The entry for Minish Cap is the same as Four Sword Adventures's. :P

Thank-you for putting Four Swords Adventures in (even if it is only at #10) My wife and I played this game together and I LOVED it. It was such a great concept. This game is actually the main reason I bought the Wii U I'm hoping for more games like this were multiple screens are used to give more freedom to co-op play.

Hm, 10 and 9 are both Zelda games that I have not played. I think these two are the only official Zelda games I haven't played though, if I'm counting right. Well, plus the anniversary edition of Four Swords also, which I downloaded but barely played since it's no fun without others and no one else has it. I also have Minish Cap from the 3DS Ambassador program, just haven't tried it out yet.

Mop it up, you mentioned the anniversary Edition of four swords and how no one has it. That aggravates me. I bought a 3DS early enough that I was able to download it, but then I bought an XL and it works because my wife and I both play so we kept the old 3DS. Now we’re getting 2DS for my 2 kids for their birthday in a couple of months, but we still can’t play this game multiplayer because we only have 1 copy of the game. I wish they’d re-open it. I’m even willing to pay for it this time so that we can actually play the game.

Agreed on the Four Swords issue.  The fact that you can't even buy it now is freaking stupid.  On the plus side, I downloaded it on my DSi, my wife's DSi, my DSiXL and my 3DS... So I got some copies I can transfer to new systems when I get them. ;)

Sorry for the duplicate entries! Copy/paste fail on my end. It's remedied now.

So there's basically never going to be a way to play Four Swords Adventure again, right? I wanted to back when it was released, but it seemed pointless without at least another person, but nobody I knew had GBAs and whatnot.

Well, Magic Cow, If you still have your gamecube or a Wii that plays gamecube games then of coarse you can still play. For some odd reason Four Swords Adventures wasn't a very popular Zelda game. My wife and I bought it and the 2 needed cables in 2009 for a pretty good price. Turns out the game is even cheaper now and if you don't have 2 GBAs already they are really cheap too. I checked out ebay for you


Here's a copy of the game that comes with 2 cables

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Legend-of-Zelda-Four-Swords-Adventures-with-2-Link-Cables-/111175171081?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item19e28e7c09


Here's someone selling 2 GBAs
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Game-Boy-Advance-/261290650299?pt=Video_Games&hash=item3cd622eabb


Here's someone selling a single GBA
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-Game-Boy-Advance-Black-Handheld-System-/271279282382?pt=Video_Games&hash=item3f298158ce


I'd guess you could be playing this game pretty easily and pretty cheap considering what's all required. And no you don't need 4 players to enjoy this game, but you do need at least 2 I wouldn't recommend playing it by yourself.

Four Sword Adventures was definitely more fun with my brother than alone. I don't believe I've played it with more than one other person. Nintendo could rerelease an updated version on 3DS.

I agree it could work on the 3DS of even the Wii U for that matter, but it would require more work than most Virtual console games.
Of coarse if they did it on the Wii U it would only be up to 3 players (1 on TV and 2 on Gamepads) so the 3DS is probably a better option.

I grabbed Four Swords Adventures and the required extra equipment (used) for a song early in the Wii lifecycle. Glad to have found it, because the experience is very different than any other Zelda game.


Getting the hardware to play isn't that hard or expensive now... but finding friends with time/interest to join in can be a challenge.  Based on my limited experience playing with a group, it's totally worth the effort.  Decent played solo, great with friends.




Shame about the DSiWare version of Four Swords. Nintendo giving it away was an awesome surprise... but limiting access to a game that requires multiple players to be enjoyed fully wasn't really a good idea. I'd gladly give up the "exclusive" factor in exchange for having more people to play against.

Both of these games were ones I "powered" through, in that I enjoyed them so much I spent every free moment I had playing them until I beat them.  Typically I might take a break from a game and play a different one or do something completely different but with these I wasn't going to do any other leisure activity until I beat them.  Games like that are special.

Four Swords Adventure is truly one of the Gamecube's best games.  I played it with my brother and only got to expand to four players once (if that; I had four people with all the equipment to play with but don't remember if I actually got all four playing at the same time) but it was still really fun with two people.  Sadly it really does provide a great example of how out of touch Nintendo can be.  Here they had this GBA-GC connection and they hyped this up like this was their ace in the hole.  But then the big showcase titles for the concept all required four players.  One GBA is doable but FOUR?  Oh, but a lot of people had GBAs.  True, but no one had the damn cable!  If they packed one in with every GBA then we would have been sitting pretty but they didn't and how do you get your friend that does not own a Gamecube to buy a cable that is only useful to him when he's at your house?  And of course the whole concept is perfect for online play with headsets but, no, Nintendo decided not to go online with Gamecube but then gave us games like this to remind us that, oh yeah, that online stuff would be lots of fun if Nintendo supported it.  Here they're trying and failing to sell the GC-GBA connectivity concept with what would be an online killer app.  All our problems with not being able to find enough people to come over with all the right equipment and the whole thing would be solved if Nintendo just supported the online functionality they designed the Gamecube to support in the first place!  And now Nintendo is online and it's the perfect situation to make Four Swords games and they DON'T, aside from that limited DSiWare version that's been mentioned.

But at least Four Swords Adventures turned out to be an awesome game so Nintendo got the most important part right.  Because of it's inaccessibility it has to be one of the most hardcore Nintendo games ever made, the closest Nintendo would ever get to something like Steel Battalion.  But if you can make full use of it, it's totally worth it.

#8 and #7 are up! http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/35507

Thanks for the info! I'm sorely tempted to collect these devices, as my Wii's Gamecube drive still works (though not the main console), but without an online option in a re-release it's a near impossibility to get anyone to jump on this with me. I had the social options to play it when it was released but not the money for the equipment, and now I have the money for the equipment but little chance that I could talk another 28-year-old in my social world to spend 15 hours on this. Ah, what will never be! Plus Pacman Vs.!

Aw man! Twilight Princess got robbed!  >:(

Easily one of my favs, if not number 1. I enjoyed it the first play through, but going through again? Blown away by how many indelible memories this game has. It's not just huge in physical scale. This is the true successor to OoT.

On my personal list I would have placed Twilight Princess a lot higher. I think that game is much more interesting than people give it credit for. Sure, it was slow to get started, but the dungeons (particularly the City in the Sky), visuals (those crazy dream sequences were frightening), music, and even the story have really stuck with me (Zant and Midna were far more interesting to me than Ghirahim and Fi).

I would also take the vistas and feeling of cohesiveness that Twilight Princess offers over Skyward Sword's segmented over world any day. It's a personal preference I guess.

Twilight Princess was a fairly by the books Zelda sequel. It didn't attempt to push the bar though O think that was the whole point. For people who complained about The Wind Waker, Nintendo went back and made Ocarina of Time 2. Still, Twilight Princess is my favorite post Wind Waker Zelda for three reasons. First, Wii Remote aiming was very intuitive. Second, the spinner was awesome; it didn't make sense as an item, but it was awesome nonetheless. Third, and most importantly, Imp Midna was one of the best characters in the series for just having personality, depth, and a true character arc. She's bitchy and selfish when Link meets her, but she warms up to Link. Sure, she kind of falls apart at the end, but collectively, it's hard to fault Midna's character. I really wish she would show up playable in Smash Bros. with or without Wolf Link. I won't hold my breathe though.

For me, I disagree with you 2. I like four swords adventures better than twilight princess. However I know I'm in the minority so I'm just happy that four swords adventures made the list.
I am glad, however, that of my top 5 zelda games only 1 is already on here so it sounds like the other 4 will be high on the list.

In a vacuum Twilight Princess could be considered the best Zelda game around but if you've played Ocarina of Time it just feels too familiar.  In the Gamecube version (ie: the proper non-flipped version) the map layout is almost identical to OoT.  Once I picked up on that I could guess all the unidentified areas on the map and that really hurt the exploration from then on, which for me is the whole damn hook of Zelda in the first place.  The only difference is that Zora's Domain and Lake Hylia are flipped, which I assign more to Nintendo's lackluster attention to continuity than an attempt to make things unique.  My reaction to it was "oh so Nintendo can't even copy the world from another game right without goofing it up".  Either they did that or they did the absolute bare minimum imaginable to make the game world unique.

But that all relates to my experience being hurt due to my familiarity with the other games in the series and that's become a problem with ALL new Zelda games as the tropes are too visible to longtime fans.  If someone had never played Zelda, Twilight Princess is the game I would recommend, though with the 3DS remake available, OoT may now be the better choice.  N64 games didn't age that well and I figured a newcomer would be turned off by the blocky visuals but that would't be the case with the 3DS version.  TP is the ideal console choice though.

I've always suspected that Twilight Princess was made the way it was as an intentional "fuck you" to those that didn't like Wind Waker's graphic style.  Like Nintendo made the game as unoriginal as possible as a personal protest against what they perceived as backlash against change.  It would also give them something to point to whenever the fans protested a change.  "You don't like change?  But you didn't like TP so you fans don't know what you want!"

Now I disagree with Nintendo on that criticism of change can be criticism of a specific change, not the concept of change.  If you painted my bedroom neon green I would be upset that you chose a colour I didn't like, not that the room was painted a different colour in the first place.  And the Wind Waker backlash was all because Nintendo showed us a DIFFERENT graphic style first!  It's their own stupid fault and they have no right to be even slightly miffed at the fans about that.  You show us one graphics style, let us get all hyped about it for a year, and then show us a new style that is the exact opposite of the old one?  That's a bait-and-switch, plain and simple.

I'd argue that Majora's Mask was a bigger departure than Wind Waker. If you look past the graphics, it's almost straight up Ocarina of Time. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. However, if that was Nintendo's idea of change, I feel like they missed the point because with Wind Waker, they made a closer sequel to Ocarina of Time than the one they made before it, albeit with gorgeous cel-shaded graphics that honestly still hold up today even with a remake filled with bloom lighting out now.

I think MM is vastly different largely because it reused the graphics of OoT.  Nintendo probably figured that the reused graphics would be a hard sell so they made damn sure to make MM stand out as unique.

The fact that WW had backlash but MM did not demonstrates that the fans don't hate change in general, but just weren't happy with the specific change regarding WW's graphics.  And frankly if that "realistic" Zelda footage from Spaceworld was never shown then there wouldn't have been nearly the same level of backlash.

The last time Nintendo gave numbers, Twilight Princess was at 7.1 million worldwide just a few years ago.  The best selling Zelda is Ocarina of Time at 7.6 million.  At this point, Twilight Princess could be even closer or have even surpassed Ocarina of Time in sales.

This is why it's funny when people on the internet complain about Twilight Princess being too similar to Ocarina of Time when in reality, that's exactly what the general gaming audience wanted.  People didn't want a sequel with a 3 day time system or a sailing adventure with cartoon graphics.  They wanted a bigger version of Ocarina of Time with a bigger world and bigger dungeons.  This is what Nintendo gave them and they were rewared with the best sales since Ocarina of Time.

This is why I suspect the upcoming Wii U Zelda will be like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess again in both look and gameplay.  Yeah they might allow some dungeons to be done out of order like Aonuma hinted at, but everything else will be closer to those games then the others.  An HD Zelda is going to probably be the most expensive game Nintendo has ever done and so they'll want something that can sell over 7 million, which only Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess have.

Majora's Mask was hated by a huge number of the fanbase when it came out.  The 3 Day time system and focus on side quest angered a lot of the Ocarina a of Time fans because it isn't what they wanted at all.  Going from 7.6 million to 3.4 million in only two years shows that much of the fanbase indeed hated the idea of change.

Goddamn it I love Majora's Mask! Is it weird that I adore both Twilight Princess and Majora's Mask? They are arguably the most and least conventional Zelda games respectively, but I love them both. Maybe not equally (Majora's Mask is clearly the better game) but still...

Good, in terms of look.

Ideally, I'd like to see the more realistic look for 3D games and the cel-shaded look for top down 2D games. It worked so well in Four Sword Adventures. More of that please, thanks.

I'll put up with a "Ocarina of Time 3" for the Wii U as long as I don't have to deal with Skyward Sword's motion controls or the DS games' touchscreen controls.  I'd be quite fine with a alternating safe Zelda/weird Zelda pattern if Nintendo didn't insist that goofy controls is the only way to think outside the box.  OoT was conventional (if you can call it that; it was a extremely innovative at the time) and then they used its graphics engine to make an unconventional sequel.  That approach would be perfect for HD development.  You take the risk on the safe game that's more likely to have huge sales and then reusing assets keep the dev costs lower on the more creative sequel.

Though I think a big reason MM didn't sell as well was that it came out fairly late in the N64's life and required the expansion pack.  Perfect Dark suffered the same fate (though I'm sure someone will say the lack of the Bond licence was the cause of that one).  Ocarina of Time was like the last time the N64 was treated seriously.  By that time everyone knew the Playstation had kicked its butt and they held on to their "failed" Nintendo console to grab that Zelda 64 game they had been hyped up about for years and then, upon beating it, promptly sold their N64 or put it in the closet.  Everyone I know who owned a videogame system from 1997-98 had an N64 but by 2000 I was like the lone weirdo over the age of 12 among my colleagues that still cared about it.  They didn't reject Majora's Mask as much as just didn't know it even existed. Hell, MM came out the same day the PS2 launched.  The gaming world was not paying attention to it.

Twilight Princess sold huge as a launch title on one of the highest selling videogame consoles ever made.  Skyward Sword came out two years after the Wii fad was over so I'm sure it sold way worse but it didn't have the same favourable circumstances of TP's release.  It's like comparing a games Cube sales vs. its sequel's Wii sales.  Obviously the sales potential of a Wii game, particularly during its first three years would be greater due to the size of the userbase and popularity of the console.

Really, you hated Skyward Sword's controls? I loved them, though I wasn't thrilled with the actual game.
Am I in the majority of minority with my thoughts on the controls. I wonder if New Zelda HD could allow you to pick controls like pikmin does that way you could Skyward Sword it with Wii remote and nunchuk or you could Gamepad/Pro Controller it.

#6 and #5 are up! http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/35515


I welcome all guesses about the Top 4, though I won't confirm until it gets posted!

Considering the way the list is going the top 4 will probably be.


1. Ocarina of Time


2. Link to the Past


3. Link's Awakening


4. Wind Waker




Considering how controversial Wind Waker still is to some, I doubt that will be top 3 so 4 looks right.  The other three are all mostly praised plus have huge nostalgia helping them so I'd be shocked if the top three doesn't look like that.

Wait!?! No Oracle of Ages/Seasons? It's hard for me to argue with your guess for top 4 even though I thought Link's Awakening was boring I know I'm in the minority. But It's also hard for me to fathom that the Oracle games aren't on here.

I'd switch three and four as guesses. A Link to the Past would be my number one, but for this list, Ocarina of Time is probably at the top.

As for the Oracle games, something had to be cut. They might have made my top ten (counted as a single game) since Skyward Sword wouldn't be on mine. I remember liking The Minish Cap, but it's a while since I played those games.

I will say you probably had the order of 6 and 5 correct as they pertain to each other... but they'd be better served as honorable mentions.

I will say that I was the only one who voted for The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest, so it will sadly not be on this list.

#4 and #3 are up: http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/35520

A Link to the Past is number three?
http://i.imgur.com/jZlU9nq.gif

Looks like it will be Wind Waker 2 and Ocarina #1. Oddly enough, that's close to how I played my first few Zelda games.

Link to the Past was the first game, Wind Waker the second and Ocarina the third. Maybe that's why it has taken me so long to play some of the others. I'd unknowingly played the best there is in the series. Link's Awakening and Twilight Princess are fine games but they left me disappointed compared to the others and the Original NES Zelda I had gotten about halfway through but got stuck and stopped playing. Still, I was quite happy with the progress I made in it as I'm not a fan of NES games and the little I tried of Zelda 2 did not encourage me to play more. The only Zelda I really need to play and want to play at this point is Majora's Mask. That and Skyword Sword. I own them but have yet to take the time to sink into them.

Only the final two to be revealed, eh?
So, the winner is now super obvious. It's by far the best Zelda game, and one of the best games of all time.


Clearly, our winner will be...


Link's Crossbow Training.


Called it!

Wind Waker should definitely not get #1 over Ocarina.  This is because Ocarina came out when I was 11 years old and everyone must conform to opinions based on my nostalgia for the experience!  :@

Fucking Wind Waker better than Link's Awakening and A Link to the Past?  That's just ridiculous.

We all know about Wind Waker's graphics controversy.  Every Zelda fan took a side on that.  I frankly feel that Wind Waker has since become overrated as it got attacked for its graphics and thus its fans feel a need to defend it by making it out to be a better Zelda than it is.  If Wind Waker didn't bust out the toon graphics and was just known as that Zelda game with all the damn sailing in it would be ranked this high?  Hell, would it be ranked even in the top ten?

I don't like the graphics but even ignoring that Wind Waker has:
-the triforce hunt
-slow sailing through a big blue ocean of nothing
-a very low difficultly.  I personal have never seen the Game Over screen.
-spots were it was incredibly obvious that a dungeon was cut to meet the release date
-a worldwide flood storyline that completely fuggered up the timeline

Frankly the elements of Wind Waker that I felt were really good were the typical Zelda elements that every game has.  The new ideas it brought to the table annoyed me.  However it isn't as blatantly cliche as Twilight Princess or as padded with obvious filler like Skyward Sword so it's still number three for the 3D games for me.  It is still an awesome game but Zelda games are always awesome unless Phillips is making them.

I love all the Zelda games, but Wind Waker above Link to the Past is an insane opinion to hold.

I'm infamously not a fan of Link to the Past, and thus it wasn't on my list, which may have thrown off the numbers a bit. If so, I apologize to all the people who are wrong and would rank that game that high on this list.

I  agree with the ranking in that Wind Waker should be higher than a Link to the Past, and this is coming from a guy who's first Zelda game was a Link to the Past.

ALTTP is #1 for me. No question.

After this list is done, you guys should make a Top 10 Zelda game topic for the Forum members of the board like you guys did after you're Top 10 Wii games last year.


http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=39463.0


It'd be interesting to see how the Forums Top 10 Zelda list compares to the Staffs.

That's a good idea. I'll set that up once this wraps up.

I like Twilight Princess and I'm not sure why people call it Ocarina of Time 2. Aside from the locations on the world map being in vaguely the same spots and the usual Zelda conventions in every game, I see little in common with OoT, and TP felt and played quite different to me. I think it's a great game with fun dungeons and items, but is held back by the terribly boring wolf transformation and ugly, unfitting graphics.

I don’t think Twilight Princess gets enough credit for the things it does better then OOT, particularly in terms of world building. in OOT the various villages and other settlements of Hyrule felt so isolated from eachother. (heck nobody seems to even know that kokiri village exists) however Twilight Princess has the people of Hyrule very well connected to eachother. they aren't just a bunch of villages connected only by the Hylian flag. they are an interconnected community of people that rely on eachother. you have your farmers and miners along with your traders and everything else. In Twilight Princess the kingdom of Hyrule actually felt like a kingdom. Additionally TP was very experimental with its dungeon settings compared to previous games in the series. only half of the dungeons in the game actually took place in the traditional dungeon/castle setting (i'm not counting the temple of time due to the fact that the temple is in ruins when you see it from the outside because of some weird time travel thing.
The rest took place in abandoned prisons, old mansions, a city in the sky... for everything you can bash TP for the world it presented felt much more real then the world presented in OOT.

The top two are on the CDi

In regards to Twilight Princess's OoT 2 reputation, I think Zelda games are hurt by staying in Hyrule and doing all this multiple Links stuff.  Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask are two of my favourite Zeldas and they involve established Links having an adventure in a different land.  Imagine if that was the whole series all along - the multiple adventures of Link from the first game in different lands fighting different enemies and meeting different people.  That makes it ridiculously easy to keep things fresh and yet Nintendo keeps giving us a new Link with Hyrule and all the typical trademarks like Death Mountain and Kakariko Village.  It seems so bizarre to pigeonhole oneself like that.  It's much more challenging to make the same place interesting over and over again than to just go to new places where you can just make up whatever the hell you want.

Nintendo could probably just pick one Link they particularly like and continue his adventures outside of Hyrule and it would work really well.  Though they would so pick toon Link, wouldn't they? *sigh*

Placing A Link to the Past below Wind Waker or Ocarina of time is shameful.

Ocarina of Time, while revolutionary, doesn't hold up today, and no reskinned 3DS version can change that. It's boring and static, the art is horrendous, the boss battles weak and arguably the start of the offensive "dungeon gimmick" element that has been so prevalent in recent titles.

And the Wind Waker has so many flaws that its timeless art style can't hide: the weakest dungeons, difficulty, and content of any of the titles. Comparing them to A Link to the Past, a quintessential game in the franchise and the peak of the 2D format, the format the game was designed for, is just not right!

Yoouuuu!! Insanity Level: User Name Earned  :P

I have to agree with (some of) what Evan said here. So many of these games are different enough that putting them in a list like this is silly. That said, Link To The Past is top 3, easy. I'm OK with it being 2 or even 1.

A Link to the Past > Ocarina of Time

ITT: "Why doesn't everyone agree with my opinions on Zelda!?!"

Also: Link's Awakening is #1, #2 and #3 of the all-time best games ever list.  Period.  Anyone who disagrees is stupid.

I'll put together some sort of "Inside the Numbers" post on the site or in the forums after we put up #2/#1. I will say that #2 and #1 were the clear favorites as the staff votes came in and were neck and neck throughout.

Link to the Past was a clear #3, but I think the one that hurt it, at least in our staff voting, is that it would be consistently #3/4 on people's lists, but wasn't at the top as consistently as the games above it. By comparison, out of our 23 voters, LTTP appeared as #1 3 times, but our top 2 combined for 12 first place votes.

For #4-#6, it was very even throughout the voting, though a little bit of late love for Link's Awakening made the difference greater. Majora's and Skyward would flip-flop with pretty much every list I got from staffers.

And for the record, one trolling staffer voted for Shadow of the Colossus.

Promote this person!

Can someone explain to me why everyone claims to love Link's awakening? I couldn't even finish that game I was bored, although I did love stealing stuff from the shop.
I know it's already been said on here that anyone that doesn't love Link's awakening is stupid so I guess I'm stupid hopefully someone can educate me so that I won't remain stupid.

#2 and #1 are up. http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/35521


Bug J.P. to get the forum voting ready. :)

Ha ha. I knew there was a reason I liked NWR. Wind Waker #1. I honestly didn't expect that to happen but I concur wholeheartedly. Easily my favorite Zelda also. Another reason why Gamecube was so awesome.

In fact, I'm feeling so nostalgic about it right now, I think I'll pop it in tonight on my cube and do another round of sailing across the ocean. I'll take exploration and finding secrets over dungeon crawling in my Zelda design everytime.

I put this in the article, and I'll post it here as well. If you disagree with our list, head on over to the Console Discussion section of our forums and place your vote in our NWR Readers' Zelda Top 10 list.

ALTTP is #1 for me.

I would have switched #2 and #3 for my top three.


Wind Waker is amazing.

How do you explain this to someone who doesn't like it? It basically breaks down to some people enjoy things that other people don't. All the reasons why you dislike Link's Awakening, everyone who likes the game probably feels the opposite. I won't tell you that you're wrong or stupid for thinking it's boring (though I'm sure there's a relevant Liz Lemon gif for how I feel). I didn't enjoy Skyward Sword overall, but I can imagine why people liked it, except the part where Link has to collect the Song of the Hero. I detested that part and I don't think I've read anyone say they genuinely enjoyed it, rather they didn't hate it. There are a few things that I'd chalk up to "not for me" (e.g. motion control sword fighting, playing the harp, the entirety of the Silent Realm) then a bunch of varying annoyances (e.g. terrible story, cliche characters, everything about Fi).

To me, Link's Awakening has the single best music track in the series. It's surreal story fits the game's atmosphere and I'm thoroughly impressed by the scope of the game considering the hardware limitations. Fitting A Link to the Past's basic gameplay onto the Gameboy is nothing short of a miracle to me. If you don't and/or can't feel the same way, it's all good.

The Zelda cycle is strong with this thread.

Adrock brings up an interesting point in the final paragraph of his last post. While I share his opinions on the game itself, Link's Awakening was truly an amazing game when it was originally released because it was not only a friggin' portable Zelda, but it was a huge, enormously ambitious Zelda that rivaled its SNES counterpart in everything except graphics. It was an amazing thing at the time that will never be replicated, so those Zelda fans who weren't around for it simply won't have that same appreciation for the game.

1) Wind Waker
2) A Link to the Past
3) Ocarina of Time
4) Adventures of Link
5) Link's Awakening

I only played Link's Awakening for the first time when it was released on 3DS eShop and I absolutely fell in love with it. I guess you could argue that because I never played it when it was originally released I'll never truly understand what it felt like to play it on a Gameboy, to be blown away by the technical achievement of having a game of that scope on a handheld; on the other hand I do think that the game stands on it's own merits and could be just as enjoyable today as it was back then. It certainly helps that I'm already inclined towards deriving pleasure from classic games, but I really do think Link's Awakening has stood the test of time.

Just to further confuse things, despite the similarities, LTTP wasn't on my list but Link's Awakening was #2. That's probably directly related to the contexts in which I played them, though.

Well if you like puzzles it's not that confusing.  Link's Awakening has a much greater emphasis on puzzles and had much more creative ones as well.  Link's Awakening is when they decided to start creating bigger and more complex puzzles that the dungeons would be designed around while Link to the Past on the other hand has much simpler ones.

So if you're someone who really enjoys the puzzles in Zelda, then I can see why you'd enjoy Link's Awakening more then Link to the Past.

Very well put. There are many things about Link's Awakening that I feel warrant appreciation, not simply just the technical marvels it showcased when first released.I'd certainly agree that the game stands on its own merits, but I can understand if its not for everyone.