During today’s Nintendo Direct, it was announced that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is due to hit the Nintendo Switch on July 16, 2021. And thank whatever deity you pray to that it will offer traditional button controls. Well, sort of.
Fans had been expecting Skyward Sword to land on Nintendo Switch for a while now, but one question remained: How would the Switch handle the game’s infamous motion controls? I held my breath in anticipation of an answer to this troubling question.
I was sitting on the edge of my seat as they discussed motion controls, which will now be assigned to the Joy-Cons, much the same way they functioned using the idiotic Wii controllers. My already-mild excitement quickly turned sour as it started to look like this would be the only way to play this new HD version of Skyward Sword.
But then I was able to breathe freely and rejoice, for I heard the utterance of these words:
But, we’ve also made it possible to play the game with button controls to ensure it can be played in handheld mode or on the Nintendo Switch Lite system.
This comes straight from the mouth of series producer Eiji Aonuma. I’m not making this stuff up, folks.
Of course, because this is Nintendo we’re dealing with here, even a more traditional button-mapped control scheme would still come with a quirk; instead of using X or Y to slash Link’s sword, the player will instead utilize the otherwise useless right analog stick to sort of flick it, à la Skate.
Flick the right analog stick down; Link slashes down. Flick it right… well, you get the gist. And although I would still prefer using face buttons to fight, I suppose this is still much better than having to waggle my arms around just to play a frickin’ Legend of Zelda game.
Man, do I hate motion controls.
You can watch the full The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD announcement video below.
