i laughed at someoen saying FPS have evolved

ha how?  more weapons?  improving camera and control?  they didn't evolve, golden eye and call of duty are the same damn thing.  you get guns and you shoot each other in multiplayer

and what the hell si with people wnating ZELDA to change.  yes it can s FPS did improve things that need to be improved or fix things.  but change? 

zelda is zelda, if you want zelda to be something else its NOT zelda. 

Basketball has its rules and is played how it is.   if you change it, it no longer is basketball. 

zelda is about its adventure, exploration and puzzles.  anything else is a spinoff like mario tennis is

Zelda in no way qualities as a roleplaying game, or a quasi roleplaying game series. With the exception of one particularly early game. Which by the way is my favorite. That hasn't stopped a legion of Nintendo fans who actually want Nintendo to hit all its bases from proclaiming that it is such. The fact that most concede the point now is good, but you can still see the undercurrent in this thread by people who just haven't given up the ghost. Anyway even to this day it seems that the point has to be driven home.

Speaking to the games themselves it is a legitimate gripe in regards to stagnation. They aren't evolving, and they are just barely being tweaked. Nintendo does not evolve its series, and while that may play at the heart strings of purists it is still a formula for slow death. Zelda is fairly antiquated, and only the polish, and name recognition keep it going strong. This is a good game series, but what I don't understand is why people aren't upset that it isn't showing massive improvement with each new outing. Shouldn't weaknesses in the series have been addressed by the point. 

For those who are confused by Malstrom's "Zelda used to be a RPG hybrid!" statements, he presented this old Nintendo Fan Club newsletter from 1987 as proof that Nintendo marketed Zelda in the early days as an adventure with arcade-like action and RPG elements. Malstrom may be an old fart but he lived through an era that most of us didn't and this gives him a unique perspective on things (I had a NES but didn't own one until 1992 and I was just a kid, I didn't follow the industry like Malstrom did.) This is why I love it when people track down old articles and videos related to gaming and uploading them on the internet.

Nintendo Fan Club Newsletter: http://www.tomheroes.com/images/ebayfunclub.jpg (which I found in this post: http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/email-my-zelda-experience/)

Read this sentence from the last paragraph of the Nintendo Fan Club Newsletter: "It has the fast action that you'd expect from a ARCADE hit, along with the depth and advanced ROLL (sic) playing of personal computer games."

I do agree with Malstrom that the killer apps should be made. But it might be problematic if every single Nintendo game is made to appeal to the mass market because this could lead to gamer burnout. EA pimps out their EA Sports "franchises" (a very dirt corporate word) every single year but is that really working for EA? Last I checked EA is losing money. Something is definitely wrong with EA's formula and if they don't correct that problem, then some execs really need to be fired. And EVENTUALLY gamers are going to get tired of Activision releasing Call of Duty every year. In the long run, you're better off spacing out your killer apps than milking them to death. It's hard to create successful new IPs so the last thing you should be doing is killing them off.

I'm not being sarcastic or facetious when I ask you this question.  What series over 10 years old spanning at least 3 iterations has demonstrated the proper model of evolving?  I can't think of any off the top of my head that are any different than the evolution of Zelda over time.  I'm ready to be enlightened.  It just seems that everyone has problems with Zelda and nobody has good solutions.

I have 2 problems with Zelda and one of them The_vagabond7 nailed it perfectly. If you already know what the game will be about, there's no surprise nor interest in playing it. I love Zelda but Nintendo needs to change things a bit, different story, items, weapons, I don't know! Wind Waker and Twilight Princess had new elements, but still you get the feeling "been there done that".

Now my second problem with Zelda was with the change to 3d. For me Zelda has always been about adventure and exploration, I loved in Link to the Past to explore every corner, lift every rock, cut grass, crash with every tree, to discover new things. Literally you could travel through all the map in a matter of minutes.

Because of the nature of the 3d, this is very difficult to do, it can take you several minutes to move from one place to another, and if you want to explore every corner it may take you hours! Ocarina of Time was perfectly balanced because the world was not that huge, but in recent games the world is so big that is frustrating, boring, tiring to do it.

I find myself exploring less because of this and at the end it feels a very linear experience.

^^^not much a solution but a suggestion, how about change the setting??? This simple change can give the illusion of it being different, that modern day Zelda mock up looked cool

@soma  hours of exploration, and it feels linear to you??? FF13, that was linear, i dont want to be an ass, but IMHO if your too lazy or tired to explore all of Hyrule then thats on you and not the game designers, if anything the games have become less linear

What you're saying is actually wrong in many ways, not even opinion for example, the story telling in each game is great if not better than most others, (The legend being portrayed in many ways) the action (although somewhat basic) is amazing the fact that you need different items to defeat different enemies is great, and the lineararity you say is an issue, well I don't see any lineararity going on as many people may get lost in a dungeon or have fun doing side quests, point being what you're suggesting is well wrong and if I had to guess you probably haven't truly been envoloped into a zelda game.

i love how the fact that it seems in most games its link versus ganon in saving zelda that somehow the story is the same

thats not true at all.  thats like saying every chess game is teh exact same cause the same pieces are used every game.

also ha at someone saying cause a game is too big to want to explore it all they didn't, THUS teh game is linear.

and whats with saying linear in dungeons. there is some linearity, but you coudl do them in a different order if you wanted to some extent.  and besides hasn't that been around since day 1 for zelda.  to get into this area you need said item, which you don't have.  just becaue you find said item near another dungeon doesn't mean you CAN'T ignore that dungeon and go back to the place you were.

Only complaint i have for zelda's is, I want MORE optional gear/equipment/spells.  you know like in ocarina where you got ice arrows, or biggorons knife, ect.  stuff that you DON'T need at all to beat the game, but you can use and they help

@Umos-Cmos

I would say the series your looking for the Grand Theft Auto series. Need I say more?