Will Link To The Past Remake Ever Happen?
Will Link To The Past Remake Ever Happen?
The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past was released in North America in early 1992, over 30 years ago and is widely considered one of the best games ever made. In any other series, it would be the crown jewel, but in the Zelda franchise, it’s only in the conversation for best game with titles like Ocarina of Time, Breath of The Wild and now Tears of The Kingdom. With Nintendo constantly remaking, remastering and porting their iconic games to new systems, the question is will we see a Link to The Past Remake?
Why Link to The Past, who would do it and when could we possibly see it?
Why
Since its release, Link To The Past has received numerous ports and remasters but it has never gotten the full remake treatment like Link’s Awakening did in 2019. It is in contention for the best game of all time with a review average of 95, Most importantly, since it's over 30 years old, it would appeal to both people that never played it and those with fond memories of it. It doesn’t hurt that the Switch has such a large install base too, with over 125 million units and counting.
Who
Grezzo makes the most sense to handle the Link to The Past remake as they have a strong history working with Nintnedo. Since 2010, on five different occasions, Grezzo have helped develop, port or remake a title in the Zelda series with the most successful and most impressive being Links Awakening that was released in 2019. It showed their ability to reinvent the game without losing the core essence that made it special in the first place.
Looking at the studios recent work, they released Link’s Awakening in September 2019, then in 2021, they did the Switch port of MiiTopia, and they just released Jet Dragon for Apple Arcade. However looking at this game, it doesn’t look like it would require nearly the whole studio, which is around 100 people.
When
Breath of the Wild came out in March 2017, Link’s Awakening came out in 2019, Skyward Sword HD came out in 2021 and Tears of The Kingdom came out in 2023. When you look at Grezzo’s size, development history and then you cross reference that with the release cadence that we have seen for the Zelda series on the Switch, it seems likely that we will get a classic Zelda with a modern touch by 2025 at the latest.
If it received the Awakening treatment, I think it would spark the conversation again for best Zelda of all time between the usual suspects of BOTW, ocarina, and now TOTK. With Nintendo constantly remaking, remastering and porting their iconic games to new systems, the question seems more likely to be when and not if.