The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, known in Japan as Zelda no Densetsu: Kaze no Takt (ゼルダの伝説 風のタクト, Zeruda no Densetsu Kaze no Takuto; which means "The Legend of Zelda: Baton of Winds"), is the tenth game in The Legend of Zelda group of games. It was made by Nintendo EAD for the Nintendo GameCube. It went on sale in Japan on December 13, 2002, in North America on March 24, 2003, and in Europe on May 2, 2003.
Most of the game takes place on a huge ocean called the Great Sea, with small islands dotted across it. This was a big change for the series. Instead of walking across a countryside, the player sails from island to island in a talking boat named the King of Red Lions. The game is named after a magic baton, the Wind Waker, which the player uses to control the wind.
The Wind Waker was the first Zelda game to use cel shading, a way of drawing 3D graphics so that they look like a hand-drawn cartoon. This looked very different from Ocarina of Time (1998) and Majora's Mask (2000), which tried to look realistic. Many fans disliked the new look before the game came out, and some made fun of it by calling the game "Celda".
The story happens hundreds of years after Ocarina of Time, in what Zelda fans call the "adult timeline". Twilight Princess happens in a different timeline instead. Two later games follow on from The Wind Waker directly: Phantom Hourglass (2007) and Spirit Tracks (2009), both for the Nintendo DS.
Story
Background
The game opens with a legend told through pictures. Long ago, a young man in green clothes, known as the Hero of Time, saved the kingdom of Hyrule from an evil wizard named Ganondorf and shut him away in another world. But Ganondorf broke free and made a second attempt to seize the Triforce. The people prayed for the hero to come back, and he never did. In the end the goddesses answered by telling the people to flee to the mountaintops, then flooding the kingdom and sealing it at the bottom of the new sea. Those mountaintops became the islands of the Great Sea, and over the years Hyrule itself was forgotten.
On one of those islands, Outset Island, a custom grew up of dressing boys in green clothes like the Hero of Time's when they turned twelve, in the hope that they would grow up as brave as he was.
Plot
The game begins with Link's younger sister Aryll lending him her telescope. Looking through it, Link sees a giant bird carrying a girl in its claws, chased by a pirate ship firing cannonballs at it. One shot hits, and the bird drops the girl into the island's forest. Link goes to rescue her from the monsters there, and finds out that she is Tetra, the captain of the pirates. While he is doing so, the bird returns and snatches Aryll instead.
The bird, the Helmaroc King, has been stealing girls with long ears and carrying them north to a stronghold called the Forsaken Fortress. Link talks Tetra and her crew into taking him there. He reaches the room where the stolen girls are held, but the Helmaroc King catches him and drops him in front of the fortress's master, a man in black. The bird then flings Link far out over the sea.
Link washes up at Windfall Island and is rescued by a talking sailboat, the King of Red Lions. The boat tells him that the man in black is Ganondorf, returned, and explains how he once tried and failed to take a wish-granting treasure called the Triforce. To have any chance against him, Link must first gather three Pearls of the Goddesses. He earns Din's Pearl on Dragon Roost Island, where a girl named Medli helps him calm the angry dragon Valoo and he befriends the bird-like Rito people. He earns Farore's Pearl at the Forest Haven, home of the Great Deku Tree and the plant-like Koroks, after rescuing a small Korok called Makar from the Forbidden Woods. The third, Nayru's Pearl, belongs to a water spirit named Jabun, who used to live on Greatfish Isle until Ganondorf destroyed it and has since hidden in a cave on Outset Island.
When the three pearls are set into statues on three islands that form a triangle, a huge building called the Tower of the Gods rises out of the sea. Link passes its tests, and ringing the bell at the top opens a way down to the bottom of the ocean, where a castle stands frozen in time. There Link pulls the Master Sword out of its pedestal, waking the castle up and forcing him to fight his way back out.
Link returns to the Forsaken Fortress and defeats a magical copy of Ganondorf called Phantom Ganon on the way up. Tetra's crew rescue the stolen girls and Link kills the Helmaroc King, but when he finally reaches Ganondorf, the fight goes badly: the Master Sword has lost its power and cannot even hurt him. Tetra arrives in time to save Link, but Ganondorf grabs her and notices the piece of the Triforce she wears around her neck, which tells him she is the Princess Zelda he has been hunting for. Valoo and two Rito swoop in and drive him off.
The King of Red Lions takes Link and Tetra down to the sunken castle and explains that it is the lost kingdom of Hyrule. He reveals that he is really Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule, the last king, and that Tetra is his heir, Zelda, who carries the Triforce of Wisdom. Tetra stays behind in the castle while Link and the King go back up to find out what happened to the Master Sword.
Two sages, Laruto and Fado, once prayed to give the sword its power in two distant temples, and Ganondorf's monsters killed them both before he took over Hyrule. Their spirits are still there, and they ask Link to find the people who have inherited their bloodlines and their instruments. These turn out to be Link's friends Medli and Makar. Link guides each of them through a temple — the Earth Temple and the Wind Temple — until they can pray again and the Master Sword works properly.
Next Link has to track down the eight pieces of the Triforce of Courage, which was broken up and scattered across the Great Sea when the Hero of Time failed to return. Once he has them all, the gods make the Triforce whole again and name him the Hero of Winds. He sails back to Hyrule to find that the statue of the Hero of Time marking the castle's hidden entrance has been smashed and that Ganondorf has taken Zelda prisoner.
Link follows them into Ganondorf's tower, fighting through Phantom Ganon and the bosses he has already beaten once. Ganondorf turns himself into a puppet to fight, and when that fails he carries Zelda to the roof and dares Link to follow. There he takes Zelda's piece of the Triforce and Link's, joins them with his own Triforce of Power, and is about to wish for Hyrule to be raised from the sea and handed to him. The King of Hyrule touches it first and wishes instead that the goddesses wash Ganondorf and Hyrule away, and give Link and Zelda a future of their own. The sea pours in around them as the three fight. Zelda stuns Ganondorf with a Light Arrow, and Link drives the Master Sword into his head, turning him to stone.
Before the end, King Daphnes admits that he was wrong to cling to the old kingdom in the hope it could be brought back, and that doing so was no better than what Ganondorf had wanted. He tells Link and Zelda to go and find a land of their own, and sends them up to the surface while he goes down with Hyrule.
Gameplay
The Wind Waker is played from behind Link in a 3D world, much like Ocarina of Time. Link fights with a sword and shield along with many other weapons and items, and the player can "lock on" to an enemy so that Link keeps facing it. A new feature is that the player can move the camera around Link. Reviewers also liked being able to pick up and fight with weapons that enemies drop.
The world is a grid of 49 squares of the Great Sea, and each square holds an island or a group of islands. Some must be visited to finish the story, and the rest are optional. Link sails between them with a sail on the King of Red Lions. The wind blows in one of eight directions, and a wind at the boat's back gives it full speed, while sailing into the wind is hard work.
This is where the Wind Waker itself comes in. It is a conductor's baton, and the player uses it by beating out a pattern to play a tune. The first tune, the "Wind's Requiem", changes the direction of the wind so that Link can sail anywhere he likes. Link can learn five more tunes, which do things like teleport the boat across the map or turn night into day.
Because Link is drawn as a cartoon, the artists could give him very clear facial expressions. He turns his head to look at things nearby that matter, such as a torch that has not been lit or a weapon an enemy has dropped, which quietly hints to the player what to do next. The team came up with this after the producers asked why the characters had such big eyes.
Away from the main story there is a lot to do. Link can take photographs with the Picto Box, an in-game camera, and use them to finish quests. Items can also work differently at sea. The grappling hook, for example, becomes a crane for pulling treasure up off the sea bed, and once Link has bombs the boat can fire them from a cannon at enemy ships and sea monsters.
Link is given the Tingle Tuner by a strange man named Tingle, as a reward for freeing him from the jail on Windfall Island. If a player connected a Game Boy Advance to the GameCube with a link cable, a second person could then use the Tingle Tuner to play as Tingle and help out.
Making the game
Nintendo's Zelda team started planning a GameCube game before Majora's Mask was even finished. Eiji Aonuma directed it, and Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, who created the series, were the producers.
At Space World 2000, where the GameCube was announced, Nintendo showed a short video of a realistic Link fighting Ganondorf. It was put together quickly, but fans loved it and expected the finished game to look the same. The team, though, had run out of ideas for that style, and Aonuma disliked the video because it felt like more of the same. They tried other directions until a designer, Yoshiki Haruhana, drew a cartoon-style picture of a young Link that the team liked. A manager, Satoru Takizawa, drew an enemy in the same style, and the team decided to go with it, using cel shading to make the whole game look like a cartoon. Aonuma kept this quiet at first because he thought Miyamoto would object, and Miyamoto did stay doubtful for a long time before agreeing.
Once the style was settled, the team decided to set the game on islands in an ocean, because that would look good in cel shading. That choice led to the sailing. When Nintendo showed the real game at Space World in 2001, some people liked it, but many fans who had wanted the realistic version were angry. Miyamoto was surprised, and decided to say less about the game until there was a playable version to show. That demo appeared at E3 in 2002 and was received much better. The game won Best Console Game at that year's Game Critics Awards.
Near the end of development, two dungeons were running late and were cut. The quest to collect the Triforce pieces around the Great Sea was put in to replace them. Between the Japanese and North American releases, the team went back and made that quest shorter.
The music was written by Kenta Nagata, Hajime Wakai, Toru Minegishi and Koji Kondo. Kondo, who normally leads the music on Zelda games, helped with the score but was not the sound director this time. Much of the music is based on traditional Irish music and is lighter and happier than earlier Zelda soundtracks.
Release
People who pre-ordered the game were given a bonus disc holding a GameCube version of Ocarina of Time together with Ocarina of Time Master Quest, a harder version that had been made for the Nintendo 64's 64DD add-on but never released. The pre-order campaign was the most successful Nintendo had run up to that point.
Later in 2003, Nintendo gave away a disc called The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition. It held the first two Zelda games, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and a 20-minute demo of The Wind Waker. It was never sold in shops, and could only be had through a console bundle, by registering a GameCube, or by subscribing to Nintendo Power.
On June 5, 2025, the original GameCube version was added to the Nintendo GameCube – Nintendo Classics app on the Nintendo Switch 2, alongside F-Zero GX and Soulcalibur II. It needs a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership.
Reception
The Wind Waker was praised by almost every reviewer. Metacritic worked out a score of 96 out of 100 from 80 reviews. It was only the fourth game ever to get a perfect score from the Japanese magazine Famitsu.
Critics liked the graphics that fans had complained about, often comparing the game to a cartoon you could play. Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot wrote that the worries about the visuals had turned out to be unfounded, and that the character designs made the story hit harder. Reviewers also praised the controls, the fighting, the puzzles and the dungeons.
The most common complaint was the amount of sailing, especially near the end of the game when Link has to cross the ocean over and over to find the Triforce pieces. Some reviewers were also annoyed at having to stop and conduct the Wind Waker every time the wind needed changing. Another common criticism was that the game was too easy.
Several magazines and websites named it their game of the year, including GameSpot, Nintendo Power and GameFAQs. It won the Excellence in Visual Arts prize at the 2004 Game Developers Choice Awards.
Ordinary players stayed split over the art style, more so in North America than in Japan. The game sold 4.6 million copies, well below the 7.6 million that Ocarina of Time had managed. Nintendo of America blamed the cartoon graphics for putting off older teenagers, who had been the series' main audience. Because of this, a planned direct sequel was dropped, and Aonuma persuaded Miyamoto to let him make a realistic-looking game instead, which became Twilight Princess.
Opinion of The Wind Waker improved a great deal over the years, and it is now often listed among the best games ever made. Writers often say that its cartoon style has aged far better than the realistic graphics of other games from the same time. Nintendo staff call this change of heart a strong example of the "Zelda cycle", where fans dislike a new Zelda game at first and warm to it later.
Remake
In 2013, Nintendo made a high definition remake for the Wii U called The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. The idea came up while staff were testing old games on the new console. Aonuma produced it and Daiki Iwamoto directed it, and the whole project took about six months. It came out in North America on September 20, 2013, in Japan on September 26, 2013, in Europe on October 4, 2013, and in Australia on October 5, 2013.
As well as better graphics and lighting, the remake fixed several things reviewers had complained about. A new item called the Swift Sail makes the boat faster and keeps the wind behind it, so the player no longer has to keep conducting. The Triforce hunt was made shorter and the Picto Box was improved. The Wii U GamePad screen holds the map and the items, so the player does not have to keep opening menus, and the game can be played on the GamePad alone. The Tingle Tuner was replaced by a Tingle Bottle, which let players leave messages for one another through Nintendo's Miiverse service. Miiverse was shut down on November 8, 2017, so that feature no longer works.
The Wind Waker HD was also well reviewed, with a Metacritic score of 90 out of 100 from 70 reviews. By September 2023 it had sold 2.37 million copies.
↑"2002 Winners". Game Critics Awards. Archived from the original on 2008-04-10. Retrieved 2026-08-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
↑The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Original Sound Tracks (Media notes). Scitron Digital Content. 2003-03-19.
↑"Best of 2003: Game of the Year". GameFAQs. 2004-01-08. Archived from the original on 2013-05-26. Retrieved 2026-08-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
