I woke up early yesterday morning. Reached for my phone, checked the site, saw the news that Wind Waker was being remade for the Wii U, laughed, thought it was a dream then went back to sleep. It’s only a couple of hours later, when I woke up again and noticed it was still there, that I realised the news was true.
Cue celebrations. See, of all the thousands of video games I’ve played in my life, Wind Waker is my absolute favourite. Hands down. I like it so much, in fact, that I could initially excuse Nintendo’s cynical re-release policy and actually consider buying it.
Then I had a cup of tea, a sit down and a quick think about it, and realised, no, it wouldn’t be that easy. The copy of Wind Waker I’ve got on my shelf still works in my GameCube, and still to this day looks amazing. The copy I run on the Dolphin emulator on my PC looks even better. Why, then, would I care about another version coming out, when the versions I’ve got work just fine?
I won’t. Well, not unless the new version makes a little effort, and does at least some stuff like this:
So the addition of fancy lighting, bloom, saturation and shadow effects looks… weird. A bit much. So it’ll be great (though I admit, given the developer also unlikely) if you could turn them off. I mean, compare the image below with the one above. The top image — running on the Dolplin emulator for the PC — is better in just about every way.
This is so perfect for the Wii U pad’s screen it’s not even funny. And would be a great chance for most players to experience something even the majority of Wind Waker veterans never got a chance to try out.
Before you even say it, yes, this kind of nitpicking is a little absurd. This is the kind of project I should be all over. I’d be as close to the target market as Nintendo would hope for. Yet here I am and all I can do is complain. But then, what else should they expect? Part of the reason this game is still so beloved is that it still looks so damn good, removing the need for an HD remake. So if Nintendo wants this to be as relevant as, say, the recent Ocarina 3D re-release — a game that was in need of a makeover — it’s going to need to work a little harder.
Of course, aside from the brief introduction yesterday we know almost nothing about the game other than what we saw. So for all we know, Nintendo could already be planning on including some/all of that. In which case… well, carry on, Nintendo, carry on.
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