Last time we saw The Legend of Zelda's Link in a proper console adventure was 2003's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. He was just a wee lad back then, barely taller than the shield he wore in the stellar Ocarina of Time. The elfin hero of Hyrule is coming back in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and this time he's all grown up.

However, it's apparently taking Link a little longer to mature than expected. In what could be the most disappointing delay to fans rabid for a sequel since Bungie's Halo 2 was knocked back a few seasons, Nintendo today announced that the Twilight Princess will miss its original ship date of 2005's holiday season.

Not much more to the story than this. I've come to believe that the quality of videogames (like any other software, really) is directly proportional to the amount of testing that they undergo and the degree of interaction between the testers and the rest of the development cycle. I've played many games in which it was glaringly apparent that the developers cut corners on testing to hit a ship date and the gameplay was resultingly poor.

On the other hand, there were a number of occassions in Wind Waker where I managed to do something really weird and the game did something reasonable. And it made me smile because I could tell that it had been well-tested. So I wholeheartedly support this delay.

New Zelda won't see Twilight 'til 2006 - GameCube News at GameSpot