Best Wii U news so far just happened today

[A Black Falcon]

Well, when I played WW, I died exactly one time before the final boss... in comparison, I died 70+ times my first time through OoT, dozens of times at least in TP, over a hundred times in LA or the Oracles games, etc... and the last time I played OoT again, I did die sometimes again, so it's not just that I first played OoT in '99. And I haven't died a lot in SS, but it certainly has happened sometimes. For me, WW was orders of magnitude easier than the other games -- I simply did not die while exploring, or in the dungeons, or what have you. I only died at that one boss, where I accidentally wasted my fairy right before the boss and then didn't know how to fight it (the sandworm thing, I believe), and then at the final boss, because he was actually challenging. And that was with me refusing to use the "A" button attacks through like 99% of the game, too.

I don't know exactly why WW is so much easier than the other 3d Zeldas, but it is.

All of those things are true (though the SNES eventually overtook the Genesis later on), and history worth pointing out. I was just pointing out how we as consumers saw things back then, with no historical context available to us at the time, and how that affects our views of what launches "should" look like.

That's true, but I think the context is important...