In the years since The Legend of Zelda's 1986 release, director, producer, and co-designer Shigeru Miyamoto has described the game as an attempt to replicate what he felt during childhood explorations of the countryside outside of Kyoto, Japan, where he was raised. In making the first installment of what would go on to become one of Nintendo's most beloved series, his foundational memories of inspecting foreboding caves or happening upon unexpected lakes provided a framework for what would become a global sensation. Three decades later, when a team at Nintendo sought to rethink Zelda's design ethos after years of working within an increasingly calcified format, its members returned to that first game and its sense of free-spirited exploration for inspiration. The result was 2017's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which, more than any series entry before it, imparted a feeling that players were wandering an expansive fantasy world as awe-inspiring and invigoratingly dangerous as the mental landscape of a great childhood adventure. Breath of the Wild tweaked the past games' more confined environments and gauntlet of clockwork puzzle levels--dubbed "dungeons" by players--by offering a sprawling landscape dotted with smaller, discrete challenges broken up by long periods spent simply figuring out how to climb mountains or descend into far-off valleys.

When the release of a new blockbuster title is imminent, most gamers will want to play the game as soon as possible--and now two men from Japan became criminals in the process. This is what happened when they couldn't wait for the release date of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The case became public through a report by the Japanese website Shūkan Bunshun. The two men, aged 21 and 24, whose cases took place independently but at the same company, devised a plan to get their hands on the new video game before its official launch. They successfully applied as subcontractors at an Amazon subcontractor, and started work a few months before the release of the Zelda game.

For the average player, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will take upwards of 50 hours to beat--that is, complete the game's main storyline and save Hyrule. For regular players, conquering Tears of the Kingdom is all about diligence, patience, and creative crafting. For speedrunners, it's about using every tool at their disposal to push the limits of what the latest Zelda will allow. Theirs is a game of strategy, where each player is competing against themselves to work faster and smarter. The first to claim victory, Carl Wernicke, who goes by Gymnast86 online, hails from the US and set the record for his community with a time of 1:34:33.

In September of 1982, a young engineer named Thomas Zimmerman filed a patent for an optical-flex sensor mounted inside a glove. The mitt would measure the yaw, pitch, and roll of its wearer's forearm and the bending of their fingers, a useful way to transpose a person's movement onto a screen. Seven years later, a commercial version known as the Power Glove launched for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The technology was simplified and styled to look like a knight's gauntlet, to which a video-game controller appeared to have been inelegantly glued. While wearing the glove, a player could throw a punch from the sofa, and watch it land in an explosion of pixels behind the television's glass.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is perhaps the most anticipated addition in the popular series - and it's easy to see why. The epic earthy adventure takes gamers to new heights by literally spanning across both land and sky to uncover the secrets in the kingdom of Hyrule. Much like the predecessor Breath of the Wild, gamers step into a world of discovery and exploration, but now hero Link is given the ability to harness new powers. These new abilities allow our protagonist to fuse together a variety of objects to build vehicles - from cars to rafts, gliding jets and even hot air balloons. One gamer even recreated a Trojan horse for Link to hide inside and avoid enemies nearby.

The release of a new Zelda game is always a major event worldwide. Ever since 1986, when famed Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto first attempted to capture in code some of the wonder he experienced exploring the Kyoto countryside as a child, Zelda games have been pushing the boundaries of what's possible in virtual worlds. Look at any best-games-of-all-time list and you'll see Zelda in the Top 10, often more than once. But 2017's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was particularly special. Launching alongside the Nintendo Switch console, which has since sold more than 125m units, it was perhaps the best realisation yet of the promise of boundless freedom and adventure that video games have been dangling in front of players' noses for decades.

I first encountered Link's work when he was a temporally displaced preteen in 1998's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He had finally unlocked the inner sanctum of the Temple of Time and seized the hilt of the mythic, Excalibur-ish Master Sword. A wreath of blue light circled Link's feet, shunting him seven years into the future. Link left the temple as a grown man, with a post-pubescent voice and a chiseled jawline, to discover that the bucolic lands of Hyrule had become twisted and malignant during his absence. Vacant zombies roamed the newly befouled farmers market, the royal castle had been demolished in favor of a Sauronified citadel, and the volcano painted against the skyline (called, yes, Death Mountain) roiled with portentous, tectonic energy.

It's a huge week for news: Google I/O happened, and we finally got a close look at the Pixel Fold and the company's latest AI plans. Engadget Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham also joins to discuss his review of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the follow-up to one of the greatest games ever made. We also chat about Nintendo's confirmation that it won't be announcing any new hardware until next year, and the perils of chatbots serving as the latest avatars for Hindu gods in India. Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments!

The denizens of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are waiting for me to save Hyrule, but I've been slightly preoccupied. A generous breakdown of how I've spent my time so far is something like this: 5 percent on main storyline, 10 percent on side quests, 85 percent on deranged, barely working experiments--like a little kid glueing Legos together. I haven't been a particularly proficient builder. I attached a rocket to a tree trunk, thinking I could magic-carpet myself across the map; I flew off the back immediately. I created what I thought was a sort of "air raft," trunks with fans on every conceivable corner to hover me away; it was as effective as a handful of helium balloons.

If you've read the reviews of Tears of the Kingdom before picking it up, you may already feel slightly overwhelmed. Can you really make weapons out of anything? It is a huge game, and though it does a decent job of easing you in, there's a lot to absorb. So to make your first five or 10 hours with the game go more smoothly, have a read over this preparatory guide. You begin Tears of the Kingdom on an island in the sky, as hero Link, who has just had all his power stripped away.