When you look back at the history of the series, The Legend Of Zelda occupies a funny space in Nintendo's planning processes. If a Zelda game arrives in time for a console launch, it's because the game was heavily delayed on the previous generation of hardware. Yet Zelda is never overlooked when a new Nintendo console is being planned – in fact, it's often one of the very first things considered for a new machine.
Our first look at The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker came before the GameCube had hit the shelves, but the game launched over a year into the life of the machine. A demo of what would eventually become The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time was shown to attendees of Nintendo's Shoshinkai 1995 expo, but the game didn't materialise until 1998. The title that started this tradition was The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, the game that marked Link's move off of 8-bit platforms.
