Waiting. Ugh, waiting. The anticipation of something good to come, sometimes known as the opposite of happiness. When it comes to video games, waiting is something that happens all too frequently. Like right now, the week ending Friday, November 18th, 2022, is a week of excited waiting for many with several high profile releases. In a familiar way, for Zelda fans, we are all eagerly awaiting the arrival of Tears of the Kingdom in just under six months.
So, with waiting on my mind right now, I got to thinking about all the other waiting I’ve done for Zelda titles and how so many of them seemed to arrive at various stages of my life. And thus, for today’s Memories, I have completed something of an official Zelda timeline that can’t be debated because, well, it is a personal real-world timeline and doesn’t have any branches I’m aware of!
As my first game was Ocarina of Time, I didn’t have all that long to wait the first time around. In fact, since Majora’s Mask came out when I was nine, when the internet wasn’t something everyone had access to, the only waiting I had to do was from the time I saw it in stores in November until I opened it on Christmas morning. Thankfully, both it and the N64 Expansion Pack which enabled it to be played were waiting under the tree. There wasn’t much wait to play it, but playing through it would take a bit of time.
After the almost back-to-back era of N64 titles, however, the wait for the next Zelda game was like torture for my younger self. More than two whole years went by before The Wind Waker would hit shelves in the US, and for me that meant another grueling nine months before it too could be mine. Other January birthdays might relate to mid-year release dates being awful to deal with. Thinking back, no wait felt longer than this one, as I heard tales and watched some friends play this new title that I knew I wouldn’t get my hands on for months to come. When I finally could play it, the reward was certainly worth it, although lack of skill and love of finding goofy things to do meant progress was, um, almost non existent.
Then came the wait all Zelda fans of a certain age remember. The dreaded postponements, the transition from purely a GameCube game to also appearing on the Wii, and being old enough (and online) to actually know what was happening. Twilight Princess felt as though it would never arrive, like we would be waiting for decades and getting by on rumors and leaked, grainy footage of demos as our only form of sustenance. Sure, there were other, smaller titles along the way, but I was in high school and had limited funds. I wasn’t going to spend them on anything short of the biggest and best games. And when it finally did, ahhh, the game delivered as they always have.
But the wait that meant the most, the memory that’s most tied to my current state of waiting-for-Friday-and-also-May, was when Skyward Sword came out during my college years. This time, I wasn’t the only one waiting. My roommates were also big Zelda fans, and we all wanted to grab that shiny golden Wiimote and see what the ancient land that would become Hyrule would look like. We discussed, we planned, we scoured the Net for new information. When the game, preordered and paid for before release day, was finally there…we played our hearts out until finals season came rolling around before we had even finished the Lanayru Mining Facility. Life being what life can be, I did not finish the game until nearly ten years later, when my wife and I did a Let’s Play of the HD version the day it came out.
That release, the anticipation of waiting, the celebration of a game’s arrival, and the long period of life’s interference, is how I learned something very important about myself, gaming, and waiting in general. What you are waiting for might come right away and be everything you ever dreamed. Or it might not be what you were expecting. Or the reward might come much later than you had hoped. But that doesn’t mean that the wait wasn’t worth it. Since then, I waited for Breath of the Wild to come out, and now we are all waiting for the follow-up. But you know what? I still have not played Breath of the Wild. I will, I know that. Be it right before May or at another time because my wife and I have some time to spare. But I haven’t let the anticipation become a let down by not having time to receive my reward, and I won’t the next time around either.
When it comes right down to it, sometimes waiting for something, no matter how excited you are for it to arrive, will only be that much sweeter the longer your wait was.
(Now can it just be Friday already?)
