Zelda has been a staple of the Nintendo console since the very beginning. On the NES we saw The Legend of Zelda, and Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link; on the SNES we we had what some consider to be the best, in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past; on the N64 we had the pleasure(or do I mean extreme pain?) of wanting almost a year and a half more than we thought we were going to have to for The Legend of Zelda:The Ocarina of time; we finally then came to the pretty OK game of The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask. We have had some really high moments, and low moments, but we've stuck with little Link through them all. I don't know about the rest of the world but I was hoping this would be a high moment for Zelda gamers and, guess what, it is.




Graphics
This is the issue I'm sure most people are wondering about. When Nintendo announced the "revolutionary" cel-shaded graphics a whole lot of people were very skeptical. I would see posts on forums from people, who had been die-hard Zelda fans ever since the original, saying that they hated the so-called kiddie graphics and had lost there love of the Zelda series and were not planning on buying it when it came out. Well, all of us who stuck around through the questionable times shall be greatly rewarded. If you ever had doubts about the graphics style, be prepared to have them blown away by the wind, literally!

10 seconds into the opening, 'press start' screen animation, my jaw dropped. This is the most meticulously crafted game world I have ever seen! I had always wondered how exactly wind would be expressed, well they did an excellent job. Not only are there sort of lines that flow in the direction of the wind but constantly seagulls will fly in the direction of the wind also the clouds all flow in the direction of the wind. When playing this game you can't help but wonder: "How did they do this?" which is a good thing in my mind. Any thinkable wait for this game is absolutely acceptable once you get a look at it.


Something that deserves mentioning in this section of my review is the clean loading of graphics while sailing the ocean. Some games will make you wait for unbearable load times just to get to the next sector. In this game, though, it quietly makes the dumping of unneeded graphics and the loading of new graphics while you're having fun jumping(that's right, jumping) on the ocean or just experimenting with what you can do. The load times for rooms are a different story. You will notice a definite sort of hanging period where you had just heard the opening door sound, you're waiting for the close-door sound, and you're just waiting to gaze upon more beautiful graphics. It is definitely more than the N64 versions but that's because of the switch from cartridge to disk. In games like this load times are inevitable so they are excused, for now.

I especially enjoyed watching Link's face. At times during the game I would find it quite amusing to imitate the faces Link was making, mainly because they're just so hilarious. The animations are always enjoyable and at sometimes comical. The animations can be moving as well. Seeing Link wave goodbye to his Grandma made me remember of saying goodbye to my grandma and actually moved me. What the artists and animators did with this game is amazing. Seeing guards patrolling the fortresses and sniffing around just to make sure they didn't miss anything in that particular corner is absolutely stunning. At the end of the day, I salute Mr. Miyamoto and his gang of geniuses for there absolutely brilliant work- they just couldn't do such spectacular graphics if they had gone with the realistic style seen at spaceworld- and for there resolve with sticking to their original idea even with the public(mostly American) outcry.



Overall, graphics wise, there is no cleaner, more beautiful, meticulously crafted game on our wonderful little cube. There are meticulous, little details all over the place and they just add to the whole experience. Even Link's hair moves in the wind! It is practically perfect