Wind Waker Blows Europe Away

The masterpiece that is Zelda finally arrives on European shores... complete with a €5m marketing budget.

Nintendo Europe today announced that Zelda: The Wind Waker will be hitting European stores on May 3, with a marketing budget of €5 million - already in full swing, and including TV, print and online advertising, plus limited editions for retail.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

TV advertising will target kids with a 30 second execution via terrestrial and satellite channels including Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Fox Kids, GMTV & ITV. The creative captures the epic nature of Link’s quest to save his sister and fuses live action and animation. Print advertising will comprise of single page ‘coming soon’ executions followed by DPS 'out now' executions running over 2 months from April in specialist gaming publications and kids press.

The online campaign will run over 6 weeks and feature multiple creatives designed to appeal to both kids and avid gamers. Executions will include banners, eye-blasters and a microsite. A specially built microsite will also carry a major online competition where entrants will be invited to be creative with Zelda.

At launch The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, will be sold as a limited edition 2 disk set, containing the game disk and an additional bonus disk, containing two additional games available for the first time on GameCube: Ocarina of Time and Master Quest.

To boost sales, Nintendo are also releasing a limited edition Platinum GameCube Zelda Pak priced at around €199.99, available from launch day on 3 May. Over 1.1 million units have shipped in the US so far, so naturally Nintendo are expecting big things for Europe with the release of the game and the platinum GameCube bundle as well. We'll let you know how the sales go, if it proves interesting.

John Gold
Was blown away by Wind Waker too.