I remember this controversy when I was little. Admittedly, I was one of the people that were disappointed. But my dad bought the game and I instantly fell in love with it. He liked the look since the reveal because he thought it was so cool that games could now look like that. Now, it's one of my favourite Zelda games, and the art style is groundbreaking for the time.

During my playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom, I was pleasantly surprised by how many ideas from The Wind Waker had been carried over. Whether it was having companions that helped you solve puzzles in dungeons, or finding treasure maps that led to hidden chests in The Depths, the game takes a lot of inspiration from The Wind Waker.

One positive about this art style is the amount of expressive freedom it allowed Link and other characters compared to the N64 models. Wind Waker's a great game, but Twilight Princess is still my favourite Zelda, so I'm thankful Nintendo responded to the criticism to the way they did.

Man, I had no idea how far back Nintendo's "oh, but one more thing" bit went

I first played the game as a kid so I was oblivious to the controversy and as an adult I don’t care. My friend’s the same and this is his FAVE Zelda game

First time playing the Wind Waker HD right now - has to be one of the best Zelda games I've ever played. The graphics held up big time.

It's now been a longer amount of time since Wind Waker HD then it was from the original release to Wind Waker HD.

GameCube and PS2 was meant to be the generational leap that made games look like the artwork and actual people. In the end we got a chibi link which was wasted potential. It's easy now to say "it's the art style" as we are spoiled by the graphics of today, but all the hype that could have made fond memories was never to be.

Is funny that Wind Waker and Sonic Unleash caused a massive backlash years ago and now those games are considered to be one of the best games of their franchise

To be clear, also as someone present for the Spaceworld demo and the Wind Waker teaser trailer later, the issue wasn’t cel-shading, but the character design/artstyle. Wind Waker didn’t endear modern audiences to cel-shading. The cel-shading was never the issue. And notice how the other cel-shaded games you cited have far more realistic character design. The issue was that Link (and every character in the teaser trailer) were drawn with the proportions of seemingly orangutang-like dwarfs. It looked _silly._ Of course, nowadays, the game is rightfully deeply beloved, and its character design and artstyle has held up remarkably well, specifically because it _didn’t_ adhere to trying to be as realistic as possible. Any “realistic” artstyle would look very quickly dated and obsolete with the graphical limitations of the console of the time, compared to future console generations and improvements in graphics. Love your videos. Especially on Zelda.

Here are Top 5 reasons why Zelda - Wind Waker would make more sense as a Wii launch title: • Nintendo fans (as well as Miyamoto) were actually not yet ready nor motivated for a Toon Link to appear on the GameCube. • Zelda as seen in a Spaceworld 2000 demo needed to be the next sequel for GameCube. • By the time the Wii comes out, Zelda - Wind Waker would actually have all the given time to be 100% complete with the scrapped dungeons and all being in the game. • The Wii is powerful enough to graphically implement transparent bodies of water for Link to swim and dive in. • The Wii is more fitting because the Wii remote would be for players to motion Link's wind baton, and to steer the sailboat.

if Twilight Princess had come out first and then Wind Waker later, the GameCube might've performed a little better, also the Wind Waker art style would've fitted better on the Wii's ecosystem.

Windwaker's biggest flaw way that it's so short, imo.

I played the demo at Circuit City and put in my pre-order .. What a fantastic game

I will always be glad that the Wind Wacker was made because it’s basically the reason my favorite Zelda game was made. Thank you Wind Waker for giving us Twilight Princess.

Honestly it always seemed like the issue was not Wind Waker’s art style versus Ocarina/Earlier Titles, but rather if Wind Waker’s artstyle was gonna be the future of the series. GameCube’s titles featured many redesigns for Nintendo characters, and some have stuck around longer than the original designs of characters and became their permanent design (Mario / Metroid / Star Fox) - honestly take a character like Beedle who was first introduced in WW, he stands out in BoTW and ToTK which is good because he’s a shopkeep but bad when you actually compare him to anybody else in the world, he looks like a Muppet. If Wind Waker was the future of the series, I think the series would’ve faltered even with good games. Toon Link is hella charming but as the face of the series, it’s a good thing Nintendo changes Link’s design every time a Joycon breaks in their offices.

I definitely remember this and at the time it made sense to all of us. "Celda" was negative term and people *really* wanted basically Twilight Princess. It's interesting how time changes what we prioritize with graphics in video games

As a player whose "golden era" was on the SNES, I immediately recognized Wind Waker art style as basically a 3D conversion of A Link To The Past, which is arguably the best Zelda game, period. Wind Waker was simply magical. LOVED it when it came out, and my housemates and I spent a LOT of time on that one.

5:11 Lol Funny that everyone was quiet especially with Link awkwardly unsheathes his sword. Unlike Twilight Princess's announcement where people went ape shit.

I still remember the "More like CELda! LOL" jokes.

I usually never clicked on a new video so fast. I didn't think, I just clicked on the video as soon as I saw it.

i love your videos and i love that you've been posting more often recently 😊 keep it up TOG!

My only issue with wind waker is the triforce quest and needing a few more temples but i absolutely loved it

Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda game but even I can kind of agree that that initial trailer is pretty bad. It does make the tone look childish and slapstick.

I am shocked that with all the mods out there, no one made a realistic looking windwaker mod

It's really funny that the gaming community really hasn't changed much at all. So many of these posts I can see being passed around if Wind Waker were first announced today. The Hey Arnold and Tiny Toons comments are especially hilarious because I know people would be comparing this game to Teen Titans Go today 💀 I definitely remember the frustrations with Nintendo around this era, though. Nintendo was getting really experimental with all their franchises, and the only games fans really responded positively to from the start were Melee and Metroid Prime. Everybody wanted Mario 64 2 but got Luigi's Mansion and Mario Sunshine. People wanted OoT 2 and got Wind Waker. And people wanted Star Fox 64 2 and got Star Fox Adventures (side note: Someone mentioned looking toward Dinosaur Planet if they wanted a game like OoT. Funny that game didn't get to escape this torrent either.) There was so much "why did they have to ruin Mario Sunshine by giving Mario a watergun? Just let it play like Mario 64!" And I even remember Galaxy coming out and everyone claiming it's "just like Marip 64!" despite the fact that Sunshine was *way* closer. Surface level stuff really is important for convincing people to play your game. I think that's why so many Indie games focus so heavily on presentation.

I remember renting it to try it out and loving the game and getting it although I do remember being extremely hyped for TP being realistic and then all the delays...

It would be cool to see what the original version for the game woulve been if they kept the realism, maybe someome should make a mod…..

Twilight Princess is still my favorite to this day. That trailer still gives me goosebumps to this day. Windwaker is still a good game though.

Zelda Twilight Princess FTW!

I definitely had a much more open mind when I was a kid and played WW. I remember seeing stills of the Spaceworld Zelda demo in a Mexican magazine called Club Nintendo. Now, I don’t know if they (the magazine) actually specified that it was JUST a demo, but the thought of “THIS is what the next Zelda is going to look like” didn’t really form in my mind. When WW came out, to me it was just more Zelda… which I gladly welcomed. Yeah, the art style did throw me off at first, like I imagine it must have for damn near everyone, but I didn’t dislike it. Game came to be my favorite Zelda game. I remember hearing about how people had complaints in reviews, saying that the sailing was too annoying but to be honest, it was one of my favorite parts. I feel like the game’s world was really well and truly realized. Whenever I set sail from one island to another, it truly felt like there was a good sense of distance. Oh, it certainly was a bit monotonous at times but by and large, I truly did enjoy it… Here’s hoping it makes it to the Switch or its successor.

Many fans still want to see a Zelda game with a realistic art style. Not sure if Nintendo will ever make one though, but it would be cool to see

I remember playing wind waker as a kid and I had no problem with the art style, but I remember how the game was really fun for the first two dungeons, but after that it feels like it just caves in on itself. The third dungeon didn't appear, it has you do all these fetch quests before you can go on the third and then once you do you get the master sword and that's cool, but then you also have to do some more fetch quest type stuff just to power up the master sword, and that is usually where the wind waker fatigue starts to come around for people. The game wants you to explore around a lot, but at the same time it's heavily restricted since a lot of islands will disappoint you either because they're reused or because they require an item you don't have yet, there are also some islands that are needlessly tied to story progression as well which didn't actually need to be. Then by the triforce hunt portion even the most diehard wind waker fan is usually like "oh right THIS part of the game" and that's when it becomes a pure chore. I think wind waker would've been better if they had more unique islands, have them be actual islands with characters and stories instead of copy/pasted shrine type areas, remove any fetch quests needed to get to the next dungeons and make those part of actual quests instead, remove the triforce shard hunt completely and allow players to tackle the master sword powering up dungeons in either order they choose, making the next one easier by incorporating optional shortcuts the player can use if they use an item they acquired from the other dungeon first to easily spice up replay value.

I knew Link, Zelda and Ganondorf from Smash Bros Melee. Thought the were supercool. Then i saw Wind Waker and i thought this does not look cool at all. I did not want it. My mother in law did not know, that i did not want the game at all. So she bought it for me as a christmas gift. I thanked her and accepted the gift. Played it. And about half way through, when i sank down to hyrule for the first time, i already knew, that this is my favourite game of all time. It is simply a masterpiece and i can't think of another game as awesome as Wind Waker. Only BOTW got me near the feeling i had with Wind Waker as a child, althought i was an adult when i played BOTW.

I was disappointed by the art style when I was a kid. I was used to watching my brother play OoT and Majora's Mask, so I was really just there for what felt like a dark and mysterious fantasy story rather than a fun game. My brother loved Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, and my little sister played Skyward Sword, but I didn't play anything besides the 64 games until Breath of the Wild came out. Now I'm working my way through the backlog and the more I play the more I love it.

Wind Waker "cat eye" Link looks more like western animation of looney tune than anime.

This was pretty much my journey with the game. When it was announced, I hated the art style because I was obsessed with Majora's Mask and OoT at the time. I preordered it because I was desperate for more Zelda gameplay, and HAD to have the pre-order disc bonus. My dad drove me an hour away, twice, to preorder and pick up the game from the nearest GameStop, and I'll never forget the excitement of the day I got it. When I first played the game, I was still skeptical about the game. Then I laughed out loud when Link was shot out of a canon to enter the Forbidden Fortress, and I fell in love with it. Now it's one of my favorite games of all time. It's probably the most complete 180 turn my opinion on anything has ever changed.

I don't mind zelda games being more comical and less gritty, as long as it knew when to take itself seriously. Like majoras mask had a scene in ikana castle where two ghost skeleton heads were arguing in this silly way, but the commander of the two was like "silence, this bickering is what led to our destruction, we're dead and we still let it destroy us" and he brought it back into this serious moment very nicely, it not only had a moment to break the tension, but also gave a nice example of the state of those people.

Wind Waker was the first Zelda game I owned. I played A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time in emulators before, but I purchased Wind Waker on an old Blockbuster around 2010 because Toon Link hit on me very hard in SSBB. I immediately fell in love with the game. Even if it wasn't as hard as ALttP or as iconic as OoT, it was so emotive, with fun battle mechanics, a nice, more personal story, and great designs I still love to this day. The humor was at its peak, and the 2nd half of the game hit me even more. Alongside BotW and ALttP, it has become my favorite Zelda Experience. I even bought Twilight Princess and fell in love with the fun it was to swipe my Wiimote to attack or turn into a wolf to do some sick combos and run around Hyrule, but I still have so much impact from WInd Waker and the DS games to this date. I recently purchased BotW and TotK, and they felt like the perfect mix of that cool artstyle and mechanics alongside the classic designs and a new open world that remids to the very first game, so it's very cool to see Wind Waker being an important part of Zelda history even today. Hopefully they will do more similar things in the future and be more experimental. I'd love to see that Link with a guitar from the first drafts of BotW or something similar for the Switch 2 titles.

The controversy will never not make me roll my eyes, it's so stupid. Of course gamers loved the tech demo, because it looked like OoT, and gamers ALWAYS want more of what they already have. Of course they hate the cartoony look, because gamers hate being seen as children. And did these people never play any Zelda games other than OoT? They always had a cartoony artstyle prior to this one. Heck, the sprites from A Link to the Past look insanely similar to Toon Link, with the big eyes. Never seen anyone complain about that. I genuinely think that listening to the fans is often the worst thing you can do. They THINK they know what's best for a game, but usually never do.

Funny how back then, Hey Arnold was considered ugly and badly animated, whereas nowadays it's looked back on fondly.

I love the graphics in Wind Waker SD, honestly I think SD looks far better than Wind Waker HD.

I like that teenagers of that era were gatekeeping the game from Kids. I was a teen during this but I didn't participate because I didn't own a GameCube

Not going to lie reception to very early demos getting people mad is crazy 😂

It took me to get older to appreciate The Wind Walker !

Love your zelda videos !

I truly wish we got that proper Wind Waker 2... I hope they return to that, whatever ideas they had were probably different than Phantom Hourglass, at least to some degree.

It's hilariously Nintendo saw the writing on the wall decades ago after Twilight Princess: great realistic graphics are nice but they age like milk and are very expensive

7:44 That wasn't just any narrator. That was THE movie trailer guy, Don Lafontaine (sp?).

I remember seeing those 14 seconds and was blown away next minute WTF

I haven't finished this game yet but I know it has two sequels for NDS. What's people opinion on those games? I would love to know. PS. Is Minish Cap a sequel of Wind Waker too?

I, back then, or even now, never understood why the west loves "hardass" looks. I was always estatic over chibi cute things. Seeing it's trailer on that master quest disc made me go nuts. But after watching that "space world" video, I understood how people felt betrayed lol. I always loved OOT style link, the best we got of him is in Soul Calibur 2.

5:23 So despite his appearance, they list this Link and Zelda as 12-14 in a bunch of design sheets and bios.

I knew this was going to be a classic and it is.

Almost forgot this Goated channel

Always loved Wind Waker. Even as a kid when it first came out I thought it looked one of a kind. Still does in my opinion. It's a timeless art style. 👌

Fun fact: Cell shading is the easiest way to make a game not age, so thats why Wind Waker still looks good even now

so after the 1st year after tears of the kindom looking at the old demo clip for has an alter with 6 medalions and semi temple of time themed so i guess they reused this room design and alter later in both twilight princess and tears of the kindom since arbiters grounds has the 6 medalions alter and tears has the sacred temple for the 6 tears alter and ganons final battle room looks like that as well as shrine of resurrection shape

I still vividly remember this era during high school... People online were fuming under the assumption that infamous Spaceworld Tech Demo was what we should expect for the next upcoming Zelda game and acted like we had the rug pulled from under us, even down to nicknaming it derogatorily as "Celda" for the cell-shaded style as many went under the assumption it was made for little babies. The obsession for "realism" and "high-end graphics" blinded many of us... Funny how much things changed as the years went on. Me personally, I remember not being TOO bothered by it, since I really liked the anime art style in Link to the Past's instruction book and Nintendo Power comic.

My biggest complaint with the game at release (being a child) was how they changed the controls from OoT/MM.

As a kid turning into a teenager ( I think I was 13 when this came out). I hated these graphics. As an adult I really enjoy them. Everyone else at my school was playing halo and calling this a baby game. No one I knew owned a GameCube as they thought it was a device for babies. This game did not help that impression. I appreciate the game now, but I do think at the time it hurt Nintendo pretty bad in the north American market.

And that's why Miyamoto made the Zelda Movie live action like it or not his vision for Zelda was always realism.

It's almost a crime that this isn't available on Switch.

I must be old because i remeber when people were upset but the game is a 💎

Honestly, that tech demo would have been cool as a sequel to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.

This is a good story! Windwaker is so widely loved these days a lot of people forget how negative the reaction was at first. As an edgy teenager at the time I was absolutely one of the haters. We all know better now though and it's far better than Twilight Princess tbh.

I preordered Wind Waker, waited like crazy, and when it finally came out the game gave me migraines. It took me months to beat, because I could only play it for 20-30 minutes before I had to close my eyes and take a nap. When I finally finished the game, the migraines stopped and went away. I went over a decade without any problems, and when I finally got Borderlands the same thing happened (10 minutes in the headache starts, and in less than a half hour I can’t keep my eyes open because it hurts so badly). When BOTW launched I was so disappointed that it had cel shaded graphics, and I was prepared to have the migraines again, but they just never came 🤷‍♂️

I was around 9 years old when Wind Waker was announced and I thought it looked cool, though to be honest, back then I didn't have access to the Internet and since the GameCube wasn't very popular here in Argentina, none of my friends were aware about the game, I got all the information from some TV shows about games and magazines and all them were very positive about Wind Waker In retrospective I think Aonuma's decision regarding Wind Waker's artstyle was very bold, he could easily just made it look like Ocarina of Time but with better graphics I also think the backlash against WW was due to the average gamer perception at the time that all games should have a realistic artstyle and that, somehow, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were realistic-looking titles

I don't understand the motive to hide of what's being made to the literal game director, I mean I get that he wanted to do something his way but that's not his say.

Zelda will be a cartoon. Metroid will be a first person game Nintendo sent shockwaves during that time.

See what i never understood about this controversy, is surely people should have known it was only a tech demo and not at all meant to be taken as an indicator for what the next Zelda game would actually look like. I never had a Gamecube growing up and the first time i ever got to sit down and properly play a Zelda game for myself was 2015...granted it was Windwaker, so there's probably a bias in there too but the reason i chose Windwaker was cause my mate used to let me watch him play it and i thought it was a cute game...so my opinion here obviously carries less weight than someone who was there at the time, but surely the footage being labelled a tech demo, should have been enough of an indicator that this wasn't actually the next game currently in the works. From my understanding a tech demo and an actual demo to represent the games are two very different things. I don't know maybe i'm chatting out my ass, but i just don't get why so many people hated it at the time. But at the same time i kind of do get it, and i suppose this controversy did eventually get us Twilight Princess which is my favourite game in the series. So i kind of hate there was a controversy but i also kind of love it because we got Twilight Princess 😅😅😅

I remember getting so mad about this as a kid but you have understand I thought it would be a permanent change.

Die Legende von Zelda😩 Die Legende von Zeldaa! 😩 Die LEGENDE von ZELDAAA!!!!!😩😩😩😩🤯

What’s the name of that show at 2:17

Because of Twilight Princess i ended up playing this game, my brother beat it but i never touched it because i was a hater lol 😂. Ended up loving this game so much

WW zombified the franchise. In the past I wrote entire essays on Zelda fan forums to explain why. Now that I'm not a raging fanboy anymore, I don't try that hard to convince anyone anymore. I'm older, see it differently now, and have some sympathy for the Big N. I now understand they missed one of the *biggest* opportunities in fantasy writing history by not developing a direct, "Hero of Time" sequel to MM. Few people who read this will understand why. Such an MM sequel would be very difficult to create, but would've broken ground across both the high-fantasy and general story telling metas. It's an opportunity they will never get back. It's only a matter of time until a bold, talented story writer who understands where the Big N went wrong post-64 creates a new franchise that will surpass Zelda in story, gameplay, and experience. First indie development team to pull that off and treat their franchise and fans properly will attract a large, involved following fast.

Holy shit I remember being so disappointed - and frankly , I'm glad zelda steered away from this style. 14:30 , now hold on there ... I wouldn't go SO far.

I really liked the new Cell-Shading technology, but I kinda disliked Links new look overall, but I eventually bought the game on release, I had so much fun with the game I did multiple playthroughs I can't even count it. It was so well made, for me it was the best title Game Cube overall.

This game was amazing and the art style is beautiful but I do wish we could have ever seen a zelda in the art style of the spaceworld 2000 demo. Twilight princess was the closest thing but it's dark green/brown earth tone filtered world is an extremely dated product of it's era that looks like shit today. The Wii U demo fixed it up a lot but that never came to fruition either.

Whiny, edgy teen boys ruin everything lmao

You have to also remember that Skyward Sword used cel shaded graphics and fans did not like it saying it should of used realistic graphics like Twilight Princess had. Nintendo took notes of what fans wanted and the Wii U tech demo showed what a realistic Zelda could look like in HD and even Eiji Aonuma thought to make the next Zelda game Breath of the Wild have realistic graphics to please fans, but ended up making it cel shaded as he said that having realistic graphics made the environments blend with each other and everything looked muddy and having cel shaded graphics made the environment pop out more. After Breath of the Wild released the fans loved the cel shaded graphics and even say the next Zelda game (not counting Tears of the Kingdom) should use cel shaded graphics.

Lol like a little Akko in a Zelda video

Nice Video ! Sub & Big Like ! And Love Retro Zelda Games !

I don’t blame for people hating wind waker when it was revealed just because the tech demo set false expectations but nowadays WW is amazing

ART STYLE > GRAPHICS BABYYYYYYY

The GameCube actually has a 32 bit processor

It's interesting. Wind Waker was hated at the time for being too cartoony. But when fans got a serious entry in Twilight Princess, it got a lukewarm reception. It wasn't till years later that both became cult favourites. BotW and TotK felt like a nice middle ground between anime aesthetics and more heavy storytelling in the franchise.

Windwaker tainted Zelda for me forever. I was so mad when it released that i stopped caring about the series forever.

Wind Waker is when i started to lose interest in the series and even as a kid i thought the game was ridiculous. Zelda should have been one of Nintendo's more "Mature" titles but since that clown Eiji Aonuma has taken the reins, everything has been pretty rainbows with low effort storytelling to boot.

I find it hard to look at. I still don't like the artstyle, no matter how much some people praise it. Not my cup of tea.

wtf is a 128-bit console? 128-bit computing is only a thing in research papers. There’s no reason to create that many memory addresses on one chip. That’s more addresses than we have data for. Like… all data. Ever.

The cartoon style is what made the game age well. Even Twilight Princess looks ugly by today’s standards, I’m gay btw

12:39 People did all that celebrating just to get an inferior game 🤣. I remember the releases of both games and even then I thought TP was overrated and overhyped just bc people are babies about graphics. Still feel that way.

I hate the dark, gritty ;ppl of TP

I find it quite hilarious and pathetic how the fans felt ''betrayed'' by the game looking different from the previous 2 Zelda Games. There was no promise that the tech demo was going to be the next game so i honestly think people of the time assumed something and were ''betrayed'' by something that wasnt concrete in the first place. Different times although it shows little has changed lol. I actually really like how the game looked and i remember when it released i thought it looked nice and to be fair it has aged very well and in a way its timeless. I like how games look different cause id rather have variety in a series rather than everything looking similar or the same

Nintendo were bullied into making Twilight Princess but it's so good. No bully.

Zelda THE Wind Waker, nicht Zelda Wind Waker.

Nowadays, it seems like some Nintendo fans really hate anything “anime/realistic” because of “perceived blandness/genericness” instead of “perceived childishness”

Too bad the HD version of the Windwaker looks worse than og because of the unfitting bloom lighting and plastic looking characters.

Honestly, Ocarina and Majora's Mask were pretty cartoony despite having a more rustic color palette. Our imaginations made them have more realistic graphics. Wind Waker was, no pun intended, a breath of fresh air.