Legend of Zelda Timeline

[Deleted]

As some of you may already know I am a fan of the Legend of Zelda games. Probably the most intriguing part of the games however is the timeline. The games do not follow on from each other but rather some are set before previous games that were released. There has been much debate over the order in which the games occur amongst fans and one thing is absolutely certain - most Zelda fans agree to disagree with each other timeline of events.

Over the years Nintendo has given confirmation about which games go where in the timeline but a concrete timeline encompassing all of the games has never been published which has caused all of this debate. Anyway, over the past year or so I have been attempting to piece together as accurate a timeline as possible using confirmations from Nintendo and also certain events revealed in the games themselves either through gameplay or prologues, epilogues and cut scenes in the games. This is what my timeline looks like which no doubt won't be accepted by a number of Zelda fans.

The Minish Cap (Game Boy Advance, 2004)
Nintendo has officially confirmed this as the first game in the timeline but other events in the game largely confirm it to be the first game in the series. The prologue tells of a hero clothed in green who was given a sword known as the Picori Blade in ancient times to defeat the evil that was sweeping the land. This hero who did not wear a pointed hat defeated the evil and sealed them in a chest using the Picori Blade to keep the chest locked for all eternity. At the start of the game a young sorcerer known as Vaati breaks the legendary Picori Blade and lets out the evil from within the chest. As the game progresses, Link - a young hero clothed in green who is not wearing a pointed hat acquires a good sorcerer known as Ezlo who has been turned into a green hat by Vaati and also manages to forge the broken Picori Blade into a powerful sword known as the Four Sword. At the end of the game Vaati is defeated but not killed, Ezlo returns to normal and subsequently rewards Link with a green pointed hat as a memento.

Some fans have disagreed with Nintendo's announcement that The Minish Cap is the first game in the series with some of them claiming that it cannot come first due to The Picri Blade being broken at the beginning. They claim that the Picori Blade is actually the legendary Master Sword that appears in other Zelda games so therefore the game cannot come first in the timeline but nowhere in any Zelda game does it say that the Picori Blade and the Master Sword are one and the same. Indeed, it is mentioned in The Minish Cap that the Picori Blade was forged by the minute Picori (Minish) people in ancient times while the prologue to A Link to the Past confirms that The Master Sword was forged by the people of Hyrule. As far as most people can see The Minish Cap does indeed come first in the timeline until it all gets a little too confusing.

Four Swords (Game Boy Advance, 2003)
This is where the timeline spirals out of control. Theorists believe that the multiplayer game Four Swords (a game that was put on the same cartridge as the GBA re-release of A Link to the Past) is the sequel to The Minish Cap due to the fact that Vaati escapes and is once again defeated by the Four Sword by means of being trapped inside the now legendary blade. Unfortunately, the game is said to occur at around the same time as A Link to the Past which, according to fans (and also the GBA re-release of the game) takes place after Ocarina of Time so therefore it cannot take place before Ocarina of Time. The only thing however that is almost certain is that Four Swords Adventures is an almost direct sequel to Four Swords.

Four Swords Adventures (Gamecube, 2005)
An almost direct sequel to Four Swords this game sees Vaati escape from the Four Sword and battle Link for the third and final time. At the end, it seems that Vaati is killed in battle while Link's main nemesis in the Zelda games Ganondorf is sealed within the Four Sword.

I will leave my timeline there for the moment because I don't want to make one individual post too long (which it will be if I complete the timeline in one post) but next time I will continue the timeline and look at the paradox that came from Ocarina of Time. In the meantime comments (or even general sarcasm!) are welcome. I would like to hear what other fans of the Zelda games here think is the definitive timeline.

[Dave]

What I think the timeline is? Er sorry haven't got the foggiest. Some clearly take place after others but in all honesty I've never given it much thought. I'll be interested to see what you come up with though.

Bonus points if you can somehow include the CD-i games.

[Rich]

To be honest, I always thought that they were multiple versions of the same story, kind of like all the versions of TF. I'm happy to bow to your expertise on this, but if it is all one ongoing story, Link must have the memory of a goldfish:)

[Deleted]

As far as I'm aware the CDi games don't feature in the timeline. They weren't made by Nintendo and don't seem to have any traditional Zelda style plot. As for the games being multiple versions of the same story some fans actually do believe in that. Fans call it the 'Just A Legend' theory in which the same story has been passed down over the centuries and has been changed many times much in the same way that the game Chinese Whispers is played. Also it must be pointed out that Nintendo have confirmed that most of the games don't feature the same Link character. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask has the same Link in it but The Windwaker Link is a different person due to there being a gap of over one hundred years between the game. The Wind Waker Link is also the same Link that appears in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks though as far as I can gather.

Anyway, I'll be back in a moment to bring you the next part of my timeline.

[Deleted]

Now to bring you the second part of my timeline.

Sometime between Ganon Four Swords Adventures and the next two games in my list Ganondorf manages to escape the Four Sword but is ultimately defeated once more and this time he dies. Because the Four Sword never appears in a Zelda game again I presume that Ganondorf destroys the legendary blade upon escaping from it.

Oracle of Ages & Oracle of Seasons (both Game Boy Color, 2001)
Both of these games run in any order because when you play one of them you can then link it up with the other one to play a new game but with characters from the first game appearing in it. Also, after beating the final boss in the second game Twinrova appears. For all of the non-fans of Ocarina of Time Twinrova were the two witches in the Spirit Temple at the end of the game who were officially killed at the end. In this one however, they are both very much alive and set about reviving a dead Ganondorf. The two witches are defeated by Link but not before they successfully revive the Great King of Evil.

Most fans actually consider Ages and Seasons to be either separate games from the timeline or feature much lower down in the timeline but I've put them up here due to the fact that Twinrova are alive and well in it when they were killed in Ocarina of Time. This does however cause another problem. Ganondorf is dead prior to these two games and so it would make sense if Ages and Seasons featured after a game where Ganondorf is killed by Link. Only Nintendo can put us right on this problem.

Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64, 1998)
One of the fans most well loved Zelda games of all time holds a very special place in the timeline. This is because it splits the timeline in two. At the the end of the game, Zelda sends Adult Link back in time to re-live his childhood thus causing a parallel universe. In the Adult Link timeline the Hero of Time legend is much talked about by the locals but the Hero of Time himself is no longer in this time zone because he was sent back to the past. In the Child Link timeline however Young Link exists and, not wanting Ganondorf to wreak havoc on Hyrule he tells Zelda and the King of Hyrule what the Great King of Evil does in the future. The King then banishes Ganondorf into the Sacred Realm (or maybe into the Twilight Realm) before he can do the damage and history is changed. Unfortunately for Link, in this timeline he never becomes the Hero of Time and the seven Sages are never reawakened.

Most fans believe in this Split Timeline theory not only because it makes more sense but also because Nintendo confirmed it sometime after the game was released. However, the story of Ocarina of Time is much debated in fan circles. In the prologue for A Link to the Past an earlier legend is explained in which Ganondorf was sealed in the Dark World (another name for the Sacred Realm) by seven wise men of Hyrule. This was called The Imprisoning War and fans believe that story was told as Ocarina of Time. There is though a major problem with this theory. The A Link to the Past prologue implicitly states that seven wise men of Hyrule sealed Ganondorf away but in Ocarina of Time it was Seven Sages. Only one of these sages was a wise man while the other six sages consisted of a Kokiri girl, a Goron male, a Zora princess, a Hylian woman, a Gerudo woman and lastly Princess Zelda herself. A Link to the Past also states that the maidens Link rescues in the game are the descendants of the seven wise men which, if the Imprisoning War is actually Ocarina of Time can't be true as it is unlikely that the various races in Hyrule could never be predecessors of Hylian human women. To add oil to the fire when Nintendo re-released A Link to the Past on the Game Boy Advance many years later they changed the writing in the prologue so now that it read tht seven sages sealed Ganondorf in the Dark World thus giving the fan theory more ground.

As I have mentioned earlier there were two timelines that spilled out of Ocarina of Time and I will now look at the easier to digest one of the two - the Adult Link timeline.

The Legend of Zelda (NES, 1987)
There isn't really anything of any note to place the first ever Zelda game in this portion of the timeline but it is here for one very simple reason - it was the almost direct prequel to the second Zelda game The Adventure of Link. Why does that have any significance? Read on.

The Adventure of Link (NES, 1987)
The Adventure of Link is the sequel to The Legend of Zelda but more importantly it has towns in the game which share their names with the Seven Sages of Ocarina of Time. It is believed that the Sages names went down in history and became so much of a legend that, many decades (or even centuries later) the people of Hyrule named several new towns after them. The Adventure of Link can't possibly occupy the Child Link Timeline because in that timeline the Seven Sages were never reawakened so there is no ground for the townsfolk to name any new towns after them.

The Wind Waker (Gamecube, 2003)
Many centuries have passed and evil has reared its ugly head once more in Hyrule. The Hylian people needed a hero to save them so they prayed for the legendary of Hero of Time (from Ocarina of Time) to return and save them. He didn't return and evil took control of Hyrule. The Gods of Hyrule then decided to take drastic action and flood the entire land of Hyrule to dispel the evil leaving it as nothing more than a great sea filled with various islands. A young islander called Link then saves the day but is powerless to stop the last King of Hyrule from destroying what is left of Hyrule (which up to that point was sealed in an air bubble under water). Link and his pirate friend Tetra (who is later discovered to be the latest incarnation of Princess Zelda) then sail away to find a new world which they wish to call New Hyrule.

The Wind Waker, like The Adventure of Link clearly fits into the Adult Timeline due to its connections with Ocarina of Time. In Hyrule Castle several stained glass windows representing the legendary Seven Sages can be clearly seen.

Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS, 2007)
This game is a direct sequel to The Wind Waker and sees Link exploring several islands far away from the Great Sea of The Wind Waker. Curiously, Link may also still be in the vicinity of old Hyrule in this game because on an island known as The Isle of the Dead six gravestones can be found each with one of the six sages (minus Zelda) names on from Ocarina of Time. Are these the final resting places of the legendary sages of old or is it just a coincidence?

Spirit Tracks (Nintendo DS, 2009)
Set 100 years after Phantom Hourglass (therefore the Link in this one is another new Link) this is the sequel to Phantom Hourglass and it even uses the same graphical style of the previous two games.

I have yet to play either Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks so the only things I can say about these games are from what I've gleaned off the net.

I'll back tomorrow with the third part of my timeline where I will explore the Child Link timeline that spilled out from Ocarina of Time starting with that games direct sequel Majora's Mask.

[Deleted]

Now for the third and final part of the timeline. This one concentrates on the Child Link timeline which spilled out from the end of Ocarina of Time.

Majora's Mask (Nintendo 64, 2000)
After Link had saved Hyrule Zelda had sent Adult Link back through time so that he could re-live his childhood. Back as a kid he changed history in Hyrule by presumingly getting Ganondorf banished to either the Sacred Realm or (more likely) the Twilight Realm (more about that later). Link and his fairy companion Navi then parted company and Link went on a journey to try and find a 'dear friend' (which fans presume is Navi but has never been confirmed). He travels to the parallel world of Termina and runs into a trouble with the Skull Kid (possibly one of the Skull Kids from the Lost Woods in Ocarina of Time) who has acquired the evil Majora's Mask. In the end Link defeats the mask and then leaves Termina once more.

The game Majora's Mask is an enigma. Nintendo claims that Termina was created from a tear in the fabric of time (or something to that effect) when the three Golden Goddesses Din, Nayru and Farore created Hyrule (this story is told in Ocarina of Time). This is why most of the characters in Majora's Mask look identical to characters Link encountered in Ocarina of Time. That explanation doesn't wear off on me however (and also with a fair few fans as well). It is my theory that Majora's Mask was just a dream that Link had. This is given some weight when a song Link plays as part of a side quest in the game is one called The Ballad of the Wind Fish. This song was a tune first heard in Link's Awakening which Nintendo confirmed was a dream. Also, the entrance to Termina looks a little odd to be a reality. Link walks through a forest and then falls down a large chasm to reach the entrance of Termina (which is on sea-level). Other websites have also pointed out other facts that confirm the game as one of Link's dreams as well but I can't remember what they are at the moment.

While I'm on the subject of Majora's Mask there is a bizarre character in the game that turns up infrequently. Keaton is a two-tailed fox creature (I wonder if Sega knew about this?) who asks Link questions when he wears the Keaton Mask. In Ocarina of Time this Keaton Mask existed but the character itself was never in the game. Instead, Keaton was confirmed by a character in OoT as something akin to a kids cartoon character and not as a real person. Several enemies called Keatons however did exist in the past in the game The Minish Cap so therefore it is my theory that Keatons did exist as a living person but at some point they became extinct. Their traits (they were thieves in the Minish Cap) went down into legend in Hyrule and resurfaced many centuries later as a character in a theatre-type play. This would explain why they are only referred to as a fictional like character in OoT. If Majora's Mask is a dream then maybe Link saw this play in question at some point in Hyrule and the Keaton character turned up in his dream.

Twilight Princess (Gamecube & Wii, 2006)
Nintendo's latest console Zelda game threw up one or two discussions about the timeline shortly after its release. Prior to the game Ganondorf is dead and occupies the Twilight Realm. Fans suggest that he was banished to the Twilight Realm at the beginning of the Child Link timeline but it is obvious that in Twilight Princess the Great King of Evil is no longer a living being. This is confirmed when the sages who guard the Mirror of Twilight stab Ganondorf with a sword but, instead of killing him it just leaves a gash in his chest which from inside can be seen Twilight energy thus hinting that he has been brought back to life by the powers of Twilight. another interesting thing about Twilight Princess is the mysterious character known in fan circles as The Hero's Shade. This is a ghostly swordsman who teaches this version of Link a few new moves. Fans believe that The Hero's Shade is the ghost of the original Link from Ocarina of Time. One reason why they think this is because this ghostly apparition shuffles around when defending himself in exactly the same way as Ocarina of Time Link did when defending himself against enemies.

Twilight Princess is here in the timeline because no mention of the Seven sages from Ocarina of Time is given (there are seven sages in the game but they don't resemble the ones from OoT). Also, the Temple of Time is in ruins and lies in the middle of a large forest with only a few walls and the infamous Pedestal of Time holding the Master Sword currently existing. This location leads nicely onto the next game in the timeline.

A Link to the Past (SNES, 1992 & Game Boy Advance, 2003)
One of the best games in the Zelda series has a prologue that tells of seven wise men sealing Ganondorf into the Dark World. This Dark World was also to be later known as the Sacred Realm and this story became known as the Imprisoning War. Some fans believe that the Imprisoning War was told in Ocarina of Time but, as I have previously mentioned there is a problem regarding the sages that makes this theory impossible. To make matters worse, when Nintendo rereleased the game in 2003 they changed the prologue to make it more closely resemble the events of Ocarina of Time but that still didn't explain why the seven maidens in A Link to the Past were human descendants of the original seven wise men/seven sages when in OoT the sages were or various Hylian races. Ganondorf doesn't technically appear in a Link to the Past but his pig-beast alter ego Ganon does. Ganondorf was killed at the end of Twilight Princess but that doesn't mean that Ganon was. Maybe only his human/Gerudo form was killed and he was able to strike again in his beast form later on. Maybe however, there are several Ganons in the timeline just as there are several Link's and Zelda's. That would make any explanation of a definite timeline more easier but would also give fans the opportunity to put the games in any order they so choose.

In Twilight Princess the Temple of Time was seen as largely destroyed and lying in a forest. In A Link to the Past a forest exists and only the Pedestal of Time with the Master Sword in it is evident in this forest. Could it be that the infamous Temple of Time from Ocarina of Time is now nothing more than a memory and the Pedestal of Time is all that exists of this once proud building? At the end of A Link to the Past Link replaces the Master Sword back in the Pedestal of Time and, according to the text at the end it remains there and is never used again. This fuels the theory that A Link to the Past is one of the last games in the series and in fact is the last game in the timeline in which the Master Sword is used.

Links Awakening (Game Boy, 1993 & Game Boy Color, 1998)
Nintendo confirmed at one point that Link's Awakening is the sequel to A Link to the Past so it is only natural that it should be placed here. According to the story, Link leaves Hyrule by sea but is then shipwrecked on Koholint Island. He goes through many dungeons and then in the end wakes the sleeping Wind Fish whereupon the island disappears leaving Link to ponder if it was all a dream.

Nintendo confirmed later on that Link's Awakening was a dream of some sort. Several years after its success on the original 'green-screen' Game Boy it was rereleased on the Game Boy Color as Links Awakening DX which added colour and a bonus dungeon known as the Color Dungeon in it.

This now completes my timeline but tomorrow I will look at the games that didn't feature in my timeline. These comprise of the two Zelda 'master quest' games released on the Japan-only Satellaview add-on for the SNES and also the three CDi games. I will also speculate where the new upcoming Zelda game will possibly fit in the timeline.

[Cullen]

Jun 5, 2010 13:23:15 GMT Rich said:

To be honest, I always thought that they were multiple versions of the same story, kind of like all the versions of TF. I'm happy to bow to your expertise on this, but if it is all one ongoing story, Link must have the memory of a goldfish:)

No, you are correct. Some are direct sequels but most are just the same story told over again. Personally I view Zelda games as a fairytale eternally retold and any attempt to reconcile individual games' stories with one another is futile. But whatever floats your boat I guess.

[Deleted]

The problem with the games being just one story retold differently has its problems. There are some games which allude to previous games being part of that games history. The Wind Waker is one such game where the prologue tells of the people of Hyrule knowing about the Hero of Time and his deeds in Hyrule many centuries ago. The basement of Hyrule Castle also has stained glass windows depicting the sages from Ocarina of Time thereby confirming that the Ocarina of Time story happened sometime in the past prior to the Wind Waker.

Nintendo has also confirmed that there is a timeline in which all of the games fit. Parts of this timeline have been revealed by Nintendo over the years but the entire timeline has never been confirmed thus leading to many fans speculating on it. The theory of the same story being retold different ways would have been a perfectly viable answer when the first few Zelda games were made but then Nintendo threw in backstories alluding to previous games and also different adventures in different lands which makes the whole theory more confusing than what it should be.

For those who have never played The Wind Waker here is the prologue which proves that Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker are not the same story retold.

[Deleted]

I now look at all of the other games that don't have a definite part in the timeline.

Link: The Faces of Evil & Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (Phillips CDi, 1993)
In the early 90's Nintendo came up with the idea of creating a CD add-on unit for the SNES. They first went to Sony and the Japanese giant came up with an add-on which they called the Play Station. Nintendo though scrapped that deal before its release however and Sony went and created their own line of games consoles in retaliation. Nintendo then approached Phillips to create a CD add-on device for the SNES but they also scrapped that deal after a contract had been signed. Due to terminating this contract Nintendo subsequently gave Phillips the Zelda and Mario licenses for a few years and Phillips released one Mario game (Hotel Mario) and three Zelda games.

The first two Zelda games were released on the same day and each had a different playable character. Link: The Faces of Evil saw Link rescuing Zelda from Ganon while Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon saw Zelda rescuing the King of Hyrule and also Link from Ganon. Both games are largely ridiculed amongst Zelda fans these days although I have never played them so I can't really give my opinion on them.

Zelda's Adventure (Phillips CDi, 1994)
The player again controlled Zelda as she battled to save the land of Tolemac. Zelda's Adventure is a curious game in the franchise as it contains live action cut-scenes and also spoken dialogue rather than on screen text boxes which is the norm for Zelda games. Again, I have never played this game so I can't give my opinion on it.

BS Zelda No Densetsu (SNES Satellaview, 1995)
After the failure of the CD add-on for the SNES Nintendo created a satellite-based add-on which allowed Nintendo to broadcast new games via a satellite signal to anybody playing the SNES at a specific time in the day. Only released in Japan and since turned off (so if anybody picks up one these days it will be useless) the Satellaview saw two Zelda games released although they weren't strictly new games. The first one was essentially a 'master quest' version of the first Zelda game released on the NES in 1987. Over four days in the summer of 1995 players in Japan played this game until Nintendo discontinued it on the service. A short while later they released a sequel to this game which took the form of another 'master quest' style version of the first Zelda game.

BS Zelda No Densetsu Kodai No Sekiban (SNES Satellaview, 1997)
After the two master quest versions of the first Zelda game were released Nintendo started work on the Nintendo 64 Zelda game which became Ocarina of Time. While they were working on that however, they released another Zelda Satellaview game which was only playable on four days of 1997 selected by Nintendo themselves. This one was a 'master quest' version of A Link to the Past.

Various Tingle games (DS, 2007 - 2009)
Tingle - the annoying grown man dressing up ill fitting green clothes first debuted in Majora's Mask before sporadically appearing in minor roles in other games. He had a much larger role in The Wind Waker before curiously Nintendo spun the character off into a series of games for the DS. The first was Tingle's Balloon Fight DS which was a remake of the NES classic game Balloon Fight and was only made available to members of the Japanese Club Nintendo website. Next came Freshly Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland which revolved around Tingle collecting as many rupees as possible! This remains the only game in the Tingle sub-franchise to be released in Europe. Both of these games were released in 2007.

As if that wasn't bad enough Tingle briefly appeared in Too Much Tingle Pack in 2009 which was a DSi ware game exclusive to Japan. The game wasn't really a game however and was (probably fortunately) removed at the beginning of 2010. Color Changing Tingle's Love Balloon Trip was also a Japanese exclusive game released in 2009 for the DS. Fans of the Wizard of Oz might be horrified to discover that this game is based on one of the Oz books. But what about the plot of the game? There is something involving Tingle having to try a have a relationship with one of a selection of women but thats as far as I got when reading about the game on the net before I decided that the game wasn't even worth reading about let alone actually playing!

Link's Crossbow Training (Wii, 2007)
This game is largely just a small shoot-em-up style game that utilises the then newly released Wii Zapper. Set in the Hyrule of Twilight Princess Link has to complete several crossbow mini games.

New Legend of Zelda game (Wii, 2011?)
Many Zelda fans have already seen the promotional poster for the new Zelda game but where does it fit into the timeline? Many people speculate that it is a direct sequel to Twilight Princess which would be the obvious answer. I am however hoping that it will tell a story from the past that has already been alluded to in prologues in other games but never fully explained. There are many opportunities for this as we have the prologue for the Minish Cap that has never been fully explained and neither has the gap in the timeline prior to A Link to the Past. The Imprisoning War is regarded amongst fans as already been told as Ocarina of Time but that makes little sense when comparing it to the events of A Link to the Past so maybe we could get a games that satisfactorily explains that. Another possible part in the history of Hyrule is the events which lead up to the Great Flood prior to The Wind Waker. Could we get a game that ends with Hyrule being flooded? Only Nintendo holds the answers to the origins of the next game.

[Deleted]

I have already mentioned this in the timeline but I thought that I would give it a bit more thought. The A Link to the Past prologue on the SNES tells of the King of Hyrule commanding Seven Wise Men to seal the Golden Land (also known as the Sacred Realm) from evil but when the game was re-released on the Game Boy Advance a few years ago the prologue was changed slightly to reflect the events of Ocarina of Time. Curiously, fans of the Zelda games are now claiming that the GBA version of this prologue is actually the original version of it. Apparently, when the SNES version of the game was translated from Japanese into English there were several translation errors and instead of the prologue telling about seven sages sealing the evil in the Golden Land and a wizard making seven maidens disappear it was turned into seven wise men on command of the king sealing the evil in the Golden Land before a wizard came along and made seven maidens who were descendants of the seven wise men disappear.

Personally, I don't believe this claim that the SNES version of the prologue has it wrong and there are a few things to support my claim. The first is that this so-called translation error only came to light after the GBA version of the game was released which effectively retconned the prologue of the game to Ocarina of Time which, at the time of the SNES games original release was still yet to be created. Furthermore, if the A Link to the Past prologue does indeed reference Ocarina of Time and did so originally before this translation error why is the wizard in the game (his name I know but cannot spell) making the maidens in the game disappear i they have no connection to these past series of events involving seven sages.

Anyway, here is the original SNES version of the prologue which according to fans is the translation error.


As I've already mentioned I believe that the events in the SNES version of the prologue is correct and the GBA version is just a retcon. I believe that the prologue tells of a different story other than Ocarina of Time and that there were seven wise men whose descendants were the seven maidens in the game. There is no way that the seven maidens in the game could possibly be descendants of the seven sages in Ocarina of Time because simply the sages in Ocarina of Time were of various races while the maidens in A Link to the Past were human. Only three of the seven sages in OoT were human with one of them being a ghostly spirit whose body no longer exists and another is a perpetual child (in order for her to have children will have to involve certain taboo subjects to explain). Therefore, the seven maidens in A Link to the Past are NOT descendants of the seven sages from OoT but if they aren't then why were they seen to be kidnapped by a wizard shortly after the seven sages/seven wise men story was told?

I've yet to read of any logical answer to this if indeed the GBA retcon version is correct.

[primenova]

I'm sure that Ocarina of Time & Majora's Mask happen in that order due to Ocarina starting with Link being a child & ending adult with horse - & then feels like the start of MM follows directly on from it seeing he's adult at the start. But the whole group of different people who just happen to be Link - that's what I got the impression of at start of TP which has an older link than we saw in MM.

[Deleted]

Link was a kid all the way through Majora's Mask. At the end of Ocarina of Time Link was sent back in time by Zelda to relive his childhood and this is where MM starts although its not stated how long since the end of OoT that MM actually starts.

I decided to surf through one or two Zelda websites yesterday and stumbled upon something interesting. I was ranting yesterday about the whole Seven Sages/Seven Wise Men scenario in the prologue of A Link to the Past and was saying that it was impossible that the seven maidens whom Link rescues in A Link to the Past could possibly be descended from the seven sages of various races in Ocarina of Time. There's a website which goes into some serious debating and theorising on Zelda games and its timelines and one explanation there has made me slightly rethink this whole 'seven maidens being descended from the seven sages' debate. Shortly after the Wind Waker was released Nintendo confirmed that the Rito tribe (the bird people in the game) are descendants of the Zora's from previous Zelda games while the Koroks (the small forest leaf wearing creatures) are descended from the Peter Pan like humans the Kokiri's from Ocarina of Time. It may be therefore possible that the seven human maidens could indeed be descended from the various races that made up the seven sages in Ocarina of Time if two other races later changed their appearances drastically for some reason or other.

[primenova]

i should have played OoT all the way before starting MM, because both are so a like in graphics its easy to get them mixed up.

[Deleted]

It has recently been announced that the new Wii Zelda game - Skyward Sword will be a prequel to Ocarina of Time. This has lead fans speculating about the announcement of the 3DS version of Ocarina of Time being able to link up with Skyward Sword in some way. All that is known about the new game at the moment however (other than the title) is that it centers on a blade known as Skyward Sword which supposedly becomes the legendary Master Sword at some point. I can't wait for both this new game and also the 3DS remake of OoT.