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and the Zelda universe itself. In their way, the fans who debate the connection of the Zelda games are as legitimate an interpretive community as any other, even if the universe they explore cannot be said to have a single unitary designer’s vision at its core. By bringing their different perspectives to bear on the worlds, the fans create and refine interpretations that better fit the model of the Zelda world that they have jointly constructed. This too is a part of the Zelda experience.

To interpret Zelda, the community must come together to use the same ways of thinking that they used to beat a particular game to explain the games. Beating the videogame is training for beating the hermeneutic game. When Aonuma announced that he sided with the “splitists” in his Nintendo Dream interview, he wasn’t merely explaining what the Twilight Princess story line is. He was adding another puzzle piece to the mix for fans to put together into a picture of Zelda world themselves. When he spoke, he didn’t act as an author delivering an unchallengeable interpretation. He acted as game creator and added another puzzle piece to the interpretation game. His pronouncement changed the relative simplicity of the two sets of explanations for fans, but only because his pronouncements are considered by fans to be one element of the interpretation game. (Incidentally, the same applies to the quote by Miyamoto given above: its importance stems from the fact that as a game designer his comments are also a part of the meta-game surrounding each videogame. The comments do not work to impose an interpretation on us, but rather they are clues that suggest a new solution.)

Zelda demonstrates that a work need not have a single author with a unitary vision in order to have meaning. Meaning is the product of a group of people working together for some common end with common agreement about the sorts of things that count as evidence, principles, and progress towards the end, but disagreements about the best interpretation that unites it all into a whole. What the Zelda fan community does is to create a deeper and richer experience by investing meaning in the games they seek to explain.

Level 5

Time and Space in Hyrule

10

Three Days in Termina: Zelda and Temporality

LEE SHERLOCK

We might say that as a series, The Legend of Zelda, and perhaps all of us players too, have an obsession with time. A simple glance at the history of titles indicates how central the idea of time has become to the series: for example, A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and The Phantom Hourglass.

Endless debates rage among fans over the proper chronology of the series—which Link killed what villain in what order? Are there two parallel universes containing two distinct timelines? It’s enough to make a Hylian’s head spin.

This is made all the more confusing when the games toss away the idea of linear chronology. In The Ocarina of Time, Link opens the Door of Time leading into the Temple of Time, with an assist credited to the Song of Time (see what I mean about obsession?). The result is that the player skips ahead seven years to find an “adult” Link ready to take on the causes of sage-freeing and Ganon-battling. After Ganon’s dismissal, Link goes back in time to return the Master Sword and happily discards those tacked-on seven years of age.

I’m most interested in looking at a Zelda game that makes no reference to time in its title but offers the most to think about philosophically in terms of time and temporality: Majora’s Mask on the Nintendo 64. Majora’s Mask is the spiritual successor to Groundhog Day, only Phil Connors is played by Link instead of Bill Murray. Before you start groaning, let me pitch it this way. Link has a measly three days to save the land of Termina from certain doom and destruction. This destruction is threatened by the Skull Kid, who is trying to force an anthropomorphic, deranged-looking moon to crash into Termina. Sound better than Punxsutawney Phil? I thought so.

Eternal Recurrence—It’s