Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s coolest new feature is named as a tribute to Nintendo’s pre-gaming past

We’re in the midst of a fairly exciting time in video games right now, where the history of gaming is such that there can be exciting looks back as well as leaps forward.

I’m not talking about remakes and remasters here, either – I’m just talking about those silly little winks and nods that just add texture to the culture of a medium. Things like when you hear the Wilhelm Scream or Tarzan Yell in TV or film; a nudge in your ribs with a knowing grin. For a long time, gaming generally felt too young to embrace this sort of thing, but now we have enough history behind us that it’s becoming delightfully more common.

One company that’s been able to do this more often than most, however, is Nintendo. Founded 133 years ago, Nintendo’s history stretches back long before Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to take a punt on digital games, with a history making real-world toys and playing cards. It follows that occasionally Nintendo dips back into that history for a reference or two – and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a delightful new one.

Tears of the Kingdom aims to build on its predecessor, one of the best games of all time, with systems. Breath of the Wild already had great systems that interlocked and interacted in weird and wonderful ways, and so the team behind its sequel appear to have decided to just stack more and more atop that. You can now combine things, and craft in a more tactile way than just through a menu by physically mashing objects together to create more powerful weapons, vehicles, or other tools.

In a new video presentation demonstrating the gameplay of the hotly-anticipated sequel, one particular thing caught my eye: the name of one of these new mechanics.

The ethereal grip that Link can use to grapple items out in the world and mash them together is known as the Ultrahand.

For those who know their Nintendo history, this name will be familiar. No, it’s not some esoteric NES peripheral or some weird hunk of plastic you clipped a Wii Remote into… it dates back to those dark ages, before video games.

The Ultra Hand toy was designed in the 1960s by Gunpei Yokoi. He created the first prototype of the toy in his spare time as personal entertainment. Yamauchi spotted it and saw its potential as a mass-market toy – in turn launching Yokoi’s career. It’s fair to say that the Ultra Hand is therefore a hugely important part of gaming history, as Yokoi went on to give us the D-Pad, Game & Watch, and Game Boy, was instrumental in getting Shigeru Miyamoto’s Donkey Kong greenlit, and produced titles like Metroid and Kid Icarus.

Naming this feature of Tears of the Kingdom for the Ultra Hand makes perfect sense, too. In-game, Link uses the Ultrahand ability to grapple larger things from a distance and wrest them into place to be combined. The Ultra Hand allowed you to stretch out and grapple things from afar, and even shipped with balls and stands – the idea being you’d have to perfect using the toy to pick up the colored balls and place them onto the correspondingly colored stands.

The Ultra Hand has shown up in Nintendo’s games before, though to my memory mostly only in a visual form. It crops up in WarioWare and Animal Crossing, and even as background decor in Mario Kart and Splatoon 3. But aside from its appearance as a decoration in Animal Crossing, I think this is the first time this iconic piece of Nintendo history has had its name attached to something contemporary.

And it’s a tribute that’s fitting for the late Yokoi, who was sadly killed in a car accident in the late nineties. His breakthrough career-launching Nintendo work, immortalized in one of Nintendo’s most important games ever. It’s a wonderful little tribute to Nintendo’s history – and one of its most important employees ever.

Thanks to Before Mario for the image of the Ultrahand box art – you should go check the amazing blog out!