Wind Waker HD to 'greatly simplify' Triforce shard-hunting process

Quick! What do you think of when you remember your time playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker? Pretty graphics? Cat-eyed characters? Or the sheer tedium involved with completing the Triforce of Courage?

Toward the end of the game, The Wind Waker asks Link to track down all eight pieces of the Triforce. To find these shards across the game's vast ocean map, you need to first find the right Triforce Charts — which are also strewn across the game's vast ocean map — then pay Tingle the fairy a mess of rupees to have him decipher the charts for you. It required lots of sailing around and (for many players) a lot of boredom.

Not so with The Wind Waker HD, the Wii U remake first showed off at the E3 show in June. According to a preview published in this week's Famitsu magazine, the new version — in addition to extensive GamePad and Miiverse support — will "greatly simplify the Triforce shard hunt that unfolds in the endgame." Exactly how it does so the preview doesn't explain, but Famitsu does mention one new timesaver — a new item, a red sail, that lets you zoom around the seas at twice the normal rate.

The Wii U remake is coming out Sept. 26 in Japan and before the end of the year elsewhere.