Recently Nintendo announced that they were making a direct sequel to their much loved Super Nintendo entry into the Zelda series, Link to the Past. Check out the trailer below:

Nostalgic exploitation is nothing new to Nintendo, the 3DS alone has remakes of Ocarina of Time and Starfox 64 (still disappointed they didn’t name it Lylatwars 3D in PAL territories), and their New Super Mario Bros. series, of which there are now four, call back to the classic Mario platformers.

LTTP2 falls square into this category. While the game will include new dungeons and items throughout, the overworld map itself is a direct remake of the original. There’s always demand for a new Zelda title, but I don’t think anyone was asking for a direct sequel here. Nintendo are definitely going for the safe money, cashing in again on their long term success.

This bastard is certainly back.

The question is whether or not this is a problem?

Personally, I think the answer is “No, not yet”. So long as they continue to be faithful, well produced and enjoyable updates to the source material then I think we have a win/win/win situation where the old fans get a treat, new comers get a chance to experience something they might have missed otherwise, and the developers get a cheaper/lower risk/more easily produced title on shelves.

The key here is that these titles need to be there to support a library of new games, rather than be the system’s backbone. Thankfully Nintendo have been delivering on this front (at least for the 3DS) with titles like 2011’s brilliant Super Mario 3D Land, and more recently Luigi’s Mansion 2.

I do think Nintendo need to walk carefully along this tightrope, but they seem to be balancing pretty well so far.

So Nintendo, when can I get a F-Zero X remake with 40 player online?