The Legend of Zelda: Nintendo releases a surprise Switch game where you can finally play as a princess

CNN
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Nintendo has dropped a new surprise for fans – a new Zelda title where players will finally be able to play as the titular princess from the legendary fantasy series.

Nintendo has generated over 140 million Zelda sales since the first edition title hit shelves in 1986, making it one of the most successful franchises in gaming history and delighting generations of fans across multiple consoles.

The new game, “The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom,” will be released on Switch on September 26, according to a statement from Nintendo.

The many iterations of the games usually revolve around the dwarf hero Link, who spends most of his adventures trying to rescue Princess Zelda who, more often than not, has been kidnapped or disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

But this latest edition will be female-led.

“This time Link has disappeared. Now it’s up to Princess Zelda to play the hero,” Eiji Aonuma, producer of the Zelda series, said in a video released by Nintendo.

Gameplay footage released by Nintendo shows that “Echoes of Wisdom” appears similar in style and substance to 2019’s “Link’s Awakening,” a top-down puzzle-based platformer with a cute cartoon design that was itself a reboot of the game Game Boy classic. From 1993.

Zelda teams up with Tri, a mysterious fairy, and together they use magical powers to create echoes, which Nintendo describes as “imitating objects in the environment.”

“Recreate these echoes whenever you want to solve puzzles and defeat enemies,” Nintendo said in its announcement.

“Use echoes from water masses to reach new heights, make bridges out of old beds, throw rocks at enemies – or find your own creative combination of echoes to do things your way,” the company said.

The Zelda franchise has long been praised for its fun puzzle-solving and groundbreaking gameplay that encourages players to explore at leisure and tackle problems in different ways.

Open world games have become a major feature of newer titles with 2017’s “Breath of the Wild” becoming one of Nintendo’s most successful and critically acclaimed titles.

Follow up on that match last year.”kingdom tears,“10 million copies were sold in just three days.

The release of a new Zelda game is the second surprise announcement Nintendo has made in recent weeks.

In early May, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said that the company plans to release a follow-up to its popular Switch console by March 2025.

The announcement was welcome news to fans who have been drooling for years over the prospect of a potential successor to the 7-year-old Switch.