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Nintendo Would Never Have The Guts To Release A Zelda Game This Cool

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It's weird. When it comes to hardware, Nintendo is the most daring video game company in the world, hands-down. You don't come up with stuff like the DS or Wii unless you're slightly mad.

Yet when it comes to software - and I'm especially talking about its older series like Zelda - Nintendo is unusually conservative. Sure, there have been deviations in setting, like Wind Waker's post-apocalyptic Hyrule and the fact there are trains in Spirit Tracks, but for the most part, Zelda games are always about a boy in green who has to save a girl in purple.

Which is why I love this idea so much. It flips that completely on its head.

New York artist Aaron Diaz has come up with Clockwork Empire, a Zelda game that isn't just steampunk in design, but - inspired by the work of Anita Sarkeesian, whose first video focuses on gender and Zelda games - also stars Zelda, who has to strap on some gear and go and rescue Link for a change.

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What's more, this isn't down to some quirk in circumstances, where the usually "heroic" Link has a bad day. In this part of the Zelda timeline, 2000 years after Twilight Princess, Zelda is "an aspiring battle mage", and Link is a naive, pasty noble.

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Clockwork Empire [Aaron Diaz, via Gamefreaks]