Now, thanks to the power of the DS, even handheld Zeldas are starting to transition over to 3D – like for example Phantom Hourglass, which contained 3D graphics and some fully 3D gameplay, most notably the sailing.

A lot of people enjoyed the style of the 2D games, so an interesting question is – what will happen to them? Nathan of ZeldaInformer feels that their era has ended, and that Nintendo may stop making 2D Zelda games. You can read his article here.

Our lucky second prize winner was Connor, commenter number 128! As for first prize, that was claimed by Ryan Stix, commenter number 330!

If you weren’t a winner, don’t worry – there will be more contests in the future. If you want to move that process along faster, you can put some money into ZU’s Bank of Hyrule, our contest fund. When we reach $250 in the fund, we’ll give away a DSi! So please consider making a deposit if you liked this STLOcarina giveaway.

We’d also like to thank STLOcarina for participating with us this time around and supplying ocarinas and materials for the contest. They’ve been awesome people all around, so if you didn’t win, you can still purchase your own Zelda ocarinas from their site.

The British Spirit Tracks site provides a lot of interesting information about the characters and the gameplay, even hosting a gallery of images from the game, but unfortunately, the Zelda.com site staff have no such work ethic – their Spirit Tracks page simply provides a picture of Link with the Phantom and a “pre-order now” button.

This was to be expected, however, from the official site so notoriously lazy that it left up its Phantom Hourglass countdown timer for more than two years after the game’s release.

We’ll announce the winners tomorrow and contact them via email.

View the contest details here >>

This is Anjean, guardian of the Spirit Temple

The Lokomo appear to be half-man, half-train. Lokomo is a pun on the word locomotive, while the name of the only confirmed Lokomo so far, Anjean, is a pun on the word Engine. Anjean is a wise old lady who guards the Spirit Tower in which the Demon King is sealed. She is the one who gives Link the Spirit Train in his quest to rescue Zelda.

As Anjean is the only Lokomo that we currently know about, it is possible that the mechanical half may simply be some sort of wheelchair unique to Anjean, though it is unlikely as the trailer showed Anjean moving around freely on the wheels without touching controls of any sort.

Either way, the Lokomo have been specifically mentioned by Nintendo as “the Lokomo people”, so we have added them to our Races of Hyrule page.

It brings up several points that you may not have noticed when watching the trailer yourself, though be warned that they do explain a bit about the story of the game while they are at it. Hit the jump to watch the video.

Up until today, that’s pretty much been the case – there was a pretty sharp divide amongst those of us running Zelda fan sites over whether this game would be worth our precious rupees. But with the new storyline information and trailers available as of today, a lot of opinions are shifting, including mine. Since the release of the new trailer, I’ve preordered Spirit Tracks.

Nathan, a fellow webmaster who, like me, harbors some disappointment in Phantom Hourglass, has gone so far as to publicly apologize to Nintendo for assuming that they would put Phantom Hourglass in new slacks and send it out the door.

As for me, I’m being a bit more conservative. But my hopes are higher. Spirit Tracks looks like it’s going to be the game I wanted when I played Phantom Hourglass – better music, better graphics, and more innovative storyline with the power to captivate a skeptic like me. So, more power to Nintendo; I can’t wait to give Spirit Tracks a spin.

We will be updating the rest of our Spirit Tracks pages with the new information over the course of the next 24 hours.

If you noticed anything interesting about the game or want to discuss the trailer, you should visit our forums, where our members are already hard at work trying to figure out the story of Spirit Tracks.

UPDATE: The storyline for Spirit Tracks has been revealed. You can read about it here.

In addition, a graphic at the bottom of the page indicates that Nintendo might be giving away feather styluses once again, so if you didn’t manage to get one the first time around – when Phantom Hourglass came out – you’ll probably be able to get one yet.

About MotionPlus: “We’re implementing it so that players can feel like they themselves are holding the sword. In the previous Zelda (TP Wii) the targeting was based on the IR pointer. This time however, we’ll be using MotionPlus for a variety of more convenient targeting systems that will allow for more pleasant gameplay.”

If this makes you so excited you just can’t wait for Zelda Wii, then look no further than Spirit Tracks, being released in December. Miyamoto also had something to say about this game:

“[Zelda ST] will be really fun. It’s turning out to be rather challenging. Many of our Japanese customers were introduced to the Zelda series with Phantom Hourglass, and ST could prove to be kind of hard for them, but I thought we’d show them what Zelda is really made of this time around. So it’s turning into quite a unique title. I’ve managed to gather quite a few creative team members for Zelda ST, so I’d like Zelda Wii to also enjoy creative development as much as possible.”

If Miyamoto holds true to these words, I’ll be just a little more eager to get my hands on Link’s latest DS adventure while waiting for the unveiling of Zelda Wii.

Source: GoNintendo (Thanks to silver-hero for the tip)

I have some extra free time on my hands at the moment, so I will hopefully be here to post more.  Not making promises, but I have hopeful.

Here is the wonderful new mailbag. And please send in your questions to be answered, and it won’t take three months.  Hopefully.

That’s all I have for now.

Of course, the guide is also on our Ocarina of Time main page with the rest of our Ocarina of Time information.

Check out the guide >>