Oh I feel myself skipping down memory lane. It's a long skip. Especially after seeing Mr. Excuuuuuse Me Princess! That is one of the most unattractive Link pictures yet. Ha! I have yet to believe he is truly Link either. More likely a doofy evil twin. Oh the hi jinks and the banter. x_x
Unfortunately I grew up on hand held consoles so I know little about the platform games. But I really conquered Link's Awakening in my day, due to the fact that it and Tetris were the only two games I owned. So who's up for a 50th beating of Link's Awakening? Ha. Childhood was sweet.
Age of Oracles was decent, but I always compared it to Awakening. My own fault. However, I really do recommend Phantom Hourglass (PH) to all DS lovers out there. It is a different type of game control due to the stylus feature, but I really enjoyed playing the dungeons and reading the hilarious conversations between some of the characters. Spirit Tracks I am still slugging through. I really don't think the quality is on par with PH. The humor is lacking, the story is shallow (as in there isn't much there), and I don't care for any of the characters. I still like solving the dungeons, but that's the only thing that seems to have held up from its previous title, PH.
Wish I had time (or money) for the bigger platform games. And curious: has anyone actually beaten the first Legend of Zelda? I tried, with two other people once, and we gave up on the 5th or 6th dungeon. Ha! Those early games are brutally hard. We have it much easier today, and with very pretty graphics. But come on, who doesn't love 8 bit graphics! It's not detail that matters, it's the heart (and the awesomeness of a two-frame animated gif).