I recently found myself with an entire weekend to myself. No spouse, no children, no chores. It’s a rarity. So what immediately sprang to mind? Video games. And as I reviewed the titles I might pick up, I realized that what I really wanted was a Zelda game. In the end, I bypassed Dead Space 2 and Assassins Creed 2 and ended up picking up copies of Metal Gear Solid 4, Metroid Prime for GameCube, 3D Dot Game Heroes, and Clive Barker’s Jericho. I never ended up starting MGS4 or Metroid Prime; they’re still on my shelf at home. I played a bunch of Jericho and decided that I don’t love it. But I spent a good amount of time with 3D Dot Game Heroes.

3D Dot Game Heroes is an unabashed clone of the original NES Legend of Zelda. It knows what it is and revels in it. It’s got a boomerang, bow and arrow, bombs, and clones of many of Zelda’s monsters. It uses apples instead of hearts and orbs instead of triforce fragments. It also includes overt references to other old school games. I even met Princess Alena, Brey, and Kiryl from Dragon Warrior 4.

The basic game is good fun, and layered on top of it are a number of new elements. Your first sword is ridiculously huge when you’re at full hearts, and can be upgraded at a smithy to be longer, wider, and pierce through obstacles. Amazingly, this doesn’t make the game too easy. There’s also a way to “book” monsters, listing them in a manual for reference. Hilariously, this is done by physically smacking the monster with your copy of the book until its listing shows up in the book. Yeah – the game has some good humor. There are also a number of other minigames, including arkanoid and tower defense clones. I haven’t found all the minigames yet.

I played a bunch of 3D Dot Game Heroes over the weekend, and got midway through the third temple. But the game wasn’t scratching the Zelda itch, so I restarted a new game of Twilight Princess, and finished the Forest Temple before the weekend was over.

I’d been chatting with a friend at a bar just before the weekend and he’d mentioned Wind Waker, which I’d never played. He’s a huge fan of Zelda to the point where he has a Triforce tattoo, and he says that Wind Waker is his most favoritest Zelda game evar. So I ordered the game online. For the past few days, I’ve been spending all my video game time on my Wii with Wind Waker. Finally, a game that’s scratching the Zelda itch.

Aside from the original NES Zelda and the side-scrolling NES sequel, Twilight Princess was my first Zelda game. I loved it. After that, I played Phantom Hourglass on the DS and enjoyed that a lot too. And while Wind Waker is seeming much more akin to Phantom Hourglass than to Twilight Princess, I’m enjoying it. I prefer Twilight Princess’s open fields to the open seas of Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, but I’m only just approaching the second temple in Wind Waker, so I’m likely too early in the game to judge its merits. I’m sure that I’ll end up taking a sizable Portal 2 break before I even get to that temple, but I’ll report back at some point with my take on Wind Waker.