I’ve spent the past few days trying to get back into games again. Though I’m surrounded by many interesting games and lots of interesting gamers, I’ve found myself so busy with other work that a lot of the joy of playing games just… disappeared? I’m burned out on WoW (and never much liked it to begin with), and there doesn’t appear to be any must-have DS game for me this summer (unlike last year, when I played Brain Age and New Super Mario Bros. quite a bit while taking public transportation around England, Italy, and Turkey). So, it’s back to the basics: I’m going to blast through as much Zelda as I can this summer.

This isn’t just for fun, as I’m currently working on a paper with Jim Gee about some aspects of Zelda (more as that solidifies), but I’m faced with the fact that I’ve (gasp) never actually finished a single Zelda. I know, I know, but I have attention deficit issues, I think, and have never been good at completing games that take longer than 50 hours of effort — and, given how inept I am at most games (other than Guitar Hero), I’m rarely motivated to go the whole way through. I’ve lied in the past about this, so I’ll just admit that I’m a terrible gamer (at least at Zelda) and will do whatever it takes this summer to rectify this egregious situation.

I started up with both The Wind Waker and The Minish Cap in the past few days. I had only ever gone as far as the end of the second dungeon in The Wind Waker (pictured above), back when the game first came out. While I loved it, I think I was just still too new to console gaming and had a hard time figuring out how to even use the controls. On Tuesday, I picked it up and blasted through the first two dungeons pretty easily, so we’ll see how this goes. The Wind Waker is notoriously “easy” for hardcore Zelda fans, and while I know the whole story, I’m still finding some of it to be challenging.

The Minish Cap is one of the most recent (the last?) Gameboy Zelda game, which I borrowed from Chris (who borrowed it from Kurt) the other day. It’s much more the “classic” style (perspective from above), and according to some timeline theories, it’s actually the earliest Zelda game in the chronology. I’m not so hot for it just yet, as I’m really caught up in The Wind Waker, but it’s something to do on the bus.

I’m really looking forward to Phantom Hourglass; The Wind Waker at least tried to do something new and different with both the game’s visual style and the setting (sinking the land of Hyrule beneath a new “Great Sea” that one had to navigate via boat). I love The Wind Waker so much, I’m actually looking into finding some ridiculous swag from the game to decorate my office. Right now, it’s a bit heavily Twilight Princess oriented — funny, considering I haven’t played more than 3 or 4 hours in that yet. Well, posters were easy to find, as they seemed to come in every publication there for a while last fall. I’ll take a pic later and update this post with it.

Anyway, while I really, really, really dislike the “realistic” look of Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time, and Majora’s Mask, those three are next on my list to play. Any suggestions from people on the proper order to do them? I’m assuming Ocarina first, then Majora, then Twilight? Opinions?