![]() ![]() And more pertinent to this particular essay, it makes me feel that Toy Link (and hopefully Toy Gannondorf) will tread new ground in 2024. It’s not looking to reinvent the wheel, it’s just looking to give it another spin.įor old-heads like me who think gaming peaked a long time ago, it’s heartening to see. From the looks of it, Pikmin 4 isn’t going to try to be a “phenomenon.” It’s going to try to be a fun little videogame, just like the 3 other numbered Pikmin games that came before it. It’s clear which one was a better return on Nintendo’s investment, both in terms of sales and in terms of longevity in the public eye.īut I also have to remember that Nintendo is marching out Pikmin 4 in a few months, and that the big selling points for that game so far are: Pikmin made of ice, a dog with no nose, and “something scary happens at night, probably.” Nothing about that is likely to go viral on TikTok or YouTube for the next 5 years. I haven’t seen any sign of the Link’s Awakening remake on my timeline in years. I still see Breath of the Wild trick videos on Twitter. Endlessly replayable open world games with user-created content like Minecraft and Roblox are the most successful games in the world right now, so it’s not surprising that Tears of the Kingdom may take after them even more than its predecessor did, with more custom stuff to build and other bait to inspire user-created content. The only thing that makes me unsure is knowing how much modern Nintendo follows trends. ![]() ![]() Then came Twilight Princess, which expanded things again, then Skyward Sword, which took after both Majora’s and Monster Hunter, plopping you in a variety of bite-sized environments where getting to know the minutiae of how everything fits together was the only way to win. That was followed up by Four Swords Adventures, which was about small-scale multiplayer action puzzle solving. Its direct sequel, Majora’s Mask, had you spending a lot of time in small town town and other little areas, learning about the people of the world and using empathy to help them to prevent the apocalypse.Īfter that there was Wind Waker, which went big again with a massive ocean to chart. ![]() Ocarina was, of course, the first Zelda game to feature a fully 3D world, and it made a huge effort to show off how spacious and sprawling it could be. Starting with Ocarina of Time, every other home console Zelda has taken a step back from making things bigger and more open. But when you look at the history of the series, a pattern emerges that points to the next Zelda to launch after 2023 to be something that goes in a different direction. The core audience for the series clearly wants them to keep getting bigger and freer. It may sound like an absurd idea for Nintendo to go backwards like that, given how much more Breath of the Wild sold than every other Zelda game. That’s far from what Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing: New Horizons did, but it’s still better than most games ever do. It was a remake of Link’s Awakening, and hey-it didn’t sell that bad! Last count put it at a little over 6 million sold. Except, and here’s the kicker, maybe I still am! It was only a couple of years ago that Nintendo made a “new” game for people like me. It made me think that maybe Nintendo just doesn’t make games for 46-year-old weirdos like me anymore.Īnd that was going to be the piece! But what would that have done for you, dear reader? A few of you like-minded outliers out there feel would feel a little less alone, and the rest of you would have just been glad that I am no longer the target demographic for Zelda games. As a result, I bounced off of each of them hard. Since Link’s Awakening and the first Animal Crossing, both the Zelda and Animal Crossing franchises have blown up in a big way, in terms of both popularity and scope. ![]()
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