The year was 2003. I had finally accepted that I liked Zelda, even though I had never completed any of the games. My interest in Zelda came in three steps. I’ve written about the first two steps in a previous article. Ocarina of Time put in a lot of work to stake its claim to a piece of my heart. The final step was my subscription to Nintendo Power. It was Nintendo’s publication, so they did what anyone should expect and promoted the heck out of every upcoming Nintendo game. And for 2003, a new Zelda game was on the way: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
For months, Nintendo Power inundated me with every detail it could fill its pages with about the game. Early screenshots, development history, reviews, and more all did their job and pulled me in. I wanted to learn all I could about the game, and I wanted to play it. I was going to take the plunge and buy a Zelda game for the first time.
The game finally came to the States on March 24, 2003. I didn’t buy it. I said I wanted to play it, I never said I was going to make every effort to do so. It wasn’t as simple as running to the store and nabbing a copy. Games were not bought on a whim back then. My birthday and Christmas were when I got games just for the sake of wanting them. Anything else needed to be bought by myself and with my own money. And later on my 13th birthday in July, I ended up needing to choose between The Wind Waker and the games I wanted for my brand-new Game Boy Advance. Those games were Mario games, and nothing trumped Mario at the time. The Wind Waker ended up on my “to-buy” list for nine months, until Christmas rolled around.
I didn’t get it for Christmas, either. I swear I’m not messing with you. I wanted it, but, again, there were things I wanted more. Yes, there were more Mario games to get. Don’t judge 13-year-old me. He was young and naïve and didn’t understand what he was missing out on.
A month or so before Christmas, I gave my parents my wish list, and I ranked each item I wanted. There was no way I was getting everything: Everything I wanted was a game, and the games were all expensive, as they always were and always are. The Mario games came first, and so did one super-important LEGO set — a set that I can’t even remember the name of now. It’s funny how something can be a must-have gift one day and then a forgotten memory the next.
The Wind Waker was on the Christmas list, but it had to be lower down. I knew the chance of my parents getting it for me was low, but I also knew I should be getting enough Christmas gift money to buy it myself. I took a calculated risk. It was a bold move, but if I was going to be playing as Link, I needed to learn how to have some courage.
I made the gamble, and I won. God bless the friends and family who embrace laziness and give money as Christmas gifts. I had plenty of cash for the game. Christmas Day would belong to the Mario Bros., but the following day would belong to Link.
Christmas Day came and went, and it was now December 26. Knowing that we were eager to keep the gift train rolling, my mom took my brother and me to KB Toys (remember them?) so we could find the things that didn’t make the cut the day before. My brother got whatever he got — I was admittedly pretty focused on myself at the time — and I got my copy of The Wind Waker. As I held the game case, I tilted it back and forth in my hands to marvel at the shiny and reflective cover. It was gold. It was so, so gold.
The ride home was a long one. Part of that was thanks to KB Toys being our first stop for what was a full day of errands, but the rest was typical childhood dramatization of life. As I sat in the back seat of our car, the cellophane wrapping that covered the game taunted me. It was keeping me from my prize. When I did finally get home, I don’t even remember walking up the stairs and down the hallway to my room. I only remember being in the car and then suddenly being in front of my TV as I opened the game case and removed the game. I put that snack-sized disc in my GameCube and turned it on.
As the cube’s intro animation played and the game loaded, I read the manual, which, for me, means I read the story and character details enthusiastically and then apathetically skimmed through the actual manual part of the book. “I’ll figure it out,” might as well have been my motto back then. OK, it should be now as well. All that mattered was the art and the information about the amazing adventure I was about to embark on.
After all of the years of ignoring the series, all of the months of delaying my dive into the world of Zelda, and all of the excruciating hours to get back home with my game, I was finally able to dive into the most special of special worlds. I didn’t know what to expect from the game, and I wasn’t fully confident of how I’d enjoy it after my initially rough experience with Ocarina of Time. There was so much about Ocarina of Time that hindered me. Would I have the same issues with this new quest?
No, no I wouldn’t. There was something that continued to pull me toward The Wind Waker. It was so familiar to Ocarina of Time, that old bane of mine, yet there was also something refreshingly different about it. The mix was perfect. The pieces fell into place in a perfect manner, enough to make me believe God must have looked at me one day and said, “OK, I’m going to make this kid be a Zelda nerd.” Yes, as should be apparent by now, I fell in love with the game, I fell in love with the whole Zelda series, and Link became one of my absolute favorite video game characters. That day marked the start of my passion for the single most important fictional series and media in my life. It was a Christmas miracle, even if a day late.
