What Zelda’s E3 History Can Teach Us to Expect Tomorrow
Posted on June 04 2012 by Will
Brand new Zelda games are often first announced at an E3 event. The flirt glimpse of a piece of art, a title, or even a full trailer–they all start at E3. This year, we could be looking at the potential unveiling of two new Zelda titles as we already know that two new Zelda titles are in the works: one for the upcoming Wii U and one for the 3DS, both games we know absolutely nothing about> At last year’s E3, Nintendo showed off a cinematic tech demo featuring Link and Gohma that was used to demonstrate the graphics potential of the Wii U at E3 2011, but Nintendo reiterated that we were not to expect anything from that tech demo to be found in Zelda Wii U, not even the art style.
So what can past E3 Zelda unveilings teach us to expect about Nintendo’s E3 presentation regarding Zelda this year? Learn more after the jump.
The first time Zelda appeared at an E3 event was with Ocarina of Time in 1997 (then called “Zelda 64“), with some very rough early gameplay footage. A year later it was released, and while polished up considerably, it still looked and behaved roughly the same as in the E3 presentation from the year prior.
While not E3, footage of Zelda running on a brand new console was released at Spaceworld in 2001. This was the infamous video of Link and Ganondorf battling in a much more detailed version of the Ocarina of Time graphical style. Nintendo made it clear that this was not what was to be expected of the next Zelda game, but was simply a tech demo to show off the GameCube’s graphical power. Fans did not listen, however, so when in 2002 Nintendo revealed The Wind Waker at their E3 press conference, many fans were outraged that the graphical style was dramatically different… even though Nintendo had already warned them the year before.
At E3 2004, we saw the first Twilight Princess trailer; interestingly enough, nothing we saw in that trailer made it into the final product, yet the graphical style was nearly identical to what had been shown. Two years later, Nintendo unveiled the Wii at E3 2006, where they announced it would release with a port of Twilight Princess.
From then on, Nintendo was a little silent with new Zelda titles at E3 events. Three years later, we see this famous image of Link with no sword and a mysterious figure. Miyamoto pointed out that we should notice that Link was holding no sword. Fans quickly noticed the similarities between this mysterious girl and the Master Sword and took Mr. Miyamoto’s hint to mean that this girl was the embodiment of the Master Sword. The next year at E3 2010, Skyward Sword was revealed, and released a year later.
This leaves us with the conclusion that a new Zelda title is unveiled every two to three years. This would be the second year, and 2013 isn’t really that far off. Let’s look at our possibilities of what we could expect in the next Zelda unveiling.
We know that two new original titles are in the works: one for the 3DS handheld and one for Wii U, and as we stated earlier, we know nothing about either of these. If we are going to see a new mainstream game pop up, it would most likely be one of these two. Many fans have been begging for Majora’s Mask 3D, but Nintendo has said while they’re aware of the demand, they intend on creating a brand new Zelda title for the 3DS first.
Even after all this, I’m going to say not to get your hopes up. The 25th anniversary of Zelda was last year, and we saw tons of games come out. Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time 3D, and Four Swords Anniversary Edition… It might be too early to expect anything new anytime soon.
So what can we expect? Will we see a trailer for Zelda Wii U? Unlikely. And if we do, history shows that such an early trailer can only show us the raw prototype they have in the works and just as with the original trailers for Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess any such trailer they may show us this year will feature places and events that likely won’t end up in the final game. But history does show that the basic graphic design will make it. However, that’s assuming they will show us a trailer for Zelda Wii U at all. Perhaps they will go the Skyward Sword route and merely show us a piece of concept art. Regardless, with Skyward Sword releasing a mere half a year ago, we cannot expect them to be very far along with Zelda Wii U, so they likely will have very little to show us–if anything–on that front.
What then about Zelda 3DS? That is considerably more likely. We know that the team who worked on Ocarina of Time 3D wasn’t even actually Nintendo, but a third party called Grezzo. Could it be that all this while a team at Nintendo has simultaneously been hard at work on the brand new Zelda for the 3DS while Grezzo made Ocarina of Time 3D so that they could have two Zelda games for the 3D released back-to-back? If so, we could have a full trailer at E3 with the actual game releasing this holiday season.
We want to know, will you be tuning into E3 on Tuesday? Are you looking forward to a new Zelda title? If so, would you prefer a new Wii U or 3DS game, or maybe a 3DS port of Majora’s Mask? Don’t forget you will be able to watch the entire Nintendo press conference right here as we livestream the event! And stay tuned to Zelda Dungeon for all the latest Zelda E3 news!
~~~Recent Content Updates~~~
