The Legend Of Zelda - Ranking Every Gameplay Gimmick
A countdown of all the ways the Zelda series has gone out of its way to make each entry unique.
Gaming history was made on 1 February 1986 when the first Legend of Zelda game was released for the Famicom in Japan. This action adventure title would go on to spawn one of Nintendo’s most beloved franchises. The Legend of Zelda saw players take on the role of Link, an adventurer who had to defeat enemies, collect items and explore huge maze-like dungeons in order to rescue the titular princess.
The title became the first NES game to sell over one million copies, so a sequel was certain. To date, there have been 18 entries in the main series, each which delivered its own unique twist to the conventions established in the original game.
The worst of these gameplay gimmicks are best forgotten, but others helped cement their Zelda title as era-defining pieces of gaming. What’s impressive is how Nintendo have always been brave (or crazy) enough to reinvent the franchise with each entry, and have never been afraid to drop monumentally successful gimmicks in favour of entirely new ones.
2017’s Breath of the Wild turned the Zelda franchise on its head, but only time will tell what earth-shaking gimmicks the future of the series will hold.
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.