Rumour: Wii Zapper Bundled with Zelda Spin-off?

You know how rumours are usually supposed to get you all excited and feeling tingly in certain parts of your body? Well, here's one that doesn't quite do that. Coming from Opposable Thumbs, this rumour revolves around a Zelda spin-off bundled with the Wii Zapper.

If you're a manager for a GameStop store, at this moment you're in Vegas, enjoying all the vendors pitching their games to you. A source at the show tells Opposable Thumbs that after Nintendo's speech, the managers were given a world-exclusive first look at the pack-in game for the Wii Zapper. Are you ready? Zelda Crossbow Training.

"The game looked beautiful," my source said. "I'm pretty sure it was running on the Twilight Princess engine. It's a third-person game, and you had some control over Link. While the video was way too short to get a good idea of the gameplay, it looks like a light-gun inspired Zelda title."

Ummm ... yeah, no. I love Zelda with all of my heart, but this is just not striking me as a very smart move. From a sales point of view, it is of course, very effective. However, if one would consider what it means for the Legend of Zelda franchise as a whole, I think one would agree that tarnishing the good name and reputation of the franchise by making some Wii Play-like minigame/tech demo based on it to promote a product is a bad idea.

Nintendo, of course, knows better than anyone that a bad Zelda game is suicide. There have been "OK" Mario games. There's been an "OK" Metroid game. There has never been an "OK" Zelda game. Ever. There would be a long, long line of people screaming for Iwata-san's head on a platter if that ever happened.

Which is why I doubt this game will really be "bad" as such. Just that, the idea of using the Legend of Zelda name solely for the purpose of promoting a peripheral doesn't quite strike me as very good creative idea. A Metroid Prime: Hunters for the Wii might have been better suited to such a task.

However, one should note that the potential for this game to look visually stunning is very high. Considering it's titled Crossbow Training, I don't think Nintendo is going to be cramming Hylian Field-like environments into it. We'll find out soon enough.

[Via: Kotaku]