We’ve been eagerly awaiting the newest Zelda game featuring the Princess herself as a playable character and made sure to snag our copy of Echoes of Wisdom on release day. It’s everything we hoped it would be and more, and it’s nice to finally be able to play as Zelda in a game for a next-gen console that so many people have access to. Still, chatting about the new game with my non-Zelda fan friends has brought up the same question that you, I, and Princess Zelda have all been dealing with for years now – ‘I thought the guy in the green hat was called Zelda?’
‘I’ve been answering this annoying question on the character name confusion since 1986’ said Princess Zelda as we bumped into her at the launch party for Echoes of Wisdom and chatted over a few Moblin Mohitos, ‘I tried to explain to Miyamoto that people would get me and Link confused if we went down this road, but he simply wouldn’t listen. The Legend of Zelda; it’s taken me 38 years and a lot of hard work to get a proper starring role, and I’m not counting the Philips CDI game because sadly nobody ever does. I mean, Tingle got his own series of games for crying out loud and the guy’s an absolute… well, this is a family publication, so I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.’
I asked Princess Zelda about her thoughts on the Hero of Time and how their media partnership had faired over the years. ‘It’s complicated,’ she said with a sigh, ‘we had a rough patch during the TV series, something that you can definitely see if you watch closely enough. The open-world nature of the new games means we hardly get to spend any time in the studio together either, but we keep ourselves busy and work on new ideas when we can.’
Retro Dodo thinks it’s about time Zelda was recognised as a playable character on a modern system and it’s something that I and the fans have been wanting for a long time. On asking whether it still bothers Zelda that everyone thinks Link bears her name, she simply smiled and took another sip of her drink. ‘Link, Mario, Sonic, Pac-Man; they might be the faces on the game cases, but it’s us ladies, Peach, Amy, Ms. Pac-Man, and me that have been keeping this industry alive since the 80s, and I’m just glad that the rest of the world is finally catching on.’ Another slice of important wisdom from the Princess of Hyrule herself that we wholly agree with, and don’t forget that you can play The Echoes of Wisdom both at home and on the go right now on Nintendo Switch!
