The Legend Of Zelda - Ranking Every Gameplay Gimmick

15. Spirit Tracks - Trains

Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass allowed players to traverse the Great Sea by boat. For some reason, the developers of Spirit Tracks wanted to translate this much-maligned mechanic to a land-based location. Their way of implementing this? Trains, of course.

Hyrule has always been a green and (usually) pleasant land, so the addition of smoke belching locomotives was quite a shocking technological leap. You might imagine this gave the game something to say about industrialisation and the loss of rural life, but no, instead they just gave everything a train theme.

The game’s version of Link was a train engineer, but that was nothing compared to the Lokomo, who were a mystical race of guardians that drove around in little steam emitting-wheelchairs. Similarly, the game featured train enemies which pursued Link, and even a Demon-Train final boss.

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds! There were some fun elements which came with driving the train, such as the touch screen train whistle. Unfortunately, the train theme seems so incongruous with what we know about the technology of Hyrule, so it’s no surprise the trains of Spirit Tracks haven’t been mentioned since.