Show HN: The Zelda timeline to catch up before the Ocarina of Time remake
58 points by jsomau 4 hours ago | 19 comments
I made this ahead of the Ocarina of Time remake which comes out in 17 days. I remember the feeling of playing it as a kid but I hadn’t kept up with the story so I built a timeline to catch up before the Door of Time reopens.

Nintendo’s own timeline is the authority here (Hyrule Historia and their chronicle page). The fun part was rethinking how to visualize it. It branches at the end of Ocarina into three eras depending on whether Link wins or loses, so each era is its own thread on the cloth. The threads meet again much later with Breath of the Wild.

I had a lot of help from Claude. I’d often thought about building things like this but never found the time between the day job and the rest of life.


hyperhello 2 hours ago
What’s the word for trying to do cluster analysis on what is actually randomly distributed data? The games do have obvious similarities and sometimes refer to each other, but they’re independent events.
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xnx 34 minutes ago
Nintendo now maintains/updates an official timeline: https://zelda.nintendo.com/about/
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bspammer 25 minutes ago
Sure but that's a retcon. They didn't have this in mind when they made the games.
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gchamonlive 43 minutes ago
If they have obvious similarities, they aren't randomly distributed data
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InsideOutSanta 59 minutes ago
I'm pretty sure Nintendo itself said at one point that they don't have a clear chronological order and may not tie into each other properly, even though they later retconned an order.

Still, it's fun to try to figure out how the puzzle pieces might fit together even though they came out of different boxes.

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SubiculumCode 10 minutes ago
I've only played a handful of these games .. but do they work together as a theme or story progression or are they, as I suspect, pretty much independent rehashes with no real relationship other than making money and appeasing fans?
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sharkbot 2 hours ago
Don't forget to include:

- Link: The Faces of Evil

- Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon

- Link's Crossbow Training

- the various Hyrule Warriors games

Good luck! :)

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yunruse 36 minutes ago
Per a scholar in the field [0], clearly The Legend of Zelda Monopoly is the pin which holds the entire Zelda timeline together!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-25c8Rsobw

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cubefox 9 minutes ago
Apocrypha!
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BewareTheYiga 2 hours ago
I thought the Hyrule Warriors games were not canon. Did I get that wrong?
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whateveracct 2 hours ago
i think the second one is canon but it has time travel and stuff so it's also basically not

(the second one wasn't very good..but the first is a great game and runs even better on Switch 2.)

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xnx 28 minutes ago
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity gets a "Definitive Edition" Feb 25, 2027. Will be interesting to see if gameplay improves.
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xnx 2 hours ago
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is canon.
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throwaway613746 44 minutes ago
[dead]
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bovermyer 42 minutes ago
I played Legend of Zelda, Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time to conclusion. I haven't really played any Zelda games since then, except maybe for a few minutes for a few of them.

I'm a little surprised to hear that Ocarina of Time is getting a remake. I take it it's going to be a Switch 2 exclusive?

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xnx 36 minutes ago
Yes
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petarb 25 minutes ago
Having trouble loading the link
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cr125rider 2 hours ago
This is really fun! Great design!
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candlemas 49 minutes ago
There's a story?
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