- author, Tom Richardson
- role, BBC Newsbeat
Nintendo has announced that Princess Zelda will star in her own game.
She has lent her name to one of the Japanese gaming giant’s most popular series over the past four decades.
However, in The Legend of Zelda series, players take on the role of Link, the Hylian hero.
That’s all about to change with Echoes of Wisdom, a new title announced during the company’s Nintendo Direct preview stream.
In the short trailer, fans saw Link get swallowed up by a supernatural portal, leaving the princess behind.
The game uses the same top-down perspective and cartoon-style graphics as the 2019 remake of the Game Boy classic The Adventure of Link.
The trailer shows Zelda summoning replicas of items and enemies found in the world to solve puzzles and battle foes.
Perhaps the biggest announcement of the 40-minute showcase for gamers was the grand finale: the highly anticipated Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.
First announced in 2017, it is the long-awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed first-person adventure series that launched on the Nintendo Gamecube.
In the short preview, fans saw bounty hunter Samus Aran navigating the alien planet and using her famous morph ball ability to travel across worlds.
Nintendo’s Shinya Takahashi, who hosted the event, warned fans that they would “have to wait a little longer” for the game’s 2025 release.
And no Nintendo Direct event would be complete without a certain plumber.
The latest release kicked off with footage from “Mario & Luigi Brotherhood,” a colorful RPG starring the two.
The rest of the presentation featured a variety of third-party titles and updates, as well as a little peek at Lego Horizon Adventures.
The platforming mash-up of beloved blocks and Sony’s futuristic open-world adventure will be released under the PlayStation Publishing label.
This follows in the footsteps of Microsoft, which announced earlier this year that it would be bringing Xbox-exclusive games to rival platforms.
Nintendo previously revealed that it would not be revealing any details about the Nintendo Switch successor during its latest Direct Show.
But the announcement of Metroid in particular has fans wondering if any of the titles we just saw will make an appearance in it.
Some of Nintendo’s most popular games released at the launch of a new console, such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, can be played on both consoles.
With the release of the Switch’s successor looming, most people expected 2024 to be a fairly quiet year for Nintendo.
However, it’s worth remembering that the original has sold over 130 million copies since its release in 2017.
The upcoming Mario and Zelda games may not be major sequels, but they show that the company can rely on two of its most popular franchises of all time to keep fans engaged.
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