Month: July 2021

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  If you'd like, you can pretend that Ghirahim (right) is the thirsty, corner-cutting Nintendo, and Link is an average fan, aghast at the shape Skyward Sword HD ultimately arrived in. [credit: Nintendo ]

Nintendo has never shied away from opportunities to touch up and re-release its most beloved video games. 1993's Super Mario All-Stars is arguably the industry's first "big" remaster project, while the Zelda series has been downright spoiled with the concept going back as far as a 1995 reimagining of the original Legend of Zelda for the Super Famicom's Japan-only satellite service.

In the intervening years, expectations for "HD" versions of older games have exploded, primarily because gamemakers have gotten better at this. And the Zelda series has excelled within this trend, too, as highlighted by Nintendo's top-to-bottom retouches of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask for the now-discontinued Nintendo 3DS.

But if those games are examples of Zelda remasters at their best and most ambitious, then this week's Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (a re-release of the 2011 Wii adventure game for the Nintendo Switch) is arguably the opposite.

Cover art for the first Wheel of Time novel. A prequel film trilogy is now in development, in addition to the Amazon TV series. (credit: Tor Books)

Expectations are high among fans for Amazon Studio's forthcoming adaptation of The Wheel of Time, the late Robert Jordan's bestselling 14-book series of epic fantasy novels, purportedly due to premiere later this year. And now it looks like we'll be getting a Wheel of Time film trilogy as well, according to Deadline Hollywood, focusing on the history of Jordan's fictional world before the events of the books.

Most of the canonical pre-history of Jordan's fictional world is revealed in flashbacks and legends found in The Wheel of Time Companion, but it is otherwise largely unexplored territory. The intent is to complement rather than compete with the storyline in Amazon's adaptation for TV. Per Deadline:

The first movie will be set several millennia before the time of the books, in a period known as the “Age of Legends”— a futuristic utopia powered by a magical force shared by men and women known as the “One Power.” When an unspeakable evil is unleashed upon the world, civilization descends into chaos, and war blankets the globe. When men using the One Power become insane and destroy much of the planet, a small band of women unite under the White Tower, and are humanity’s last hope of survival.

Screenwriter Zack Stentz (Thor, X-Men: First Class, Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous) will take on screenwriting duties for the first film. “I’ve been a fan of Robert Jordan’s work for many years, and it is especially his allusions to the origins and backstory of The Wheel of Time that I have always found most intriguing. I’m excited to be bringing this era Robert Jordan conceptualized to life,” Stentz said in a statement. “A fusion of the fantasy and science-fiction genres, the Age of Legends is a tale of paradise lost, as a futuristic Garden of Eden devolves into a dangerous and broken world.”