Not to turn into Did You Know Gaming, but did you know that Link used to be left-handed? Ever since his introduction in the originalLegend of Zeldagame for the NES, Link held his sword in his left hand and his shield in his right.
As a left-handed person myself, I always thought it was really cool that there was a character I loved who was like me, who also had the same experiences of struggling to use scissors properly, knocking elbows with right-handed people at dinner, and enjoying a higher on-base average percentage when playing baseball.
Okay, I’m not sure if Link has experienced any of those things, in fact, I’m certain he hasn’t done that last one (unless they play Octorock Ball in Hyrule), but if he hung out with me as a kid, he certainly would have.
Unfortunately for left-handed people everywhere,Nintendoswitched Link to be right-handed in the mid-2000s, and he’s stayed that way ever since. Don’t worry Link, I won’t forget who you really are, even if everyone else has.
The Legend of Zelda: Lefty To The Past
Link was left-handed untilThe Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princessreleased in 2006. As Nintendo put more focus on motion controls with the Wii, the company needed to come to a consensus on how most people would engage withthe Wii remote. Twilight Princess was a cross-generation launch title for the Wii, so Nintendo made Link right-handed for the Wii version of the game since 90 percent of the population are right-handed, and the swinging controls would feel weird for them with Link holding his sword in his left hand.
Oddly enough, the GameCube version of Twilight Princess still featured Link as a left-handed person, but, for whatever reason, Nintendo didn’t use two different models for the different versions, instead opting to simply mirror the entire game. It’s a bizarre choice, certainly, but it got the job done and showed that Nintendo was committed to keeping Link as a left-handed character.
That commitment, however, dried up by the timeThe Legend of Zelda: Skyward Swordwas released. Nintendo didn’t provide a left-handed mode, even with the game’s heavy focus on motion controls, making Link canonically right-handed for the first time in the series. Maybe Link having to switch hands explains why the motion controls in Skyward Sword are so clunky and terrible. Link has been right-handed in the mainline Zelda games ever since with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Who Even Notices This Kind Of Thing?
It might seem like an odd thing to care about, especially if you’re a righty (AKA, normy), but being left-handed comes with a whole slew of minor inconveniences. It seems silly to say, but there are universal experiences that come with being left-handed that 90 percent of the Earth’s population won’t understand. So, whena character in a popular video game or movie is shown to be left-handed, left-handed people notice.
It’s a small form of representation, but one that matters to people like me. It’s always fun to notice that Ned Flanders from the Simpsons orSephiroth from Final Fantasy 7are lefties. That said, with all representation, it can be a little complicated. It’s not always a celebration when a character is shown to be left-handed because, as is the case with those two examples, left-handedness is often used in media to show that a character is untrustworthy, not like the protagonists, or just flat-out evil. What makes having a character like Link so cool is that he’s the hero of The Legend of Zelda, and his left-handedness is never used to portray him in a negative light.
It’s kind of a shame now that Zelda games have ditched the motion controls, Link hasn’t gone back to being a lefty. I still have hope that he might eventually reclaim his left-handedness once the current canon established in Breath of the Wild ends because Nintendo hasn’t completely forgotten that Link is a lefty. He was left-handed in the Switch remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and was left-handed inThe Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Notably, he was left-handed in the first Hyrule Warriors game, but was right-handed in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.
Despite the inconsistency, I think it’s clear that Nintendo is still interested in making Link’s left-handedness part of his character. A potentially unintended consequence of having Link switch things up all the time is that that’s a very common experience for left-handed people. Many lefties identify as ambidextrous since we’re forced to do many things the right-handed way and often opt to learn right-handed methods in our free time since it makes life less of a hassle, even though it feels unnatural to us.
In my headcanon, Link was forced at some point to learn to fight right-handed from a strict sword master who had no interest in teaching a left-handed person differently (another common experience for us). Little did that sword master named Nintendo know, left-handed people have an advantage in sword fighting. Let him hold his sword in his left hand, Nintendo. I, and the rest of the lefties out there, know it’s holding him back.
