Five months ago, in that basement classroom we Interactive Entertainment majors can call home, I had my first taste of Zelda. I wrote about it on this very blog last October and how impressed I was with the puzzles and charming fantasy world. I thought about buying a GameCube to play it, but it was good thing that I didn’t. Two months later, I had a Wii.

My excitement with Wii games temporarily made me forget that the Wii had backwards compatibility. I had forgotten about playing Zelda until I stumbled upon the Wind Waker strategy guide in a used bookstore for $3. This guide is hard to get for under $30 these days, so I was very excited. I then bought a used GameCube remote and memory card. Now I could play Wind Waker again.

I wanted to savor my return to The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I sat down on a Friday night and played to my heart’s content. With the help of the strategy guide, I felt like I got a lot more out of the first hour of the game (which is how far I had played before without any help). I already knew what to do for the most part, but it was neat to know certain things, such as which spots to avoid if you don’t want to trigger events yet.

I also discovered some new content in previously-visited areas of the game, such as a mini-game. There was a pig-herding side quest on the island. When I first played, I simply thought it was fun to run around with a pig over my head. However, I now knew that there was a purpose to this silliness. I usually don’t care for mini-games, but I found this one to be fun because of the novelty factor. Some games, like Spyro, have silly herding games with creatures you kick and then make annoying noises. You have to do mini-games like this to move forward. In Wind Waker, this herding game involved pigs that would run away from you but were never too hard to catch if you used your brain. The pigs were believable and not aggravatingly stupid. I felt like I had accomplished something simply by being able to catch the pig, especially since I was rewarded with the amusing animation of a plump pink piglet squirming above my head.

Despite my appreciation for this game, I did learn one important things: I should really spend more time practicing jumps. There is one portion where you must swing on lanterns to get to platforms in a pirate ship. I had a lot of trouble with this thre first time I played, and my previous attempts provided no help when I had to do it again last Friday. Fortunately, I made it through by telling myself each time that it would be the last time. Then, I discovered that all my time spent jumping on lanterns was actually meant to help me. The pirate ship drops you off on an island fortress that also has several lantern jumps. Usually it was only one at a time (and not a string of them). I was glad I had some practice because it significantly reduced the number of times I fell.

Even if I do have a little trouble with jumps at first, I do learn eventually. This is no fault of the game and I actually appreciate a good jump now and then. After all, it’s much more fun to virtually rope jump for me because I’m way too scared to perform many of those stunts in real life. I really enjoyed my experience in Wind Waker and I look forward to playing it more again.