Notable Absences
Due to only having a couple of stages in most Smash games, The Legend of Zelda has a lot of games that haven’t had stages based on them. While a few of these absences make sense due to being smaller titles or due to licensing issues, there are several significant Zelda titles that have been completely glossed over in Super Smash Bros. when it comes to stages. Here I will talk about the most glaring of these absences.
The Legend of Zelda is the first game of the series; the one that started it all. But despite this it hasn’t even received any acknowledgement in Smash besides music. As the very first Zelda game, such a historic Nintendo game’s absence is utterly baffling, and the game definitely deserves to have a stage in the Super Smash Bros. franchise. In fact, The Legend of Zelda is one of only two series that was in the original Super Smash Bros. that has never had a stage based on its very first game, the other being Star Fox. With an increase in the amount of series getting retro stages in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, hopefully we will get one for The Legend of Zelda in the near future.
Link’s wish for the Triforce is to change his hair to a colour other than pink.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was the SNES’ only Zelda game and is widely regarded as one of the best Zelda games of all time. Its popularity was large enough for it to receive a direct sequel twenty-two years later, which is notable as most direct Zelda sequels usually come out while the original is still recent. Yet, like the original The Legend of Zelda, it has never received a stage and has only had remixed music appear in Smash. The game has a very iconic visual style, and seeing it brought to life in beautiful HD in a Smash Bros. title would be amazing. There’s already potential for it with a stage that could swap between Hyrule and the Dark World, so it’s not like it’d be hard for it to have an interesting feature.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was the first ever handheld Zelda title and remains a fan-favourite to this day. But yet again, due to the 3D Zelda games taking priority in Smash, this game is another that has been unceremoniously skipped over with its only acknowledgements in the entire series being the Tal Tal Heights remix (which is mostly just the Overworld Theme with the actual Tal Tal Heights part being very brief) and a trophy of Marin in Melee. Unfortunately, unless something significant happens that will bring it back into relevancy, this game doesn’t seem like it will be getting a stage any time soon.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds was the most recent Zelda game at the time of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U, having released ten months prior to the release of the 3DS version. However, the game missed out while the previous two handheld Zelda titles received stages instead, even when one of them was merely a port. Perhaps its situation was similar to the lack of a Super Mario 3D World stage for Mario in that it was just a bit too recent, so it may have a chance of showing up in the next Super Smash Bros. instead.
Predicting the Future
As before in the last series analysis, I will now try to predict which games are likely to receive a new stage in the next instalment of Super Smash Bros. Due to how the series has never gone back to represent games that were skipped over when they were more relevant, it is a bit easier to predict which Zelda games will get stages compared to a series like Mario. Like most series, The Legend of Zelda always has stages from its most recent games. It also tends to go with early-game areas to base its stages on. With these facts in mind, let’s have a look at what stages could potentially make it into the next Smash.
You probably wouldn’t be able to set everything on fire in the Smash version unfortunately.
– A Breath of the Wild stage
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is newest 3D Zelda title and it isn’t even out yet, set for release in 2017 for both the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch. As every 3D Zelda game has received a stage in Smash and they have never skipped an instalment of Smash either, a Breath of the Wild stage is practically guaranteed to be in the new game. As for the location, it would most definitely take place in the Great Plateau.
– An A Link Between Worlds stage
The most recent top-down Zelda game (if one does not count spin-offs), The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds only just missed out on getting into the latest game. Unless a new top-down Zelda game is announced by the time of the next Smash it still has a decent chance of making it into the new game due to its recency, although being from a top-down Zelda title may hurt its chances slightly. The stage could take place in the overworld of Hyrule or Lorule (or even both), but I think it would be more interesting if the stage took place on a wall, referencing the wall merging mechanic of that game.
– A stage based on one of the 3D Zelda remasters
While many series in Smash have had a particular game receive more than one stage over the course of the series, it is notable that the only time The Legend of Zelda has double-dipped from a game is when it recently had an updated port on the same console as the newest Smash. With this in mind, it is possible that we might receive a stage based on one of the other Zelda remasters (The Wind Waker HD, Majora’s Mask 3D and Twilight Princess HD) in the next game. As the second Ocarina of Time stage was set in a later-game area due to the first stage being an early-game area, it’s likely this would also apply to these remasters too, with the exception of Majora’s Mask, which already went with a later area for its only stage.
It’s dangerous to go alone, but to be fair being with others in Smash is pretty dangerous too.
– An original The Legend of Zelda stage
The Super Smash Bros. series has always had stages based on old-school games with retro visuals since the very first game. In the first two games, the only series that had them was Mario, and in Brawl this expanded a little bit with the DK series having one too, but in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, this concept was expanded even further with series such as Kirby and even F-Zero receiving stages that recreated the visuals of their oldest games. With this trend seemingly expanding to more series, maybe it’s not too long before we see our first retro stage for Zelda. This one is much less likely than the others, but there is a chance of it happening.
Conclusion
And with that we wrap up my analysis on stages of The Legend of Zelda series in Smash. Despite having the second-largest amount of stages in the series (well, tying with Pokémon), there is a lot less covered by it due to how few stages it has received across the games. Hopefully the next Super Smash Bros. will grant it a lot more stages next time around. As with last time, writing this article was enjoyable, and I hope you learnt something interesting or new. There will be a couple more series I will be writing stage analysis for, so be sure to stick around!
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I think the Zelda series is pretty well represented in terms of stages (or at least about as well as it could be being such a big series with the number of stages its given). In addition to rarely double dipping as far a game representation, it also reps a pretty diverse set of locations across its series, not putting an extreme emphasis on one type of environment like DK and Metroid.
The focus on the 3D titles kinda seems to reflect the outlook of the series proper post-OoT, with the 3D games getting considerably more promotion than the 2D games. Its a shame LttP ended up getting past over because of this but I feel a stage from ALBW could potentially also serve as LttP representation provided its based on an area appearing in both games, so it might have a chance.
It’s adequate, but for such an important series as Zelda it should be getting a bit more than two new stages per game, especially since they’ve never been able to make up for lost ground what with there being at least two new Zeldas by the time of each new Smash game. I feel like three new stages (if Smash for Switch isn’t a port) would be good for the series. Enough to include Breath of the Wild, A Link Between Worlds and an older Zelda game too. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with double-dipping, just as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of other games getting shafted like what happened with Kirby. It does have a pretty great variety of locations (castle, beach, ocean, canyon, fields, village); I’d argue much better than Mario stages in terms of different settings.
I understand that 3D Zeldas have more focus in real-life too, but it really is a shame that they’ve all been shafted in Smash except for Spirit Tracks. It’s still kinda hard to believe no old-school Zeldas are in Smash; it’d be like having no stages from the classic side-scrolling Mario platformers. I’d rather not have the ALBW stage double as an ALttP stage since I feel that kinda be a cheap way of representing it, plus I feel an ALBW stage should be about something important to that game (fighting on the walls would be cool). I feel if there was an opportunity for an ALttP stage, it would have been in Melee.
I’m surprised that they haven’t made many Zelda stages based on a recurring location in the series, since the only one in Smash is Hyrule Castle. I’d be down for a stage based on the Lost Woods, Death Mountain, Lake Hylia, etc., which come with the bonus of finally repping the original Zelda and LttP in Smash.
I guess it’s because Sakurai might have wanted to pick locations that can only be associated with the game the stage is based on, hence something like Bridge of Eldin for Twilight Princess. I wouldn’t mind some of those locations you mentioned though.