I was a freshman in college when The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker came out. I hadn’t been excited for it — despite my love of the Zelda franchise, having conquered games like A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, and Ocarina of Time in my youth, I had been unimpressed with the pictures of the upcoming “Celda” I’d seen in video game magazines up to that point (remember when people read magazines?).
Besides, I was entering college now. My days of spending hours in multiplayer matches of Goldeneye or marching through 80-hour JRPGs like Final Fantasy were long over, right?
All it took was five minutes in a friend’s dorm room watching him play the first dungeon in Wind Waker to convince me otherwise.
I’d already surrendered to video games before that, having spent hours on my roommate’s PlayStation 2 to catch up on various games by then, but the one-two punch of Metroid Prime and Wind Waker had me dipping into my college savings to pick up a GameCube posthaste.
By this point, everyone on my hallway had a GameCube, it seemed, mostly to play Super Smash Bros. Melee and Phantasy Star Online, but Wind Waker grabbed everyone’s attention. It became a spectator sport to watch people sail the Great Sea and restore the Master Sword as each of us raced to finish the game first.
In less than a week, I was way ahead. Classes and homework were neglected so I could spend a few more hours in front of my or another’s GameCube to forge ahead a little farther in the game.
By Wednesday, a mere six days after I’d purchased the game, I was in the final dungeon, battling my way through Ganon’s minions and traps to reach his lair. I took down the dark lord’s giant spider puppet and was getting ready to mount the staircase to reach Ganon himself when my roommate ducked his head into the room to tell me I had a phone call.
I, um, didn’t react well.
I knew my parents were coming that evening for dinner, but I was busy trying to save Princess Zelda here. I didn’t have time for a phone call! I slammed my controller down in frustration and hit the power button on the GameCube to march down the hallway and take the call.
If I’d bothered to look at my watch, I might have just hit pause, but I fully expected my parents were calling to tell me they were downstairs waiting to pick me up. They were not. They were calling ahead, by two hours or so, to ask if I needed them to bring me anything from home. I did not. The call ended.
And then I had to slink down the hallway and back into my friends’ dorm room to sheepishly admit I wasn’t leaving yet.
I ignored the smirks and rolling eyes of my pals, who had just watched me pitch a bit of a temper tantrum at having my gameplay seemingly interrupted, as I booted up the GameCube, fully expecting to have to take down the spider puppet all over again. Thankfully, the game had saved my progress and the spider was already dead. I climbed the stairs, watched the cinematic and began the final battle.
Thirty minutes or so later, the game was over and I was congratulated for finishing Wind Waker successfully by my friends, my ignominious exit earlier forgotten in the triumph of victory.
But I make sure to check the time now before I cut any game off for a seeming emergency, lest I have another game interrupted only due to my own foul temper.
