Review: Skyward Sword HD isn’t the 35th Zelda birthday gift we’d hoped for

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  If you'd like, you can pretend that Ghirahim (right) is the thirsty, corner-cutting Nintendo, and Link is an average fan, aghast at the shape Skyward Sword HD ultimately arrived in. [credit: Nintendo ]

Nintendo has never shied away from opportunities to touch up and re-release its most beloved video games. 1993's Super Mario All-Stars is arguably the industry's first "big" remaster project, while the Zelda series has been downright spoiled with the concept going back as far as a 1995 reimagining of the original Legend of Zelda for the Super Famicom's Japan-only satellite service.

In the intervening years, expectations for "HD" versions of older games have exploded, primarily because gamemakers have gotten better at this. And the Zelda series has excelled within this trend, too, as highlighted by Nintendo's top-to-bottom retouches of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask for the now-discontinued Nintendo 3DS.

But if those games are examples of Zelda remasters at their best and most ambitious, then this week's Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (a re-release of the 2011 Wii adventure game for the Nintendo Switch) is arguably the opposite.

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