Seems all old school dev's will all be retired soon. :(

[Sinful]

Yep, them one of a kind genius creators of Mario, Ghouls & Ghosts, Strider, Gradius, Metroid (oops, ol Gumpi is dead already. Same with the series + he was the guy that kept Miyamoto in check creativity wize. Nitendo was big time stupid for firing him ), etc, aren't getting any younger. And I'm not sure I have enough faith in new dev's poping up? And even if I do, not sure they'll be able replicate what these other guys have? What do you guys think? I think it sucks, as I want them to continue on forever.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I can't think of a single industry that would run out of talent after just one generation's worth of workforce.

[Skykid]

Not sure there's a question here.

Any old school devs who survived still died long ago with the advent of the west becoming market leader. Nintendo haven't made a great Zelda game since Majora's Mask, and while the odd Mario title still has genius, most are throwaway filler.

Kojima hasn't really been great since Snatcher and MGS on PSX, and Capcom is in a whole world of suck.

We're waiting now for Inafune to put his (our) money where his mouth is, and make something legendary that rekindles the Japanese gaming spirit, but I'm skeptical. I have a feeling we're in for a straight Mega Man clone in 2.5D embossed in Donkey Kong chrome. With Capcom's recently developed MM8 & 9, it's hardly a game series that's desperate to go back to its roots.

[KennyMan666]

Nintendo haven't made a great Zelda game since Majora's Mask

What

recently developed MM8

What

[speedlolita]

Obviously he means 9 and 10.

[Udderdude]

Oh my god we're dooooooooooooomed :3

[Skykid]

Obviously he means 9 and 10.

Sorry, thanks for the fix.

What great Zelda came after MM? And by great I mean legendary, not merely good.

[CStarFlare]

Wind Waker is above average. It's not MM-tier, but it stands tall above everything that has succeeded it.

[KennyMan666]

Twilight Princess (GC version mind you) is the best 3D Zelda so there's that. Skyward Sword is quite great too.

Wind Waker is definitely below average, worst 3D zelda not counting the DS games because we don't talk about the DS games. And what I played of Phantom Hourglass before I decided the control system was absolutely fucking horrible felt more like a 2D Zelda anyway.

[Skykid]

Twilight Princess (GC version mind you) is the best 3D Zelda so there's that. Skyward Sword is quite great too.

Wind Waker is definitely below average, worst 3D zelda not counting the DS games because we don't talk about the DS games. And what I played of Phantom Hourglass before I decided the control system was absolutely fucking horrible felt more like a 2D Zelda anyway.

Oh come on! I thought you were going to give me a typical Wind Waker bandwagon response, but I didn't see you sidestepping that for Twilight Princess, and in such knife through the guts fashion.

The best 3D Zelda? Twilight Princess?? You gotta be on crack Kennydude, not a chance in hell.

[KennyMan666]

Twilight Princess was fantastic through and through you philistine.

Sure, it didn't do everything right, but no Zelda game did. A Link to the Past came the closest. Even so, I consider ALttP and TP to be roughly as good. The best parts of TP were just incredible. While I'm not overly fond of using the term, it was absolutely amazing at creating atmosphere. I mean, MM was quite great at doing that too, and I'm of course not trying to claim that MM is anything but a fantastic game as well - really, I'd probably rank it as the second best 3D Zelda, with Skyward Sword in third - but TP edges it out on several levels.

[Skykid]

No philistine here. Twilight Princess is vastly overlong and very much a 'best of' title that regurgitated all the aspects of previous Zelda titles and shoved them into a disconnected anthology that lacks direction and soul. By no means bad, and better than Wind Waker for sure, it pales in comparison to the big 4.

Ocarina, M.Mask, Link to the Past and Link's Awakening are the series masterworks, and if I needed to create a hierarchy out of those I think the 64 entries might edge it into joint first place.

I don't know what happy time in your life Twilight turned up in, but I assure you it's little more than a technically competent pretender, and sadly further evidence that the series lost its power in the Gamecube era.

You're the only person I've spoken to who feels so strongly about that one. Normally I'm phalanx shielding rubbish from kids about Wind Waker. I appreciate the curve ball.

[KennyMan666]

Me and Twilight Princess was actually kind of interesting in that for some reason I can't possibly recall, I never ended up playing it when it was originally released. Then the years passed and I never thought about it, until I was at a friend's birthday party some year ago and saw Twilight Princess for GC on her game shelf and something clicked in me and I was like "Oh, hey, can I borrow this?" and played it and beat it just before Skyward Sword was released - in fact, I think I beat it the weekend before the week during which I received Skyward Sword - and I just loved it from beginning to end. Midna was an amazing character in stark contrast to Skyward Sword's worst Captain Obvious exposition character in the entire series, I really liked the graphic style, and some of the dungeons had an amazing subtlety to them - I didn't even realize that Snowpeak Ruins was a dungeon until I were a bunch of rooms in because entering it was done without any fanfare at all. There was perhaps a bit too much railroading at times, they could easily have made Snowpeak and Temple of Time doable in any order, but that's a minor thing. Of course it did a lot of things previous Zeldas had done already - but almost all Zeldas do that - but it did a lot of them better.

Also: Dual Clawshots.

Dual motherfucking Clawshots.

[BulletMagnet]

Even if nobody ever makes a good game again from this point forward many of us probably already have (or could, with a little looking around) backlogs that would take more than a lifetime to get through. From where I'm sitting, though, I'm betting there will always be at least a couple of new things worth trying out for the foreseeable future.

[Hagane]

It's sad to see the industry in such a dire creative situation, but as BulletMagnet says there are enough older games to keep me busy for the rest of my life.

[Skykid]

Me and Twilight Princess was actually kind of interesting in that for some reason I can't possibly recall, I never ended up playing it when it was originally released. Then the years passed and I never thought about it, until I was at a friend's birthday party some year ago and saw Twilight Princess for GC on her game shelf and something clicked in me and I was like "Oh, hey, can I borrow this?" and played it and beat it just before Skyward Sword was released - in fact, I think I beat it the weekend before the week during which I received Skyward Sword - and I just loved it from beginning to end. Midna was an amazing character in stark contrast to Skyward Sword's worst Captain Obvious exposition character in the entire series, I really liked the graphic style, and some of the dungeons had an amazing subtlety to them - I didn't even realize that Snowpeak Ruins was a dungeon until I were a bunch of rooms in because entering it was done without any fanfare at all. There was perhaps a bit too much railroading at times, they could easily have made Snowpeak and Temple of Time doable in any order, but that's a minor thing. Of course it did a lot of things previous Zeldas had done already - but almost all Zeldas do that - but it did a lot of them better.

Also: Dual Clawshots.

Dual motherfucking Clawshots.

Yeah they ruled, but unique inventions and application are a trademark of the series, but like everything else in Twilight dual clawshots is a regurgitation of stuff already seen (clawshots).

It sounds like you had a good time with it - and so did I - but I knew about halfway through that the game was suffering from a serious lack of originality, well formed as it was.

The importance of brevity cannot be overstated. Keeping a game going just for the sake of hour count doesn't do anything for its value, and Twilight even more than Wind Waker suffers from a huge amount of repetition and filler that should have been left on the cutting room floor. The purity of the big 4 weighs hugely on this: perfectly formed, never tiring, and over precisely when they're meant to be. That makes the meat of it that much tastier. Twilight is approching 40 hours iirc, which is absurd for a Zelda title, and it really struggles to stretch the formula out for so long without becoming boring (which it did) or losing sight of its narrative (which it did.)

Not the worst. As you said, Phantom Hourglass sucks so much shit it's the only game in the series I jacked in just over halfway. Not worth the time. But there's a masterclass of game design in Miyamoto's prime time classics still unequalled by anything thereafter.

[Sinful]

Yeah, I really wish the Zelda games were good enough again too... I don't get it. Why can't they like just take the SNES Zelda, leave it exactly the way it is, and make it 3D, Then just keep changing the setting & going froward from there?... Oh, wait, aren't they doing this already? Bet they're gonna fudge this up still. >_<

Another porblem is that we aren't overcoming technology anymore since we've hit the 3D era (basically when originality stoped).

I can't think of a single industry that would run out of talent after just one generation's worth of workforce.

Yeah, you got a point there.

@skykid; yeah, but it's not like one or a few persons has total control over a project anymore. With all them market research & guys in suits who don't know squat about games & only money, etc. I think Miyamoto needs to chill & stop tyring too hard to be inventive with all these BS gimicks. He also needed Gumpi & original Nintendo President to keep him in check maybe?

Oh my god we're dooooooooooooomed :3

Yeah! I know!!

Even if nobody ever makes a good game again from this point forward many of us probably already have (or could, with a little looking around) backlogs that would take more than a lifetime to get through. From where I'm sitting, though, I'm betting there will always be at least a couple of new things worth trying out for the foreseeable future.

lol, this is exactly what I'm betting and praying on.

[Skykid]

@skykid; yeah, but it's not like one or a few persons has total control over a project anymore. With all them market research & guys in suits who don't know squat about games & only money, etc. I think Miyamoto needs to chill & stop tyring too hard to be inventive with all these BS gimicks. He also needed Gumpi & original Nintendo President to keep him in check maybe?

I got no idea how the Big M rolls in the Big N these days. BS gimmicks I don't know about, all I know is when they work (Galaxy, Mario 3D Land) they're still star-grade quality - no different from the Mario Worlds of yesteryear. It's all the other IP shovelware that's a bit deflating.

Miyamoto doesn't have the single-handed reign as director he had when it was a team of seven guys, since all these games require staff in triple figures to turn out, but I'm sure when he applies himself fullest we still get something special. I just wish he hadn't allowed Zelda to wander off.

But that said, I have high expectations for A Link Between Worlds. And maybe after all the poor shit on DS I shouldn't, but dayum, it looks just like Link to the Past. They got me.

[CMoon]

But that said, I have high expectations for A Link Between Worlds. And maybe after all the poor shit on DS I shouldn't, but dayum, it looks just like Link to the Past. They got me.

I was going to be bringing this up as a retort to your argument, but yeah, looks like a good game so far. It may be that the old school developers are gone, but there's always going to be new talent, and I'm still finding a small handful of games coming out every year that I desperately want to play. I just question what we consider a classic and if we'd allow a modern game to fall into that niche. Is anyone going to allow that Mario Galaxy might be as good as the original games (although how do you compare them?)

I'm also suspicious that a lot of new indie titles like Dust Force might be just as good as a lot of so called classic titles--or take Völgarr the Viking which as far as I can tell looks like it improves on its source material. Doesn't mean we'll ever acknowledge them as classics which makes me think we're alway going to be lamenting the end of the 8/16 bit era.

[shmuppyLove]

CAVE should hire Peter Molyneux to revolutionize interactive gaming.

[Drum]

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that ALttP is anything above an average Zelda game.

[Skykid]

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that ALttP is anything above an average Zelda game.

You should bite off your tongue and spit it down a well! What incredible sacrilege/trolling!

[Drum]

Ugly bugly pixel art with a bland colour palette, lots of items and dungeons but none of them especially memorable, and Link has pink hair. It's good, but it's not super amazing. I like how you turn into a bunny.

[Skykid]

Ugly bugly pixel art with a bland colour palette, lots of items and dungeons but none of them especially memorable, and Link has pink hair. It's good, but it's not super amazing.

You're actually completely wrong.

[Drum]

The pixel art is at least indefensible. It's often a real dog. Some of those enemies ... ew.

[Leader Bee]

Lol Drum, you are a real card. I know Oot is typically regarded as THE premier zelda but in mine and many other peoples eyes it's Link to the past. It's the large expansive world, well designed areas and colourful art direction along with some of the most atmospheric mood of it's era that makes this one a cast iron classic. There is a reason it's included in the (ahem) triforce of great snes games along with Super Castlevania IV and Metroid.

I rate wind waker as one of my favourites but that's personal opinion and isn't necessarily true for everyone but to say that lttp is barely above average is just BS.

[Ed Oscuro]

LTTP bandwagoning in hurr

Drum is right; LttP isn't too special.

Though the art is still a step up above the original games, for the most part (the dungeon perspective in the original is a stroke of genius), it's mainly just so because they had to deliver something for the 16-bit console and couldn't get more primitive than the NES games.

I know Oot is typically regarded as THE premier zelda

Why even say this? It's Majora's Mask, clearly. Form your own opinions instead of trying to influence the discussion with what you think the community at large thinks (which doesn't matter).

There is a reason it's included in the (ahem) triforce of great snes games along with Super Castlevania IV and Metroid.

Super Metroid is probably the only one of that "triforce" (which Nintendo would be super grumpy about, seeing that Castevania is a Konami franchise, and probably one of the Mario or Yoshi titles is more beloved by many, and at least as playable as Super Castlevania IV) which could be considered at the very pinnacle. Personally I'm not so sure about that; Metroid games aren't so interesting once you've played through them once or twice, unless you feel super motivated to do a quick clear time. There are definitely many games I'd place above all of these mass-market titles on the platform.

[Hagane]

My favorite Zelda game is Alundra.

[Skykid]

Jesus, what the hell is happening to our forum of respectable seasoned gamers. LTTP "isn't too special"?

Have you guys played it? I get the impression Drum's main beef was visual, which leads me to believe he hasn't.

Not that it needs clarification, LTTP is masterful game design, perfect in every way. If that doesn't qualify as 'special' I don't know what does.

Between Ocarina and Majora, L.Bee is correct, Ocarina is considered to be the people's favourite - although I prefer not to get involved. Personally I think Majora might be the greatest unsung work of gaming genius of all time, the only problem is very few people 'get it', but I'm not sure whether that qualifies as a bona fide fault. I think the 64 duo can happily be praised in equal measure. That i'd probably give Majora the definitive edge doesn't matter much when weighed against how brilliant they both are.

[Ed Oscuro]

Between Ocarina and Majora, L.Bee is correct, Ocarina is considered to be the people's favourite

This question, what the "fan favorite" is, doesn't matter - and nobody is even really promoting OoT as such here. Bringing in the supposed wisdom of the community confuses (and dumbs down) the topic even more. Ditto for the rather amusing suggestion that we need look no farther than LttP, Castlevania IV, and Super Metroid for the SNES' best games.