To answer the deck question: a) yes, and b) Take it, Reggie.

I honestly would have preferred Majora's Mask 3D! I am actually quite dissapointed that we didn't get that. I guess it's nice to have a "new" Zelda game for the 3DS but after the two DS games I am not interested in A Link to the Past 2 at all. But that's just my opinion and like assholes we all have them! LOL!

Translation: "We're going to mess up the legacy of the most important of all Zelda games and add even more gimmicky stuff to the next big Zelda title, simply because we can and you are a bunch of predictable, brain-dead bastards who will buy anything that says 'Zelda' on the box."

Mr. Aonuma... if you read this... please, pretty please... do not mess up Zelda anymore. I am so tired of the so-called "innovations".

what are you saying, the new zelda games are great, if those innovations didnt exist then we where playing the same game for 25 years!

What innovations are you talking about motion sword control? Touch control on the DS?

Majora's mask was crap and im glad they won't be remaking it...Just saying
Been gaming since video gaming began

Weird. Usually when I read a thread I find one, maybe two, comments that I disagree with, but so far I disagree with the majority of what has been said here.

I'm very much interested in ALTTP 2 (although I still really hope we get a Majora's Mask remake)

I don't think Aonuma has messed up the legacy of Zelda. No series can last as long as Zelda has without innovations and gimmicks (for me the two go hand in hand).

Majora's Mask was not crap and is in fact one of the better Zelda games (It's actually my third favourite after Twilight Princess and Wind Waker).

As far as I am concerned, I get the feeling that Aonuma does not want to push the series forward structure-wise. To put it bluntly, every Zelda game since Ocarina of Time (or more appropriately, A Link to the Past) has featured the same structure of "go to a certain number of dungeons, collect artifact X from there, then have an event and then collect other artifact Y in another series of dungeons". It just feels like there is a thick crust on all of the series and while adding certain elements does indeed give off a vibe of having something new, it never was something as mind-blowingly different as Majora's Mask. Also, I don't think the addition of either touch or motion controls is that much of an innovation rather than a "gimmick". Which I don't fully condemn, but I'd like to state here that this is not enough to get me engaged in a game. It is just a new element fumbled on top of an archaic structure.

What Zelda needs right now is to emancipate from the legacy of both Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past and go into a new structure which does not collide with what has been established. Alas, this is a very hard step to take, seeing as both fans and creators have a bizarre obligation to the series's legacy. But what is the series's legacy? In my opinion, it is the common elements of Zelda (and its clones): 1) a fantasy world 2) melee-oriented combat 3) dungeons 4) which are accessible through a spread-out overworld 5) exploration and puzzles. That seems like a whole lot of stuff, but it is really not that restricting of a frame to work in. As long as any new Zelda stays true to these elements, they can do whatever they want... but right now they're just clinging to OoT (which was what I meant when I said that Aonuma is messing with the series's legacy (in a bad way)) and heap different gimmicks onto it in hope they can pass it off as "new".

I really hope that Aonuma stays true to his word of wanting to rip the way you visit the dungeons out and replace it with something new. It may not be something fully new, but I regard it as a start to something better. And if Aonuma is not able to revolutionize the series... I think it would be best if he stepped down.

What I find odd is that Aonuma's first effort was Majora's Mask, which is easily the most creative Zelda game since Ocarina of Time.  It is the titles that came after that, while still good, seemed too formulaic or relied on a gimmick that didn't really add much.  So is Aonuma at fault or was he given less control after MM and has had to deal with more interference from his superiors?  It seems odd that if his hands were not tied that he would go for broke on his first game and then become conservative.

I think the problem stems from Nintendo post-DS philosophy towards game design.  They like their controller gimmicks.  Both the DS and Wii followed a pattern of introducing some outside-the-box control "innovation" and then hoping it would inspire great ideas.  Only that doesn't work as well as they think.  But they sure as hell aren't going to admit that so we get those ideas shoehorned into Zelda.  They need to "prove" the concept and Zelda is their most well regarded series so it gets assigned the task.  So we get Zelda w/ touch controls and Zelda w/ motion control.  But it doesn't really change Zelda in any real way, just makes them control is a goofier less-precise way.  When playing Phantom Hourglass I felt I was playing Zelda-by-numbers... except the game controlled like shit.  Skyward Sword has tons of reused areas and time filler as if they spent too much development time getting the motion controls right which didn't leave enough for the actual content of the game.  The need to "prove" the controller gimmick that isn't that hot to begin with comes from on high and I don't know how you can a great and creative Zelda with that sort of controls requirement.  I blame Nintendo management's dumb approach to game design where controller gimmicks are used to create a "new" experience.  If the next Zeldas feel generic, I'll bet they have lots of 3D or Tablet controller usage.  Aonuma can only do so much if Iwata and Miyamoto are telling him to build Zelda around some shallow control gimmick that ultimately just does the same thing in a more roundabout way.

But you'll still buy it.

See the actual problem here?

I didn't buy Spirit Tracks... says the single grain of sand on the beach.

You need pressure to make a diamond. He had one year to make a whole game, so cranking out another Ocarina of Time wasn't feasible, and thus the time limit was born. After that though he's had all the time in the world to work on the games.

you could say a similar thing about E.T. on atari

Necessary =/= sufficient. :P

Although for once in my life I'm not talking completely out of my ass: the Iwata Asks on Spirit Tracks talks about how the format of Majora's Mask was largely shaped by having only a year to work on the title.

Majora's Mask was in a lot of ways the effort of Yoshiaki Koizumi, who was responsible for the concept of the 3 day cycle and wrote the plot behind some of the side quests. Incidentally, he also invented the target feature for 3D Zelda games and rebelled against Miyamoto when he wanted to make OoT a first-person game (and got his way). Just saying, because Koizumi seems to be often forgotten when it comes to the evolution of the series.

And just saying... he might be a bettter – or at least more interesting – choice for the Zelda series than Aonuma and Fujibayashi.

still can't imagine what a first person zelda would be like... maybe if miyamoto took the help it'd come out gloriously.

I would've imagined it to be something like a The Elder Scrolls installment... with the typical Zelda elements instead of all the RPG stuff.