Take my word on this: There's something incredibly sleazy about playing The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and 3D Dot Game Heroes back-to-back. It's basically like going on a comfortable date with your long-time girlfriend, taking her home, and then sneaking out to spend time with some crazy stalker chick who dresses exactly like your girlfriend in order to catch your attention. And you've been dating your girlfriend for 20 years and you really like her, but after all that time you can't help but feel like your relationship is getting a little stale and predictable. And the stalker chick is a lot younger, and specifically styles herself to look like your girlfriend did back when you were in junior high and she was the class hottie who you thought was way out of your league -- plus, the stalker adds an extra touch of daring, modern sexiness that your girlfriend never would even consider, conservative and modest as she is. And you feel kind of guilty about it, but --

-- actually, you know, let's start over. I'm straining an analogy that wasn't very strong to begin with, and someone's going to get hurt. In simpler terms, 3D Dot Game Heroes wants to be a Zelda game. And not just any Zelda game, but the original NES Legend of Zelda. You control a little hero in a top-down world where you can only swing your sword in cardinal directions, battling through more than half-a-dozen dungeons scattered about a vast overworld in a quest to reach an evil overlord who lives at the peak of the northern mountain range. Along the way, you'll collect a boomerang, and bombs, and faeries, and money, and accidentally blast open hidden doors where the residents insist you pay them for the door repair charge. It's not so much that Heroes wears its influence on its sleeve as it is that it butchered the original Zelda, skinned it, and started wearing its skin as clothing.