bragason as Zelda

Confirming the pair's involvement in July, Nintendo revealed Bragason and Ainsworth would play Zelda and Link, aka two of the franchise's most famous characters, in the film.

Of the pair, Bragason is arguably the most well-known. She's inhabited roles in the Disney+ show Renegade Nell, and Prime Video TV series The Jetty and King & Conqueror. Playing Hyrule's princess in this live-action take on the popular game series is easily her biggest role to date, though.

Meanwhile, Ainsworth, who's being hired to play the Zelda franchise's Master Sword-wielding male protagonist, will be recognizable to anyone who's seen Disney's 2022 live-action/CGI remake of Pinocchio. Well, his voice will be, because he only voiced the titular character in that movie. Other roles he's had include Son of a Critch on CBC and Channel 4, and The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Sandman on Netflix.

There'll be more cast announcements – official and leaked – in the weeks and months ahead. In fact, fans think Dichen Lachman, who stars in Severance on Apple TV, has secretly boarded the project as Zelda's chief adviser Impa. Their evidence? In a leaked video posted on X/Twitter (see above), Bragason's female hero is seen conversing with someone who not only looks a lot like Impa but also Lachman.

Other reveals will arrive in due course. We still don't know who'll play the Zelda series' primary villain, Ganondorf, nor which supporting characters from the Zelda franchise's packed back catalog could be part of its ensemble. In fact, determining which other individuals may appear depends on which games The Legend of Zelda Movie's story has been influenced by. Speaking of which...

The Legend of Zelda Movie story speculation

Potential spoilers follow for The Legend of Zelda Movie.

Unsurprisingly, The Legend of Zelda Movie's story synopsis hasn't been unveiled yet. Based on its first-look images, though, it appears it's inspired by the game franchise's two most recent entries: Breath of the Wild (BotW) and Tears of the Kingdom (TotK).

One of the biggest clues available to us is what Bragason's Zelda is wearing. It's a costume not dissimilar to the primary clothes set she has in the aforementioned games, so it's more likely than not that BotW and TotK have, at the very least, part-inspired this film.

There's more evidence to suggest this is the case, too. The official still of Link and Zelda in lush surroundings is a clear nod to the idyllic Hyrulian fields, forests, and hills that gamers explore in BotW and TotK. Add in the fact that the duo are actively working together – something they do throughout the aforementioned titles – and it stands to reason that this pair of games, which are among the most highly-rated and beloved games in the Zelda series, are influencers-in-chief on this project.

That's not to say that other Zelda games won't impact the movie's story.

For one, the franchise's timeline has become increasingly complex to follow with each new entry and, based on the outcome of events in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, split into three distinct timelines (per IGN) before BotW's arrival. Since BotW and TotK were released, Nintendo has updated the official timeline to show that these two titles sit independently of the other three timelines (thanks to vooks.net for the screenshots).

That means if The Legend of Zelda Movie is based on BotW and TotK, it won't take cues from other Zelda games, right? Not necessarily. After all, other Nintendo movies – both recent and forthcoming releases, which I'll get to in the next section – have cherry-picked elements from various titles in their own game series. It's possible, then, that this film could do something similar and include, say, aspects of Skyward Sword, A Link to the Past, or The Wind Waker as part of its narrative.

Perhaps the most important question of all, though, is: will Link speak? He's never uttered a word in the game series, so will Ainsworth follow in the footsteps of the franchise's silent male protagonist or give him a voice? In conversation with comicbook.com, director Wes Ball declined to comment, so we'll have to wait for its first trailer or the movie itself to find out for sure.

Will The Legend of Zelda Movie get a sequel?

We don't know. Nintendo hasn't discussed the prospect of making a follow-up, and, realistically, a lot depends on how successful The Legend of Zelda Movie is.

Just look at The Super Mario Bros. Movie (TSMBM), for example. The 2023 animated movie, which took its cues from various Mario games, earned over $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Despite its mixed reception from fans and critics alike, it was a no-brainer for Nintendo to greenlight a sequel, which we now know is called The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. You can read more about that film in my dedicated guide to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

If – and it's a big if – The Legend of Zelda Movie is as commercially successful as TSMBM, it's inevitable that a sequel will get made. Until it arrives in May 2027, though, this is a question we can't definitively answer.

For coverage of other videogame adaptations, read my definitive guide to Fallout season 2 and what we know so far about The Last of Us season 3.

• Nintendo has revealed the first official images for The Legend of Zelda Movie
• They show Link and Zelda wearing immediately recognizable costumes
• The photographs arrive days after an on-set video leak

Nintendo has officially unveiled the first images for The Legend of Zelda Movie – and they offer us a big clue about which game it'll be based on.

Released today (November 17) on the Nintendo Today app, the three photographs show The Legend of Zelda Movie's leads Benjamin Evan Ainsworth and Bo Bragason wearing costumes that long-time fans will instantly recognize.

Indeed, two of them are close-ups at the movie's stars looking at something off-camera, while the third shows the pair looking out onto one of Hyrule's great – not to mention lush-looking – plains.

There are a couple of things worth noting about the stills. Ainsworth's Link is decked out in his legendary green tunic and white undershirt, so Nintendo and Sony Pictures' live-action take on the former's universally popular videogame series is going all-in on being as authentic as possible.

However, what's far more interesting is Bragason's Zelda is wearing a turquoise dress and dark-green leggings ensemble that's reminiscent of her look from one of The Legend of Zelda franchise's more recent entries. Its attire not dissimilar to the clothes she wears in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the 2017 action-adventure Wii U and Nintendo Switch title that's regularly hailed as the game series' best entry. Is this confirmation that the forthcoming flick will adapt – directly or loosely – Breath of the Wild's story?

Swapping science fiction for fantasy action?

This isn't the only imagery from the movie that's emerged in recent days. Last Saturday (November 15), leaked footage from the film, which is being shot in New Zealand, found its way online and appears to have revealed an addition to its cast that hasn't been publicly acknowledged by Nintendo.

The secretly-filmed video begins with the camera trained on Bragason's Zelda, who walks over to a pair of horses. It's here where she's greeted by another actor, who seems to resemble Impa, Zelda's chief aide in Nintendo's hugely successful game franchise.

As the camera zooms in, we get a much better look at who may be playing Impa (or whoever this individual is). And, while it's difficult to fully make out the actor in question, they look a lot like Dichen Lachman, aka the Australian star who viewers may recognize as Ms. Casey from sci-fi hit Severance on Apple TV.

The leaked clip raises more questions about The Legend of Zelda movie's plot. Will this mystery character be part of proceedings in its first act or throughout? Is one of the horses Epona, Link's trusty steed who might initially be under Zelda's care in this film? And, perhaps most importantly, are Zelda and her lieutenant traveling in secret to avoid being detected and/or found by Ganandorf, The Legend of Zelda franchise's Big Bad?

I'm sure we'll get answers to any or all of the above in due course. For now, here's that all-important release date information: The Legend of Zelda Movie will arrive in theaters worldwide on May 7, 2027.

• The cast for the live-action The Legend of Zelda movie has been unveiled
• Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed who will play Zelda and Link
• Some fans are disappointed Hunter Schafer didn’t land the role of Zelda

Production on the live-action The Legend of Zelda movie is very much underway as two members of the lead cast have officially been confirmed.

The news was posted on social media by Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto, who revealed a picture of the actors that will play the eponymous princess of 'Hyrule' (the fictional kingdom in the video game series), Zelda, and legendary swordsman Link in costume.

Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who made his debut in Mike Flanagan's horror series The Haunting of Bly Manor on Netflix, has been cast as Link, while Bo Bragason from the period drama Renegade Nell on Disney+ will play Zelda.

Nintendo and Sony casting two young actors to play the lead characters of the Zelda franchise is one of our first indications of which direction the movie could take. Indeed, such a young cast could mean that we see an earlier game in the franchise, such as The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, as the central plot of the film.

Of course, that's just speculation. It could be that there's still a chance that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the subject matter for the first live-action movie adaptation, but that would mean that we're expecting a second Link to be cast for when the character grows up in the game.

This first casting announcement also arguably suggests that we could be in store for a series of movies. Having such a young cast gives the actors room to grow with their characters over multiple films, and means there won't be any issues like Stranger Things now has with its cast of adults playing teenagers in season 5.

Nothing else surrounding the production of The Legend of Zelda adaptation has been confirmed yet, but we do know the release date of the live-action movie: March 26, 2027. We can therefore expect more casting announcements in the months to come.

What are fans saying about the cast of the live-action The Legend of Zelda movie?

In the lead-up to today's announcement, there were quite a few rumors about who would play Zelda and Link in the live-action The Legend of Zelda movie. One of the frontrunners for Zelda's role was Hunter Schafer (Euphoria), but it seems that Wes Ball, who's directing the film, ruled her out by going for a younger cast.

Indeed, going off an interview that Nintendo's veteran game designer Takashi Tezuka did with MTV over nine years ago, there was even a chance that Link could have been played by a woman. "This is just personally, [but] it would be very fun and awesome if Link was played by a female actress," Tezuka said, "a boyish female actress."

The direction that Ball has decided to take the movie in instead has been met with a lot of praise on social media, with many expecting another quality film in the vein of Nintendo's last hit, the Super Mario Bros. Movie. While some have expressed disappointment that Schafer didn't land the role of Zelda, others say that this suggests the movie will be part of a trilogy.

Comment from r/gaming

Some users also appear to be pleased that both actors are English, as it offers some continuity to the video game – many of the voice actors are English in the series (except Link, of course). However, this does vary from game to game.

Overall, the reception appears to be positive, especially as it gives fans of the video game who are excited for the live-action movie their first real indication of what to expect. Could such a young cast mean we get a Zelda movie trilogy? Does it narrow down our speculation about which video game will form the basis of the story? There's a lot to chew on here.

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Despite borrowing plenty of elements from both titles, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom definitely falls closer to the recent The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening remake than The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This is a traditional Zelda experience through and through, with plenty of puzzles to complete, intricate dungeons to master, and a more linear fantasy story to discover.

That might be a turn-off to some, but will undoubtedly be a huge draw for others. I can’t deny that there’s something incredibly refreshing about the return to the 2D format. As brilliant and innovative as it is, the shift to a more freeform open-world has definitely sacrificed some of the more careful, considered design of older games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Nearly every aspect of Echoes of Wisdom feels finely crafted, with the introduction of some clever new mechanics successfully differentiating it from what we’ve seen before. I think that it will be remembered as one of the best Zelda games, perhaps even one of the best Nintendo Switch games, because of this, but it’s not a title that is without its flaws.

Girl power

Echoes of Wisdom marks the first time that the series’ titular princess takes the starring role. Link has vanished, swallowed up by one of the countless purple rifts enveloping the kingdom of Hyrule and spewing out legions of shadowy monsters. The king has been replaced by a sinister clone that sentences his daughter, Princess Zelda, to death, confining her to the castle’s dungeon until her execution. It’s here that you meet Tri, a mysterious fairy who becomes your companion throughout the game.

Tri grants Zelda a suite of magical abilities in order to facilitate her escape and eventual defeat of the malevolent force behind the rifts. This begins with the power to create echoes, copies of certain objects that can be placed at will. From tables, giant crates, and beds that can be stacked to form bridges to floating blocks of water and bouncy trampolines, there are countless echoes to discover and experiment with. Any that you find are added to a growing library and can be brought out at any time, adding a fantastic collectible element.

You quickly learn Bond, which allows you to bind yourself to objects and carry them while you move. You can even activate Reverse Bond, which causes you to follow the movement of your bound object. While this whole system is not as expansive as the building of Tears of the Kingdom, these powers are leveraged in a plethora of interesting ways once you escape into the world of Hyrule and begin your quest in earnest. Puzzles frequently require the intelligent use of echoes and Bond. A large rock, for an abstract example, might be positioned on the opposite side of a grate. You can’t reach it normally, but you can use Bond to move it around.

If the rock needs to be placed in a high position, perhaps on top of an out-of-reach pressure plate, you can simply create a stack of echoes to climb as a makeshift ladder in order to drag it up. It’s all delightfully intuitive and, importantly, remains so as the complexity ramps up. Many puzzles also have multiple solutions and I found that the vast majority of the time, if I expected a certain strategy to work, it would.

This openness can be a bit of a double-edged sword at times, though. Many dungeons contain platforming challenges that, although tricky, are very enjoyable to finally crack. Unfortunately, almost all of these can be bypassed by simply stacking up long chains of beds in order to bridge across them. This is in itself a lot of fun and rewards experimentation in a way, but does feel like a bit of a waste of the otherwise superb level design.

Free roam

Although it follows a very linear story that is broken up into clear digestible chunks, Echoes of Wisdom does feature something of an open world. You’re free to wander around any accessible area as you please, though large portions of the map are blocked off until you reach about the halfway point in the story. There’s not a huge amount to do in this version of Hyrule, but there is just enough to make a little exploration worthwhile.

Hidden chests are littered throughout the world, filled with rupees and the occasional smoothie ingredient. These can be eaten raw as a quick health top-up or combined into powerful drinks with a variety of special effects such as elemental resistance at a handful of smoothie vendors. There are a decent number of unique combinations to find and the whole system is pleasantly reminiscent of the creative cooking introduced in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You can even make your own rather ineffective ‘Dubious Smoothie’ by adding in a splash of monster guts, a detail that I found quite amusing.

There are a good number of side quests too, most of which have you collect and summon a specific echo at the behest of an NPC. They’re quick to complete and don’t offer much in the way of useful rewards, but do result in some quite amusing and memorable interactions that help the world feel that much more alive.

On top of those found in dungeons, Hyrule is also packed with enemy creatures to fight. Combat is one of the most significant areas where Echoes of Wisdom departs from previous entries, as Zelda does not possess any conventional combat abilities at first. She can toss heavy rocks to deal damage in a pinch, or create echoes of previously defeated foes to fight on her behalf. This is a blast at first but unfortunately wears out its welcome quickly.

Even with a button to direct your minions toward a specific enemy, they’re just too slow and unresponsive. I often found myself skipping running past entire fights, purely because I didn’t want the hassle of managing an army of unreliable slimes. Thankfully, you unlock more combat abilities as you progress, including a magical sword that lets you transform into a swordfighter form.

In this form, Zelda dons Link’s trademark attire and effectively gains all of his abilities. You can slash with a sword, get shots off with a bow, and eventually toss explosive bombs. Your strength in this form can be upgraded too, with special collectibles hidden at the end of dungeons or in the most hard-to-reach corners of the map.

Miniature mayhem

The whole of Echoes of Wisdom is rendered in an adorable, miniaturized visual style that makes everything from the characters to individual trees and buildings look like it was plucked from a cute diorama. It’s very similar to the look of Link’s Awakening and, sadly, means that Echoes of Wisdom suffers from many of the same performance problems.

Frame rates are a little higher overall, especially within dungeons, but are still prone to significant drops. This is understandable in particularly intense moments, especially when you’re dealing with lots of enemies and summoned creatures on the same screen, but is pretty inexcusable when it happens at random points in the world.

The particularly awful performance of one snowy area late in the game is almost unbearable in both handheld and docked mode, which is a massive shame and does spoil an otherwise attractive part of the world. Hopefully, there will be patches to address at least some of these problems down the line.

Otherwise, there’s an awful lot to like in Echoes of Wisdom. It’s cute, charming, and, despite relying on an older formula, it is packed with a handful of novel ideas that make it well worth your while.

Accessibility

There are no dedicated accessibility settings on The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. The game allows you to choose between a normal and Hero difficulty setting, with the latter designed for more experienced players, but that’s it. This is very disappointing, especially given the reliance on holding button inputs to use abilities. A few basic options to alter the control scheme to remove longer inputs would go a long way to make the game more accessible.

Should I play The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom?

Play it if…

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How I reviewed The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

I played over 15 hours of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom on Nintendo Switch OLED. During that time I completed the main story and played in a combination of both handheld and docked mode. In docked mode, I played on a 1080p monitor and used a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. In handheld mode, I played using the standard Pastel Pink Joy-Con controllers and used a pair of Final VR500 earbuds.

Throughout my time with the game, I was careful to compare my experience with other adventure titles and plenty of past entries in The Legend of Zelda series including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, plus plenty of time in the original The Legend of Zelda.

First reviewed August 2024.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom seems like the perfect blend of everything that I loved in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

After playing through over an hour of the upcoming game at a preview event hosted by Nintendo, I’m confident that the next entry in the long-running series has all the makings of a fantastic sandbox experience. It could even become one of the best Nintendo Switch games of the year.

On the surface, Echoes of Wisdom looks most similar to Link's Awakening, a 2019 Nintendo Switch remake of a 1993 Game Boy title. It has the same adorable art style, which lends everything a cutesy, miniaturized look. The Hyrule setting is almost like a diorama, with a top-down perspective and shiny, plastic-like textures to really sell the effect. 

That said, anyone who played Link's Awakening will know that the attractive overall look of that game was always a little undermined by its rough performance. Substantial framerate drops were common, particularly when entering or exiting a scene. 

Thankfully, the build of Echoes of Wisdom that I played performed substantially better. It wasn’t perfect, with a couple of visible dips in particularly busy moments, but it was much more consistent on the whole which bodes well for the finished release.

Copy and paste

One of the biggest departures from the Link’s Awakening formula in Echoes of Wisdom is its protagonist, Princess Zelda. It’s the first time in the series that she’s taken a starring role, that is if you wisely choose to ignore the horrendous Phillips CD-i installments. It seems like a very positive direction for the franchise and, given the success of titles like Princess Peach: Showtime!, a Zelda game where you play as its titular character was well overdue. 

Playing as the princess doesn’t just mean a change in aesthetic either, as she feels like a very distinct hero and is bolstered by her own set of magical abilities. My demo opened with her imprisoned in the dungeons of Hyrule Castle, the kingdom thrown into chaos by the sudden appearance of sinister purple rifts that are swallowing its inhabitants. You’re soon introduced to Tri, a fairy-like creature that grants you a staff that can create echoes - identical copies of objects from the world around you.

Echoes are where the most obvious Tears of the Kingdom elements come in. There are a huge number of objects to add to your collection, any of which can be summoned at any given time. The world is your playground and many of the early puzzles that I encountered took full advantage of this fact. Patrolling guards may be distracted by a tossed summoned pot, while a tall cliff can be easily scaled if you stack boxes like a ladder.

There are some hilarious options to play around with too, like trampolines that bounce you at rapid speeds or giant roast meats that attract nearby monsters. You have a limited amount of Echo energy, which does restrict the number of objects that you can summon at one time, but I never felt frustrated by this limitation. Rather, it was a consistent joy to work around it and find a good solution given these constraints.

Chatting with some other participants from the demo session over lunch, I was also pleased to discover that each of us had tackled the puzzles in our own way. I was a big fan of the bed, which can be stacked like a plank to create bridges. It’s versatile and a brilliant way to navigate between elevated areas. Others favored tall potted plants, dropping them in gaps to form small platforms or even just a plain old crate. 

Catch em all

Creating echoes of objects is only one half of the story, though, as you can also cast echoes of defeated foes. Zelda does not have any conventional combat abilities at first, so you need to rely on small conjured armies of Zol, Moblins, and more to fight on your behalf. I primarily made use of the bat-like Keese, finding their dive-bomb attacks perfectly suited to dealing quick bursts of damage. 

Some enemies can even be used for more than just combat. Like Link’s Awakening, Echoes of Wisdom features a number of side-scrolling 2D platforming sections. Here, creating a spider could give you a handy strand of silk to climb. 

Towards the end of my demo, I was also able to try out Zelda’s Bind ability which is absolutely brimming with potential. Bind can be used to pick up any moveable object in the world, be that something you’ve found or that you’ve summoned. Holding the R Button inverts these mechanics, causing Zelda to move alongside the object that she is holding rather than control it. Binding to a moving platform above you and holding R, for example, will cause you to float along in its path underneath it. It sounds a little complicated on paper, but it’s highly intuitive in execution. 

This is definitely a good thing, as mastering Bind was fundamental for the completion of a couple of highly enjoyable puzzles, not to mention tracking down hidden chests.

The only part of the demo that I wasn’t overly thrilled with was the point at which Zelda unlocks her sword-fighting form. This sees her suddenly transform into a warrior who looks suspiciously like Link, with access to his iconic sword and shield. I was almost disappointed when it appeared, as I was definitely enjoying the departure from a more traditional The Legend of Zelda experience. Thankfully, your use of the ability is restricted as it is time-limited and relies on a special type of energy that you need to accumulate first.

This moment aside, I left the preview highly excited to discover what else lies in store when The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom launches for Nintendo Switch on September 26.

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An upcoming multiplayer mod for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that will let you play the open-world adventure with your buddies is due to release in only a few months' time.

The as-yet-unnamed Breath of the Wild mod was teased last year by speedrunner and YouTuber Eric ‘PointCrow’ Morino, who advertised a $10,000 payment to anyone who would develop the mod. They’ve now released a short snippet of the project in action, showing three playable Links running around The Great Plateau together.

In the accompanying Tweet, Morino said the mod will be “coming to my channels Summer 2022” – that’s anytime between June, July, and August, for those not in the Northern hemisphere.

A strange way of couching the release date, Morino clarified to Dexerto that the mod will first be shown off on their personal YouTube channel before being made available for free after they’ve “sufficiently made enough content surrounding it”. 

In their original pitch for the mod, Morino said they’d want one to two weeks of streaming exclusivity before its public release. So, you won’t be waiting too long to get your hands on it after it pops up on the PointCrow YouTube channel.

“It’s functional, runs at 28fps at least, and you can be anywhere in the game,” Morino told Dexerto. 

“The mod needs polishing on more niche things like Cryonis, rune support, quest syncing, etc,” they added.#

You can take a look at an early version of the mod below, courtesy of one of the creators, on their YouTube channel Alex Mangue.

Better with friends

Morino originally pitched the mod as a multiplayer overhaul that would allow several players to explore Breath of the Wild with no restraints, letting two players complete separate playthroughs simultaneously. They also specified the mod would be completely free and would operate through peer-to-peer networks, requiring no public servers.

Although the mod was first described as supporting 2-player multiplayer, three players can be seen wandering around together in the short video. The developers who picked up the project – who go by the modding handles Sweet and Alex Mangue – may have expanded upon the initial brief.

A separate video that Alex Mangue uploaded to their personal YouTube channel looks to show an early prototype of the mod in action. It contains everything you'd expect; three players traversing the open world, fighting enemies, and collecting secrets.

There’s no word yet as to whether the upcoming mod will run on Nintendo Switch or a PC emulator of the handheld console.

Notably, Morino also specified the mod must be finished two months before Breath of the Wild 2 (officially known as Tears of the Kingdom) is released. That certainly won’t be a problem now the sequel has been delayed to next year.

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A fan-made PC port of the classic Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has almost finished development and is expected to release by mid-February.

The fully functioning PC port comes from Harbour Masters, a group of community developers who say the game is approximately 90% complete (thanks, VGC). They expect to launch its first iteration by the middle of next month, before ironing out any creases for a full release in early April.

As well as bringing Ocarina of Time to PC, the project will let you play the game at multiple resolutions, including widescreen support, run at 60+ FPS, and include a scripting system that supports additional mods, opening the door to future texture packs and more assets.

“Currently all of the game logic runs pretty much flawlessly”, one of the project’s lead developers, Kenix, told VGC. “We have a few assets that aren’t packed correctly in the archive, most specifically skyboxes, and there are still a few graphical errors we are working through. Audio is also not yet decompiled.”

“I’d give it approximately 90%. We’ve been hoping to be complete by the middle of February and use a month or so until April 1st to refine the game before release. We’re hoping to have a public repository available in late February.”

To get around Nintendo’s lawyers, the developers have been careful not to use any of Ocarina of Time’s original, copyrighted assets or code. Instead, the game’s source code has been reverse-engineered and rebuilt from scratch to avoid replicating Nintendo’s property. The developers hope this will clear them from copyright infringement.

“We packed assets into an external archive”, one of the project’s lead developers, Kenix, told VGC. “No assets are linked into the [executable file]. Our belief is that this will prevent a DMCA takedown from Nintendo.”

Given this workaround, players will need to source Ocarina’s original assets themselves. That’ll involve ripping the assets from a ROM of the game and dumping them into the same directory as the PC port. 

The team isn’t stopping at Ocarina of Time, however. The Zelda Reverse Engineering Team, the group who first reverse-engineered the game’s code, is currently decompiling Majora's Mask, preparing it for Harbour Masters to port PC next.

Analysis: wait with bated breath

The developers of the port appear to have taken serious efforts to keep everything above board and avoid being slapped with a copyright infringement notice. But legal wranglings, especially over the copyright of video games, are never clear and the possibility remains that Nintendo won’t take kindly to the group’s efforts.

Take-Two, the parent company of Grand Theft Auto publisher Rockstar, last year announced it was suing a group of modders who decompiled Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City. That group reverse-engineered and rebuilt the games in a very similar way to how Harbour Masters are approaching Ocarina of Time.

Similarly, Nintendo has already shown they’re wary of community recreations of its classic titles. In 2020, the company took action against a fan-made PC port of Super Mario 64, citing its unlawful use of copyrighted material, assets, and fictional depictions. 

When it comes to Ocarina of Time, a dollop of hesitant optimism is probably best. If Harbour Masters can navigate the complex and onerous world of copyright infringements, they’ll bring what is widely considered not only one of the best Zelda games to PC, but one of the best video games of all time. Nintendo Switch players can grab it from the Nintendo store easily enough, but PC gamers have been left waiting for the past 24 years.

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New speculation is mounting that fan-favorites Zelda: Twilight Princess HD and Zelda: The Wind Waker HD are coming to Nintendo Switch later this year. 

While the February Nintendo Direct was surprisingly light on Zelda-flavored news – scroll down for what we did find out, in case you missed it – some are hinting that there's more to come for Zelda fans, including a tweet from an industry journalist who suggests that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess remasters are coming to Nintendo Switch in 2021. Both were previously remastered for the Wii U console, and a re-release on Switch has been long anticipated.  

"For those disappointed with the Skyward Sword remaster, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are 100% coming this year," tweeted journalist Andy Robinson after the latest Direct presentation. "So that's at least one good 3D Zelda."

2021 is the Zelda series' 35th anniversary, so we wouldn't be surprised to see more games revealed later in the year. 

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Tired of rumors? Here are some Zelda facts for you…

If you missed it, the Nintendo Direct didn’t have any news about Breath of the Wild 2 (Tears of the Kingdom), either, other than confirmation that an update on the game was coming later in 2021. 

But we did find out that a Wii-era game from the series is planned: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is headed to the Nintendo Switch on July 16, and you can preorder it now.

Nintendo also announced that Zelda would be gracing the Switch in other ways, with a new Joy-Con design. The right Joy-Con has a purple-ish hue modeled after the Master Sword, while the left is a true blue with red accents, following the classic Hylian Shield color scheme. You can pick them up from July 21.

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Grezzo, the developer behind The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on Nintendo Switch, is currently hiring a programmer and two designers for a new game project, which the company describes as being both “medieval” and “stylish.”

The developer is well known by Nintendo fans for its work on The Legend of Zelda series, having also developed the enhanced Nintendo 3DS ports of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask.

Grezzo shared a snippet of information regarding the game’s visual style, claiming it will have a stylish take on reality while mostly avoiding photorealism. The game’s name and platforms of release aren’t announced yet, but the Switch seems like a safe bet given the company’s history working with Nintendo.

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Switching it up

The hirings, initially spotted by Nintendo Everything, detail openings for a programmer, an effects designer and a UI designer. According to the job descriptions, the design brief of the game is not photorealistic, but rather putting a unique spin on "real elements".

It’s not overly clear what the final product will look like with a design goal like this, but it doesn’t sound dissimilar to what Grezzo managed to achieve with the remake of Link’s Awakening. 

That game featured a polished, shiny visual aesthetic that gave everything the look of an interactive diorama. Even the characters in the game somewhat resemble cute collectable dolls and figures.

It also brings to mind Fantasian, Mistwalker’s upcoming RPG, which has its environments scanned in from real 3D sculptures. If that’s anything to go by, then it sounds like Grezzo might be developing a real looker of a game.

While Grezzo made a name for itself working on The Legend of Zelda series, its back catalog extends beyond Nintendo’s revered franchise. It developed RPG and town management sim Ever Oasis in 2017, and also worked on the 3DS version of Luigi’s Mansion.

This new project sounds like it’s in safe hands, then, and we have a vague, but intriguing visual premise to look forward to learning more about in future.

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It appears that Nintendo has plans for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, the Wind Waker sequel and bestselling 2007 DS game, after registering a new trademark for the game in Australia but a few months ago. But could it mean we see the cel-shaded DS game come in some form to Nintendo Switch?

The news comes courtesy of @KeliosFR, who runs the French Pokemon fan site Pokekalos. Kelios posted a screenshot of the trademark to Twitter, showing that it was filed by Nintendo in mid-2020, and accepted in November – though it only went public in early February of this year (via Nintendo Life).

Phantom Hourglass was a bestseller on the original Nintendo DS handheld, following on from the story of the GameCube's Wind Waker to tell a high seas adventure of toon link conquering time itself – with the help of the eponymous hourglass – to defeat a great evil.

The use of touch controls were very innovative, making use of the DS's touchscreen and stylus to chart the paths of boomerangs, plan routes through dungeons, and etch runes for magical effects. The cowardly pirate (and Jack Sparrow lookalike) Captain Linebeck is a great comedic addition to the ensemble too.

It's definitely exciting to see the game get a new lease of life in some form, but what could it refer to?

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Phantom Hourglass: our predictions

Trademarks like this are intentionally broad, covering "Electronic game programs", DLC, and the like, and it's not clear what Nintendo might have in the pipeline.

Given that 2021 is the 35th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda franchise, though, it's certain that some big things are afoot – and Phantom Hourglass appears to be one of them.

We're expecting to see some remakes and remasters of previous Zelda games for the Nintendo Switch, as we saw with the 3D All Stars Collection for the Super Mario series last year. We could envisage some GameCube titles like Wind Waker (which got a Wii U port too) or Twilight Princess, but there's no reason why some of the best Zelda titles on Nintendo DS couldn't get a look-in too.

The Switch does feature a multi-capacitive touchscreen, so a re-tweaked Phantom Hourglass could feel right at home, whether it gets a slight graphical overhaul for the Switch's HD screen or something more of a remaster. It would be harder to imagine this working in the Switch's TV mode, though, given this would stick the touchscreen inside the Switch dock – but expecting fans to play a DS port in handheld mode doesn't seem like too much of an ask.

The best scenario is probably a packaged Phantom Hourglass + Spirit Tracks release, the latter being a spiritual (ha) successor that swaps boats out for trains, but retains the same art style and underlying mechanics. 

It's fitting that, whatever Nintendo has in mind for Phantom Hourglass, we're sure to see the company turn back the clock to revisit this and other classics from The Legend of Zelda's past.

Didn't play Phantom Hourglass on the Nintendo DS? Check out the trailer below:

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UPDATE: The original Amazon listing for a Skyward Sword port on Switch has been removed, unsurprisingly, after the leak was widely publicized and peered over by Zelda fans and gaming press. We don't know for sure whether the port listing was legitimate, but there's plenty of reason to think that it's happening – and in the next year, too. Read on for why we think that's the case.

A new Amazon listing for an upcoming Nintendo Switch game has us thanking the heavens – which is fitting, given that game is none other than The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

The 2011 instalment in the beloved Nintendo franchise launched originally on the Nintendo Wii, with a release on the Wii U eShop in 2016. It was the last mainline Zelda game before Breath of the Wild (2017) on the Nintendo Switch, and is well due a port for the expanded audience of Nintendo's bestselling hybrid console.

While there's been no official announcement of the port from Nintendo – and the listing itself has now been pulled from Amazon – the listing was clearly for Nintendo Switch and carried a slightly eyebrow-raising £69.99 RRP, while specifying that the title "has not yet been released".

What lends this further credence is the upcoming 35-year anniversary of the Legend of Zelda series, coming in 2021 – coincidentally also the 10-year anniversary of Skyward Sword's release.

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Don't hold your breath

While we suspect the listing was legitimate, there's no telling how early the information has leaked. As mentioned, 2021 is likely as the franchise's 35-year anniversary – and it may be that Nintendo is using Skyward Sword to tide over fans until Breath of the Wild 2 finally comes to the console.

The Breath of the Wild sequel was teased at E3 2019 with a mystifying trailer, one that possibly hinted at the return of Demise – the big bad in Skyward Sword, and the true evil force behind regular series villain Ganondorf.

It would be smart, then, to remind players of Demise in the series mythology – or, for those who didn't play Skyward Sword on Wii or Wii U, introduced them to Demise for the first time. It would be exciting to see elements from so many different past games appear in BOTW 2, with the trailer seeming to show off iconography from the Twili in Twilight Princess, while also presumably keeping a lot of BOTW's open word elements and characters – being a direct sequel and all.

BOTW 2 hasn't got any further reveals from Nintendo over the E3 2020 period, though, and it's likely the publisher is looking to E3 2021 to show the game off in more detail – possibly when press and fans can attend the event in person again.

Given how integral the Wii's motion controls were to Skyward Sword's combat, too, there's plenty of potential for the Joy-Con's capabilities to be shown off – you know, if they ever stop drifting. Either way, we wouldn't hold out on any announcement before 2020 is out.

Didn't play Skyward Sword on Wii or Wii U? Check out the HD trailer below:

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Hold onto your Minish Caps, Legend of Zelda fans: Nintendo has announced a medley of new features and items available in Super Mario Maker 2, one of which lets you don the green garb of the Hylian hero.

An incoming update for Super Mario Maker 2 lands on December 5, and includes a 'Master Sword' item that turns Mario into Link from the Legend of Zelda series.

The item is only available in the retro Super Mario Bros. Game Style, meaning you won't see any 3D Links running about – like, say, in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – but you do get to enjoy his 8-bit pixelated presence. And it's not just the Master Sword you get to play with, either.

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A press release from Nintendo stated: "After downloading the Ver. 2.0.0 update, the new Master Sword item will be available to use exclusively in the 8-bit Super Mario Bros. style. When this new course part is picked up, Mario will transform into Link, equipped with a new set of moves like attacking with a sword, shooting arrows and dropping bombs."

While the Zelda crossover is most notable part of the video, you can also see Mario making use of the other items being added below:

• Dash Block: Available in the Super Mario 3D World style, the Dash Block course part gives Mario a major speed burst when stepped on.
• Frozen Coin: These coins are surrounded by a block of ice and can only be released if melted by fireballs or other fire elements, including a certain angry sun.
• P Block: When a P Switch is hit in the course, invisible P Blocks temporarily turn into hard platforms, or vice-versa.
• Spike: This classic enemy coughs up massive spike balls and launches them at Mario. If used in the snow environment, Spike will toss snowballs instead!
• Pokey: The iconic stacked cactus from multiple Super Mario games joins Super Mario Maker 2 for the first time. Players can even edit the height of each Pokey.

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For those who never played the original, Link’s Awakening begins with our valiant hero Link being washed up on the shore of Koholint Island. Not knowing where he is or how he got there, it’s your job to guide Link to his escape. 

As you go through the isle's various dungeons, you find out the key to getting off the island involves waking up the Wind Fish. On your adventure you will come across mini-games and extra features dotted around the island which provide a break from the usual gameplay.

To bridge the gap between Breath of the Wild and Link’s Awakening there are a few features that more recent fans will find familiar. The autosave feature returns, along with menus bearing a striking resemblance to those of Breath of the Wild’s and the ability to eat apples off trees to gain hearts back. These are just a few we managed to spot. 

If you joined the series with the previous instalment, you’ll be glad to know that Nintendo has made this easy to pick up without changing anything too important from the original Link’s Awakening formula.

Nintendo does a fantastic job at keeping to the original Link’s Awakening on the Gameboy, with most items, characters and dungeons remaining the same. Using the original game as a blueprint, Nintendo really went all out in making sure every other detail was pristine, clean and polished. This makes the artstyle really steal the show.

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Now with moving parts

When it comes to Link’s Awakening on Switch, Nintendo went for a ‘toy-like’ aesthetic in its artstyle. Hearing the plastic-y sounding footsteps and the tap of hitting an enemy made us feel like we were Andy from Toy Story, playing with all his old friends.

Love it or hate it, the toy-like artstyle makes this an easy transition from the original 8-bit game to a current generation title. We struggle to think of any other way to get all the details of a small Gameboy screen onto current TVs.

Link is so expressive in his animation and vocals, we had him take damage, drown, jump off cliffs and even get electrocuted just because the animation was so adorable. Sorry, Link. Characters constantly break the fourth wall to explain controls only for them to explain it is something they heard once and have no idea what it means, lending well to the atmosphere the creators are provoking. 

The music is, of course, an orchestrated update to the bleeps and bloops of the Gameboy original. What we didn't expect was hearing said bleeps and bloops scattered around the many different levels in its soundtrack - reminding players of the game’s origins - with Animal Village being a stand out tune for us. This game is clearly more on the silly side than the likes of Twilight Princess.

With the nature of this game being so light-hearted and nonchalant, it makes dropping in and out of gameplay fairly easy. Telephone Booths are dotted around the island and provide clues to where your path should take you next, along with Memories, which is a feature to replay important text from the Owl that aids you throughout the game. 

This doesn’t mean to say that the puzzles within dungeons are a walk in the park. Older games can often be much less forgiving in general and Link’s Awakening has that great balance of intricate puzzles along with its easy ‘pick up and play’ nature. No in-depth Hyrulian lore, no outbreak of war over thousands of years: just Link on an island trying to escape. This makes the game perfect to come back to, on those rainy days or if you ever find yourself washed up on a beach. 

Don't tri-force it

Link’s Awakening really does make you feel immersed in Koholint but sometimes the island is just a little too overpopulated and the Switch struggles to perform well. The frame rate then drops and reminds you as much as the artstyle is archaic and toy-like, so are the internals of a Switch.

A new addition to the game (since Link’s Awakening DX) is Chamber Arranging. Think of it as the Mario Maker for Zelda dungeons, but not as good. Nintendo teases us with the possibility of freely creating dungeons, sharing them online and experiencing other player creations, however this is not the case. You can only slot chambers together that you have already played. So you increase your roster of available rooms by playing through dungeons in the story. 

To then share your dungeons with friends you must save them onto amiibo and then tap onto other Switches. It’s a flawed, backwards way of doing something that could have intrigued fans, but it does suggest there could be a fully fledged Mario Maker style Zelda in the future.

Da da da daaaaa!

Similar to the movie The Sixth Sense, there is a big twist at the end of Link’s Awakening. We went in knowing this already and there are nods to said secret which makes playing the game all the more interesting and personal. 

Link’s Awakening originally came out 26 years ago, so you’ve done well to avoid this spoiler until now - if you have. Don’t worry, we don’t plan on spoiling it for you now. However the game does heavily hint at the truth so eagle-eyed players may be expecting it.

Link’s Awakening’s story is not typical of a Zelda game. As we mentioned earlier, this time there is no Hyrule, no Ganondorf, and ironically no Zelda. It truly is Link’s Awakening, and this makes exploring the whole island with all its inhabitants much more personal. With this entry in the Zelda series, Nintendo seem to be putting emphasis on the happy-go-lucky, cheerful nature of Koholint island and this makes the few cutscenes and deep moments in the game all that more thought-provoking and melancholy.

If you’re doubting the credibility of a top-down Zelda title, or how hard a 2D dungeon can be, then you’re in for a shock. Although the dungeons don’t feel too distinctive from eachother in design and structure, they stay unique in their puzzles and enemy types. 

Puzzles usually require you to figure out which of your many weapons to use and keeps you on your toes and constantly thinking of ways to surpass each and every room. Enemies make you stop and think about the correct way to tackle each encounter and make for some hectic situations. As you come to learn enemy patterns, you will speed through hordes of erratic foes which really make you feel accomplished and like a cute little toy bad-ass. Combine the two and it makes for a varied and tense experience.

Verdict

The few flaws Link’s Awakening suffers from are so miniature (pun intended) that they aren’t enough to take away from the impact the game had on us. 

The core gameplay of a Zelda title is all here. This, combined with a new coat of paint and charming demeanor, tips it over the edge and makes this not just a remake but a re-imagining. It took us to another world and then ripped us right out of it just as quick, and left us thinking about it much after the sun set on Koholint Island. 

• Best Nintendo Switch games 2019: the most essential Switch games right now

• Check out our review of the SNES Classic Mini for a complete rundown of the console's features. 

If you're looking to play the best SNES games, the SNES Classic Edition is the best place to start. Not only will you find the best games from the '90s on there, but you'll find they're exactly as you remember them - they're perfect emulations of the original games. (We're looking in your direction, PlayStation Classic...)

But with so many iconic games on Nintendo's classic console it can be hard knowing where to start first. If you've gone ahead and added the entire library of classics by modding the console - not something we advocate for but something that does happen - the choice becomes even harder. 

Practically each and every title included on the system can rightly be regarded as a solid-gold classic, and ranking them has involved some serious hair splitting. 

But, in the end, we think we've been able to decide on the best SNES games - or at least, the best SNES games available on the SNES Classic - and have ranked them here from worst to best. 

Kirby's games struggled to find a truly receptive audience outside of Japan until very recently, and the odd combination of cute platforming and golf that's on display here makes Kirby's Dream Course a bizarre inclusion on the SNES Classic; the gameplay is fun but there are plenty of better games that could have be featured instead of this – Super Tennis is the one we're most aggrieved about not seeing. 

Not a terrible game by any means, but Nintendo could have done better.

The comical sequel to the original Punch-Out!! might lack Mike Tyson's beaming mug – he was included in the initial NES version before being replaced by "Mr. Dream" – but it's a better game overall thanks to deeper gameplay and large, appealing pugilists. 

The big issue is that it's too easy to memorise the tactics required to defeat each opponent, and this severely curtails the game's long-term appeal.

Capcom's side-scrolling action platformer is still as tough as old boots, with pixel-perfect precision required to overcome its grim fantasy levels. As an early release on the system it dazzled players with colourful and detailed graphics, but the crippling slowdown which occurs at busy moments is hard to stomach, especially in 2017. Still a classic, but one which has perhaps aged less gracefully than others.

Street Fighter II owes much of its enduring success to the million-selling ports which graced the SNES, with Turbo being the second to hit store shelves. 

With 12 playable characters (including the four bosses this time around) and a mirror-mode which lets both players select the same fighter and a much-needed speed boost, it remains irresistibly playable, especially if you can convince a fellow carbon-based lifeform to play. 

That said, we've put the game slightly lower down our list simply because superior versions of the game exist.

Something of a superstar on the 8-bit NES, Mega Man – or Rockman as he's known in Japan – appeared in several eye-catching 16-bit adventures. Mega Man X was the first and, some would argue, the best. It arguably struck the perfect balance between technical wizardry and compelling platforming action.

Nintendo's first Mode 7 racer may lack the embellishments of its more technically advanced sequels F-Zero X and F-Zero GX, but it's arguably the most accessible and instantly enjoyable entry in the series. The colourful presentation, tight controls and challenging courses make for a purebred speedfest which hasn't aged one bit; only the lack of a two-player mode holds it back.

Released for the first time ever on the SNES Classic, Star Fox 2 is perhaps the game many owners of the new system will boot up first. It's a fascinating illustration of how to evolve a gameplay concept, and jettisons the linear structure of the first game in favour of a more open, randomised set-up, with each gameplay session differing greatly from the last. The only negative is that things can sometimes feel a little loose and lacking in coherence.

Rare's pioneering use of pre-rendered characters caused jaws to drop all over the world when Donkey Kong Country made its debut in 1994, and while the game owes a massive debt to Super Mario, it's polished and entertaining enough to stand on its own as one of the best 16-bit platformers ever made. 

David Wise's groundbreaking soundtrack is the cherry on the top; how he made a non-CD system produce tunes of this quality is beyond human comprehension.

Known as Kirby's Fun Pak in Europe, this is a surprisingly robust collection of seven games, some of which have more depth than you might imagine. There are plenty of homages to other classic Nintendo games to be found, and because this was released quite late in the life of the SNES, it boasts some truly impressive, cartoon-like visuals. 

It's hard to believe that this was one of Konami's earliest SNES outings; with its incredible visuals, stirring soundtrack and impressive Mode 7 bonus levels, Contra III is rightly regarded as one of the finest run-and-gun blasters available. The two-player mode means you can bring a friend along for the ride, too.

Back in 1993, this was utterly groundbreaking stuff. The first SNES game to feature the assistance of the Super FX chip, Star Fox delivered cutting-edge 3D visuals in your living room. Ironically, the simplistic, unshaded polygon graphics lend the game a timeless quality, while the thrilling gameplay and superb music keep you glued to your controller.

Never released in the UK, this Squaresoft-developed RPG epic came late in the lifespan of the SNES and adopted the then-commonplace "CGI" look for its visuals – a fact which has perhaps caused it to age faster than other 16-bit examples of the genre. However, the game combines the best elements of Final Fantasy's turn-based combat system with action-based commands that make battles feel more exciting and skill-focused.

The gothic platformer starts off slow but soon develops into one of the best entries in Konami's long-running vampire-hunting series. Notable for its excellent use of Mode 7 sprite scaling and rotation, it's also famous for its beautiful soundtrack – another demonstration of just how adept the Sony-made sound chip inside the SNES really is.

Known as Final Fantasy III in the US only – it's actually Final Fantasy VI in the true chronology of the series – this is regarded by many as one of the finest JRPGs ever made, and with good reason. As well as possessing the usual gripping and addictive gameplay the franchise is famous for, this stellar outing also includes some of the most memorable characters to ever feature in a role-playing adventure, and packs a dramatic storyline to boot.

The second title in the Mother series of RPGs, EarthBound isn't like any other role-playing adventure you've seen. Set in modern times, it replaces dragons and orcs with bizarre aliens and its heroes are ordinary school kids who find themselves wrapped up in a fierce conflict which puts the fate of the world in the balance. Boasting an iconic soundtrack, humorous script and moving storyline, EarthBound is a true classic – despite not having seen release in the UK during the SNES' lifespan.

While it lacks the massive, non-linear structure of Super Mario World, this sequel harnesses the power of the Super FX chip to create some of the most eye-catching visual trickery ever achieved on the SNES. Instead of controlling Mario you're in charge of Yoshi, who can float in mid-air and hurl eggs at enemies. With a fresh gameplay idea on almost every each level, this is Shigeru Miyamoto at his most inventive and playful.

Arguably one of the most influential video games of all time, Super Metroid is the title responsible for laying down the "Metroidvania" blueprint so skillfully adopted by modern titles, such as the superb Axiom Verge. Konami's 1997 adventure Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is also credited with popularising this style of game, but it's Nintendo's SNES epic which should get the lion's share of the credit. Exploring a massive alien world packed with hidden passageways, new weapons and bloodthirsty enemies has rarely been this entertaining; this year's Metroid: Samus Returns on 3DS continues this fine tradition.

The game that started it all. Now a quarter of a century old, Super Mario Kart has to rank as one of the most influential titles in gaming; it created a whole new racing sub-genre and established a series which – at the time of writing – has sold over 100 million copies worldwide. And you know what? The 1992 original is still playable as its sequels, especially when there are two people involved. Don't forget that battle mode, too.

Recently confirmed for the reboot treatment by Square Enix, Secret of Mana – or Seiken Densetsu 2, as it's known in Japan – is comfortably one of the most iconic JRPGs in existence. It got pretty much everything right back in 1993; engaging real-time combat, sumptuous visuals, gorgeous music and – perhaps most important of all – a gripping storyline populated with memorable characters.

The best platformer ever made? We personally don't feel there's any room for debate here; Super Mario World is nothing short of a masterpiece; a finely-tuned 2D epic spanning a massive, non-linear game world which is literally bursting with new ideas. Finishing every single stage takes days if not weeks of effort, and the controls are tight and joyfully precise. And to think this was one of the first games released on the SNES – remarkable.

Here it is – the big one. While subsequent Zelda adventures have expanded the scope of the series, A Link to the Past remains the best instalment for many fans. It's the benchmark many RPGs attempted to emulate in the decades that have passed since its launch; Nintendo's game managed to combine real-time combat, challenging boss battles, head-scratching puzzles and a seemingly never-ending overworld – all done on a humble 16-bit console. A true classic.

A new update hit the Nintendo Switch this week, bringing in a number of tweaks to the console’s software. The main one being VR support for two of the Switch’s biggest titles – Super Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

And it may be the single worst experience you can have on the Nintendo Switch.

I was surprised, as I’d been testing out the VR goggles from the Nintendo Labo VR Kit, and was generally impressed by what Nintendo had done with their crafting-based take on a VR headset. 

• Nintendo Labo VR Kit is much more than a gimmick
• Nintendo Labo review
• Nintendo Switch review

The Switch doesn’t have a very high resolution for a VR-ready console (given that its 1,280 x 720 pixels are split in half for each eye) and the Labo VR Kit largely worked around this by sticking to simple, low-res shapes and textures, and generally keeping your first-person view locked into place, to prevent excessive motion sickness.

However, as I loaded up BOTW from my last save, it was clear the same care had not been carried over. I materialised at one of the game’s many Sheikah towers, jumping off in the paraglider to survey the game’s breathtaking mountain ranges. But while BOTW does a great job with its 1280 x 720 resolution, it wasn’t designed for anything less, and the fuzzy VR mode is painful to watch after hours spent in the game’s beautiful scenery.

BOTW is a very vertical game, and generally requires you to jump, climb and glide constantly to navigate its broad terrain. Even when on level ground, Link is having to dart between enemies, backflip to avoid attacks, and jump around all sorts of obstacles with a quickly moving camera. 

Doing any of that in low-res VR is really asking for trouble, and I only managed about six minutes of play (fighting off two Moblins and finding a Korok seed) before having to lie down from the nausea.

The VR mode also doesn't take the new view into account for Link's HUD, meaning you can barely see your number of hearts in the corner of the screen. Only about half the text is visible on loading screens too.

There’s a huge disjunct with the Labo VR Kit’s VR games, which only last a few minutes and frequently remind you to take breaks out of concern for your health. 

BOTW is not a game to be played minutes at a time, and the flow of the game is absolutely crippled by its half-baked VR mode, which feels incredibly short-sighted given how obvious the problems should have been in play-testing. The whole thing feels like a poorly-guised gamble for headlines.

Falling off the bandwagon

A lot of big-name video game franchises have jumped on the VR bandwagon recently: we got afallout last year, while Bethesda has led the charge with full VR ports of both Doom and Fallout 4. Valve is also planning a big-name franchise VR game for its new Index VR headset.

But a VR port worth a consumer’s time or money is hard work, and requires more than flipping a switch into split-screen mode, with no thought for the actual play experience. While the early nature of VR should be considered, one of the world’s biggest video game publishers should really have known better than to let this get past R&D.

We're hoping we don't see the same misstep with Breath of the Wild 2, unless that new Nintendo Switch console we keep hearing about manages to really up the resolution per eye. Either way, we'll be wary of big VR tie-ins from Nintendo in the future.

• The best Nintendo Switch games (that won't make you feel ill)

For subscribers of Nintendo’s Switch Online service, the platform allows for online multiplayer as well as offering a capable emulator of the gaming company’s debut console – the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System).

Eagle-eyed Twitter user Kapu has spotted some clues hidden within Nintendo Switch Online’s coding that lists 22 SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) titles that Kapu expects will be arriving with the service, joining the existing 20 NES games already on offer. 

The list is full of classic titles such as Super Mario Kart, Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, Yoshi’s Island, Star Fox, F-ZERO, Super Metroid and more, and if it proves accurate, will help boost the value of the Online service considerably.

• Best Nintendo Switch Online Games: 11 best online games for co-op and versus multiplayer

• Super Mario Kart
• Super Soccer
• Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
• Demon's Crest
• Yoshi's island
• Stunt Race FX
• Kirby's Dream Course
• Pop'n Twinbee
• Star Fox
• Contra 3
• Kirby Super Star
• Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
• Kirby's Dream Land 3
• Super Metroid
• Super Mario World
• Pilotwings
• F-ZERO
• Star Fox 2
• Super Punch-Out
• The Legend of the Mystical Ninja
• Super Mario All-Stars
• Breath of Fire 2

Obviously we don’t know if this list is accurate, let alone when these games will actually arrive on the service, or if they will at all, but the promise of having both a NES and SNES library on the portable Nintendo Switch is certainly alluring. 

While the NES emulator arrived with all 20 titles playable at launch, Nintendo may well take a different approach with these SNES games, releasing them sequentially over a period of weeks or months.

Either way, we’ll have to wait and see what Nintendo has in store for us with its revival of the SNES and its games, but in the meantime, be sure to check out our list of the best online Nintendo Switch titles. 

• Nintendo Switch Online: the paid service for NES games, cloud saves, and online multiplayer

As we reported in May, 2017, Nintendo has been aiming to bring Legend of Zelda to the mobile gaming sphere, and we even had some delightful speculation as to what that could mean. 

Some further evidence of a potential Zelda mobile title – as well as a Donkey Kong game – has surfaced via Destructoid in the form of a pair of trademark filings. Specifically, Japanese Nintendo has trademarked the phrases “Spirit Tracks” and “Mario vs Donkey Kong”.

While trademark filings aren’t hard evidence of an impending mobile release, they were filed under the category of “program for home video game machine, downloadable video game program, and program for smartphones”, which bodes well.

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We have seen some console games in recent years launch with companion apps for mobile, so it may be a case of one, or both, of these titles landing in some way on the Nintendo Switch or 3DS systems and receiving such an app.

In fact, it could result in any combination of releases on Nintendo’s current systems, as the category in which it’s filed under is broad enough to avoid specifics, but here’s to hoping we’ll get some more mobile action from Nintendo.

Spirit Tracks was a Legend of Zelda title that released on the Nintendo DS and heavily relied on the use of its stylus as an input device – re-arranging puzzles, wielding special weapons, and so on – all of which could be mechanics that translate well to the touchscreen interface of a smartphone.

Similarly, the Mario vs Donkey Kong series largely revolves around puzzles and platforming and could well be remade for mobile. While this would be the mobile debut for Donkey Kong, Mario has already made quite the splash with Super Mario Run.

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With The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, Nintendo opened up Hyrule and made one of the most sprawling and open Zelda games we’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. It was a significant step in the direction of making Zelda a fully-fledged open world RPG and judging from sales and review scores, this is a move fans seem to love. It’d make no sense, then, to scale right back and release a Zelda mobile game, right? 

Well, maybe not. According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, A Legend of Zelda mobile game could very well be saddling up and heading to smartphones at the start of 2018. 

So far, though they’ve not been utter flops, Nintendo’s mobile games haven’t had the greatest success in terms of generating money. But Nintendo is undoubtedly hoping that the recent rush of love for the Nintendo franchise on Switch will spill over into mobile. If there’s one thing we learned from the 1, 2 Switch mini games it’s that Nintendo is not averse to milking. 

At the moment, very little is known about the game. We don’t know whether it will take the free-to-play approach of Fire Emblem Heroes or follow the larger one off charge route of Super Mario Run. It’d be easier to guess which monetization path made sense if we knew any plans with regards to gameplay but, well, that’s a bit of a mystery too. 

One benefit to this dearth of details, though, is that it leaves us open to hope and speculate about what we’d like Zelda on mobile to look like because, if it has to happen, we might as well look on the bright side. 

There are so many ways Nintendo could approach Zelda on mobile – it’s safe to say we’re not likely to see a direct Breath of the Wild port. But Fire Emblem Heroes proved there are ways to keep the core elements of a big game without stripping it back too much. Then again, Super Mario Run proved that stripping a game right back to its most simple form isn’t necessarily a bad approach either. 

So, what could Nintendo do? Well, here are some ideas.

Puzzle game

The Zelda franchise is known for its dungeon-based exploration puzzles, and block brain teasers puzzles in particular have traditionally featured heavily. This element of Zelda’s gameplay would actually translate very easily to mobile and has the potential to work extremely well. We’re imagining something along the lines of fun mobile title Ittle Dew wherein you explore various dungeons, solving block-pushing puzzles to find items that will help you solve future, more complex puzzles and defeat enemies.

With this kind of game Nintendo would be more than able to do the one-off charge with no need for microtransactions. 

Cooking game

One of the most unexpectedly popular parts of Breath of the Wild has been cooking and a mobile game would be the perfect way for Nintendo to explore this further. Players could find, prepare and experiment with ingredients in what we’re imagining as some kind of cross between Cooking Mama and Fruit Ninja. 

Perhaps we’re reaching here, but as well as making the game stand alone, Nintendo could also perhaps create a way for players to transfer their culinary creations into their Breath of the Wild play.

Here there are opportunities for a free-to-play structure where microtransactions take the form of cooking aids or extremely rare ingredients. 

NES throwback

Following the success of the mini NES, it’s safe to say that fans are still interested in its games and their aesthetic. In fact, throwbacks and nostalgia are incredibly popular not just in gaming right now, but in mobile phones and cinema too. 

Combine the demand for the mini NES now that it’s no longer on sale with the Zelda love generated by Breath of the Wild and we’d say you have a recipe for a highly successful mobile game. 

The top-down view with relatively simplistic graphics and gameplay could translate well to mobile screens and controls could easily be a simple swipe-to-slash affair. 

With each dungeon as a level, there’s potential here to follow the Super Mario Run route of monetisation by making one dungeon level free to play before charging more to unlock the rest of the game. Or it could also be a free-to-play title where weapon and item improvements could be purchased separately. 

DS-inspired multiplayer

Our initial reaction to the idea of a mobile Zelda game was “touch screen Zelda? Get out of here!” But actually it’s worth remembering that we’ve already seen a couple of touch screen titles such as Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS. These games really creatively used the DS touchscreen for combat and puzzle solving and we could absolutely see them being a hit on mobile.

Thinking about this also made us wonder if this could be Nintendo’s chance to create a great multiplayer title for mobile by drawing on elements of games like Phantom Hourglass and Tri-Force Heroes where players could join up online and work together to solve puzzles or battle against one another in Coliseum matches. 

Got some ideas of your own for a mobile Zelda game? We’d love to hear them so let us know at gaming@techradar.com

• Not willing to wait for Zelda? Here are some more great mobile games

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the biggest and most open Zelda game to date and to make it slightly easier to navigate this sandbox Hyrule, fans have created an interactive Google-style map.

A collaborative community effort of the Zelda Universe fan site, the map is an impressive feat but it’s also stuffed to the brim with spoilers for anyone that’s not completed the game. If you’d rather find everything in the game yourself we’d suggest not looking at this just yet. 

It's not everyone, however, that has the time to find everything, so if you need some guidance this is a useful place to go. 

High over Hyrule

Similar to Google Maps, this click-and-drag map of Hyrule marks out significant locations which include weapons and equipment, side quests, shrines, collectibles and enemies. 

Each point of interest on the map is color coded to make it easy to find what you’re looking for or what may be around you at a glance. 

The map is only in the early stages of its development but it’s already extremely useful and its creators are inviting everyone to pitch in via a Google form with things they’ve found that haven’t been added.  

The development team hope that eventually they’ll be able to chronicle every single location of interest from the game and transform the eagle-eye map into one with more Google Street View capabilities to allow users an even closer look. 

• Don't forget to check out our tips and tricks for Breath of the Wild for more adventuring advice!

Getting a new games console is an exciting experience, but it can also be an expensive one. As well as having to spend your hard-earned money buying a new system, you'll probably need to fork out for various accessories if you want to get the most out of it.

Then there are the games, which are often pricey for a system that’s only just hit the shelves. Thankfully, Amazon has been offering some pretty steep discounts on the hottest upcoming Nintendo Switch games to Prime members, which is great if you’re looking to cheaply build up a library of new games.

Check out our guide to our top picks of the new game discounts. 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

By far the biggest title in Nintendo’s launch line up, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is being priced by the majority of retailers at around $59.99/£59.99. Amazon, however, is using the pre-order period to undercut the competition and you can find the game there for a still expensive though much more reasonable $47.99/£49.99. For US customers this price is only available for Amazon Prime members, though it's open to everyone in the UK. UK Prime members will, however, save an additional £2 bringing the title down to £47.99. 

See this deal: at Amazon US or at Amazon UK

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

A new Nintendo console always means the purchase of a new Mario Kart game. It’s a social gaming must-have. While most retailers are pricing Mario Kart 8 at $59.99/£49.99, Amazon is sliding into first place in our hearts with a price of $47.99/£44.99 for its Prime members.  For US customers this price is only available for Amazon Prime members, though it's open to everyone in the UK. UK Prime members will, however, save an additional £2 bringing the title down to £42.99.  

See this deal: at Amazon US or at Amazon UK

1-2 Switch

1-2 Switch is the cheapest game in the Nintendo Switch launch line up, but it’s still retailing at the fairly high price of $49.99/£39.99 most places. Not at Amazon, though. The trusty electronics retailer has given the game's pricing the ol’ 1-2 down to a slightly more reasonable $39.99/£34.99. For US customers this price is only available for Amazon Prime members, though it's open to everyone in the UK. UK Prime members will, however, save an additional £2 bringing the title down to £32.99.  

See this deal: at Amazon US or at Amazon UK

Even more games! 

While those three games are the highlights of the launch line-up, Amazon US is offering plenty of discounts to the games coming down the road, too. 

Starting today you can find Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch at a discounted $47.99, the multiplayer brawler Arms for $47.99, Splatoon 2 on the Switch for $47.99, Xenoblade 2 on the Switch for $47.99, Fire Emblem Warriors for $47.99, Skyrim - Switch Edition for $47.99, The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth for $31.99,  FIFA for $47.99, Minecraft on Switch for $47.99, Dragonball for $47.99, Skylanders Imaginators for $47.99 and Just Dance 2017 for, you guessed it, $47.99.

These are the only titles in the Nintendo Switch launch line up that Amazon is offering noticeably cheaper than anywhere else, but if any more discounts appear in the run up to the console’s launch we’ll update here. 

Nintendo wasn’t 100% clear on the differences between the two versions of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the next iteration of the world’s most well-known franchise coming to Nintendo Switch and Wii U.

We knew the experience would be comparable between the two consoles but, as it turns out, there’s going to be one major change. Well, OK, 180 changes.

Nintendo told IGN today that the Wii U version of the game would only be able to run at a 720p resolution while the Switch version, when docked, will be able to do 900p. Obviously 900p isn’t as good as full 1080p but considering that PS4 and Xbox One often suffer from the same problem, there’s no reason to work yourself up too much about it. 

Both versions of the game will run at 30 frames per second (boo!) but the Switch version will benefit from higher quality environmental sounds – i.e. You might actually be able to hear the aforementioned breath of the wild on the Switch version of the game. 

In all seriousness, though, the improved ambient sound will improve the overall immersiveness of the game, and is therefore the recommended route to take.

You call it Deku, I call it Deeku

While the resolution and audio details were the two larger discrepancies between the two versions of the game, Nintendo mentioned a few other small differences you’re likely to notice if you play the two side-by-side. 

According to the source, “Some icons, such as onscreen buttons, differ between the two versions” and the “Special Edition and Master Edition of the Wii U version are not available.” 

That’s kind of disappointing for fans of the series looking to own the collector’s edition, but it’s understandable that Nintendo doesn’t want to overproduce something that may not sell. 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will launch on both systems March 3, 2017.

• 15 facts from the Nintendo Switch presentation you need to know

There’s no limit to what people will attempt to 3D print. Cars? Check. Drones? Check. A one-handed bottle opener? Check. 

Now someone has found one of the most perfect pieces of videogame history to 3D print. 

The object in question is a 3D recreation of the map from the original Legend of Zelda on the NES, and the creator looks like he’s absolutely nailed the retro game’s pixel-based art-style. 

To printing via Minecraft

The map itself was initially created in Minecraft over the course of six months. It’s not surprising it took this long, as the high resolution images below show some great little touches, like the graveyard you originally find the master sword in.

The model's size and detail meant the 3D printed process took a massive 24 hours, before another six hours were spent painting it.

It’s hard to argue the results weren’t worth it though. Check out Mike Matei’s tweets below for some high-resolution images.

• The original game is available on the NES Mini if seeing this map has made you want to revisit it. Check out our full NES Mini review.

Last night saw one of the biggest international awards for video games take place in Los Angeles. 

Called, appropriately enough, The Game Awards, the night sought to shine a light on some of the fantastic games released this year.

Winners ranged from Overwatch (which took home the award for overall game of the year) all the way through to That Dragon, Cancer, which won the ‘Games for Impact’ award. 

Exclusive trailers

But some of the best moments of the night came from the game trailers that were premiered, and we’ve collected our pick of the best below for your viewing pleasure. 

First up is a trailer for Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima’s first post-Konami game Death Stranding. Talk of the game has been quiet since it was announced at Sony’s conference at this year’s E3. 

This lack of information hasn’t quite changed with the release of the new trailer, which frankly raises more questions than it answers with its skull-faced soldiers and the repeated appearances of a creepy children’s doll. 

We also saw new footage from the new Legend of Zelda game, Breath of the Wild, which revealed the game’s jungle area. 

It was a cool trailer, but if we’re honest we’re ready for the game to come out at this point after Nintendo showed off so much at E3 earlier this year. 

Our final pick of the best trailers shown off last night has to go to Mass Effect: Andromeda, which showed off its gameplay for the first time. 

It looks like more of the same Mass Effect that we know and love (which is no bad thing), although some of the new environments shown off bring to mind the likes of a sci-fi universe such as Firefly, rather than the Star Trek-style environments favored by the series thus far. 

• Check out the best Xbox One games and the best PS4 games

It seems that Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild development team has taken some sage-like advice from Creative Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto’s book, as they're rumored to be delaying the launch of their upcoming game until several months into the new year. (Miyamoto, remember, was the one who said “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”)

The sources of these rumors are Nintendo insiders who originally spoke to Emily Rogers, telling her that the Breath of the Wild was “more work” than originally anticipated. Since Rogers’ initial report, Eurogamer has corroborated that rumor with sources of its own, as has another member of the media, Laura Kate Dale.

In both instances, sources have said they expect the game to be finished in December, but state that the new launch date will be sometime much later in 2017, after the game has undergone extensive QA testing.

Breath of the Wild, which was originally shown off as a tech demo during E3 2015, resurfaced at E3 2016 this year with a playable demo, and was then shown off again during the debut trailer for the Nintendo Switch. 

Many gamers (myself included) had assumed that Nintendo chose to show off Zelda with the debut trailer because it had plans to either bundle the two together when the console launches in March of next year or, at the very least, sell the game alongside the console.

It appears now that both scenarios are unlikely to happen.

But hey, at least we’re still getting a new 3D Mario game, right? Nintendo? Please…

• Opinion: Nintendo is making the same mistakes with the Switch as it did with the Wii U

Let me make something clear right off the bat. I love The Legend of Zelda, and I couldn't be more excited about its new Wii U entry, Breath of the Wild. It looks like a solid addition to the series which balances maintaining its traditional feel while bringing in some significant, and welcome, changes.

But in order to take in the new Zelda in its entirety, Nintendo expected people to sit and watch a dedicated stream of the game which went on for a mammoth five hours.

When compared to Sony's ten minute demonstration of Days Gone, which still managed to show off many of the game's biggest features, Nintendo's showing looks needlessly bloated

Depth, not just headline features

Nintendo's intention with the move appears to have been to give people as much information and gameplay as possible directly from them rather than having to rely on journalists playing its games and then reporting this fuller information to their own audiences.

In comparison, Sony showed off just a five minute trailer of Resident Evil 7 at its press conference and then had to rely on journalists playing the game on the show floor to deliver more in-depth impressions.

This way Nintendo can deliver more coverage directly to its fans.

There are undoubtedly advantages to this kind of E3 showing, but it's hard not to miss the traditional press conference with its ability to introduce you to new games that you would never bother to watch a live stream of.

Press conferences are also great at condensing a game's headline features into a short five minutes. The new God of War? Kratos has a son and it looks like a much more cinematic game. FIFA 17? There's a story mode and dynamic weather.

But sit me down and ask me what the headline feature is of the new Legend of Zelda and I'd be hard pushed to tell you. I know from watching the livestream that you can gather fruit and cook them together into potions. I know that Link can jump and climb and cut down trees.

What I don't know is what the most important new features in the new game are. I don't know whether cutting down trees is a crucial mechanic, because it was a feature that was discussed for five minutes in a livestream that lasted five hours.

Most importantly I don't know how these mechanics fit together. I saw Link cut down a tree to make firewood, but then I had to wait half an hour to actually see him turn that same firewood into a campfire and make use of it.

If Nintendo had needed to fit its demonstration into a press conference we would have seen a much more condensed mini-story. Link would have cut down the tree and immediately set to work building a campfire to show off the potion alchemy on.

It's these smaller stories of how mechanics fit together that you miss when the presentation is as long as Nintendo's was this year. You don't get these end to end stories of a game's features, they're just too spread out.

Quantity over quality

Again, I can absolutely see the advantages of the massive live stream. If you want to learn literally everything there is to know about the new Zelda then Nintendo has been great at providing a one-stop shop for all the information you could possibly need.

But there's value in editing information down, value in limiting your message to the top things people need to know. Press conferences force companies to do just that, they force them to pick their biggest games and show their highlights.

And I'm sad to see Nintendo leave that kind of E3 behind them.

• Here's what we've learned about the new Zelda at this year's E3