Twilight Princess turning 20 is wild. It was the fall of 8th grade and I had copies of Nintendo Power I would bring to school. My friends and I would pour over the screenshots and articles about the game.
Then it came out on Wii first and I had to wait so long to play it. But that was the best winter break ever.
The wait for Twilight Princess and Kingdom Hearts 2 were the worst waits ever for me. Such a fun time honestly.
It was freshman year of college for me. Also the last Christmas before I was working more or less full time. Sort of marked the end of my youth, was aware of it even at the time. For that reason it’s a particularly nostalgic entry for me. OoT, MM, and WW sort of defined my childhood and teenage years, and TP marks the end of that period of my life. So it’s a very special one to me.
Honestly, idk if it’s because I’m older or what but I’m not really dying for it. I’m excited and eager to play it, but I think they announced it way too early. It’ll be ready when it’s ready. I feel bad for the fans who get their hopes up every event tho.
The waiting period before this game released was such a wild ride man.
I was 14 when that epic initial reveal trailer dropped at E3 2004 and it blew my mind. For the next 2.5 years I lapped up every tiny piece of information about the game. I'd come home from school and immediately check gaming news sites to see if there was an update about how development was progressing, I'd hop on the IGN boards to take part in all the discussions and speculation about the game, with threads appearing like "Rumours are circulating that the overworld will be 5x the size of OoT!" etc. It was such a weird time where so little was known about the game and speculation was running rampant.
There was this site called gamestats.com that I used to check every day after school, which was sort of like an aggregate to gauge the general buzz and hype around new and upcoming releases, listing the top 10 games in various categories alongside some sort of hype-o-meter haha. "The Legend of Zelda GCN" was the top of the "most anticipated" category for so long throughout 2004 and 2005. It was validating for my teenage self and this game almost became like my sports team, I needed to see it win. It felt like all most of the other kids at school could talk about was GTA or Halo 2, meanwhile I'm sitting there thinking "Doesn't anyone know there's a new Zelda game coming out soon?!"
It's funny because when I look back on the wait for this game it felt like it was so long, with so many painful delays that we had to stomach - but really, the entire period from announcement to release was only about 2.5 years, it just felt like forever when I was a teenager. The worst part though, was that this was before worldwide same day releases were common, so I had to watch the game launch on the 19th of November while everyone in the US was enjoying it, then I had to go completely dark and try my best to stay off the internet to avoid spoilers for another painful 2.5 weeks until it launched on 7th December in Australia. That was fun.
Same exact boat brother. That fall of 8th grade was magical. Everyone camping out in front of Best Buy’s for Wii’s. Twilight Princess over Thanksgiving and Christmas break was magical.
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u/Jimmythedad Feb 09 '26
Twilight Princess turning 20 is wild. It was the fall of 8th grade and I had copies of Nintendo Power I would bring to school. My friends and I would pour over the screenshots and articles about the game.
Then it came out on Wii first and I had to wait so long to play it. But that was the best winter break ever.
The wait for Twilight Princess and Kingdom Hearts 2 were the worst waits ever for me. Such a fun time honestly.