The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Twilight Princess Return More Likely Than we Thought

The Legend of Zelda is one of the oldest franchises in gaming history, but it’s surprisingly difficult to play all the games on one unified system.

The Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 have most of these games available for you to play if you’re willing to pay for an online subscription.

Paying for Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack gives you access to all the Zelda games on NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, and GameCube.

Then you’ve got all the Zelda games that have been released on the platform since 2017, too. Like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

This leaves only a handful of Zelda games that aren’t available on Switch 2, with Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, and A Link Between Worlds being the most offensive omissions.

Nintendo

2026 Marks The 40th Anniversary Of Zelda

However, 2026 could be our year, marking 40 years since the original The Legend of Zelda released. Nintendo loves a good anniversary celebration, as evident by the Super Mario Galaxy re-releases for Mario’s 40th last year.

So, it stands to reason that Nintendo could be planning the same for Zelda’s 40th anniversary too, potentially bringing over some of the missing games to Switch 2.

I’d imagine this could mean re-releases of The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD, which were both remastered for Wii U in 2013 and 2016 respectively.

The Wind Waker is already available on Switch 2 via GameCube Classics, but it’d be nice to get the superior HD version which trims down some of the awkwardness the original had.

On the other hand, it’d also be nice to finally have Twilight Princess available on Switch. It was the bestselling game in the series until Breath of the Wild surpassed it in 2018, meaning it remains one of the most popular Zelda games of all time.

However, you can only really play it on a Wii or Wii U now, making it a little difficult to access if you don’t own any older consoles.

Still, we’ll await news from Nintendo before speculating any further. The Legend of Zelda is due to get a live-action film adaptation next year, which could also bring Nintendo to re-release some old classics.

The film stars Bo Bragason as Zelda and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link. It’s being directed by Wes Ball, who directed each entry in The Maze Runner trilogy and that rather good Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes film.