From the first few months following the Nintendo Switch’s release way back in March of 2017 to now, the house that made Mario has ported just about every significant title from the GameCube era to the Wii U to the hybrid handheld. The likes of Mario Kart 8, Metroid Prime, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD have found new – and arguably better – homes on one of the best selling consoles of all time. With the recent announcement of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, only a handful of smaller titles, such as F-Zero GX and Star Fox Adventures, remain. That is, if you completely ignore the fact that The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess haven’t gotten the Nintendo Switch treatment.
I have been waiting for these two Zelda titles to make their way to the Nintendo Switch since 2017, highly anticipating their announcements every Nintendo Direct. However, considering all the rumors surrounding the Switch’s successor, I no longer want Nintendo to re-release them anytime soon. In fact, I’d be pretty annoyed if they did.
You see, we’re not likely to get a new The Legend of Zelda game for a while. Tears of the Kingdom released this year, and between it and Breath of the Wild, we had a span of seven years. Nintendo did release the remake of Link’s Awakening and Skyward Sword HD to keep rabid fans like myself happy in that span, yet now all signs point toward a new Nintendo console in 2024 without a new Zelda game as a launch title. If Nintendo releases The Legend of Zelda: Revenge of the Zonai before 2030 it’ll shock me as badly as stepping on an Electric Chuchu.
It won’t surprise me if we get another Zelda remake or remaster to herald the new console, however. And it may very well be the first 1440p/4K Zelda game if the rumors of NVIDIA DLSS support for the system are true.
Given how stingy Nintendo is with Zelda ports, if they release these two missing titles before the Switch Pro 2 – or what have you – it’s likely we won’t see them on it, or we won’t see them on it for a few years, making for a lengthy Zelda drought to begin a new Nintendo hardware generation, unless they go ahead and remake Breath of the Wild, which has also been rumored. Regardless, I’d much rather see The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess on all-new hardware rather than the Switch’s 1080p. The most recent remakes of these games, after all, were also 1080p on the Wii U.
Related: Wind Waker’s Greatness Proves That Epona Kinda Sucks
It’s also not like Switch owners don’t have a lot to look forward to as the system nears the end of its juggernaut of a run. Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Super Mario RPG highlight the next two months, while titles starring non-mustachioed heroes, such as Persona 5 Tactica and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince will certainly eat up dozens upon dozens of hours for those that pick them up.
Nintendo has also already begun rolling out information on what might be the last first party Switch games in 2024: Princess Peach: Showtime! and the aforementioned Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Given how late Nintendo generally announces their games, expect a handful more to round out next year as we lead up to a new console. And this neglects discussing third-party titles (and Metroid Prime 4, if it exists, but at this point it has to be a Switch 2 launch title, right?), and titles that cross generational lines. Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild straddled generations, after all.
Simply put, we’ve gotten 1080p HD versions of The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess already. We’re well into the realm of 4K displays, and it would be an absolute travesty if Nintendo released these classic titles for the Nintendo Switch rather than its successor if it meant we had to wait forever to see them in a more modern glory. Then again, this is Nintendo we’re talking about, so the more likely scenario is that we’ll have to wait a decade to see either on the Super Nintendo Switch 3 in 2033 while they remake Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom instead. Regardless, I hope Link’s adventures on the Nintendo Switch have come to an end.
