For diehard Nintendo fans, a year without a new Zelda game on the Wii is a sad year indeed. Especially when it’s also a year without a new full-fledged Mario title (and no, the recently released New Super Mario Bros. Wii, fun though it may be, doesn’t count.)
But Nintendo is closing out 2009 on a high note with The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS and DSi. We got a hands-on sneak peek at the game, which lands in stores Dec. 7, and it’s sidled its way onto our must-have list of holiday titles.
The game is similar in look and feel to 2007’s The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, but with an entirely new storyline and new game world. It seems Princess Zelda’s spirit has been separated from her body, and a nasty demon king wants to use her as a vessel for his resurrection. That’s never good.
Zelda and Link!
It sounds darker than it is, but the upshot is that the ghostly Zelda will accompany our green-suited hero Link on his adventures, a first for a Zelda game. And instead of crossing oceans on a sailboat, players will be chugging across the landscape on a nifty train.
We spent an hour with Spirit Tracks during a preview event in Toronto (held aboard a vintage streetcar that clackity-clacked its way around downtown), and it felt both very Zelda-y and very fresh. Sort of a mix of classic puzzle-solving and some new mechanics unique to this game.
Spirit Tracks also seems to be rife with self-referential humour, and the overarching goal of finding four stone tablets to unlock the titular tracks in four quadrants of the world map is quite cool. As is Zelda’s ability to temporarily possess foes’ bodies, turning them into allies for Link (although she’s terrified of mice, which poses a problem in some of Spirit Tracks’ rodent-infested dungeons.)
No big-screen Zelda this year? No problem. A little Spirit Tracks should go a long way.
