The spirit of NES Zelda lives on in Phantom Hourglass

With The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass making its home on the DS, Nintendo had the opportunity to bring Zelda back to the casual public that remembers loving Zelda on the NES. And in making a game with that goal, producer Eiji Aonuma found the feeling of the new game beginning to evoke the classic cartridge.

As he told MTV's Multiplayer, "With the DS Zelda, I kind of feel as though it is the updated version of the original Zelda. It wasn't a conscious decision, but in an effort to get kind of back to basics, I was able to reconnect with that essence of Zelda that made it fun for people when it first came out." Any time something is likened to the NES Legend of Zelda, we see it as shorthand for "this is a life-changingly incredible game." Because, argue all you want (and you certainly will), The Legend of Zelda is not only a high point for the series, but for games. It's the only one we can consistently go back to.

And, for those of us who love arguing about Wind Waker, here's a note from Aonuma about Phantom Hourglass became a sequel to that game: "When we were starting work on the DS Zelda, it's not as though we knew we were going to create the sequel to Wind Waker, but as we developed the game and gameplay was kind of finalized, we discovered that Wind Waker 2 was what we were making."

We couldn't be more pleased, since we love pretty much everything about Wind Waker (except the Triforce hunting there at the end-- we're not crazy). However, we know that just referring to the game usually leads to a heated argument about whether it's awesome or terrible.