The Frequency of Zelda Releases

Ever since The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past were ported over to the Game Boy Advance, with the original Zelda game making an appearance on Nintendo’s e-Reader, I have been intrigued and excited at the prospects of playing all of the Legend of Zelda games on nearly every console, be it portable or home-based.

We then received Ocarina of Time along with a Master Quest version as a pre-order bonus incentive for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It looked as if Nintendo was going to keep adding content to it’s back catalogue of Zelda games: The Legend of Zelda got updated translations; Zelda II got a “minorly-major” upgrade (which has since been removed for the 3DS) with the experience points remaining where they were when or if Link died on his quest (also, they removed the Water Dungeon shortcut); and A Link to the Past added the Four Sword Dungeon and enabled Link to do a whirlwind slash.

By now, we should all know pretty much everything that was added and removed from The Wind Waker upon the release of The Wind Waker HD. But before we got that remake, we were all surprised with the announcement of Ocarina of Time 3D (I was anyway; I didn’t have internet for a few years) and it was developed by Grezzo. They did an amazing job at making the game easier (in terms of the Water Temple and constant putting on and taking off of the iron boots), and harder (removal of certain bugs/glitches in the game, such as having infinite bottles), to the extent that it actually made the game more enjoyable for me. I had never really been a huge fan of Ocarina of Time (I know, blasphemy, but I always felt like it was an exact copy of A Link to the Past) but now I’ll play it every few months.

Nintendo keeps teasing us with hints about a potential remake of Majora’s Mask (which I’ve never had the opportunity to play), and after saying that the perfection that is The Wind Waker only took six months to make, it got me wondering even more, why aren’t the Zelda games ported or upgraded more frequently, especially when there is something of a drought between releases?

I, personally would love to see a new Zelda game every year-and-a-half for portable and home consoles. While in between those gaps we should get remakes or ports. The next new Zelda game to come out is A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS/2DS on November 22nd.  After that, it’s anyone’s guess whether we will see another game in the series on the system, be it a remake, port (on the Virtual Console) or new. I feel that that just seems like a wasted opportunity for Nintendo and leaves us fans “wanting”, knowing that we will buy the games to satiate our love of the series.

Nintendo does not have to do the remakes and ports, they can hand it off to companies like Capcom, Atlus (who I feel Nintendo should purchase) and the aforementioned Grezzo. Maybe I’m alone in thinking this way, maybe I’m not. How do all of you feel about the drought between titles?  Do you think that remakes and ports should fill the gaps between releases?