The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD gets “A Hero Rises” trailer

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Anyone who played on the Wii remembers well waving the controller to land each sword strike. On the eve of the re-release, Nintendo released another trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, called “A Hero Rises”, which sums up the beginning of Link’s journey and the origin of the Master Sword, the legendary blade able to banish evil.

Skyward Sword originally came out in November 2011 for the Wii and has a special place in the series: it is the first game in the Zelda timeline. The story takes place in Skyloft, a city floating above the clouds. When Link’s childhood friend, Zelda, is carried off to the abandoned lands below, he descends to the surface to rescue her and, along the way, turns the Goddess Sword into the Master Sword that so many other Links would wield afterward.

In the Wii days, combat depended on the Wii MotionPlus accessory, which read the direction of each slash. The game was a critical and commercial success, with more than three million copies, but it also drew complaints about its linearity, the back-and-forth between areas and the motion controls. Those criticisms ended up influencing the series’ following games, including Breath of the Wild.

The HD version was developed in partnership with Tantalus Media and was set for July 16, 2021, on Nintendo Switch. On the same day, a themed pair of Joy-Con, inspired by the Master Sword and the Hylian Shield, would reach stores.

What came next

Skyward Sword HD was released on July 16, 2021, as promised, and sold nearly 4 million units worldwide by March 2022. For those who grew up with the series, it was a chance to revisit the beginning of the legend on a portable console, with high-definition visuals.