Cruise Elroy

By any objective standard Twilight Princess seems head and shoulders above Ocarina of Time. The dungeon design has improved, the battles require more strategy, the world is bigger, the plot is deeper…I could go on, but I suspect many of you have played or read about it by now. Suffice it to say that Twilight Princess is an incredibly ambitious title that improves upon Ocarina in nearly every area.

So why am I loath to say that it’s a better game?

I have a theory, but first allow me to make a somewhat labored analogy between the Zelda and Mario games. If we distill the series into just their most groundbreaking titles,¹ they follow similar trajectories.

The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. are the seminal titles, and they establish the basic mechanics for future games to expand upon. Though simplistic by today’s standards, they’re still fun and eminently playable. Both are universally considered classics of the medium.

A Link to the Past and Super Mario Bros. 3 are similarly analogous. They’ve fleshed out and refined the gameplay elements of their predecessors; now Link can visit full-fledged towns instead of random old men hiding in caves, and now Mario has more items and an overworld instead of just a Fire Flower and series of barely connected levels. Both games represent the pinnacle of 2D gaming in their respective genres and, once again, are hailed today as classics.

Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 defined their series in the 3D realm, with new controls and revamped gameplay, and both enjoy widespread acclaim for their genre-defining innovations. The analogy begins to break down a bit here; while Super Mario 64 was quite well-received, you’d be hard pressed to get a consensus that it’s the greatest Mario game ever.

On the other hand, it would be difficult to overstate how well-received Ocarina was. Despite a staggering amount of prerelease coverage and speculation that it could never live up to the hype, critics and fans both adored the game. It seemed to get more perfect scores than non-perfect ones, and it still routinely lands near the top of those ubiquitous Best x Games of All Time lists. Rarely in the history of the industry has a title been anticipated so highly and still exceeded expectations to the degree Ocarina of Time did.

Now we have Super Mario Galaxy, which has gotten widespread critical acclaim, as is to be expected by now. One could make a case for including it on this list of groundbreaking Mario titles with its motion controls, asymmetrical two-player mode, and physics-defying gravity. But what news from the Zelda front?

They’ve certainly been busy. After the seven-year gap between A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time, Nintendo cranked out three console Zelda titles in five years, including Majora’s Mask and The Wind Waker. These games have been critical successes and fan favorites, but none have been the post-Ocarina phenomenon Nintendo has been looking for.

Enter Twilight Princess, a game explicitly promoted as the best Zelda ever.

During development, Nintendo Power magazine interviewed several people working on the game for their “Inside Zelda” feature. Nearly all of them mention Ocarina of Time as the benchmark for success, which assistant director Makoto Miyanaga picked up on in one of the articles:

You’ve heard from many people on the team that we’re under great expectations to exceed Ocarina of Time. I see Twilight Princess’s development from a privileged perspective, since I work with many teams almost every day. So I’m in a unique position to see how the pressure from Ocarina translates for different people: sometimes good, sometimes not so good. For example, there’s a feeling that we absolutely can’t “lose” to Ocarina. And that creates a lot of pressure.

So how did they do? Incredibly well, actually — it’s a great game, and fully deserves the accolades it’s received. As I said in the introduction, it improves on Ocarina in nearly every way.²

Unfortunately, that’s also Twilight Princess’s biggest fault — that it improves upon Ocarina in nearly every way. After ten years, I don’t really want that; I want a revolution. I want something analogous to the jump from The Legend of Zelda to A Link to the Past. I want a Super Mario Galaxy — something to take the series to the next level.

Instead, what I got in Twilight Princess is a refinement of the same formula that’s powered the Zelda games since the Nintendo 64. Is it the best Zelda ever? Maybe if you look at it out of context. Ultimately, though, it’s just another iteration — not a bad one by any means, but an essentially familiar experience. That’s why Twilight Princess “loses” to Ocarina despite Makoto Miyanaga’s best efforts.

I’m reminded of the quote I mentioned in “Bridge games” where Shigeru Miyamoto says Twilight Princess will be, “without a doubt, the last Zelda game as you know it in its present form.” If the series is to continue, we badly need that to be true.

1. I’ll probably raise the ire of Mario and Zelda fans with this sort of cherry-picking. All I’ll say is that I’m focusing on what I see as the truly revolutionary titles — ones that significantly changed and improved upon the core gameplay. I have nothing against games like Majora’s Mask or the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, but they are pretty closely derived from their immediate predecessors.
2. There are actually some things that I think Ocarina does better, but that’s a post for another day.