Satoru Iwata’s GDC keynote ended with a bang thanks to the announcement of a new Nintendo DS Zelda title. Called The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, the title reminded Dale of Nintendo GameCube’s iteration of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker because of it's cutesy cel-shaded visuals.
The announcement trailer didn’t reveal any hard details, but we did observe Link on a train -- ushering back memories of Wind Waker’s boat -- and a dungeon-type environment.
Is it Zelda? Hell yes. Now where did I put that boomerang? Oh right, I left it in Hyrule Castle.
[Update: Yep, it’s a train instead of a boat. One of the first things you notice, aside from the cel-shaded graphics, in the Spirit Train trailer -- available after the break -- is the rail system that Link will be following through the environment on his little train of awesome. Like Wind Waker’s boat, the train has offensive capabilities. Towards the end of the vid, you see the train lighting up enemies in its path. You also see cows, and, uh ... I’m not sure about those.
In the dungeon scenes, something we lightly touched on above, you can observe a puppetmaster-style power that allows Link to control a Knight-type foe (friend?). Also, boomerang and large boss monsters confirmed. Yes!
Take a gander at the trailer. We also uploaded some screenshots of it for your viewing pleasure.]
I am saving all excitement until I get confirmation that there won't be another stealth dungeon with a time limit that they'll herd you into again and again.
I'll probably play this eventually, but I'm just not a handheld player. I've gone through like 3 DSs, not because they broke, but because I never played the system. I still need to play Phantom Hourglass. :(
So... this is what I think the story might go out as... Ganon ties Zelda down on the train tracks, and you are forced to save her with Epona!... Epona is locked up somehwhere near the end of the game or something... >.>
Or, if Epona does turn out accessible early in the game, you can venture off to certain areas/dungeons.
You have several days before the train reaches and hits Zelda. Each night, the train turns into something demonic and void of passengers but instead are replaced with ghosts and other baddies, when its day time it resumes its normal form with bunch of merchants and people to talk to...
The train also never stops/or maybe stops on days to let you venture out to a new town or something, Each night the train has a different form or maybe individual sections which you have to beat. This is a very long train btw... so theres lots of possibilities as of what your up against.
This is just a very stupid and random thing I thought up of ... haha
But who cares... theres Epona!!! would be cool to ride Epona again...
Good, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that disliked the highly overrated Phantom Hourglass. Zelda is my favorite series but it needs less gimmicky "innovation" this time around and a much higher difficulty. Probably won't happen though. I just hope that "Spirit Tracks" isn't referencing to tracks in the audio sense. The last thing we need is a Wii Music/Zelda hybrid shit machine.
Zelda:PH sucked pretty hard so I've set the bar low on this one.
I DON'T want to do the saem dungeon over and over. I DON'T want crappy stylus controls that are inconsistent at best. I DON'T want super easy difficulty to make up for the fact that the controls are horrible.
All of the GB/GBA Zelda's were awesome. Just stick to the script, Nintendo!
Putting a steam machine on a Zelda game means something really odd is about to happen, it is reaching a time Hyrule (or whatever kingdom is now) into a civilized nation, progressing probably to modern days.
@ElfAngel7
I really doubt shit like this will happen just now. The DS is really young even if it was released 5 years ago. Most probably it will simply have more features on the i like black GameBoy cartridges.
WAAANT!
I hope they learn from a few things in PH and really make it good. The humor in PH was particularly great. I don't know about Link dressing up like a train engineer though, kiiiiinda strange.
I love PH, and I really don't get what the big deal is about going back to the Temple of the Ocean King "over and over". It's not like you are doing the exact same thing over and over. They throw in short cuts that can be accessed by the new items you receive, and they put in freakin' check points. Oh, and I liked the stylus controls, although it did make fighting very easy. But in all honesty, if I wanted a balls hard game on the DS, I wouldn't have gotten Zelda.
Hmmmm... most of the attacks still require stylus controls, so i'm sure we wont be seeing this w/o stylus entirely, maybe the D pad for walking and L button for slashing, a bit similar to starfox DS controls. I wouldn't mind using D pad for walking at all though, wasn't a fan of stylus only controls anyways had a bad time trying to face the direction i wanted without stepping too far.
Ex. the times where there was a small floating direction panel and I wanted to face in another direction to shield myself before those flying arrows could hit me, I sometimes fall off when trying.
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Contest:
3:50 PM on 03.25.2009
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![GDC 09: Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks revealed [Update] photo](http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/126257-headerzelda.jpg)
The blue-ening is complete.
i am a sucker.
Still Zelda though, so awesome
Do I have to go through the same timed dungeon a billion times?
Dollars to donuts, this game is going to require the DSi's cameras at some point
hopefully it'll be harder than phantom hourglass was and then we've got a solid LoZ handheld =D
Or, if Epona does turn out accessible early in the game, you can venture off to certain areas/dungeons.
You have several days before the train reaches and hits Zelda. Each night, the train turns into something demonic and void of passengers but instead are replaced with ghosts and other baddies, when its day time it resumes its normal form with bunch of merchants and people to talk to...
The train also never stops/or maybe stops on days to let you venture out to a new town or something, Each night the train has a different form or maybe individual sections which you have to beat. This is a very long train btw... so theres lots of possibilities as of what your up against.
This is just a very stupid and random thing I thought up of ... haha
But who cares... theres Epona!!! would be cool to ride Epona again...
I'm hoping this doesn't have anything to do with horse racing.
Hope this tones down the suck-factor.
I DON'T want to do the saem dungeon over and over. I DON'T want crappy stylus controls that are inconsistent at best. I DON'T want super easy difficulty to make up for the fact that the controls are horrible.
All of the GB/GBA Zelda's were awesome. Just stick to the script, Nintendo!
@ElfAngel7
I really doubt shit like this will happen just now. The DS is really young even if it was released 5 years ago. Most probably it will simply have more features on the i like black GameBoy cartridges.
I hope they learn from a few things in PH and really make it good. The humor in PH was particularly great. I don't know about Link dressing up like a train engineer though, kiiiiinda strange.
The music used for the trailer was pretty kickass though. :D
Ex. the times where there was a small floating direction panel and I wanted to face in another direction to shield myself before those flying arrows could hit me, I sometimes fall off when trying.