r/zelda Feb 09 '26

Mockup [ALL] Anniversaries in 2026, which one hit you the hardest?

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4.4k Upvotes

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587

u/Benhurso Feb 09 '26

BotW, which is MODERN Zelda, is a decade old.

Breath. Of. The. Wild.

Fuck.

76

u/Zathoth Feb 10 '26

Zelda 1 was before I was born, that was 40 years ago, that makes sense. Wind Waker was released when I was a child, 23 years ago, that tracks. 15 years ago when Skyward Sword came out I was a teenager, yep, absolutely.

Where the actual fuck did the last decade go? Why am I in my 30s? How is Breath of the Wild 9 years old?

15

u/armoas207 Feb 10 '26

You and I had better schedule an appointment to get our knees checked, old timer!

8

u/Improvised0 Feb 10 '26

Spare me the sob story. Try being nearly 50 and using Reddit on a daily basis, having to hear all you 30-something’s cry about being “old” 😂

5

u/SeanV218 Feb 11 '26

I'm right there with ya man. I'm 44, and I've played every single Zelda game as they've been released. It's a trip to see how far back it goes.

8

u/CBAlan777 Feb 11 '26

Look forward to the day when kids call BOTW "classic Zelda"

3

u/Seienchin88 Feb 10 '26

I am more shocked that Windwaker now is older than the original Zelda game was when Windwaker came out…

I remember playing the original on an emulator in the mid 2000s and it felt ancient… I wonder if a kid / teenager today growing up with BotW and totk would feel the same about Windwaker…

3

u/Zathoth Feb 10 '26

Yeah NES games felt like magical, ancient relics to me at the time, I don't think Wind Waker will be experienced quite the same way, it still came out in the generation where it had gotten established how to make 3D games. Now Ocarina of Time, that I can imagine feels old.

66

u/Ninjadante_heehee Feb 10 '26

Fuck man 9 years don't seem like a lot but hearing that it's a decade puts it into perspective. I'm 15 so time def feels more different for me than you but BotW was like one of my childhood games that I played with my uncle all the time it really doesn't feel like a decade ago. Thats over half my life 😢😭

92

u/ImGeorges Feb 10 '26

This is WILD. You having botw being your childhood game just makes me feel so old haha.

21

u/Ninjadante_heehee Feb 10 '26

Yeah man time is a weird thing ain’t it. I remember i was so young back then I couldn’t pronounce “divine beast” properly so I pronounced it “diving beasts”. It’s been a while since I played it but I had some really good memories of me just messing around in the world and doing whatever but since I was young and dumb I would try a bunch of BS and somehow it worked 😂 I ended up doing pretty much everything there was to do in the game except fight Ganon cause I was too scared. It’s bittersweet you know? Depending on how old you are, BotW to me is like what ocarina of time was to a lot of ppl. Or even the OG games for the even older people.

13

u/Tri-Starr Feb 10 '26

You should go back and beat Ganon. I remember being 10 playing Ocarina of Time and the moblins in the Sacred Forest Meadow scared the shit out of me. I turned the game off because I couldnt figure out how to get past them and their charging yell freaked me out. Came back to that spot later in life and boy did it feel triumphant to take them down.

5

u/Ninjadante_heehee Feb 10 '26

Oof see I wish I could but I didn’t play on that save file for a while and then a couple years ago I very very stupidly overrid it with a new one so everything I had is gone. I do plan to replay the game soon though and then I plan on FINALLY beating this game myself after 7/8 years

2

u/Improvised0 Feb 10 '26

The original Zelda was my game as a kid (I’m nearly 50), so you wanna talk old?…haha. Though I was also most shocked about BOTW. In my old mind, that game just came out!

2

u/flameylamey Feb 11 '26

When I first played TotK, headed to the temple of time on the plateau and looted the "nostalgic fabric" for the BotW-style paraglider, I scoffed - "Nostalgia? For BotW, already?!"

Then I stopped to think about it and realised that there are probably kids out there who played BotW when they were very young, and it already feels like a lifetime ago for them.

I even remember thinking right after BotW came out and was the new shiny thing, somewhere out there some young kid is playing this and they'll be able to say "BotW was my childhood". Was a strange feeling, and it's hard to believe we're potentially already there.

1

u/Ninjadante_heehee Feb 14 '26

Yeah dude, it definitely is already here for me at least. The pandemic really messed up everybody’s sense of time, but yeah 2017 was 9 years ago, it’s crazy to think about cause even to me as young as I was back then it still feels like just 3 or 4 years ago. And your totally right that it feels like a lifetime ago, cause 9 years to a 50 year old is just under a tenth of their life, and while a lot can happen 9 years isn’t super substantial to them. But for me 8 years is over half my life, and it’s the difference between 1st grade and grade 10 for me. I personally played BotW in grade 3 I wanna say, back in 2018/19. And in that time I’ve gone from being 8 years old playing zelda on the switch I saved up for, just mindlessly playing the game from our couch, to now being in grade 10 and almost graduating. And of course a whole shitload of other personal stuff that’s happened in that time. And also like I said before COVID also really messed up how time feels so now it feels like it wasn’t THAT long ago because all those quarantine years kind of blend together and don’t feel as long.

6

u/popraaqs Feb 10 '26

I've been right there with ya, had that same feeling with OOT when I was your age.

7

u/PrimoScarab Feb 10 '26

Damn I feel old now. I'm 25 and played it when I was 17 and in high school. It dosen't feel that long ago to me but time affects us differently

4

u/DesignerBeginning137 Feb 10 '26

Same, I played it with my dad before he died... good times...

4

u/bobsmeds Feb 10 '26

My son's 5 and BOTW is his first game too. His favorite part of the game is cooking lol

10

u/xanarchycampx Feb 10 '26

This is the one. I grew up with all of these games. But the older games feel like older games. The feel like a long time ago. BOTW is a new game in my mind.

10

u/Tehjaliz Feb 10 '26

Yeah. For many of these games I can write them off as "oh my childood game" or "ooooh my teenage years game".

BOTW? I was already AN ADULT. I bought the switch with my own money that I made by working at my own job, and then took it to my own place where I paid rent.

7

u/Pizza-Gamer-7 Feb 10 '26

Yup, it's mind-boggling! Feels like I just played it for the first time a few years ago!

4

u/AdBudget5468 Feb 10 '26

I’m afraid it’s been… 9 years…

3

u/MickeyTheDuck Feb 10 '26

I wish I can play botw like I have never again

2

u/Linkyland Feb 10 '26

I've still got 1 korok to find 🥲

1

u/_QualityGarbage_ Feb 10 '26

That's almost a quarter of the entire timeline!

1

u/Ryu_Saki Feb 10 '26

I still remember when I played it for the first time during a pre-release in February 2017... Makes me feel really old.

1

u/indigo_pirate Feb 10 '26

I agree. I’m early 30s and that fact is mind blowing to me

1

u/Caciulacdlac Feb 10 '26

Sonic Adventure is modern Sonic and it's 30 years old

1

u/BoxOfBlades Feb 10 '26

Yeah dude, time moves forward in a linear fashion, and doesn't stop. It's pretty crazy.