Zelda's Hype

By Ice

This is a great time for The Legend of Zelda and all of it's faithful followers. For the first time in five years, another chapter in the epic Zelda legacy is about to be told. And this time, Nintendo made sure that it would be the greatest story ever told. For all of you people who have been following the production of Zelda 64 closely, let me start out by telling you that you are at risk of a heart attack. With that out of the way, I'd like to also discuss a very pressing matter with you. Zelda's hype. The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time was initially supposed to be released in late summer, 1997. Those of us who were following the production closely don't know whether to laugh or cry about that now. In any event, here we are, an entire year later, and still no Zelda. We do, however, have a confirmed release date. November 23rd. And we all know what we'll be doing Thanksgiving holiday. For the first time since my mom can remember, I'll be doing something besides stuffing my face! Of course, I'll be playing Zelda. And you guys (and gals) who visit the site regularly won't see me for about a week. I'd like to apologize for that in advance. After all, I'm only human.

This editorial is about Zelda's hype, not my priority problems. Zelda's hype. As you probably remember, Zelda was almost positively going to come out in Spring, 1998. So Nintendo began promoting it pretty darn heavily. The Super Power Supplies Catalog even graced us with a Zelda t-shirt, a shirt that I still wear as often as I can, even though it's not the coolest-looking thing around. But after recalling all that promoting and advertising they did of it, I remember that people were more eager for it to come out then they are even right now. And then Nintendo delayed it indefinitely.

That literally crushed most gamers. Some expected another delay, mainly us older gamers who have really tuned in to what Nintendo has been doing the past couple years and have gotten familiar with how they operate. But even I didn't expect that one. It didn't come as a shock or anything, I simply didn't expect that Nintendo would make such a dumb move as to promoting a game that's over eight months away from coming out.

And here we are today. Once again, Nintendo has started it's little promotional campaign, with merchandise, articles, and more screen shots and info than I care to have. Dan Owsen has mentioned that there will be a promotional video, like Banjo-Kazooie and Star Fox 64. And Nintendo said that they will start airing commercials at the end of October. So I guess they're handling it properly now. After they started promoting it the first time and crushed us like that, many gamers lost faith. Many even gave up on Zelda 64. And instead of the hype increasing tremendously now, it's sort of shimmering away. What does this mean? Ganon, the guy that used to help me here on Ice's Zelda Central, isn't even going to buy Zelda 64! Nintendo, what have you done?

So I leave you with one final thought. Nintendo really spent itself this time, buddy. And the main question is, will it affect Zelda's sales? Probably not. At least not considerably. But with any other game, you can bet your pointed little ears that it would. So the question is, will Nintendo make the same mistake again? I hope not, but with Nintendo, there still runs a chance. Hopefully, they learned their lesson. But as the old saying goes, you can't teach an old Tektite new tricks... or something like that.