The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Message Board older than one year ago

#zelda The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword excels at many things. It has great art direction, inspiring level design and so many other good qualities. More »

A portion of a NerdMentality review...

Not only does Skyward Sword draw so successfully from its 25 years worth of predecessors, but is also improves upon all of those things it uses. It is for these reasons that Skyward Sword will go down in the books as an absolutely phenomenal game, for many, as the best Zelda to date, and as a beautiful tribute from Nintendo to end the Wii's successful life.

Full review here

#speakuponkotaku The Zelda Vs. Orc image from our calm, rational discussion on the merits of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim triumphantly returns for commenter SageofMusic's explanation of what makes the Zelda title a better game. More »

Breaking, obvious news: Mario and Zelda games are popular.

All right, it gets more interesting upon getting into specifics: Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told USA Today that Super Mario 3D Land has become the fastest-selling portable Mario game ever, moving over half a million copies since its November 13 launch. As a result, 3DS system sales have spiked, as well. According to info provided by Nintendo, system sales are up 325% for the week of November 20 over the previous week, and sales that week were up 49% over the week of November 6.

Fils-Aime told USA Today that the surge in 3DS interest allowed the system to cross the DS's first-year sales threshold (2.37 million units) in eight months, even before Mario Kart 7's release.

In crazier news, the Wii had its best Black Friday ever, with Nintendo reporting over 500,000 systems sold just on Black Friday, including early store openings the night before. The combination of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword -- which is itself the fastest-selling Zelda in history, at 535,000 copies -- and rock-bottom prices helped propel the system to its record-breaking feat.

See, Nintendo, there's at least enough life left in the system for Rhythm Heaven Fever to be worth releasing! If you didn't get that subtext, we'll lay it out: give us Rhythm Heaven.

Nintendo has revealed that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the fastest-selling Zelda game of all time. Since launch, 535,000 copies of the game have been sold in the United States alone. The numbers were boosted by strong sales over the holiday weekend, with 500,000 Wii systems sold on Bla...

A portion of a CNN review...

In the end, "The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword" is an underwhelming game that mostly sticks to the successful path that Link has been on for the past 25 years. This is one series that can keep fans happy with its familiar concepts and characters. But the new game's minor tweaks don't inject new energy into the franchise. I wonder where Nintendo can take "Zelda" next without considering some radical changes.

Full review here

Anybody else who has the soundtrack CD, is the track information wrong for you guys? I'm seeing 5 of the 8 tracks with wrong titles, the remaining three blank and all of it under the artist 'Batphone' with the year 2008. The tracks themselves match the official tracklist, but I'm suprised the CD has the wrong information on it.

Edit: Alternatively this could be Media Player and/or Zune messing with me, I'm looking into that now.

Edit2: Media Player is indeed messing around, disregard.

- Aonuma said he both cried and got chills while attending the Legend of Zelda concert
- Kondo played "Grandma's Theme" from Wind Waker live, without practicing
- Kondo knew he couldn't mess it up, which is why he chose that song
- for debuggers on Skyward Sword, testing times of 600 to 700 hours was common, while some played as much as 1,000 hours
- Aonuma tested the game as well, and debuggers would often show him a better way to approach a situation that he was trying to handle
- Aonuma hopes friends and families play the game together
- the simple structure of the game lead to dense content
- the save system was revamped to do away with the frustration of the prior system
- one of the debuggers was French, and while he didn't understand the language of the debug version, he could easily figure out what was needed to complete the game
- Aonuma says that "developers think that a more sophisticated game will provide surprises and awaken the player's inquisitiveness. But that isn't necessarily true."
- Bokoblins are obsessed with underpants
- Aonuma feels that Fujibayashi played a huge part in making Skyward Sword feel so different
- Aonuma felt that after Ocarina, that was the way that console Zelda games should be made
- future console Zeldas after Ocarina didn't start from scratch, but instead, started with a base from previous games
- when Aonuma moved onto Phantom Hourglass with Fujibayashi, that's when they started to think of how things could be refreshed for Skyward Sword
- Aonuma feels that for the next Zelda, "if we will build on the methods we established this time, we might end up getting into a rut."
- Aonuma also says there was a lot they didn't get to do in Skyward Sword
- Fujibayashi wants to make the next Zelda happen in a 3-year time span
- Fujibayashi explains why Miyamoto's games continue to sell so well...

When I've made games, I've always thought, "Why is it that Miyamoto-san's games sell for 10 or 20 years?" What I thought was that Miyamoto-san's games are about intuition rather than culture. To make an extreme example, the exciting points would be the same for cavemen as it is for us who're in the present. You don't need linguistic or cultural knowledge. ...Earlier, we heard from someone overseas who said that the game could be enjoyed even without understanding Japanese, and I thought, "Oh, have we been able to make it so that people can play with intuition?" It was entirely uncalculated to me, but I feel like Miyamoto-san's genes, cultivated throughout the 25 years of the history of The Legend of Zelda unexpectedly generated a landmark with this title that took back from the origins of the series.

- Aonuma says this isn't the end of the Zelda series
- for Skyward Sword, Aonuma says the synergy this time was greater than he had ever experienced before

I've played  uncharted 3 arkham city and now skyward sword, and I like skyward sword the most by far.

Its game of the year in my book but thats just me, what do you all think?

A portion of a C3 review...

Nintendo has taken on-board the feedback from fans and critics alike following Twilight Princess’ release and used it to create one of the best Zelda games ever, if not the best.

Full review here

This is, without a doubt, the longest Iwata Asks feature to ever see release from Nintendo. The 8th release in the Skyward Sword series, this time around we have a 26-section long interview between Iwata, Miyamoto and Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi. I simply do not have the time to read the whole thing right now, but here are some juicy tidbits.

On the possibility of releasing Skyward Sword last year...

Miyamoto: "If we'd only been thinking about what was most convenient for the company when we made this new game The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, we probably would have put a half-finished product on sale last Christmas by saying that we have managed to make it on time just because it was the order from the company."

Iwata: "If I had said last Christmas, 'We need something to be our big end of the year product. Make a new Legend of Zelda game,' you would have made some sort of game. Because you would have spent as much time as you had and put in as much energy as you could to make it."

Miyamoto: "We spent six months making the game, and another six months fine-tuning it. Because the game we were making was so huge, we needed to work that hard on it. Otherwise it would have felt like a waste. We spent so much time making a really good game and it came out so well that it would have been a waste not to make sure that it was really polished."

On Miyamoto becoming bored halfway through Super Mario 64...

Miyamoto: "All of a sudden it hit me, I don't remember if it was when I watched someone playing it, but I was like, 'Wait, a minute...' So I went around and asked everyone, 'This game was really fun in the beginning, but now it doesn't feel fun anymore, does it?' And just as I'd expected, they all said, 'We agree.'

Well, it was something really simple with Mario's movement. In the beginning, we had Mario turning really slowly, so that it was really overemphasized. But at some point he'd started turning really quickly. He kind of zipped around. So then we changed it so that he went back to turning really slowly. And well, I'm not sure if that was the right change to make, but it was really important to me. Because Super Mario 64 was a project that started from that turning movement."

Full interview here
Link, Link

After half a decade of wild experimentation, the Wii seems to have found its summary masterwork in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a long, story-heavy game that is impossible to imagine playing without motion controls. All the old arguments about processing power and short-term gimmickry can be ...

#zelda Some of you are playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. YouTube user AJLStunts is doing that, and then some. Just...watch. More »

#zelda To celebrate the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Lionhead's Lead Character/Creature Artist Jon Eckersley created these Zelda shirts for Lionhead Studio and Andrzej Zamoyski. More »

Patrick leads sky-land expert Jeff through what could be the reason to dust off your Wii.