Nintendo sold Zelda: Ocarina of Time to me. I’m selling it to my kids

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Hi there!

Welcome back to another week on The Game Business. The major games are starting to come out now (GTA is next week!), and so stay tuned to The Game Business on how these titles performing and, importantly, what they’re doing to console sales.

Plus! We have interviews with Minecraft developer 4J, and two big indies tell us why they’re daring to go up against GTA 6.

But that’s for later in the week. For now, I’m going to analyse Nintendo’s marketing strategy for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. And give you a round-up of what’s been going on during a busy week for the industry. Enjoy!

Playing the long game: Generational nostalgia is Nintendo’s secret weapon

I really like the musician Meat Loaf. I’m not making some sort of shameful admission here. I genuinely do.

Technically, he was a big artist when I was young. His seminal 1993 epic Bat Out of Hell II landed when I was around eight. But like a lot of fans of the Meat, that isn’t where my admiration began. It was the 1977 iconic classic Bat Out of Hell.

I wasn’t around when that album came out, but my dad was. He was a teenager at the time, and it was one of those records that defined his youth. He played it often while I was growing up. Most vividly, I remember listening to it on the weekly drive to Scouts. I could sing along to every word of Paradise by the Dashboard Light, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad, and the title track itself… not that I knew what exactly I was singing about (thankfully).

Just last week, You Took The World Right Out Of My Mouth came on my playlist, and when it finished, my four-year old said he loved it. And the cycle continues.

Nostalgia is contagious. My dad listening back to his favourite album turned it into one of my favourite albums. My wife really loves the Disney Robin Hood movie, which came out 12 years before she was even born. And that’s because it was her mum’s favourite Disney film.

I’ve been thinking about this dynamic with the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. Nintendo hasn’t positioned this game at modern fans. It isn’t pitched at the Breath of the Wild crowd at all. It is aimed squarely at me. The Google ad that turns the clock back to 1998, the UK TV spot matching the exact beats of the original N64 commercial and the pre-order incentives offering replica cardboard N64 boxes… all of it targets the people who were there the first time around. It targets me.