At Space World 2000, Nintendo’s show in Tokyo, a short demonstration for the new GameCube showed an older, realistic Link fighting Ganon with a sword. Fans took it as a promise of a darker Zelda. A year later, at Space World 2001, Shigeru Miyamoto showed the real game, and Link was a wide-eyed cartoon boy. Computer and Video Games reported that when a single leaked screenshot appeared, “the entire videogaming world erupted” and some fans “decided to write off GameCube completely”. The game that came out of the argument, The Wind Waker, flooded the kingdom of Hyrule, put Link in a sailboat and gave him a baton that commands the wind.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Nintendo, from its EAD division
- Director: Eiji Aonuma; producers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka
- Format: GameCube
- Released: Japan, 13 December 2002; North America, March 2003, at $50; Europe, May 2003
- Look: cel-shaded, or toon-shaded, 3D graphics drawn to look like animation (see cel-shading)
- Remake: The Wind Waker HD for the Wii U, 2013
The reveal
Edge was in the hall at Tokyo Big Sight for Nintendo’s press conference on 23 August 2001. Before he showed the Zelda footage, Miyamoto asked the press not to photograph it. Then “came the shock of Link”, with “cel-shaded polys and a stylisation harking back to ’50s Disney”, and it “initially stunned attendees. A few half-hearted cheers went up, but the usually boisterous US correspondents looked on bemused.” A caption in the same report summed up the reaction: “The American’s didn’t like it. Everyone else did.”
Miyamoto explained the change in terms of the character. “I started to feel strange making Link like an adult,” he said. “Link was growing up and I wanted to return him to a childlike state.” He told Computer and Video Games that as the team added “more polygons and detail to Link as an adult”, he “just started to dislike him. There was less emotional connection for me. So I changed it.”
Aonuma, who directed the game, later gave Edge the team’s side. The GameCube was the target, cel-shading was spreading through computer graphics, and once the team decided the hero should be a child, it wanted “to depict the very cheerful side of his character — the little distortions in animations that are telling”, taking ideas from Japanese animation. The style also solved a technical problem. Realistic sea water is semi-transparent, and showing detail beneath the surface “takes a huge amount of processing power”, he said: “I’d rather have the colour and the suggestion than unnecessary details that don’t suit The Wind Waker’s style.”
Sailing the Great Sea
Hyrule lies under water. The game’s world is a sea of islands, divided on Link’s chart into a grid of 49 squares, and Link crosses it in a talking boat, the King of Red Lions. Edge’s review explained what the title meant: the Wind Waker is “a magical baton whose purpose mirrors that of the eponymous musical instrument from Ocarina of Time”. Link conducts tunes with it, and the first use is to “command the direction of the gameworld’s wind in accordance with a compass. Without the wind (or, indeed, a sail for your boat), Link isn’t going anywhere.” Later tunes work other magic, and one of the dungeons depends on the baton.
On the GameCube pad the controls followed Ocarina of Time, with the L trigger “substituting for the Z-lock”, as Edge noted when it played the Japanese version, and the C-stick working the baton. The grappling hook was used “both on land and in conjunction with your boat as a crane device”, and the sea held pirate outposts, treasure to fish up and minigames, from a take on Battleships to a post-sorting game: “Try it — Edge vouches for its addictiveness.” The game was kinder than its predecessor. “Compared to Ocarina, it is positively generous,” the review said: pots and grass hide power-ups “that have you back up to full strength in no time”.
Reception
Edge reviewed the American release in May 2003, ahead of the British one, and made it the cover game. It admitted to being “slightly sceptical about The Wind Waker’s quality upon initial inspection”, and listed the game’s nods to the series, from the Deku Tree onwards. It gave the game nine out of ten. The game reached British shops in May 2003, and Nintendo offered a bonus disc alongside it carrying Ocarina of Time and its harder remix, Master Quest.
Some criticism lasted. Retro Gamer later wrote that Nintendo’s intention had been “to make a Zelda game that anyone could finish”, and that “many fans would bemoan the game for being far too easy”. Edge blamed the schedule: in 2006 it argued that Satoru Iwata’s push for more games, more often, had left both The Wind Waker and Super Mario Sunshine “short of the exhaustive refinement” of their Nintendo 64 predecessors. When Edge put it to Aonuma in 2005 that the game felt unfinished, he took the blame: “originally we were thinking about something bigger, and in order to make it on time we had to make it more compact-sized… that was my fault.”
The look won its argument. By 2004 Mark Baker, a lead programmer at the developer Climax, could tell Edge that The Wind Waker was “probably the best known” cel-shaded game, “for its departure from the previous games”. Twilight Princess (2006) went back to a realistic Link, but ran on “a heavily tweaked Wind Waker engine”, according to Retro Gamer.
Sequels and the HD remake
The cartoon Link carried on on the Nintendo DS. Phantom Hourglass (2007), which Edge reviewed as a rare explicit sequel in the series, following on from The Wind Waker, kept its “vibrant 3D graphics in the Wind Waker vein” and its sea. Spirit Tracks (2009) followed, and Aonuma told Edge that the same idea of exploration ran through all three games.
In 2013 Nintendo remade the game for the Wii U. At E3 that year Edge found it “looking resplendent in 1080p”, with “a new sail” for faster travel across the sea, a Picto Box that held more photos, Miiverse messages in bottles in place of the GameCube version’s Tingle Tuner, and item management on the GamePad’s touch screen. Aonuma hinted at changes to the end of the game, “promising a more satisfying conclusion than the Triforce trawl that closed the original”. When the remake came out, Edge found that the changes had not restored “the dungeons that were pulled from the GameCube original”, but thanked Nintendo “for making Wind Waker’s Triforce Quest less laborious”, and said the game “sets a new standard for the HD remake”.
Sources
- Edge issue 103, November 2001, p. 53: Nintendo Spaceworld 2001 report (Tokyo Big Sight, 23 August; Miyamoto’s request; “the shock of Link”; Miyamoto on Link’s age; the caption on press reactions).
- Computer and Video Games issue 239, October 2001, p. 29: the leaked screenshot and reaction; “last year’s Space World tech demo”; interview with Shigeru Miyamoto on the child Link.
- Retro Gamer issue 51, 2008, pp. 30–31: history of Zelda (the Space World 2000 demo of Link and Ganon; The Wind Waker’s islands and sailing; the Ocarina of Time and Master Quest bonus disc; “a Zelda game that anyone could finish”; Twilight Princess and the tweaked engine).
- Retro Gamer issue 1, 2004, p. 231: Miyamoto profile (The Wind Waker: Nintendo EAD; Miyamoto as producer).
- Edge issue 119, January 2003, p. 32: Prescreen of the Japanese version (release in Japan in December; the L trigger and C-stick).
- Edge issue 123, May 2003, pp. 88–91: review (format GameCube; $50; “Out now (US), May (UK)”; the baton, the wind and the sail; the grappling hook; Battleships and the post-sorting game; “positively generous”; “slightly sceptical”; the Deku Tree). Cover: “The Wind Waker: The best Zelda yet?”
- Nintendo Official Magazine issue 126, March 2003, p. 34: European release date given as 3 May.
- Edge issue 136, May 2004, p. 74: “Big break: cel shading”, Mark Baker of Climax.
- Edge issue 150, June 2005, p. 66: Eiji Aonuma on the game’s shortened development.
- Edge issue 169, December 2006, p. 59: Zelda retrospective (Iwata’s new approach and “exhaustive refinement”).
- Edge issue 179, September 2007, p. 77: Phantom Hourglass review.
- Edge issue 210, January 2010, pp. 62–63: interview with Eiji Aonuma (why cel-shading; the child Link; the sea; Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks).
- Edge issue 256, August 2013, p. 59: E3 preview of The Wind Waker HD.
- Edge issue 260, December 2013, p. 88: The Wind Waker HD (the dungeons not restored; the Triforce Quest; “a new standard for the HD remake”).
- Wikipedia, “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker” (web, secondary): release dates; producers; the 49-square sea chart and the King of Red Lions; Edge’s nine out of ten, citing Edge issue 123. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_The_Wind_Waker