Link is a Leftie from the Start?

[the_gamer]

Hi folks,

everybody says that Link was a leftie up to the wii. Nope. Take Zelda 1, move up, down or to the right. Link holds the sword in his left hand... But now move to the left and tell me where he holds his sword...

 

[Satsy]

So he's ambidexterous but prefers to use his left hand anyway?

Isn't using one animation -- out of a range of limited animations -- in the first game a stretch when coming to disprove him being left handed? Or is that just me?

 

[nicktheslayer]

...hes always been a leftie.

ALWAYS.

I thought this was common sense, >.>

I guess its not too common though, if you hadnt played the original, but yea, hes always been that way until the Wii.

 

[Din Akera]

I would say in the originals it is a little harder to tell with the graphics, therefore, moving directions will influence how the sword is viewed. Moving to the left may just be that he is holding the sword out forward in from of himself. But, in every other original game (this specifically in reference TP GC, because that was the intended console) he is a lefty. The map flip/port to the wii is the only place we see right-handedness.

 

[Djinn]

It might have been due to graphic constraints that the sword appears in Link's left hand when looking down, but it has remained in the left hand ever since. Most of the promotional artwork of Link will have his sword shown to be in the left hand until SS. Even Dark Link is left handed in his appearances. I am certain that it was AoL that officially decided that Link is to be left handed as the sword is in his left hand in the art and the triforce mark appears on his left hand in the story.

Warning! Ocarina of Time Spoilers

Spoiler

Not only that but every time it has appeared, the triforce crest is on Link's left hand while it appears on Zelda and Ganondorf's right.

 

[Oldewindmill]

Link is left-handed in as far as I know every game, save for SS (In TP he was left-handed in the GC version, which I think is the canon one, but that's beside the point). TvTropes brings up an interesting point an the matter (However it should be noted that TvTropes is a wiki, and therefore not a definitive source). Behold:

Link is left-handed, but in the 2D Zelda games his sword and shield will switch hands depending on which way he's facing. The player's guide for A Link to the Past mentioned how Link superstitiously kept his shield between him and Death Mountain.

• The shield part was explicitly averted from Link's Awakening onwards.

Sprites are pixel art characters used in video games. Unlike a 3D model, you can't simply rotate a sprite to get a new view of it. Additional clothes, poses, and each frame of animation for actions have to be made almost entirely from scratch. For this reason, artists will usually make sprites perfectly bilaterally symmetrical. That way, any poses or actions made facing left could simply be flipped to make the same poses and actions facing right. There were also memory size concerns on earlier platforms - it was often more efficient to mirror the sprite than to store the opposite poses.

The article I am quoting can be found here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmbidextrousSprite
Hope this information helps clear up the issue.

 

[Jimmy]

That would make sense.^

Shigeru Miyamoto is left handed, so he made Link left handed also.

 

[Pocket Asian]

Link is left-handed up until the Wii. The reason for him holding his sword in his right hand in The Legend of Zelda, the Adventure of Link, and A Link to the Past is due to pixel mirroring, which saves time and memory. It's not that Link is ambidextrous, it's just a graphical limitation.

 

[DuckNoises]

Technically, this isn't considered Zelda Theory, so this is going to be moved to the World of Zelda section.

 

[Blazestarre]

I think the intention was that Link was always a leftie, but the official art for the first game is a bit contradicting.

Here he's holding his sword with his left hand, like we're used to:



However, most of the artwork depicts him using his right hand, instead:



I'm not sure how much these pictures are considered canon, but it does show that Link was depicted as using his right hand in the original game and it wasn't just a sprite flip. The fact that the direct sequel has him using his left hand could mean that the original intent was that he was left handed and the artist just messed up. Or maybe they just didn't care while working on the original and didn't think about it much until AoL.

 

[Linknerd09]

Link has been a left hand until TP. In the GC TP, he has it on the right hand. Bcuz WII is left handed and GC is right handed. But it doesn't matter to me, as long he knows how to manage a sword. I'm happy on which hand has the sword

 

[EternalNocturne]

Link is canonically left-handed, but I guess we can accept that he's grown to be ambidextrous over the years. His Wind Waker in-game figurine also states not what his handedness is, but which hand he prefers to use. (It actually says: "Preferred hand: Left") That, and, well, considering how Skyward Sword Link is the first one ever to be truly right-handed...

Back when Zelda was young and didn't exactly know where its roots were, there were a lot of things going on and we can't really confirm anything for sure. The official art can be misleading. -_-;