The prize for the lucky winner is a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, a Spirit Tracks t-shirt, a $1,000 Nintendo World Store gift card, a Zelda's "biggest fan" trophy and a white Nintendo DSi system personally signed by longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma.

We've looked over the entries and selected our 11 favorites as finalists. Now it's up to you to decide which will win the grand prize. The remaining ten will receive a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks game and a Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks t-shirt.

We'll leave the voting open until midnight Mountain time on Sunday. You can vote once a day. Please check over all of the entries, from videos to pamphlets to photos, before voting. Everyone put a lot of effort into their entries.

Thanks to everyone who entered.

The reward?

A copy of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, a Spirit Tracks t-shirt, a $1,000 Nintendo World Store gift card, a Zelda's "biggest fan" trophy and a white Nintendo DSi system personally signed by longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma.

We've looked over the entries and selected our 11 favorites as finalists. Now it's up to you to decide which will win the grand prize. The remaining ten will receive a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks game and a Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks t-shirt.

We'll leave the voting open until midnight Mountain time on Sunday. You can vote once a day. Please check over all of the entries, from videos to pamphlets to photos, before voting. Everyone put a lot of effort into their entries.

Thanks to everyone who entered.

"To tell you the truth, I actually wanted to create Link's Crossbow Training 2," he told gamesTM in an interview. "I thought that we should do something more and better in the field of the first person shooter, based on our experience of the first game".

The "more" he wanted was an expanded multiplayer mode, but Nintendo would have none of it. "The fact of the matter is that a lot of people inside Nintendo insisted that I should work on a new Legend Of Zelda title rather than working on more Crossbow Training".

Hey, Aonuma. Back to work.

Anouma Wants Crossbow Sequel [gamesTM, via NowGamer]

Ends December 31.

Don't post entries here. See the link above for full contest rules. The contest is open to residents of North and South America. You must be 18 or older.

Good luck to all who enter!

In a snippet of of the interview reprinted on Edge Online, Aonuma says that the realistic look and feel of Twilight Princess presented challenges for the designers to incorporate ideas that fit with the "sheer grand scale" of the game. "I am afraid that definitely no, we were not able to do all the things that perhaps with hindsight we had the capabilities to do. With that as the starting point, we are now developing the Wii version of Legend Of Zelda."

Aonuma goes on to say:

"In the case of Spirit Tracks it was relatively easier, because regardless of the actual proportions between the player character and the other objects, we can simply concentrate upon the many game ideas we want to realise. But in the case of trying to depict a relatively photorealistic three-dimensional world, we have to be very careful to adapt the ideas so that they seem to perfectly fit with that world. I must admit that's actually one of my very greatest regrets as regards the Twilight Princess."

Sounds like a pretty good interview. I look forward to seeing the whole thing in print when Edge 211 hits the shelves.

Aonuma's Regrets For Twilight Princess [Edge Online]

Don't post entries here. See the link above for full contest rules. The contest is open to residents of North and South America. You must be 18 or older.

Good luck to all who enter!

We've got an amazing prize pack to give away to the biggest Kotaku Zelda fan: A copy of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, a Spirit Tracks t-shirt, a $1,000 Nintendo World Store gift card, a Zelda's "biggest fan" trophy and a white Nintendo DSi system personally signed by longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma.

But proving that you're a big, huge fan of a Zelda is old hat. We'd ask and you'd deliver with amazing, inspired photos of yourself posing, showing off items, doing silly stunts. But that's been done to death.

Recruiting others to your cause, now that shows true dedication.

Here's what we want to see from you: Photo or video proof that you've convinced friends, congregations, schools, entire stadiums of people that the Zelda franchise is the best around. In the video or photo your converts will need to each be holding a Kotaku sign so we know it is legit and for this contest. You''ll also want the video or photo to somehow demonstrate your love and their new-found love of the Zelda games.

The entire team at Kotaku Tower will be going through your entries to pick the best, judging each based on quantity and quality of converts and the zeal with which they and you seem to be enthralled with Zelda.

Once we've selected the 11 finalists we'll let you vote to determine the winner.

While the grand prize winner will be walking away with those unbelievable prizes described above, ten runners-up will each receive The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks game and a Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks t-shirt.

The Rules
* One entry per an account only and pictures missing the Kotaku sign (everyone in it needs to have one in some form) will be tossed out.

*You must be 18 or older.

*Contest only open to residents of the Americas.

*You must include your submission as a comment in the post linked here, but not as a reply to this story.

*We will be regularly checking to make sure new users submitting for the contest have their accounts activated as quickly as possible, but it might take a day or two to show up on the site.

*Do not email your entry, these will be ignored. They have to be submitted in comments HERE, click on this link. Please only use that post for your entries, not for commenting or discussing so we can more easily sort through the entries.

*Read the rest of our standard rules here.

*CONTEST DEADLINE: All entries must be posted no later than December 31.

"Whenever we have to think about the remake," Aonuma told IGN, "we have to also think about the background, especially what kind of situation, what kind of period and time that previous game was played in, because, be it Ocarina of Time or any other games, whenever they say they want to have a remake on whichever platform, they have some emotional attachment from playing that game at that particular time or environment." According to Aonuma, that sort of background is always there. "We cannot afford to destroy that kind of emotional attachment."

Another reason is that whenever Nintendo comes up with new technology, the developers are inspired to put that new tech and new ideas into new Zelda games. For example, in the upcoming Legend of Zelda on the Wii, the game features 1-to-1 controls. Players can swing the Wii Remote, and directly control Link's sword play in-game. "It has become very natural," the producer added. "I mean, the movement of your arms are precisely reflected in the gameplay whereby Link is wielding his sword just as you shake the Wii Motion Plus remote."

What's more, game play for the upcoming Wii Zelda title will be different from the traditional dungeon — field — dungeon structure that has dominated Zelda titles in the past. According to Aonuma, expect an announcement at next year's E3 about these changes.

"So that's the current situation and that's the reason why we are not very aggressive in exploring the possibility of remaking the past Zelda series," the producer added. "If I can think how to do it, or if any inspiration comes to me, without destroying the emotional attachment people have to the past game, and I can make some great innovation or renovation on the remake, then I might be able to think about it further."

The Legacy of Zelda [YouTube via WiiNintendo]

Consider that the earliest Zelda game was all caves and magic swords, with nothing more high-tech than a boomerang and a whistle. Several Zeldas later, Link was sailing ships, taking pictures with a camera and, as of a week from today, driving a train in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks on the DS.

So I wrote to Aonuma: "Spirit Tracks features a train, which may be the most modern piece of technology included in a Zelda game. How modern do you think the Zelda universe can get? Could it include, for example, a radio? A car? A gun?"

In an e-mailed response, Aonuma said: "Technology actually was not a major concern for us when we decided to use the train. In The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, the boat was the key mode of transportation. Now that Spirit Tracks takes place on land, we needed a new way for players to get around, and felt that the train offered the best sense of exploration and discovery. We don't think it feels out of place in the game world. Trains are also a popular mode of transportation in Japan. My children and I still feel a great sense of adventure when we ride trains in Japan."

Note how un-Zelda-like some of my suggestions were. Final Fantasy can get modern and even futuristic. Even World of Warcraft manages to include motorcycles. But a Zelda game with even more modern technology?

I don't see Aonuma ruling any of it out based on what he then said to me about future tech:

"Regarding use of other forms in technology in the future, as long it adds to the overall game experience and is something we feel the player would enjoy, we wouldn't be afraid to implement it. As a matter of fact, we have used the Hook Shot in several previous games, which would be considered a very modern type of technology, even by today's standards. "

So maybe Link can have a cell phone some day. Though I doubt they'd go that far. I don't see the gameplay benefit of an iPod over a fairy. But a car... then who would need a horse any more?

In a brief e-mail interview with Kotaku in advance of the release of next month's The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Aonuma explained that Link's latest adventure takes an unusual route to satisfying and challenging veteran gamers:

"One of our lead planners for the game is a programmer, so he has a different, more scientific or mathematical approach, so to say, to creating puzzles," he wrote to Kotaku. Aonuma is the producer on Spirit Tracks.

"Development team members, including [senior Nintendo developer] Mr. [Takashi] Tezuka and myself, actually got stuck in several places. So the dungeons and puzzles pose a different type of challenge than what we have utilized in previous games, and will certainly require longtime Zelda fans to approach each challenge differently. "

Getting more specific, he noted: "I believe that the latter half of the Tower of Spirits dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — [which] players will revisit throughout the game — has puzzles which require a different type of approach from those of previous games,"

The chief architect of most of the major Zelda games, Aonuma has talked with your Kotaku deputy editor before about how to balance the creation of a new Zelda game to satisfy veteran fans and newcomers.

A couple of years ago, I suggested that his team consider giving the player their boomerang and bow-and-arrow from the get-go. that might be a way to make new Zeldas more alluring to veteran series gamers.

But never has he admitted to being stumped by some of the puzzles his designers have created.

The game won't all be harder.

Controls, for one thing, will be easier, Aonuma said.

I had asked him what his team had learned about the touch-screen controls implemented in the previous DS Zelda game, The Phantom Hourglass. That prompted this reply: "The one consistent piece of feedback we received about the controls in Phantom Hourglass was that it was too challenging to execute the roll move. You had to draw little circles at the edge of the screen to make Link roll. This is actually something we felt similarly about during development, but ended up not having enough time left in the schedule to implement another solution. In Spirit Tracks, this move is done by tapping anywhere on the screen, so hopefully players get more use out of it. "

Another tweak for the new game is in the Zelda character herself. In a change for the series, the Spirit Tracks Zelda takes on the game's adventure alongside Link, in the form of a spirit. She's not a damsel in distress just waiting to be saved. She's an active adventurer. Aonuma said she was designed out of a desire among both Zelda fans and developers to have a stronger princess.

"We recently received information from a survey conducted in the US that indicated that, among our female characters, users had a preference for those that were more on the independent side, such as Shiek and Tetra," he wrote. He was referring to the Zelda-in-disguise incarnations of Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. "Making Zelda a more integral part of the game was also a goal for our Director, Mr. [Daiki] Iwamoto, so we set out with this element in mind when we started making the game."

Link's different in this new game too, of course. He so often is. Aonuma didn't divulge if or how Link will behave differently. Visually he looks like the Link in the GameCube's Wind Waker and the DS' Phantom Hourglass, but with the new game set 100 years after Hourglass, it's no surprise that this Link is at least a new hero.

"The Link character in Spirit Tracks is different from those featured in previous games," Aonuma said. "He's a brand new Link. The game does share ties with Phantom Hourglass and Wind Waker though. This is mostly communicated to the player through the Niko character, who appears in all three games. Of course he is much older in Spirit Tracks, and his aging conveys to the player that much time has passed across the timeline of all three games."

Niko? That's the stripe-shirted guy, not the GTA guy.

The new Zelda, Spirit Tracks, will be released in North America on December 7 for the Nintendo DS.

Because he's yet to make a game that's better than Ocarina.

Speaking with Nintendo Power magazine, Aonuma said:

I’m happy that a title I worked on some time ago remains highly praised to this day, but that also shows how none of the subsequent games in the series have surpassed it. As someone who is still working on the series, I have mixed feelings about that. Because I haven’t yet surpassed it, I can’t quit. Surprisingly, that simply motivation may be the reason I continue to work on the Zelda series.

Don't get so down on yourself, Eiji! You know...and I fully understand the ramifications of saying this...I thought Wind Waker was better than Ocarina. Yes. Really. That oughta cheer you up!

Nintendo Power [via Go Nintendo] [Image]

Of course, he checked the fundamental parts at the beginning. Then, I asked him to play an almost finished version. Some time later he called me and all he said was that it was fun and he thought it'd sell well.

It's because of gamers that games have come as far as they have... it's not Nintendo's intent to alienate those people... We think we can involve everyone — people who played games in the past because the approach is so new, and people who were never gamers.

Alienate Gamers [Infendo]

I snap the picture and sadly return to my seat all the way in the back of the meeting room, but I'm lucky enough to have a chair to sit in. When I arrived at the venue the line was stretching far off into the hallway, and I was sure I was going to be turned away before I even got to the door.

I put on my special headset and listen to the music playing on it as Aonuma gets ready to speak. Since he will deliver the session in Japanese, us non-speakers have to listen to a woman over the headset who translates on the fly.

He begins by speaking about his hopes for Wind Waker. Despite critical acclaim the game did not perform as well as he had hoped in North America, and things were even worse in Japan. A phenomenon was occurring there which he calls gamer drift...gamers losing interest in games. They needed a new way to play games. Something that would bring back the old gamers, while reaching a whole new market. While the team was already working on Wind Waker 2, they found that toon-shading wasn't popular with the fans, while 3D gameplay that hadn't changed much since Ocarina of Time would get boring for older players while at the same time confusing the newer ones.

One answer they tried was connectivity. He explains that while connectivity had played a part in Wind Waker and other games, no other game had fully taken advantage of linking the GBA together with the Gamecube. Enter Four Swords. He was very hopeful for the success of the game, but it turns out people weren't happy with having to buy four GBA systems, and to the outsider the process seemed overcomplicated. Suppose the entire internet could have told him that, but even big time developers have their vision clouded sometimes.

Wind Waker had alienated their teen demographic and Japan needed a new way to play to get over the gamer drift, so Aonuma decided that he should create a game to cater to the North American audience since Japan was still uncertain. He decided to make a realistic Zelda game, announcing it at E3 2004. He was worried the staff working on Wind Waker 2 would be upset at the different direction, but they loved the idea.

Aonuma announced the game at E3 04, with a release target of 2005. People were intrigued, excited, overwhelmed, ecstatic, orgasmic, and several other adjectives.

Now he shows some footage from the prototype of Zelda DS, which would eventually go on to become The Phantom Hourglass. Originally the 3D portion was on the top, but the controls didn't really work. Moving right along.

He explains that he wanted to play with the concept of transformation. Light and dark, good and evil. Inspired by the bit in Link to the Past where Link becomes a bunny, he decides to explore the wild and heroic...link will become a wolf!

Aonuma left the game in the hands of the team and went to work on The Minish Cap, the game that brought Japan back and made the worries about gamer drift fade. Awww, he says that he had put himself so fully into the Minish cap in order to avoid the fear of not coming up with innovative gameplay for the adult Zelda.

In 2005 the response to the wolf Link was overwhelming, but there was still no real innovation. Time to break out the Miis!

Miyamoto said that the 'Revolution' would be the key to innovating the game, but Eiji says hewas torn...he didn't want to alienate the Gamecube users, and making different versions would push the game to 2006. Iwata had the answer.

Huzzah!

He says that since the hardware between the Gamecube and the Wii were not all that different, transferring the code was a snap. Now he details the control issues...the trial and error used to make the game feel right. He says that control was a problem with the E3 2006 demo, and his reactions when Miyamoto told him weren't all that positive.

Still, controls were ironed out. A new way of targeting, sword strokes with the wiimote taken out, then returned with a complete mirroring of the game's maps to make the right-handed sword holding make sense. Brilliant move there. Much better than trying to rework the entire character with only several months of development left.

Finally they did internal playtesting...he says that even the women in the office could play it, meaning it had to be good. Not sure what he is implying there ladies. He said it, not me.

The game finally came, and the rest is history.

He says he suffered a lot during the development process, but he says creation is about suffering...you must learn from your pain.

Now he talks for a bit about The Phantom Hourglass, explaining the multiplayer aspect. One player plays Link, the other plays three phantoms trying to stop him from collecting gems. The gems are of varying sizes and weights, which effect how fast or slow Link moves towards the base. He can only see the phantoms on the map when he is holding a gem, and they cannot see him in his base or a safe zone. Looks...interesting. Not exactly fun, but interesting. When one player loses the sides are swapped. Hmm.

And now his final parting words. It's about his family...his wife, and his 5 year old son. Dammit, what is it about you fathers putting your five year old sons into everything you do? Not to name names, but here and here and here.

Aww, his wife never plays games, and his son wanted a wiimote...not the Wii, but the wiimote, because he saw it on TV and it looked cool. His son loved Wii sports, and then played Zelda. Then one day he comes home to find his wife playing the game with his son.

And that wraps the whole thing up into a lovely package. Eiji Aonuma struggled for years to come up with something that would be special enough for fans and new gamers to enjoy, and is paid off by discovering his non-gaming wife playing the game he created with his son. What a heartwarming tale, with a storybook ending. And they all lived happily ever after. Michael Fahey

According to Kohler, an impending stock deal could prevent Nintendo executives and developers from talking about new product or even upcoming product at their multiple keynotes and interviews. That would, in a word, suck for fans hoping to hear about exciting new Nintendo developments, turning GDC into a somewhat stalled event for Nintendo.

Regardless, we'll be there, bugging Miyamoto and Aonuma to the extent the law allows. Michael McWhertor

Nintendo: No New Information at GDC [Game|Life]