The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

Blew me away...again.

Upon hearing Nintendo was giving a facelift to a previously released AAA title, I suppose the two main feelings I had were confusion and skepticism.

Pictured here.

Confusion because rehashing something from ten years ago in HD is not something the Big N does, no matter how good it originally was. To me, it's a money-grubbing tactic that companies use when they've got nothing else. They're all out of ideas and have to attempt to capitalize on what's worked in the past.

Skepticism because it's Nintendo. I mean, come on, really? I know the Zelda series is a big deal, but really? I didn't know if I fully believed it. But then they revealed it in a Nintendo Direct, so I had to accept it was true.

After playing through it, I have come to partially accept it, but still have some trepidation in giving it heaps of praise. Yes, it was good, but it was always good. If I only sing praises, does that mean I'm okay with them re-releasing other past titles with a new skin? My initial feelings of worry are still there, no matter how good the game turned out to be. Seeing as how it is Nintendo, I'm not too worried, especially with the current and future Wii U/3DS lineup. If they did it again, though, I'd start to get scared. I will accept them doing it as an (extremely effective) experiment, and leave it at that for now.

But on to the game itself. Damn, it was good. The tiny changes/improvements make all the difference in presenting a much smoother, flowing game experience. Doubtless you can find reviews of the game itself in over a decade of internet activity, so there's really not any point in me talking about the story, characters, and the like. Instead, I want to talk about some of the changes between the original GameCube release and the current Wii U one. This assumes you have played the original release sometime between 2002 and 2013.

Quick List of Changes

• Items can now be equipped via the GamePad in real time. No more pausing to set items to buttons. Just drag and drop. If you're in a hectic spot, it is still possible to pause while setting items

• Your Sail is not an item in the sub-screen. You just push "A" in your boat to pop it up. The same applies for the Cannon, Grappling Hook, and Wind Waker itself

• The GamePad displays the dungeon maps (once you find them) and you can easily switch between floors and see treasures, bosses, etc. You also have a little Link head that displays both your current location and the direction you're facing, so you don't have to try and figure out where the heck in the room you are. If that's still not helpful enough, the map has a zoom function as well

• After gaining information from a Fishman, you can access it right from your map, without having to call him over again

• You have a cursor on the GamePad of where your boat is on the Great Sea, moving in real time

• The GamePad's gyroscope can be used to aim the Bow, Boomerang, etc. I played this way until I got to a boss where it became too awkward to try and run/roll around while trying to aim/throw my Grappling Hook. Thankfully, there is an option to turn this feature off and play the old-fashioned, right-stick way

• The HUD can be completely eliminated from the TV screen. It was cool to see it that way for a while, but it became tedious very quickly to have to look down at my lap every ten seconds to check things

• In addition to the already-agreeable camera, you can now move around in first-person mode. You can also move while aiming with certain items (e.g. Boomerang, etc.) in this camera view

• You can change direction while swinging on your Grappling Hook. You don't have to stop, rotate and start swinging again. It's very nice

• Obviously, everything looks absolutely gorgeous in 1080p widescreen. The colors are vibrant, the visuals eye-catching, and the cartoon-esque style (originally controversial) really feels at home at this resolution. I think Wind Waker might be the most expressive Zelda game, partly due to things like Link's personality and facial expressions

• You can obtain a Swift Sail, which lets you move across the sea much faster. For people that have played the original version, you will scream with glee. I vividly remember having to sail from one island to a distant other, and having time to leave the room, make a sandwich, eat half of it, then returning to find I had almost arrived at my destination. The Swift Sail also changes the wind to be at your back no matter which way you're turned

• Getting hit while in your boat won't knock you out of your boat (unless it's a hard, hard hit)

• Hero Mode (in which you take double damage and no recovery hearts can be found) is available right from the start

• The Tingle Tuner, in which you needed a connected GBA to implement, has been replaced by the Tingle Bottle. You can use it to upload Pictographs to Miiverse for all to see and share. It's a nice feature

• The Pictograph Box can now hold 12 Pictos as opposed to the original 3

• You can download Pictographs via Miiverse. That means that if you're trying to complete the Nintendo Gallery and have passed a certain point where you can no longer get a character's photo, you can turn to Miiverse for help

• The Deku Leaf has a cursor on the ground where you will land

• The Cannon has a projection line as to where your bombs will go

• Five Triforce charts have been replaced with the Triforce Shards themselves, meaning you don't have to spend a fortune in Rupees and time in getting them deciphered

There are more changes I missed, I'm sure. Attention to detail is really what sets Nintendo apart in this case. There have been other HD re-releases for games (e.g. Okami, Metal Gear series, Devil May Cry, etc.), but for most of them, the things that initially annoyed people are still there. An HD upscale is only that. Obvious flaws and irritations noticed the first time around aren't seen as worth changing. This is why I enjoyed Wind Waker HD so much more than those other re-releases. The gameplay itself has been fine-tuned to an insane degree. And the fact that Nintendo decided to pretty much do it themselves instead of letting an outside company really shows how much they care.

Is it worth $50? I say yes, especially to those that haven't had the joy of playing it before. It really stands out as one of the best games in the series, and with these new tweaks, the argument is even stronger. It's a major reason to pick up a Wii U if you've been on the fence so far.

Nintendo took their old technology and seamlessly integrated it into the new. Just talking about using the Wii U GamePad for a game released in 2003, and having it work better than the original controller speaks volumes. Having the two work together is what really made the difference. Instead of saying, "Oh, yeah, you can use the GamePad. The buttons are the same as the GameCube controller, so it's nothing new, just looks different," they instead choose to say, "Hey, we're going to actually use the functionality and features of this thing to really incorporate it as a huge part of the game." The number of changes really make the game feel like it could have been released today for the first time, and it would be just as successful. But the changes don't affect the main gameplay or story. It's still the same game at its core. Nintendo has managed to make a decade-old adventure feel new and fresh, even to those that have already experienced the journey countless times. I cannot applaud them enough for that. But I also shake my finger to warn them not to expect to be able to do it again any time soon.

GameCube Virtual Console Thoughts

Still a long way away.

Since the launch of the Wii U, there's been a lot of hype and speculation about the future of the Virtual Console service. Even eight months into the release, the prospects are still very much uncertain. Nintendo tides over most people with news about moving Wii to Wii U, MiiVerse compatibility, GamePad play, and the like. Titles move over at a snail's pace. Why is this? To keep interest flowing consistently? For better long-term profits? Both, most likely. But a huge issue always comes to my mind whenever someone brings up the Virtual Console: the inclusion of GameCube titles.

Without a doubt, the GameCube can be placed into the category of a "legacy console". It's twelve years old and three console generations past. Even the later model Wii took out GameCube readability. So no issue in terms of it being "not old enough." Even when the Wii U was announced, there was excited whisperings of GameCube games being available for download.

But (and I know Nintendo is already moving towards a proposed solution), the internal memory is meager at best when compared to even last-generation consoles. Retail games take up a large amount of space, and even with the Deluxe Set, your internal memory is full before you can blink. eShop titles take up less space, but with consistent updates and patches, they quickly grow in size as well. The Basic Set (8 GB) is sitting on shelves gathering dust while the Deluxe Set (32 GB) is constantly in demand, but it's still not enough. Nintendo introduced the ability to connect an external hard drive to your console for additional storage space. This "solution" was, I feel, a short-term fix to a long-term problem. Even after it was hastily introduced, updates came quite often to improve and expand upon it. The whole thing reeked of afterthought.

With E3 upon us and the holiday season coming up shortly afterwards, Nintendo has to have some kind of hardware solution in their bag of tricks. Releasing consoles in a variety of colors only goes so far, and can only distract the consumer for so long. Even now, it was just announced that a 32 GB version will be released in White as well as Black. So what? That doesn't fix the underlying problem.

There is a possibility that Nintendo will release their own external hard drive. This will allow them to fix their initial faux pas while at the same time making money off of it. To sway people to their side further (other than just having an official "Nintendo brand Wii U External Hard Drive"), they could offer some included software/game/DLC/etc.

Another option (and this is the one people want the most) could be releasing another batch of consoles with a bigger stockpile of internal memory right off the shelf. If I can buy a used Xbox 360 with 320 GB storage space or a PS3 with a 500 GB storage space, why shouldn't I have the option to buy a Wii U with more than 32 GB? Would it cost too much?

Thus, we hit another roadblock. The GamePad replacement price has been valued by Nintendo at approximately $150 (It is not being sold as a solo item yet, it is only available as a replacement by Nintendo directly). Yet, the whole Basic Set is priced at $300. Could this mean that the base console itself is only valued at $150 by Nintendo? That's cheap. So what if Nintendo says, "Hey, let's release a Wii U with lots of memory." The only problem is, everyone who already bought their console is stuck with 32 GB max, and they sure as hell don't want to buy a new one that is going to cost even more than they paid the first time. And Nintendo can't sell a base console by itself for cheaper than a full set, because many games need the GamePad to function. You can't return only part of your purchase.

Or can you?

Since Nintendo has recently started selling refurbished hardware firsthand, why don't they make some sort of offer where you can send in your unit, have it upgraded with all your data transferred over, and then send it back to you? Since you won't need a new GamePad or anything, it can be done for a way smaller fee than buying some bundle brand new. All you would have to pay for is the price to upgrade your internal memory. Then it gets sent back with all your data intact, since Nintendo is doing it themselves and can easily navigate their own security measures (which is a big deal to them, for obvious reasons). This way, people that jumped on the purchase right away can have just as much storage space as people buying the upgraded console off the shelves brand new. And since Nintendo would then have consoles with less storage space that had been sent in, they could offer them, refurbished, at a way lower price. There would definitely be consumers that would not need that large amount of space, and the lower price would most likely sway them even further.

The increased storage space would mean that there would be no problem in people downloading lots of Virtual Console stuff directly to their Wii U, which also means there's way less of a chance of people passing around software through illegal means, which scares Nintendo to death. It's way easier to stick something on a tiny, portable hard drive and take it somewhere else to fiddle around than to pick up your whole Wii U setup and drag it around behind you. So Nintendo kills a lot of birds with one stone.

Bringing us back to the main focus of this post: GameCube games on the Virtual Console. NES, SNES, and N64 titles do not take up that much space. N64 would be the most, and that has a max of 64 MB. With only those options (aside from Genesis, Turbo-Grafx, etc.), you're not filling up even the Wii's internal memory any time soon. And since the Wii U is such a big step up in terms of storage, no way you're filling it up with those. However, Nintendo realized they had hit a huge snag after offering full, new retail titles to be downloaded on the Wii U without fully considering the space requirements. GameCube games are the same way. With a maximum disc capacity of 1.5 GB, you're looking at a lot of space used up just for GameCube titles.

Bottom line is, Nintendo needs to open up that space, and I think the "send in, upgrade, send out" model is their best bet. They aren't going to move ahead with something that takes up a lot of space, but requires a non-Nintendo supplier. They want to, logically, have control of their own products and services. So until that happens, GameCube games on the Virtual Console are not going to be a high priority. If they are announced before some sort of storage increase, I will be slightly surprised.