In the 2022 EOY Round-Up, I mentioned plans to run through as many of the Good Zelda Games as possible leading up to Tears of the Kingdom in May, to provide my 4-year-old kiddo with sufficient background context for the game he’ll be watching me play for a good chunk of the year.

It went great. . . but it’s also where the vast majority of my game playing has gone for the first half of the year. Here’s a brief recap with my kid’s thoughts.

The Legend of Zelda (Switch Online)#

We started off with LoZ via Switch Online. It was fine. I remembered most of it from memory but had to pull up guides for the absolute mess that is “which is the good bush to burn?” and “everything about the final dungeon”.

Kiddo enjoyed it. “It’s kinda my favorite but there’s just one bit of it in my head. That means I like it a little bit. (In my head.)”

Deathless 100% from memory on Switch Online. Great as always. Digging minigame can still die in a fire, the only bad thing about LTTP.

Kiddo thought it was ok. “Not my favorite. The Dark World was yucky.”

We played the Switch Remake even though NSO expanded to include Link’s Awakening DX the day we were slated to start. Didn’t 100% it because there’s always one seashell I forget about, and because I didn’t want to deal with kiddo getting bored as I did all the Dampe stuff.

This was the first media product he has interacted with that he didn’t want to end. Like, legitimately mad about it ending. He made me load it back up after credits rolled (which I cried through as usual) to prove that the game didn’t go away and that Marin was ok. He was very concerned about Marin.

I am reasonably confident that he did not understand what I was talking about when I explained that the first time I beat this game I was worried we were going to run out of battery, as I was in the rear-facing seats in a station wagon, on a road trip, running out of light, because these are all things that are completely alien to him.

Kiddo’s thoughts: “It was good. At the end I was sad about Marin. But that’s ok.”

Ocarina of Time (Switch Online)#

Potentially Controversial Opinion: OOT has not aged well. Watching it is fine, but oh man the gameplay is . . not good. I did not 100% it because I could not be bothered with bean stuff whatsoever. I do not like bean shenanigans.

Kiddo enjoyed it. He didn’t enjoy it as much as LTTP or Link’s Awakening, but still good.

His Thoughts: “I liked the parts where it was good, but not the bad parts, with Ganon.”

Wind Waker (HD, Wii U)#

The day we were slated to start Wind Waker news broke that people’s Wii U’s were apparently bricking themselves due to disuse. Also I couldn’t find the bonus BS proprietary power brick that powered the Game Pad, so I had to order a third-party one. Against all odds, everything worked fine so we hopped into Wind Waker HD.

Wind Waker is in my opinion the best Zelda game, and even with the Mii Verse gone, Wind Waker HD is still the best incarnation of any Zelda game. I didn’t 100% it because woof that’s a lot of pictures to take, but I did basically everything else.

Of note here is that replaying this straight up made me angry. I completely misremembered how important the touchpad was. I thought it was used so much more, and it straight up isn’t. You can play the whole game with the Pro Controller, but you can’t use gyro aiming which is so good. There’s literally no reason this shouldn’t be on Switch. They almost certainly have Twilight Princess and Wind Waker in the bag, just waiting for an advantageous time to ship them. It’s just crazy that now that the WWHD is only on one console, and the only console it’s on is the one that is actively bricking itself, and you can’t use their horrible digital storefront to buy it anymore because they closed it.

Kiddo’s thoughts: “I was super surprised that Tetra was Zelda. I really liked our painter fish friend.”

Breath of the Wild (Switch)#

With a month remaining, we hopped into BotW. It took a bit to re-acclimate to BotW after Wind Waker but it all came back fast enough. We did not 100% it because Koroks Exist, but we did 120 shrines.

Kiddo’s thoughts: “I liked it a LOT. I like this Zelda more than Marin.”

Extended Viewing#

We also watched two speedruns, Linkus7’s world record any% from about a year ago, and Player5’s BotW record from a few weeks ago.

Kiddo’s thoughts re: Wind Waker HD “Swimming backwards was really silly”. Regarding BotW: “He should put pants on.”