The Wind Waker was first mentioned at E3 in 2001. The demo video featured at E3 had realistic graphics, something like Twilight Princess's graphics, and shocked many gamers and viewers. When Nintendo announced later that they had decided to switch the graphics to a less-realistic, cell-shaded, toy- type graphics, many loyal fans were dissapointed. The game was criticized by everyone, and some Zelda fans even turned their back on it. But as soon as it was released in 2004, praise for it sprouted up everywhere. People understood why Nintendo had used cell-shaded graphics instead of more realistic ones, for the graphics Nintendo had chosen created the perfect environmental setting for this type of game. Magazines were rating it 10 out of 10, and it became a Player's Choice game only a few weeks after it was released. It was one of the top Legend of Zelda games, topped only by Ocarina of Time (in my opinion).

There was a bonus disc available if you preordered The Wind Waker. The bonus disc contained two versions of Ocarina of Time; the original N64 version, and Ocarina of Time: Master Quest, which was originally released in Japan (called Ura Zelda), but it was never planned for release in the United States. It was a harder version of Ocarina of Time, but had the same dungeon and dungeon locations, as well as the same storyline. the only reason you need this disk is if you would like a harder version to play after original, or you're just a collector.

The Wind Waker, even with its weird graphic scheme, still was as close as they come to a perfect, flawless game (after Ocarina of Time, of course). Unlike other games that have graphic glitches, there was not one glitch in the entire game (well, maybe not the entire game...but); Nintendo thoroughly worked out all the bugs. They did do a very good job with this game, and it deserved every single bit of praise given to it.

The game had a weird sort of dungeon layout. It had three sub-dungeons (sort of like in Ocarina of Time), then it had a Tower in which you and to complete four parts of a dungeon to (sort of like the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time), then there were two more full sized dungeons before you had to find eight Triforce Shards before you could enter Ganon's Tower. But all in all, the amount of time it took to beat this game, is the exact same amount of time to beat any other Legend of Zelda game.

The coolest thing about this game was the giant ocean that stood between each island. It was the biggest empty space ever put into a Legend of Zelda game. It took about fifteen minutes just to get from one side of the ocean to the other. You used the King of Red Lions, your ship to help you navigate. The ocean was so big, but luckily you had maps and this really annoying fish that popped up everywhere helping you, giving you hints and helping you navigate. From what's been said, Twilight Princess will have a Hyrule plain as big, if not bigger than the ocean. Though this ocean drove some crazy, it pulled the game together and attached one place to the next. This game would not have been the same without it.