By The Ben

Well it’s been a quiet week in Lake Hylia recently it’s been this way for the past few months. You can tell when there hasn’t been a new release in the Zelda series in a long while when the fan mutter surrounding the series becomes as quiet as you can imagine. And it’s ironic that things are quiet during this season of mum words as you’d think the period where the fans would be most quiet would be right after the release of a new Zelda game. But of course there’s always a vocal minority that just has to get their opinion out concerning the new game as soon as the disk is popped into the system.

Contrast that to the articles and impressions of the game around four or five years after it’s initial release, almost all the time they’re articles about how the gaming community may have underrated the game. Yes underrated. The Zelda series is one of the few video game series that seems to be in a constant cycle between whether or not the titles are overrated or underrated. A few weeks, few months and then a year or so after the release of a title you get the obligatory “______ Overrated?” articles and many of the articles bring up good points about the game’s design and how the flaws were overlooked at the time of release. However the main point of these articles stems from the fact that there was too much hype surrounding the game, and then particular people were let down.

The opposite on the other hand concerns the other Zelda titles. No not the CDi ones the ones that weren’t what longtime fans of the series would call traditional entries. These ones are noted by detractors as being too much of a departure while supporters of the titles herald them for “turning everything you know about Zelda on the head”. A few years after these entries are released they finally get mentioned as being “unjustly looked down upon at the time” for being too different from tradition. This happened first of course with Zelda II.

Without the internet at the time it wasn’t as easy to find these admissions of love for the black sheep of the family and the common assumption by the early to mid-nineties was that Zelda II was for all purposes the worst of the Zelda titles. Every magazine you’d find Zelda 1 and Link to the Past topping the Favorites Lists and any mention of Zelda II wasn’t about the experience the writer had with the game but a small blurb simply acknowledging the fact that it was “the black sheep” of the series.

You see this happen with almost every entry in the series but more often than not it happens with the off-season entries. Zelda II, Link’s Awakening, Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker are most common examples of articles consisting of sympathetic affection towards the outcast titles. This was most noticeable to me during the Virtual Console releases of both Ocarina of Time and more recently, Majora’s mask. With Ocarina of Time the general consensus seemed to be that while it was great that the Virtual Console was getting more games, most wouldn’t buy it because they’ve already played it multiple times before, and only really recommended buying it on the VC for those that never experienced it before. Not only that, but accusations of “It hasn’t aged that well graphically” and the like were thrown around, as if they were trying to say “Eh, you don’t really have to get it” but almost felt like they were unjustly mistreating the game by doing that.

With the release of Majora’s Mask on the US Virtual Console in the last week the sentiment seems to have been one of a vastly different attitude. Cries of “If you’re going to download one game on the Virtual Console this year, make it this one.” are being heard and fellow gaming journalists are coaxing their peers who were too cool for Zelda by 2000 into giving the game another go.

I used to think that the Legend of Zelda series was one that was built on a foundation of agreement among fans. That the mindset of every single one was in compliance with the rest of the group. As the series got bigger and older fans got older while new younger fans were brought in, I noticed my original assumption couldn’t have been further off the mark. Every Zelda fan has one game in particular it seems that they’ll point to and go, “There. That one. That was the best one.” But they won’t always agree and they’ll fight and try and use irrefutable evidence that the other person’s opinion is wrong. “That game’s so overrated no THAT one’s so overrated how can you be so stupid” the process never seems to end and continues with each new release. It’s because of this controversy in the end though that I think the Zelda series is better off because of it. Each title has at least one super fan who will defend it’s importance through and through, from the NES to the portable entries. Hell, in the future some kid who got a Wii for Christmas as a child and a copy of “Link’s Crossbow Training” because his mom saw that came with an extra piece of plastic will probably defend that entry as their favorite as well.

There’s no one universal hatred for any specific title in the series and yes, after years of searching without any luck, there’s at least one person who fancies the CDi adventures as well.