Spirit Tracks Still Has More To Offer

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 12, 2024 24 Views 5 Min Read
Spirit Tracks Still Has More To Offer



Many games populate the cluttered timeline of The Legend of Zelda, some being canon, and others spin-offs. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is technically the former, but one would be forgiven for mistaking it for the latter in spite. Released for the Nintendo DS on December 7, 2009, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is the second portable sequel to TLoZ: The Wind Waker, and it’s one of the greatest oddities in the series because of that. Zelda’s typical lack of direct sequels and Wind Waker’s follow-ups jumping from console to handheld are unusual details, but they’re just the beginning of Spirit Tracks’ strangeness.




While The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has a fairly unassuming reputation among Zelda fans today, its age and inaccessibility not helping matters, it was a fairly radical game for its time. There had never been a true narrative trilogy in the Zelda series before, and remaining a touchscreen-controlled game like its predecessor, Phantom Hourglass, was also a surprise. Even 15 years later, there are still plenty of ideas that Spirit Tracks either pioneered or refined that modern Zelda titles have yet to revisit, and doing so could be worth the effort.

Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks Remake

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Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks Deserves a Remake or Sequel

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is sometimes cited as one of the best DS-era Zelda games, and it needs to be revisited on the Nintendo Switch.


One of the biggest selling points that Spirit Tracks offered to Legend of Zelda veterans was the chance to play both series protagonist Link, and the titular Princess Zelda. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom also focused the princess, but that Zelda took precedence over Link. A Zelda-focused setup has its own appeal, but Spirit Tracks made both Legend of Zelda protagonists playable at once. Future games don’t need to keep Princess Zelda in the action as often, but more balance between the two in gameplay could serve a Zelda title well.

Smaller Zelda Games Don’t Need Typical World TraversalGameplay screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

A less popular Spirit Tracks detail was its lack of a proper overworld, or at least regular connective areas. Instead of the standard Hyrule Field, an open world, or even The Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass’ naval navigation, Spirit Tracks placed players on interconnected railroad systems, with regular gameplay resuming at stops along the way. This particular approach is fairly blunt about restricting the player, but it demonstrates that a Zelda game can forgo the massive world its name would imply and still hold an adventurous spirit. Any smaller upcoming Zelda spin-offs would be well served by taking note of this.


Constants Like Hyrule or Ganondorf Can Be Left Behind

Besides an unusual mode of travel, Spirit Tracks also inherited a considerably different setting than Zelda’s norm from The Wind Waker. The Triforce, Ganondorf, and even the kingdom of Hyrule itself were all dealt with definitively in this timeline by the end of The Wind Waker, so Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks relayed the story of the Hylian people finding and colonizing a new land they also name Hyrule. Even if there are plenty of familiar elements, breaking away from Legend of Zelda tradition helped Spirit Tracks build its own identity, and upcoming games can follow suit.

Any Zelda Game Can Support A Direct Sequel

legend of zelda botw sequel


The most understated, but perhaps most important, trait that Spirit Tracks can offer future Zelda titles is its nature as a sequel. Nothing else in the Zelda franchise has had as many direct sequels as The Wind Waker, and even if opinions on them are divided, they are still full Zelda games contributing to the franchise’s mythos and gameplay. Revisiting fan favorite Zelda characters, settings, and features could be easily justified by giving other titles direct prequels and sequels as well. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks may be old, but its worth to the series means it should never be forgotten.

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