Ranking of Zeldas

Editor’s note 1: Believe it or not, my friends and I had plans to do this, with this exact title, well before there was a Giant Bombcast of the same name. The timing of that Bombcast was pure irony for us ;) Anyway, just throwing it out there that this is not a response to the Bombcast (and our first ranking, titled Ranking of Marios, occurred before then).

Speaking of, after ranking all the Super Mario games a few months ago, we have now moved on to The Legend of Zelda! Our panel was the same as last time, plus one: Justin (aka me, @majormitch), Nathan (@wess), Ryan (@turgar), Paul (@paulusvictor), and Garrison (not a Giant Bomb user, for shame). We assembled a list of what we considered the “core” Zelda games (15 in all), and “ranked” them from best to worst. Or more accurately, we argued and came up with some rough consensus ordering of favorite to least favorite. We read off the 15 games in contention at the beginning of our discussion, and also touched on why we did not include some other potential candidates.

We recorded the whole thing in a podcast that ended up being just over 4 hours long. If you’re crazy enough to want to listen to that monstrosity, you can download the mp3 from my Dropbox by clicking here (download in the top right of the page). Let me know if there are any technical issues. Also, I'm sure I didn't do the best job, but I tried my hand at some very light editing this time by slipping in 20-30 second music clips at various points (intro/outro and breaks). All music comes from various Zelda OC Remix songs, and I’d be remiss to not give them their due:

Intro: “A Link to Zelda” by T1lTED (source: Overworld, A Link to the Past)

Restroom breaks: “Hawaii Shoppi’n” by NoppZ (source: Shop, Ocarina of Time)

Lunch Break: “Cluck, Old Cucco!” by worldsbestgrandpa (source: Kakariko Village, A Link to the Past)

Outro: “Full Mast” by Jake Kaufman, Preenus, SnappleMan (source: multiple Wind Waker tracks)

Editor's note 2: In our discussion, I mistakenly attributed the terrible pan flute to Phantom Hourglass. I have since learned that that unfortunate item occurred in Spirit Tracks, not Phantom Hourglass (the two games somewhat run together for me...). Apologies for the error, especially to Phantom Hourglass. Regardless, the rest of the arguments still hold, and I would have still pushed for the position it got.

If you (understandably) do not want to listen to our 4+ hours of arguing, here is the final ordered list behind a spoiler tag. However, the list will of course make a lot more sense if you listen to all the arguments. Many of these games proved to be very divisive, with impassioned attackers and defenders all around. If one thing became clear while ranking Zelda games in comparison to Mario games, it’s that we all felt much more strongly about Zelda. This created some noticeable points of contention, and it was impossible to create a list that fully pleased everyone. But that’s part of the fun, which we all had. At any rate, the list!

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
2. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
3. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
5. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
6. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
7. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
8. The Legend of Zelda
9. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
10. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
11. The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
12. The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
13. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
14. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
15. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

I think that covers it! We had a lot of fun with this once again, even when it got heated, and I think there was some good discussion in there. And we may be doing more rankings in the future too (after a break)! Thanks for reading/listening, and maybe someone else will get a kick out of it :)