The Legend of Zelda Year in Review 2022
The end of 2022 is nearly upon us, and that means we’re about to head into 2023, which is very exicting, given Tears of the Kingdom is currently schedule for release on 12th May 2023. However, that is the future, and today I wanted to look back at 2022 in review focused on The Legend of Zelda. I’m going to go through 2022 month by month and pick out the best Zelda headlines.
Before we get into it today let me know in the comments your 2022 Zelda memories. Was it a big Zelda story in the news, or did you complete a classic Zelda game for the first time or maybe the tenth time? Share your Zelda 2022 in review down there in the comments.
Without further delay let’s get to it
January
January was a fairly slow month of Zelda news, although we did get a nice bit of insight from the legend Miyamoto himself.
Miyamoto took part in this interview in 1999, however, it was recently translated by Shmuplations.com and Miyamoto revealed the original Zelda was nearly just dungeons.
“In every Zelda development, the dungeons take a huge amount of time to make. I can’t tell you how many times they end up having to be remade and revised, while the team is on the verge of tears. Did you know, in the original Legend of Zelda, at the beginning of the development it was just dungeons. There was no overhead map. That’s a testament to the “Dungeon Supremacy” philosophy we’ve always followed. However, with Ocarina of Time, for the first time we didn’t spend as much time on the dungeons. It was a very a “un-Zelda” thing to do. (laughs)”
February
In February, Nintendo released an update to Nintendo Switch Online’s Expansion pack with version 2.0.0, which included Majora’s Mask. As well as Majora’s Mask, a bunch of fixes and improvements were added to the service which helps with performance. Fog was added back into Ocarina of Time, plus games that would previously crash the system were now performing as expected. Majora’s Mask is up there as a fan favourite Zelda Game, so if you haven’t tried it yet, maybe take some time over the holiday break to check it out.
March
March was a big month for Legend of Zelda fans, and not in a good way. This was the month Eji Enouma came out to say unfortunately The Sequel to Breath of the Wild was not going to make it in 2022, and it was infact being delayed to 2023. While Anouma was very apologetic, it wasn’t all bad new because we got a short snippet of new video footage, showing a close up of Link with his strange arm, plus a close up look at the Master Sword, which appears to have been broken or affected by the Malice in some way. The delay also meant bad business news for Nintendo as their share price dropped by 6%.
April
In April we were all in mourning related to the big delay for The Sequel to Breath of the Wild. Rumours had started to appear once again about a Nintendo Switch Pro, and fans were speculating that The Sequel to Breath of the Wild looked ‘too good’ to be on a base Nintendo Switch. Digital Foundry did some investigation work to look into it, and they determined that Breath of the Wild 2 wasn’t too big for the Nintendo Switch, and it was infact going to be fine. Rumours about the Nintendo Switch Pro would continue to swirl all year long.
May
In May we had a couple of nice Legend of Zelda stories. Ocarina of Time was added to the Video Game Hall of Fame. This is arrange by The Strong Museum and Ocarina of Time beat off competition from Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil and PaRappa The Rapper. In other news, fuel was added to the fire regarding Twilight Princess coming to Nintendo Switch, with one of the Twilight Princess developers saying this
“No, and look, we’d obviously love to do that [Zelda: Twilight Princess HD], but that hasn’t been a priority for Nintendo – or at least not in conversations that they’ve had with us.”
“The way it works with our friends over there is we’ll jump at any opportunity we can to work on one of their titles. There’s a constant dialog between our two companies. Often there’s a little bit of time that passes between titles, and there might be other ideas that are kicked around, but in the case of Skyward Sword, some time passed and then the email comes: ‘Would you be interested in considering bringing Skyward Sword on to Switch?’ To which the answer is of course: ‘Yes we would.’ And then we enter into the conversations with Nintendo around what that might look like and eventually we get underway. So it was similar in a lot of senses in terms of how Twilight Princess (on Wii U) came to fruition.”
June
The summer months got under way and everyone was waiting for news related to the Sequel to Breath of the Wild. Aonuma revealed that Miyamoto wasn’t a fan of the Wind Waker art style when he first saw it by saying this
Aonuma: “If I had gone and talked to him from the very beginning, I think he would’ve said ‘How is that Zelda?’…Miyamoto had trouble letting go of the realistic Link art style until the very end.
“At some point, he [Miyamoto] had to give a presentation against his will. That’s when he said something [to me] like ‘You know, it’s not too late to change course and make a realistic Zelda.”
July and August
The summer months were quiet from a Legend of Zelda point of view, however, The Legend of Zelda music did feature in a BBC Prom here in the UK. The Proms are live classical music concerts, and tickets are made accessible to everyone, so they can enjoy classic music over a festival that lasts all summer long. This video game music focused prom featured music from The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy and other hit games. Zelda music is great when played by a full orchestra, I didn’t get to go to the prom myself, but I always love listening to Zelda music played by an orchestra.
September
September was a huge month for Zelda fans. A name was given to The Sequel to Breath of the Wild, and was revealed as Tears of the Kingdom at the end of a Nintendo Direct in early September. We got the name, and we also got a release date too with the game scheduled to release on 12th May 2023. I think fans were hoping for earlier in the year, but we can’t really complain, we have the release date and we can now all start looking forward to that date.
Also in September, rumours had been swirling once again about Wind Waker and Twilight Princess ports coming to Nintendo Switch. Many jorunalists were sounding very confident, however, nothing materialised. Nintendo has very few Wii U titles left to porlt to Nintendo Switch… so hopefully we’ll see them sometime in 2023.
October
Still riding the high from the Tears of the Kingdom announcement, Nintendo showed up at a Game Conference in Japan with a lifesize Link Statue from Tears of the Kingdom, where we got a much better look at Link’s arm. It’s glowing, and appears to have longer fingernails, plus the origin of the arm is unknown at this time, although many think it’s the arm holding the corpse in place in the first trailer from E3 2019.
November
In November there was good news related to Tears of the Kingdom. The game was rated in Korea. While Korea does tend to be first when it comes to ratings, this is likely good news for Zelda fans, given it’s far along in the development lifecycle now, and hopefully this means it’s going to stick to it’s proposed release date. Also in November some rare, previously unseen footage from Ocarina of Time was found.
December
In December Wind Waker turns 20, which makes me feel very old indeed. I remember the backlash to the art style when it first came out, but if you look back at it now I think it’s one of the better looking Zelda games, and the art style is timeless. For me Twilight Princess is the one that looks dated, even though that was a course correction when it came to the art style, even Ocarina and Majora’s Mask don’t look great today, even though they are great games. We also had news from Nintendo of Latin Ameria that the dubbing in taking place for Tears of the Kingdom at the moment, which I would assume means Spanish and Portugese.
Final thoughts
I’ve really enjoyed my 2022 with the Legend of Zelda. I went back to the original in January and played through The Legend of Zelda on the NES through Nintendo Switch Online. I would then go on to play Zelda II The Adventure of Link and A Link To The Past on the SNES later in the year with you, via The Zelda Game Club. If you missed those playthroughs you can check them out on Triforce Times.
Also, 2022 was the year Triforce Times was born. A huge thank you to everyone who has watched in 2022, The Legend of Zelda has been a long-term passion of mine, and it’s a pleasure and privlege to share this with you via Triforce Times. I want to take this opporunity to wish you a happy holidays. 2022 has been a big year for The Legend of Zelda and Triforce Times, and I have a feeling that 2023 is going to be even bigger and better, and I am looking forward to sharing it with you all.