The Evolution of “Geek Culture” (part 2)

(previously)The Evolution of “Geek Culture” (part 1)

You would think that finally being accepted would be the happy ending to the story. Geek culture has “arrived” and is finally widely accepted. It’s not social suicide to wear a Dr. Who shirt, talk about the Infinity Stones, or debate console wars and video games as it once was. Clubs and small get-togethers were starting to become bigger. A Smash Bros. tournament or 3DS meetup that used to take place occasionally in someone’s basement now is a weekly event with 50 people attending. All sorts of people you wouldn’t expect to attend a Comicon-style event show off their tickets ahead of time. There are entire swaths of Reddit and YouTube dedicated to oddly specific hobbies where there was once just a sole webpage back in the late 90’s. Shows like Stranger Things look back fondly (through very rose-tinted glasses) on those times with the DnD nerds as the town heroes - something that wouldn’t have happened before. Basically, it was way easier to find and recruit new members to things traditionally relegated to the realm of nerd-dom. 

All is well in the world, right? 

But there was a major shift in things. I wanna say it started around 2014 and came to a head in mid to late 2018. The major battlegrounds were things like the all female reboot of Ghostbusters, Gamergate, “New” Atheism, the new Disney Star Wars films (especially the Last Jedi and Solo), Marvel Comics, and several other areas. Hardcore and longtime fans of these hobbies were suddenly being accused of gatekeeping and excluding people, especially women. 

My experience had been that for the most part, girls/women didn’t want to be seen doing these things, but when there was one, she was accepted with open arms. I will also admit that these sorts of boys are probably not the greatest at reading social cues or knowing how relationships are supposed to work. So there were probably girls who may have liked said hobbies, but were too afraid of committing social suicide by being associated with them or who were turned off by the boys’ lack of social grace and/or hygiene, possibly.

I will also admit that a lot of these hobbies have some gatekeeping elements built in to them naturally. They aren’t the kind of thing (like, for example, sports) where there are a lot of casual fans - you’re either all in or your not part of it at all. And there is a higher/steeper learning curve (like needing to understand/memorize a lot of background information in order to keep up with spirited debates) that might be purposely designed to keep “normies” out. In this arena, words and ideas are what's important and athleticism is not at all, so one needs to be prepared to defend one's opinions about fictional universes. There is probably also a measure of distrust towards more “normal passing” newcomers because of all the wedgies and swirlies suffered in the past - there are plenty of examples of opening the group up to new members and having it attract more bullying in the long run. That type of exclusion/derision is fertile grounds for an “Us vs Them” type mentality between cliques. The other threat to the fan community is the swarm of "Nu-Fans" who invade a space and demand that it be changed to accommodate the interests of these people who didn't know it existed until last week. Rather than admitting that perhaps Star Wars is just not their thing but Marvel is, they petition to make Star Wars more like Marvel with lightsabers. I personally have not been much into Star Trek, but I don't go onto their part of the playground and demand that Gene Roddenberry (or whatever corporation owns the IP presently) make it more to my liking. 

This type of "gatekeeping" is actually good to help keep what made something good/popular in the first place more "pure," for lack of a better term, and more inline with the original premises and ideas. In other words, gatekeeping for reasons like race/gender/etc. is not a good thing, while gatekeeping for merit reasons or to ensure the product/IP remains intact should be commended. However, bad actors/media will accuse fandoms of the first kind of gatekeeping when they're really engaged in the second kind. A slightly different example is that we all benefit from the American Medical Association gatekeeping who can and can't perform surgery. (see: In Defense of Gatekeeping)

I also truly believe there are people who (previously) secretly loved something geeky but couldn’t let on in public that now are free to enjoy it without social stigma, and that’s a good thing. But there are also bad actors and opportunists who get accepted along with the new and casual fans, and eventually they cause the havoc. 


So after a honeymoon period of great growth of geek culture, the pendulum has swung the other way. Most of the backlash stems from “nerds” having their spaces being invaded. “Nerd” and “geek” are no longer the insults they once were, but words like, “toxic,” “incel,” and, “masculinity,” have replaced them. Essentially, what it comes down to is that these types of “geek” hobbies are being socially “gentrified” to an extent. Someone on a reddit post put it fairly perfectly and succinctly: 


So to see gamers, especially “nerd” gamers, accused of doing the opposite [excluding people], is very upsetting. It’s not just a false accusation, it’s a movement to try to exclude and eject those very gamers who were so welcoming in the first place.
It's called social gentrification, and it's something I've seen discussed many times in this sub. The pattern basically goes like this:
1. A nerdy hobby (video games, comic books, etc) suddenly becomes cool and mainstream.
2. An influx of new, non-nerdy fans enter the hobby.
3. Creators are encouraged cater to the broadest audience possible, which often involves dumbing it down, removing sexy women, and putting in token gay and minority characters.
4. The old fans don't like the changes being made to their hobby and start to complain.
5. Progressive bloggers and writers attack the old fans for not being "inclusive" and write articles smearing them. The old fans start being seen as undesirables (again) by the public.

6. The old fans are driven into the shadows, some abandon the hobby in disgust.
7. Eventually the hobby's mainstream appeal peaks, and begins a slow decline. The casual fans lose interest and find something new and trendy to follow.
8. The hobby becomes nerdy and uncool again, leaving only the hardcore fans.
On second thought, Step 8 may be wishful thinking.

I think that in all businesses/industries, there are growing pains. Once geek culture caught on, several corporations saw it as a new money-making opportunity where it wouldn’t have been such in the past. The proper way to please the long time fans and the newer, more casual fans simultaneously is always a tough tightrope to walk. There’s something in the business world called the  Pareto Distribution (closely related to the Matthew Effect), and in this context, it turns out that something like 20% of the fans were responsible for 80% of the revenue that companies like Lucasfilm earned. And instead of appealing to the hardcore fans, they pandered to the other 80% while trying to recruit increasingly greater numbers of less passionate fans by means of "wokeness" and diversity instead of coherent story and character growth. 

To those of us who are old enough to have experienced both sides of this story, it feels disingenuous when normies loudly proclaim how great this culture is when it is what used to be made fun of, like they’re only doing it because it happens to be popular at the time. In sportsball (a term that geeks use to throw a little shade back at the bullies), they call that being Fairweather Fans.   

I understand why corporations would sell out - the promise of money. Someone has convinced them about this phantom potential audience out there that’s just waiting, even chomping at the bit, to take part in the great cultural experience that is geekdom, and will only do so once they see themselves represented on screen, or page, or whatever, and that it becomes sufficiently woke/diverse. The best example is replacing Tony Stark with a 10-year-old African-American girl in the comics (and later in the MCU). I imagine that someone convinced the editor-in-chief that there were hordes of young, black girls who would just love to buy and read Marvel Comics, but the fact that Iron Man was a straight white dude turned them off [in my head, it probably went like a Screen Rant Pitch Meeting]. If Tony were to be gender and racially swapped, not only would the old fans continue to read the book, but all these new fans would flock to the All-New, All-Different Iron Heart! (spoiler alert: neither thing happened)

At some point the corporations decided they can bleed the fans dry with fake paid fansites/reviews, and to longtime fans, it looks more like a soulless cash grab from the new owners of the IP, especially when the original creator(s) have sold their IP to a new company. Lucasfilm and Blizzard are perfect examples of this. 

Nerds care about things like consistency in canon, the story and character development, continuity, the rules of the universe, and lore, and feel like they’re just being exploited for money and fame. “Normies” don’t usually care about those things terribly much, and just want the street cred and the t-shirt without doing the legwork of reading/watching the source material. When companies pander to the normies they tend to alienate the original (and more hardcore) fans. 

In summation, I really hate to see my neighborhood of pop culture being so ruined and exploited. Different sections of the hardcore fans are fighting back and they're catching hell for it. But I think it's a fight worth having. 



A few good articles:

A great article on Social Gentrification


Another great article on the evolution of Subcultures (very relevant)

The Evolution of "Geek Culture" (part 1)

This post is one that’s going to make me feel old, but I think it bears putting into words.

My kids are growing up in a much more accepting and kinder world with regards to the types of hobbies we enjoy. It was very different when I was their age, and at the risk of sounding like a, “walked to school barefoot in the snow uphill both ways,” type of post, I’m going to talk about it.

When I was young, there were very few acceptable outlets for “geek” or “nerd” culture. The

most mainstream of them were Star Wars, and to some extent, Star Trek, but seeing outward professions of fandom by others was a pretty seldom sight. Public proclamations of fandom (like wearing a shirt) was tantamount to wearing a “Kick Me” sign. Admitting you were a Nintendo or Marvel fan more or less made you out to be Urkel, the prototypical nerd. Personally, I was never given a swirly or shoved in a locker. But there was definitely ridicule when someone overheard me talking Zelda with a friend, saw my Marvel card collection that I brought to swap with other collectors, or saw me doodling Wolverine in class. Though I think it was known that I was into such things, I knew better than to bring it up unless I already knew the other party was a fan. Like, I kept a mental list that I could talk Star Wars with these 3 friends, Comic books with certain other friends, video games with a select few, etc. And when talking about those things at school, we kept the conversation kinda quiet so as to not draw attention our way.

The Sci-Fi, Superhero, and Fantasy genres seemed to be the domain of the nerd and

making those kinds of movies is really expensive because of the additional costuming, set, and special effects costs being so much higher than, say, a comedy like Fletch or Animal House. So when one did get made, it was usually terrible and only enjoyed by the most hardcore of fans.




Meanwhile, Sit-Com, Drama, and Sports television programs were on nearly all the time. But things that represented my interests and hobbies were only shown on Saturday mornings. I grew used to just accepting that most other shows would be about Hospitals, Cops, and Relationships that sometimes had pop culture references (video games didn’t make the cut as popular to be referenced in “pop” culture). Though what I liked wasn’t as mainstream, I used to love when even the smallest semblance of geek culture was seen on more traditional media. Like, I just about wet myself with glee while watching Family matters when Harriet mentioned Nintendo. Once.


Sometimes I would catch wind of something, like the 90’s Flash TV series, or Birds of Prey on the WB. Even if it wasn’t terribly great, I would still watch and support it hoping that it would get better because I was starved for things I really wanted. But these types of things were 1) usually cancelled after the first season, 2) were almost always relegated to really inconvenient time slots (and it seemed to change time slots weekly so it was hard to catch consistently), and 3) were often bumped for other programs that took precedence, like the Miss America Pageant. Back then, I really tried to embrace the philosophy that Kevin Smith (still) espouses - support everything that is even vaguely comic-book/sci-fi related so they will continue to make more of it.

There were, of course, comic books, computers/electronics, novels, Dungeon and Dragons, but very few movies outside of the Star Wars/Star Trek ones. The only (decent) ones I can think of are examples are the first Batman and Superman movies, Dune, Tron, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Occasionally there was a TV show, like Wonder Woman, Hulk, or Flash, and there were animated series. And there were places like Radio Shack, an arcade, or a comic book store that served as some of the few refuges for geeks but even these places were seen (to some extent) as seedy and frequented by less-than-desireables.

Video games caught a foothold and then almost lost it in the Video Game Crash of 1983, but thankfully were saved by Nintendo (for the most part). Slowly it gained in popularity, but was still seen as more of a nerd/geek/unpopular thing, and usually not something that girls did. However, there was always a prominent video game case/display in major stores like K-Mart, Wal-Mart, etc. that gave the hobby some visibility.


But something happened. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but sometime around 2003 to 2005, it became socially acceptable for some reason. Perhaps the kids who grew up with Nintendo were now of an age to spend large amounts of cash on consoles/accessories and it was enough that the business world finally took notice. Maybe it was Bryan Singer’s X-Men and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films that made it ok to like these things, or Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films winning all the Oscars. Perhaps it was the Star Wars prequels wrapping up that allowed the older generation of Star Wars fans to “transmit” the love of the films to their kids. It might even have something to do with online forums letting us all know that there were more fans than we initially thought because it was safer online than in public. I’m almost certain that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had something to do with it.

I don’t know.  

Edit: After reading some comments on Reddit, I have decided that Lord of the Rings probably accounted for like 45% of the shift, and the other things just mentioned are spread across the other 55%. 

The two comments in particular are this: 

from /u/TechniChara:

I've said this before - on paper, [the LotR Trilogy] should have failed spectacularly.

• Low budgets (less than $100MM per film) with huge special effects expectations and cinematic translation of a sprawling world
• Directed and written by an unknown indie director, his wife and friend
• Directed in a country with little more than an indie film industry
• Adapting a work that was deemed unfilmable even by modern standards
• Using an unknown special effects workshop
• Featuring a 100% CGI character as a main character meant to blend in with live action and interact with other characters - history before LotR showed this was very risky and likely to fail.
• All three films filmed at once - this is the biggest shocker. This had never been done before, closest was two films at once and one film would always end up worse off at best. Three films is logistically insane.
• Some of the main actors were relatively unknown, so there was little star power to draw people in
• At the time, geek was not cool. High fantasy with weird names and deep lore would put a neon sign on your person screaming "kick me!" The genre itself was known for some mild successes and plenty failures. At best they might expect to break even.

It should have gone wrong. But someone really fucking liked Tolkien and rained a hurricane of good luck upon that production because everything good that could have happened to make it even better than originally envisioned, did, and it forever transformed our culture to embrace and love geek.

And this comment from /u/Deggit:

There's a lot of missing context here for people who grew up with film series like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, or the MCU. The idea of making a trilogy of nearly 3-hours-each fantasy films, and financing and shooting the entire trilogy before the first film was even theatrically released, was considered absolutely looney tunes in 1998.

Fuck, it's audacious now.

But in the late 90s it was especially bad for genre films. The epic flop Cutthroat Island was one example of what scared Hollywood away from fantasy adventure for a while. The 90s were a heyday for straightforward action films and in the latter half of the decade, for slick adult scifi. But fantasy and comic books were considered dork material. The only high grossing comic book movies were about Batman or Superman. Also, if you were an industry exec in the late 90s, your idea of chaching was sequels, not film series per se. You would make a movie and if it was successful the sequel gets greenlit. The idea of purchasing an entire IP just to make a structured cinematic universe out of it was... out of this world in 1998.

There were eight trilogies that really changed the landscape of Hollywood between 1998 and 2008. They completely altered the possibility-space of what a successful, genre movie could look like.

1. First, the original X-Men trilogy... though it's probably not considered a notable series of films anymore, at the time it blew the doors off superhero filmmaking. Instead of the "god IPs" of Superman & Batman, the X-Men films made bank with "less bankable" characters (there were earlier films that tried this, like Spawn, that were just a bit too soon before their time). There woulda never been Iron Man (and certainly not Deadpool), without X2 back in 2003.

2. Then LOTR happened and showed you could get huge mainstream box office and even sweep the Oscars with a fantasy movie, leading to a glut of me-too movies for the next decade (most notably, the Chronicles of Narnia movies). The first movie is very much a "Part One" and proved that a film that was necessarily, unashamedly incomplete could still be a success. There would be no "cinematic universes" without LOTR and Harry Potter, which I'll talk about for #8.

3. At the same time you had the Star Wars Prequels and...

4. ....the Matrix trilogy, both of which were highly commercially successful despite fanwars, and both trilogies pointed the way to a new "hybrid" Hollywood that combined live action and completely virtualized environments, which is what most top grossing movies are doing today (the New York City in Avengers 2012 doesn't look as wild as Avatar's Pandora, but they are both 100% fake). Together with LOTR all three film trilogies also combined CGI with miniatures, mattes and other "conservative" special effects techniques.

5. Together with this was the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy and...

6. the Nolan Batman films. The importance of these two is they heralded the dawn of "manchild cinema." In a revenge of the nerds, the pariahs of pop culture took it over; the kid who used to get shoved into lockers for playing with toy armies was now helming $150m movies, and those movies then became the top rated and most discussed movies of that year. It was an era of complete euphoria and vindication for the former dorks. (Peter Jackson was partially identified with this generation of directors as well). Premises that would have been considered abysmally dumb and puerile became real movies because you had a "dork whisperer" like Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon, or Sam Raimi in the director's chair making movies for his fellow dorks. Manchild cinema was arguably a 10-15 year generational fad that swept not just movies but TV (Big Bang Theory ran alongside its heyday) and our wider pop culture (celebrities playing Dungeons & Dragons was pretty unimaginable in 1995). Manchild cinema came to an end around 2017 or so, with the Star Wars Sequels and Justice League both being unfortunate casualties of the pop culture shift. Ironically the main reason for its demise was possibly that younger audiences are so used to any premise being a possible movie - the idea of, say, Kick Ass being an actual Hollywood movie doesn't amaze them - that they began to be a bit more cynical about these films than their "inject it into my veins, because I never had this as a kid" elders.

7. The seventh trilogy that was crucial in Hollywood's transformation, and honestly it's weird that I put it at #7 because it deserves a higher spot, was Pirates Of The Caribbean which presaged the entire Disney MCU. Pirates nailed down the tightrope-walking formula of all modern blockbuster films, where everything is postmodern and meta and the characters continually puncture the drama of their own situation, yet the movie is also full of genuinely indulgent genre thrills. There's no Tony Stark without Jack Sparrow. This film-making strategy is in the final analysis a cynically psychological management of the audience; you give them the stupid thrills they want, but also give them an 'out' from having to admit they're invested in a movie about men in spandex or women with magic swords. In other words: THEY FLY NOW? THEY FLY NOW (also, EARTH IS CLOSED TODAY, SQUIDWARD). Interestingly the age of Jack Sparrow movies may be coming to an end for two reasons. First the idea of "Marvel humor" has filtered into pop culture so much that people see that shit coming a mile away (and few screenwriters did it as well as the original Pirates screenplay). Secondly there's a trend in movies, filtering in from television, for a "New Sincerity". Mad Max: Fury Road was one example of a post-2010 film that made no apologies for its hideously genrebound setting and plot. And every movie the Rock makes, especially the Jumanji films, pretty much wears its heart on its sleeve with no false ironies.

8. Finally there was Harry Potter which was maybe the most important film series of all of them, even more important than LOTR, because it kind of revolutionized the relationship between studios and actors. The idea of hiring actors for an entire series turned films into quasi-TV and created a believable continuity that went beyond the casting-carousel James Bonds and Batmans of the past. Also, while many of the costs of producing a film remained fixed on a per-film basis, the franchise grew increasingly profitable, ending with two films that were absolute fucking cash cows and created a merchandising empire.

All I know is that now it’s remarkable when I go in public and don’t see someone wearing a Marvel t-shirt or see hordes of Captain Americas and Iron Mans (Iron Men?) while Trick-or-Treating. And it’s not like it’s that this kind of thing is finally just tolerated. It’s flat out thriving and even driving current pop culture. The MCU in 10 short years became the highest grossing movie franchise with 23 movies that are the cultural event that Star Wars was in 1977, only even more so. When I visit subreddits like /r/NBA and /r/CFB, which should be the stomping grounds of jocks and sports fans, there are Thanos jokes and WandaVision references peppered throughout the LeBron and College Football Playoff discussions. That still blows my mind.

When once there were a few small conventions for very specific things (Star Trek or San Diego ComiCon) that were often a punchline to jokes told on sit-coms, these are now huge industries, with conventions popping up all over the place. Cosplaying has been normalized and is even popular enough that some people make a living doing it. The Big Bang Theory was a whole show about physicists (and one engineer) that lasted 12 seasons but would have never made it past the initial pitch when I was young. Instead of the "nerd" being the outcast like Urkel was, they're the main stars. The video game industry rivals the film industry every year for most money grossed, and e-Sports and Twitch live streaming is a thing. Sports stars in the NFL solving Rubik's Cubes and talking about Black Panther isn't out of the ordinary. Dr. Who is no longer an obscure British show known by only a few Americans.

Basically, what I’m trying to convey is that if I could get into a time machine and go tell my 9-year-old self that the biggest movie ever was about Captain America and Iron Man (and like 50 friends in full costume) taking down Thanos, that there would be an actor who portrayed Wolverine perfectly, and that dressing up as characters or playing video games made you “cool,” he would call me a liar.







However, there is a Part 2 to this story . . .

That Time Zelda (sorta) Saved My Life

Ok, maybe the title is a bit sensational and perhaps a little click-baity, but Zelda definitely saved my sanity.

Excuse me, Mr. Dracula,  have you
heard of our other Lord, Jesus Christ?

This one’s going to be way more personal than all of the other posts, and perhaps a bit embarrassing. Like, some of this I haven't even told my wife. And it’s not something I like to talk about since a major life paradigm shift roughly 7 years ago, but there was a reason I spent some time in Japan that wasn’t part of an exchange-student type program or sightseeing trip. I was there to be a Mormon missionary.

I know that logically, I wasn’t exactly forced to go and I could have refused. But I felt obligated to go because it’s just what good Mormon boys do, and I had seen how those boys who didn’t go (or weren’t able to successfully complete the two years) were treated by the local Mormon community. They weren’t exactly shunned or kicked out, but there was a definite presence of cultural shaming which colored and overshadowed all their social interactions; they were seen as "less than," and I didn't want that to happen to me. I felt apprehensive, but I had taken 3 years of Japanese in high school and had wanted to visit Japan ever since. Besides, Nintendo was headquartered there, so there was excitement to accompany my apprehension.

Matsumoto Castle

Once I had said goodbye to my family and friends, the reality of what I had embarked upon started to weigh heavily on me. There was a whole list of things I wouldn’t be able to do for the next couple of years, like play video games, watch TV/movies, go on dates, call my family (except for Mother’s Day and Christmas), or hell, even be alone for a while. I would be missing a whole bunch of pop culture events, most notably Star Wars Episode 1. For the duration of my time as a missionary I was limited to writing letters (snail mail) because the rules didn’t allow for email – something about wanting to keep us focused on our duty and not be worried about family back home.

I wasn’t sure I could make it, and I needed a coping mechanism. I now know that a lot of Mormon missionaries experience some kind of depression and/or culture shock, and I was no exception, but I didn't know that at the time and assumed it was only me who was experiencing this. The idea hit me that if I thought of my mission as a quest, like the kind I had enjoyed in The Legend of Zelda series of games, I could make the time pass more quickly, make it more bearable, and give me a goal to focus on.

A digital recreation of my
notepad and planner

My idea was to make a list of every major event in the four Zelda games to date. Since I had left about 6 months before Ocarina of Time came out, Link's Awakening was the most recent game. Once I had my list, I was going to use the calendar in my day-planner to spread the items/events evenly over the two years, celebrating each event as a mini-step towards the end goal. 

For about three weeks, when I had some personal time (which wasn’t often) I racked my brain to make a list of every item found, every piece of heart, and every boss and dungeon. I was sure the other missionaries would find my coping mechanism rather silly so I kept it from them and sorta wrote in code. All they knew was that I had a notepad with a list that meant something to me – Yes, it was a secret to everybody. To help me remember each thing, I also recreated the item sub-menus from memory and mentally played through the games to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. It helped that I had beaten each of the four games at least 5 times each. Once my list was complete, the only thing left was to do the math and write them on my calendar.

If do right, no can defense.

If I recall correctly, it worked out that about every 3 to 4 days there was some new event or item to celebrate. For example, July 15th might have been finding the Power Bracelet, or October 23rd might have been defeating Agahnim for the first time.  It became my morning routine that after I had eaten breakfast and  showered, I would sit at my desk and check my planner/calendar to remind myself of the day's agenda, but also to “see where I was” in the game. 

Keeping that in-game progress in mind as an analog to what I was doing in Japan helped me keep my spirits up. This isn’t to say it was all bad. There were plenty of good times - nice people to meet, new food to try, and interesting things to see in between all the work I was meant to do. But I mainly relied on Zelda while doing things I didn't enjoy, like knocking on doors to bother people (for which I’m extremely regretful now) or sitting through boring meetings/trainings. It's too bad that I hadn't played Ocarina yet, as it might have been fun to imagine that  having to ride my bike for miles on end was like riding Epona. 

After living in Japan for about 4 months, I started to see some of the promotional material for Ocarina of Time around stores. I took a few fliers home to my apartment and would stare at them, draw the pictures, and translate the text, using it as a good excuse to enhance my Japanese vocabulary. In my mind, getting to play Ocarina of Time was like getting the Triforce at the end of A Link to the Past, and it gave me another reward to look forward to. Occasionally while at a store I would see the demo of it playing (you know, the title screen and some cut scenes that play if the game is on but nobody is playing). The cruel irony of not being allowed to play the game while living only a short train ride to Nintendo Headquarters and the forest that inspired Miyamoto’s sense of adventure was not lost on me. 

At long last, I made it home to Oregon and I think I had only been in my house for about three minutes before I was staring at the title screen of Ocarina of Time. Even when a girl I had been sorta interested in dating before I left tried calling me, I would have rather been playing Zelda and got off the phone as soon as I could.

So even though I highly doubt anyone involved in making the games will ever see this, I want to sincerely thank Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, Koji Kondo, Yoichi Yamada, Yasunari Soejima, Daniel Owsen, Kazumi Totaka, and all the others who worked to make these games so good, thank you. No, really - Thank You. Your efforts helped me get through a difficult time in my life, and while I’m not claiming anything like I would have been suicidal without them, they helped me stave off some depression by giving me a little something to look forward to every few days, and something big and well worth the extra wait it took (one and a half years late!) at the end of it all.

Years later, I have moved away from being associated with the Mormon church, but my love of Zelda is stronger than ever, and it served as one of the anchors in my life when my whole world was being turned upside-down and inside-out while coming to grips with finding out the awful truth about the church I had been raised in. 

Zelda Spin-off Games

Review of Spin-off games


After doing a little console hacking and emulator configuring, I found myself with access to some of the spin-off and region locked games that I had never really planned on playing. So I figured I might as well play and review them. I am limiting this to officially released games, and not any fan-made ROM hacks, like Zelda: The Outlands (even though that game is actually quite good) or randomizers.

I fully acknowledge the fact that these are spin-off/non-canon games does sorta relegate them to a “lesser class” of games to most people, and it usually means the games weren’t given as many resources when they were in development. Which is all to say that it’s a bit unfair to compare some of these to, say, Twilight Princess or a Final Fantasy game in the same way that it wouldn’t be fair to compare Mario’s Math to Super Mario Galaxy 2. So for that reason, I’m going to give each game two scores - one for how good of a game it is in general (just like any game website would rate it). Naturally these scores won't usually be as high as a "normal" game. I'm also trying my best to rate it not by 2019's standards, but by the standards of the year each game released. My personal bias and subjectivity in the scores here is acknowledged, so some of the scores are probably higher because of my love of the Zelda franchise. 

The other score is a ranking for how good it is as far as a Zelda spin-off. In other words, when compared to just other Zelda spin-offs, how do they fare. There are 19 (!) different non-canon/spin-off games and are shown here in the North American release order (except for the Japan-only games, which are given their Japan release dates) along with what official games they were released around for context.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Zelda Game & Watch (1989, Nintendo)

[Released between AoL & ALttP]


The first Zelda spinoff was a Game & Watch - one of many made by Nintendo that preceded the Tiger line of portable single-game devices. I played it by unlocking it from the Game & Watch Gallery 4 game on the GBA (and by unlocking them, I mean downloading a save file so that I didn’t have to play through all of the other games I don’t care about). Alternatively, it can be played through a browser online (Adobe Flash required). The tech of its day severely limited what could be done to make it portable, though it should be noted that the Game Boy came out a month earlier than this did, but it would be four years until we got a proper Game Boy Zelda game. It’s fairly repetitive and involves getting timing patterns down. Essentially, Link’s goal is to kill the stalfos in each room while avoiding the knives of the enemies. Some rooms only have 1 and some have up to 5 enemies. After completing a room, Link has to choose to go left or right, and depending on his choice he can get additional items. At the final room, there’s a dragon boss, and after defeating it a new level begins. Getting through the first few levels is fairly easy but each level adds more rooms and with it the possibility of missing a crucial item to make the boss easier. If this game had a save feature it would have made it more fun, but alas, it must be completed in one go (which didn’t stop me from using save states on my emulator). For the time it came out, it was probably a fine adaptation as a portable way of playing a game and wasting some time, but is fairly primitive by today’s standards. And as stated before, the Game Boy had also just come out, and is a far superior piece of tech. 


General Score: 4/10                   Ranking: #14

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TLoZ Game Watch (1989, Nelsonic)
[Released between AoL & ALttP]


This is the only one I haven’t played, and I probably won’t get the chance to do so. Buying a watch on eBay is out of the range I’m willing to pay, and I don’t think the emulation community is really gonna get this made. But from what I’ve read about it, it seems like a crappier version of the Game & Watch Zelda, so I don’t have high hopes for it. The controls are most likely very hard to navigate because of the small size of the watch face, and the sound is limited to a few beeps. This watch debuted a few weeks after the two-screen Game & Watch version by about a month and a half, but is significantly smaller since it had to fit on a person's wrist.

Here is the plot synopsis from the Zelda Wiki: Link enters a cave unarmed to collect the pieces of the Triforce. He travels through four dungeons with four caves in each, while being attacked by Iron Balls, Keese, and at the end of each dungeon, Aquamentus. After reaching the end of the fourth dungeon, Link reassembles the Triforce. Also, here's footage of the watch being played. 

EDIT: I actually got one of these. I was correct in that the controls are hard to navigate. It probably would have been easier when I was 10 years old and had smaller hands/fingers. The limited range of sounds doesn't give you a lot of feedback; in other words, when I hear a beep, I'm not sure if that means I picked something up or if I'm running into a wall. And because the display is so tiny, it's really hard to tell the Iron Balls apart from bombs or other objects. I think if it were just a bit bigger, it would be easier to play/see. The main problem from a gameplay point of view is that the starting position of the Iron Balls is random, and sometimes includes the doorway - meaning that when you enter a new room you might die instantly just from random bad luck. Where I would say that the Game & Watch is better functioning than a Tiger handheld, the one is just like a Tiger, but smaller and harder to play for the reasons I listed above. The battery life is also quite short.



General Score: 1/10                   Ranking: #19


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Link: The Faces of Evil (1993, Animation Magic/Philips Media)
[Released between LA & OoT]


Hooooo, boy. Where to begin on this one. The AVGN covered this pretty well, so I'll link his video here. But this game has some major issues. As a combination Platformer/Fetch-quest adventure game, I can see a fun concept buried deep, deep beneath a myriad of problems. There's a reason these games are considered the laughing stock of the Zelda series by pretty much everyone, and not acknowledged by some as even being Zelda games (Nintendo themselves is included in this second group). This game and its sister game (The Wand of Gamelon) are more or less identical in terms of controls, gameplay, graphics, and sound. So I'm kinda reviewing them together, almost like how people often review the Oracle games together. I'll do the good parts in this one and the bad parts in the next one.

The redeeming qualities are that the music is decent with a good beat, though it doesn't really fit in with the genre, and sounds kinda more like someone was showing off their fancy new synthesizer by making generic video game music that could work for almost any game. The art style of the background graphics is pretty good  and colorful for its day and some parts have animations woven into them (like waterfalls). Those are the only good things I can think of. The bad will be in the next review, but keep in mind that I ranked these games below the LCD Game & Watch, and just above the ones that aren't really games. Comparatively, as simple as the LCD game was, it had reliable controls and patterns that could be learned, while the controls for these games are awkward and badly programmed. 
I played this (and Z:TWoG) using the MESS emulator with the CDiMono bios and ROMs in the CHD format.


General Score: 2/10                   Ranking: #17


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Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (1993, Animation Magic/Philips Media)
[Released between LA & OoT]


This is continued from The Faces of Evil review above, where I listed the positive things I could think of. The negative parts are next, and they are . . . numerous. The controls are really clunky. If the programmers had used all 3 buttons available to the CD-i with a dedicated "jump" and "menu" button, it would have made the game 5 times better. There is no recovery time after being hit by an enemy (i.e., no "blinking"/temporary invincibility) so 1 determined enemy can drain your life really fast. Also, swinging the sword while jumping stops Link/Zelda's momentum, meaning you can't use it while trying to jump over a hole/chasm lest you suffer instant death - and this goes against every instinct I have to collect items or defend myself while jumping. This is the bread and butter of Adventure of Link, where jumping and stabbing is paramount to a successful campaign. 

While the backgrounds are pretty, it's damn near impossible to tell what is considered foreground - meaning a platform that Link/Zelda can stand on. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the doors are supposed to be (as opposed to what's just background decoration), and even more time randomly jumping around trying to discover where solid ground can be found. Link and Zelda look like retarded white-skinned Gremlins (from the 1984 movie) with a 3-frame walk, and a lot of the enemies don't look a whole lot better. Making it through an opening level opens up a new level, but it's often not super clear where this new level is on the map, nor is it coherent as to why completing level B unlocked level G - it just is. If all the selectable levels on the map were highlighted in yellow, for example, and levels not yet unlocked were darkened, and furthermore, if a path was shown how finishing level J unlocks level K, it would make plotting one's course way more intuitive. 

But the worst part are the god-awful cutscenes, which have made these games somewhat of an internet joke. Terrible animation, bad voice-acting, and an atrocious script written by someone who took their cues from the Zelda animated series (from the Super Mario Bros. Super Show) all contribute to making the experience unforgettable, and not in the good way. As far as ranking goes, I put Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon higher than Link: The Faces of Evil only for the fact that there's a little less item grinding involved.

General Score: 2/10                   Ranking: #16



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BS-TLoZ: Map 1 (1995, Nintendo/St. Giga)
[Released between LA & OoT]


I covered this a bit elsewhere, but the short version is that with an add-on to the Super Famicom and the proper subscription, players could download what was essentially the pre-internet DLC of its day. Some of this content were new games, or in this case, a remix/remake. This was essentially more Zelda 1, but made using SNES graphics and broken up into 4 parts with a time limit. Which is another way of saying that it was great. It's easy to make an analogy that this was kind of like what Super Mario All Stars was for the Mario series - an 8-bit game remade on SNES. Originally there was CD/Radio quality music and voice-over acting broadcast during the game, but now the version I emulated just had some slightly enhanced versions of the original audio and text screens replacing the narration.

Honestly, it feels almost like a Third Quest for the original LoZ game, in that the overworld is mostly the same (albeit smaller) but the dungeons have been moved around and remixed. Using the L/R buttons for item switching eliminated one of the major sources of tedium with the original game, the upgraded graphics look nice, and adding in the random buffs/nerfs give some variety to an older-but-still-great game. Originally there was a weekly contest to have the most rupees, so players who completed each stage of the game used extra time to wander around the overworld collecting extra rupees, but on the emulation there is no such need. My only gripe with the game is that once you accomplish all of the current week’s tasks there should be an option to fast forward the game to the end of the timer. Unfortunately it can't be played with the original audio, but the fine folks who hacked it into its present state have used a text based workaround. This can be played on any SNES emulator using ROMs downloaded from the BS Zelda Homepage. 

General Score: 7/10                   Ranking: #6


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BS-TLoZ: Map 2 (1996, Nintendo/St. Giga)
[Released between LA & OoT]

Essentially, my review is the same as the BS-TLoZ Map 1. Besides 8 new dungeons, the overworld is even more remixed than the previous game. But other than that, it looks, plays, sounds, and feels the same, almost as if it’s the Legend of Zelda: The Fourth Quest (or more accurately, BS-TLoZ The Second Quest). My only real problem with it is that it's not as original of a concept as the first BS game, which itself wasn’t super original to begin with. So its ranking suffers for being essentially a remixed sequel of a remixed remake. My only suggestion would be to not play this immediately after Map 1 as it tends to get a bit repetitive playing both games back to back. This can be played on any SNES emulator using ROMs downloaded from the BS Zelda Homepage. 

General Score: 7/10                   Ranking: #10



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Zelda’s Adventure (1996, Viridis/Philips Media)

[Released between LA & OoT]


This game is the third in the Unholy Triforce, and it's marginally better, but only for the fact that there's no platforming involved. I think the idea behind this game was to sort of re-imagine Zelda 1 but with realistic textures instead of sprites. Unlike the other two CD-i games, instead of terrible animation it uses terrible digitized FMV or photographs. They used digitized photos of bad cosplay and awful rubber-suit Halloween costumes in various poses to create the frames to animate them. It's sort of like Zelda 1 (with a splash of King's Quest), but without the good music, the intuitive controls, the ability to use a sword and another item, or any of the fun. The voice-over work is just as bad as the animated clips from the previous two games, and there's no warping, apparently. The only word I can use to describe the dungeon design is 'uninspired.' More than half of the NPCs offer no hint, item, or quest and are just a waste of pixels. 

Zelda 1 had 8 usable items and 6 more automatic items organized neatly on the subscreen. However, this game has many, many items arranged into two rows that require scrolling left/right to find the one you want. None of the items/treasures have clear instructions what each one does and no clues are given as to which is the appropriate item to use on an enemy. Had there been some kind of text box explaining it and how many rubies it costs to use (like in every game since ALttP) it would have been far less confusing. Or perhaps for all of the single-use items, once whatever its purpose is has been accomplished it goes away. Subsequently. the subscreen just gets really cluttered; for example, Zelda keeps each compass and map she finds on the item screen instead of a separate dungeon subscreen just acknowledging that they were found, meaning that when you want to select a particular item late in the game you have to scroll past all of the maps and compasses and other single-use items you found earlier to get to the item you actually need. (Edit: My 10-year old son accidentally discovered that using the compasses as an item in the overworld warps Zelda to that particular dungeon's entrance. So my previous statement of no warping is incorrect and my objection to keeping every compass on the subscreen is lessened. It would have been nice for the game to indicate this, as there's no hint to use the compass as an item in the instruction manual.)

Like the previous two games, it is really hard to tell where you're allowed to walk; sometimes it appears there's a wide doorway available to move to the next room of the dungeon, but Zelda has to be within a very narrow section of it to advance the screen. Other times she can walk under things, like trees. Each overworld screen's background was made from aerial photography badly photoshopped together, and the dungeons are mostly composited rock textures. And it comes as no surprise that it has bad hit detection (this seems to be a theme with the CD-i games). Sometimes you can hit enemies through an object (like a tree) and vice versa, almost like it was a Newton's Cradle (i.e., you hit the tree so the tree hits the moblin, I guess?). Certain enemies require being hit by a special weapon or spell (which is fine) but it's a big game of guess/check/revise to figure out the right spell. Even when you have the correct spell selected, if an enemy bum rushes you and your spell doesn't have enough space to actually activate, being hit by the wand casting the spell doesn't damage the enemy (the way the wand does damage in the original LoZ), and you lose a bunch of life in the process. 

The loading time between screens is rather annoying (even when speeding up the emulator), and it often loads the incorrect sound effects for enemy hits. Sometimes the birds sound like birds, but other times they sound like pigs being strangled or lawnmowers being started or a dude being punched. The sounds for the Patras (flying eyeballs) are re-used wav files of the Tentacles moving around from Day of the Tentacle (maybe they thought borrowing sounds from an actual good would rub off and make this one better?). 

Had they put Maurice Ravel's Bolero (the song Koji Kondo originally wanted to use for the first Zelda game title screen but didn't have the rights to do so) playing in the background in addition to the wind, birds, and river sounds, it would have made the game way better and it would have been a nice tribute of sorts. When there is a bit of music or background environmental noise it's short and awkwardly looped. It really makes you appreciate how good Breath of the Wild's minimalist music is by comparison. I actually started playing with Bolero running in the background after completing Dungeon 3 and can confirm that it makes the game better. 

The best way of summing it up is that after playing Zelda 1 (hell, even after seeing the goofy TV commercial) I couldn't stop thinking about it. But I was just bored with this game, and it felt like a chore to complete. Because I was playing it on a broken emulator, I couldn't use save states (which would have sped up the process) and it crashed every time I died. There was also another quirk where sometimes Zelda would suddenly change direction when using the wand, leaving her open to attack from enemies. The AVGN has a pretty good review as well. I played this game using the TinyCDi Emulator. (Edit: I found a slightly better configured TinyCDi emulator that let save states sorta work, so my son will have a slightly easier time getting through some parts.)


General Score: 2/10                   Ranking: #15




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BS-TLoZ: Ancient Stone Tablets (1997, Nintendo/St. Giga)
[Released between LA & OoT]

This game follows the same idea and format as the other BS-X games, except that its base game is A Link to the Past (and could be considered ALttP: The Second Quest). Which is to say that it’s even better than the previous two BS-X games. In addition to the random buffs present in the last two games, there are also some new events, like weather, that can affect actions. For example, while raining, bombs will not work (just like bomb arrows in Breath of the Wild). It also added the item rental system, which would be later used in A Link Between Worlds. There is plenty to do and many secrets to find (like Pieces of Hearts), so the problem I had with having to run out the clock with nothing to do from the past two BS-X games wasn’t an issue. 

One thing that was done to help players who happened to miss a week is that if you visit a dungeon that was missed, a thief stands outside of it and won’t let you in, but instead gives you a bag of all relevant treasures, immediately catching you up to everyone else. Personally, I would rather play the dungeon. Other than that little gripe, this game is very fun, it has some interesting new puzzles, and quite honestly, who wouldn’t want more ALttP? Even though the concept is the same as the other two BS-X games, my love for A Link to the Past helps this game edge out the more original entries on this list. This can be played on any SNES emulator using ROMs downloaded from the BS Zelda Homepage. 


General Score: 9/10                   Ranking: #1

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Navi Trackers (2004, Nintendo)
[Released with FSA in Japan]

This game was released in Japan (and Korea, oddly enough) as part of the Four Swords Adventures disk, but never localized anywhere else because of the nature of the voice acting and how the Japanese language works. The easiest way to play it is with GBAs hooked up to a Homebrewed Wii that has Game Cube controller ports using the link cable with the Japanese region ROM being run via Nintendont (yeah, it's a bit of a process). 

Like Four Swords Adventures, you can play single player (against a computer-controlled Tingle). However, it won't let you play single player with a Game Cube controller since most of the game happens on the GBA. After a mini-game to acquire initial items/rupees, the main part of the game resembles some of the multiplayer portions of Phantom Hourglass and Four Swords all while Tetra and Salvatore (the Sploosh guy) give you updates or hints with voice acting. Using the items collected, Link tries to get rupees and find the correct numbered pirate who is giving away medals (which must be found in order). After it's all over, the totals are tallied up to see who got the most stuff and some bonus rupees are handed out (it has a few Mario Party-like elements to make the results a little more unpredictable). It has an odd combination of Wind Waker graphics on the TV but Four Swords graphics on the GBA. 

I am kinda torn between calling this a spin-off and just a different playing mode. It was going to be kinda like a "Zelda Party" stand alone game originally (based on an old BS-X Treasure Island game made by Eiji Aonuma) but I suspect that the developers realized that the concept wasn't deep enough to justify it being its own game, so it was incorporated to Four Swords Adventures; however, because the mechanic of having Tetra and others give updates/encouragement/etc. and the fact that it features so many characters from Wind Waker is so different from the rest of FSA and it has 12 stages (not just 3 or 4) and isn't just a 'battle mode,' I lean towards calling it a spin-off. Another factor in this decision was that the game kinda reboots between the normal menu and starting Navi Trackers, leading me to believe it was added on late in development and uses a completely different game engine. So I consider it a spin-off that just happens to have been included on a regular series game disk (at least in Japan). And since it was never localized, understanding Japanese is fairly important to begin with, but once you play it a few times you kinda get the hang of it and don't need the voice acting from Tetra as much. This can be played either by importing a Japanese GameCube and disc or by the Nintendont method mentioned above.


General Score: 6/10                   Ranking: #9


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Freshly Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland (2006, Nintendo/Vanpool)
[Released between MC & TP]


In Japan, Tingle is a fairly popular character, but is not at all popular over in the US. So when Nintendo made a Tingle spin-off game, it's understandable why it was never released over here. However, it did get a European release, so it can be imported and needs no fan translation work. This game can be best classified as an RPG-adventure type game with a lot of fetch quest elements in it. Tingle’s goal is to amass enough rupees to make it to Rupeeland. Each area of the map has a goal to accomplish to earn rupees before moving on, with many little side quests to earn additional cash. It incorporates a fair amount of the stylus equivalent of button-mashing, and smaller amounts of treasure/scavenger hunting, dungeon crawling, crafting, and bargaining/haggling. Some of the side quests involve paying people off - literally buying their acceptance and friendship because Tingle is kinda repulsive naturally. As he does this, more options and sidequests to earn extra cash are opened up. Tingle can hire mercenaries to aid him in dungeons or other dangerous situations for a price as well. Overall it’s an okay game, nothing too special, but it's at least enjoyable. This can be played using a EU region DS with the EU cartridge, or alternatively, on a CFW 3DS (which is region free). 

General Score: 5/10                   Ranking: #11


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Tingle’s Balloon Fight DS (2007, Nintendo)
[Released between TP & PH]

This game is just a slightly updated version of the original arcade/NES classic Balloon Fight. The main difference is that the original unnamed character is replaced with Tingle. It was only released in Japan as a DS game for Club Nintendo members. The second screen of the DS adds a little bit of vertical space to the playing area, but other than that, it’s just normal Balloon Fight. The analogy I made is that it would be like re-releasing Pac-Man, except that the sprite is swapped out with Kirby. The main addition is its multiplayer option and upgraded graphics. It’s fun for a few minutes and deals a healthy dose of nostalgia (assuming you played it 30 years ago), but also serves as a reminder why repetitive, single-screen games like this probably aren’t too popular these days. It’s only available in Japanese, but other than menu navigation (which is admittedly pretty easy to do if you’ve ever played any game before) it’s not necessary to speak/read the language. The fact that it's basically an updated remake hurts its ranking. This can be played on a CFW 3DS. 

General Score: 5/10                   Ranking: #13


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Link’s Crossbow Training (2007, Nintendo)
[Released between PH & ST]


This game could be summed up as a Zelda-themed first/third-person on-rails shooter game that used the pointing function of the Wii Remote. All of the graphics, music, and sound effects were re-used from Twilight Princess, so it very much feels like you’re back in that version of Hyrule. Included with it was the apparatus to turn the Wii Remote + Nunchuk into a 2-handed crossbow style weapon. Some stages were stationary, some required walking around, some were “on rails,” and one was even on horseback. It made effective use of the pointing feature of the Wii Remote to turn it into a target shooting game similar to many arcade games. There are 28 unique levels, and the opportunity to earn a Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum medal depending on the score. There is an option for multiplayer, but it’s no different from the regular game; each player just takes turns playing the stages. While I would have liked to see a few more modes/options and perhaps a simultaneous multiplayer game, it was a fun little shooting game + accessory that was a good value for the price ($20). It's easy to pick up and doesn't require a huge time commitment. This can be played on a Wii or Wii U with the original disk. 

General Score: 6/10                   Ranking: #4


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Too Much Tingle Pack (2009, Nintendo/Vanpool)
[Released between PH & ST]


It’s kind of hard to really call this a game, but it’s technically on the list of Zelda spin-offs. It’s really more of a collection of small utilities, including a timer, a coin flipper, a calculator, and a fortune teller. It’s the kind of thing that might have been useful for kids with a DSi before smart phones with apps (like the tip calculator or currency converter) became ubiquitous. It was only released in Japan, and requires knowing how to read Japanese to really use it. The best I can say about it is that it’s the kind of application that makes one say, “Hm. Mildly interesting,” and then it’s soon forgotten. But because it's slightly more useful than just a watch (since the DSi has an internal clock already), its ranking is just above the Game Wristwatch. Also, even though it's not really a game, per se, it does have the potential to hold one's attention for a few minutes and its audio/visuals/controls are much more appealing than a tiny watch face. This can be played on a CFW 3DS. 



General Score: 1/10                   Ranking: #18


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Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love (2009, Nintendo/Vanpool)
[Released between PH & ST]


In contrast to his last adventure, this game is mostly a point-and-click adventure type game with little bits of dungeon crawling, puzzles, and fetch quests being thrown in. Tingle is taken from the real world to a fantasy land where his goal is to dance with a girl and get a girlfriend. Along the way he meets 3 companions and wins over people who shun him because of his looks by giving them presents (sort of the bribery thing again). It features a better plot than his last game with plenty of humorous moments and a journey somewhat based on The Wizard of Oz. While I initially started it because of the completionist in me, I found myself actually enjoying it quite a bit. Admittedly there’s a lot of Japanese culture male-female relations that don’t translate well to western sensibilities, so I see why they might not want to do a western release, but I was able to play with a fan-made translation because my 3DS has custom firmware. Overall, it’s actually (and surprisingly) a decent game, and my dislike for Tingle actually decreased because of it. This can only be played on a CFW 3DS with a ROM that has been patched with a fan translation script (unless you want to play in Japanese). Note: sometimes this game's title is translated as "Color-Changing Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love," due to the confusion that the verb to change color (irodzuki) is also applied to things like leaves in Autumn or vegetables that turn yellow/red when they are done growing. 


General Score: 6/10                   Ranking: #8


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The Legend of Zelda Battle Quest (2012, Nintendo)
[Released between SS & ALBW]

This is a mini-game that's part of a collection of Nintendo-themed mini-games called Nintendo Land. Where Wii Sports was the thinly veiled tech demo/pack-in game for the Wii, this game should have served the same function for the Wii U (but was only included in deluxe sets - standard Wii U buyers had to purchase it separately at full price). It features interesting ways to use the Wii U Gamepad for asymmetrical play. The Zelda part of this game is called 'Battle Quest,' and it has several ways of playing. The best way to describe it would be that it's almost as if Link's Crossbow Training and the 'Swordplay Showdown' mini-game from Wii Sports Resort had a baby with all the aesthetics of Yoshi's Wooly/Crafted World. You play as your Mii, who is dressed as Link. Depending on the mode selected, you can play as an archer or a swordsman. When playing multiplayer, whoever has the Gamepad is the archer, while those with Wii Remotes are swordsmen. It can be played single-player or up to four with multiplayer, though it should be noted that Player 4 is yellow instead of purple like other multiplayer Zelda games. 

Like Navi Trackers, I debated on whether it really belongs on the list, not being a standalone game. The reason I ultimately included it is because it has Zelda music and enemies, and has the words, "The Legend of Zelda," in the title, which is more than I can say about some other entries (I'm looking at you, CD-i). 

For a mini-game, it's fine, and it has some form of "Achievements" to entice players to get better, and it even incorporates some of the directional sword mechanics similar to Skyward Sword. It does have some Zelda music played on marimba in it, but it's ranking is hurt mainly because it's not a stand-alone game, it gets a little monotonous, and it's not extremely different from Link's Crossbow Training or portions of Wii Sports Resort. But one other interesting and positive note is that this is the first spin-off game to have its music featured later in a mainline game, when usually it's the other way around. The Time Attack mode music was used in A Link Between Worlds for the race from Lake Hylia to the Woodcutters' Shack. Neat! This can be played on the Wii U with the original disk. 



General Score: 5/10                   Ranking: #12


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Hyrule Warriors (2014, Nintendo/Koei Tecmo)
[Released between ALBW & TFH]


This game is essentially a Dynasty Warriors game with a coat of Zelda paint overtop of it. It features many playable characters from the series and a lot of levels that have names which should look familiar, it has Zelda themes in the music, and it does kinda cover a bunch of non-canon tangential Zelda lore from all three timelines.

The main problem is that it gets rather repetitive. Mowing down peons turns into button mashing, and having to do each stage 13 times (or more) to pick up all the little upgrades and complete it for every character starts to get old fast. It’s great that there are so many options, but 100-percenting the game is damn near impossible, and that really bothers the completionist in me.

It was ok value-wise on the Wii U, and it makes good use of the Wii U Gamepad to play 2 players,  but I only got it on 3DS because I didn’t have to pay for it, and don’t want it on the Switch (again, unless it's free). However, it is a whole, entire game that stands on its own which takes many hours to finish through the campaign mode, and not any kind of remake/remix or glorified mini-game. It wasn't my favorite, but I put it higher up in the rankings because compared to a lot of the titles it has originality and a decently sized campaign going for it. This can be played on the Wii U, 3DS, or Switch using original media. 

General Score: 6/10                   Ranking: #5


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My Nintendo Picross: Twilight Princess (2016, Nintendo/Jupiter Corporation)
[Released between TFH & BotW]

There have been many Picross games, and this is an entry that just happens to be based on Twilight Princess. Picross is a puzzle game that could be compared to a pictorial version of Sudoku. There is some information given about which squares of a grid should be filled in and using methods of elimination and context clues it’s possible to create a picture. Once it’s completed correctly the picture fills in some of the color making it easier to see what it was you were drawing the whole time. As a puzzle game it’s okay, but having it be Zelda themed makes it just a little better. Though I will say that even knowing the source material well (Twilight Princess) doesn’t really confer an advantage to the player. Midna serves as a guide/tutor to get started, and there’s music from Twilight Princess playing the entire time, which is nice, but it would have been even better if there were a few more tracks so as to not be so monotonous. It’s fun to play while half-watching something in the background or listening to a podcast, and there are several modes to try. This can be played on the 3DS using coins earned in MyNintendo rewards.


 General Score: 6/10                   Ranking: #7


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Cadence of Hyrule (2019, Nintendo/Brace Yourself Games)
[Released after BotW]


Like Hyrule Warriors, this is less of a traditional Zelda game and more of a Crypt of the Necrodancer game with a coat of Zelda paint. But that doesn’t make it any less fun. It has a great selection of songs from past Zelda games but have been jazzed up with a nice beat to make them easier to move to. While not terribly deep, it does have some puzzle elements in the form of block pushing to make stepping stones or bridges to acquire some of the items/treasures, and has familiar places and people (like Kakariko and Impa).

One thing that’s great is that every playthrough (meaning when a new file is created) is different because the overworld is somewhat randomized, as are some of the dungeons. The ability to play as Link, Cadence, or Zelda adds some variety as well. It takes some getting used to, but once you learn the enemies’ patterns it becomes easier. The only thing I think I would add is a digital instruction manual for certain things that aren't communicated to the player clearly (or at all) and how some of the mechanics work for elements like weapon upgrades.

Ever since playing the Theatrhythm games for the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games, I have wanted something like that for the Zelda games, and while this isn't exactly what I was asking for, it was quite enjoyable and I really liked the use of so many songs I love. And in case it's not obvious, my love of the music is what propelled this to the number 2 spot on the rankings. This can only be played on the Nintendo Switch. 

General Score: 8/10                   Ranking: #3

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Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (2020, Nintendo/Koei Tecmo)
[Released after BotW]

When this game was first announced, I'll admit to not being incredibly thrilled about it. The first Hyrule Warriors game wasn't my favorite spin-off, but this was marketed as a prequel to Breath of the Wild, and was said to be a canon spin-off, which intrigued me. 

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised, and it rose to be my second favorite spin-off. What made the difference between this and the original Hyrule Warriors is that it's the same world and characters as BotW and not just shameless callbacks or fan service. Its story fits into and fleshes out one of the best games in the series, and it features the same characters, locations, items and musical cues which makes it inherently more interesting. It's also less "grindy," in that I don't feel like I have to play every level with every character in every mode to 100% the game. The battle mechanics have incorporated elements from BotW enough that it blurs the line between the HW style and typical Zelda style combat, apart from the 1 vs 100 battles. By comparison, I guess I wasn't invested in the story of the original HW, where I was very much interested in this one, even if it turned out to be an alternate timeline thing (the marketing was somewhat deceptive in calling it a canon spin-off).

The only thing I would like to see added in DLC is the ability to just walk around the various levels in peace (no enemies/time limits - especially Hyrule Castle) to get a sense of what pre-Calamity Hyrule was like, and a canon story of how Hyrule and Link actually fell (sorta like how in Star Wars: Rogue One we got to see the main characters die knowing that they made a difference for future generations). This can only be played on the Nintendo Switch.

General Score: 9/10                   Ranking: #2
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Not included in this list are games like Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 8, Super Mario Maker, and Soulcalibur II, and a few other entries where Link is a playable character guest starring in another series, nor when Link/Zelda is used as an easter egg or cameo (NES Tetris or the Japanese version of Final Fantasy, for example).


There is also an obscure game series that scans UPC codes on cards, and some Zelda cards were released for it. From what I understand, it plays more like a JRPG or electronic Dungons and Dragons kind of game where instead of rolling dice and announcing your move you scan cards with items. My main reason for not including it is because it isn't a video game (there being no graphics - just numbers) unless you also count a calculator as a video game (though I do own the cards for it).

The WarioWare series has several micro games that are Zelda themed, and in that sense isn't too dissimilar from Nintendo Land. I would consider adding them if each lasted more than 3 or 4 seconds per game, but as it is they are such a small portion of the overall game that I wouldn't consider them spin-offs as much as I would call them easter eggs or cameos. I would also count the Zelda portions of the NES Remix games in the same manor. 


So the end tally is that there are 2 LDC Watch games, 4 mini-games (2 of which were given a Twilight Princess theme), 4 that are some kind of remix, 3 abominations not made by Nintendo, 1 utility program, 2 original  games featuring a character from the main series (Tingle), and 3 games from a different genre given a Zelda coat of paint. For a casual Zelda fan, the top eight are definitely worth checking out. Hardcore Zelda fans should consider playing the top fourteen, but only the most masochistic Zelda fans should worry about the bottom five. A CFW 3DS can play most of these, with a few needing a Wii/Wii U/Switch, and a computer for the 3 CDi games. 

#1) BS-The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets #2) Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity #3) Cadence of Hyrule #4) Link’s Crossbow Training #5) Hyrule Warriors #6) BS-The Legend of Zelda: Map 1 #7) My Nintendo Picross: Twilight Princess #8) Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love	Definitely worth playing
#9 Navi Trackers #10 BS-The Legend of Zelda: Map 2 #11) Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland #12) Battle Quest #13) Tingle’s Balloon Fight DS #14) Zelda Game & Watch	OK if you’re a serious Zelda fan
#15) Zelda’s Adventure #16) Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon #17) Link: The Faces of Evil #18) Too Much Tingle Pack #19) The Legend of Zelda Game Watch	Only for completionists and masochists

More Resources: YellowSuperNintendo's video of most of these games.