The Legend of Zelda Is At Its Best With Young Link

esquire.com:

Bring him back, Nintendo.

If you were lucky enough to grow up with The Legend of Zelda games in the late '90s, you experienced time travel. I'm not just talking about setting the clock back in Majora's Mask. (Though that was pretty great.) I'm referring to the transcendent moment in Ocarina of Time when Young Link, only 10 years old, draws the Master Sword—and wakes up as an adult in an unwelcome future. Suddenly trapped in a grown-up body, with the world of Link’s idyllic childhood nowhere to be found? It was dizzying.

But it captured something so real, didn’t it? It’s like that line in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

This week, Nintendo will send longtime Zelda fans like myself reeling once again with the release of Tears of the Kingdom on the Nintendo Switch. The 20th main installment in the canon, Tears is an ambitious new chapter in a franchise that has always sought to reinvent itself. Introducing wild, new mechanics like vertical traversal and weapon amalgamation, Nintendo is yet again challenging our notion of what a Zelda game can be. Groundbreaking as it is, though, I can’t help but feel like something is missing.

To be honest, I’ve struggled to connect with Link, a character we've seen countless iterations of, for a while now. To me, The Legend of Zelda is about more than just innovative combat and perilous dungeons. It’s a coming-of-age story. Saving the kingdom is one thing. Growing up? That’s the real adventure. None of these recent games—yes, even Breath of the Wild and its teenage Link—have explored that fundamental part of the mythology. Nintendo, I humbly ask: Where is Young Link?

The last time we saw pointy head