It's December 2006, and after months of eagerly scrubbing through trailers and poring over Official Nintendo Magazine, a brand new Zelda game is on the way. Not just that, it feels like the Zelda game, a gritty successor to Ocarina of Time's throne, bolstered with the incredible motion controls of the Wii. As December 8 rolled around, I queued up at midnight with my best pal, giddy with excitement, and sped home quickly as if the wind of Tulin was behind me.
We stayed up until five in the morning playing Twilight Princess, briefly slept, then went straight back to it. My poor younger brother didn't touch Wii Sports for at least a week. But, it wasn't the much-touted waggle controls that offered the biggest thrills, or the (at the time) incredible graphics. Instead it was Twilight Princess's commitment to tone, to crafting a lived-in world, and the tangible feeling that this space was really right in front of us – if we could just reach in and touch it.