In speaking with Nintendo, the Japanese play testers (who, remember, had not played the game before) took no less than seventy hours to complete the game, it was claimed. Seven. Zero. Note that this was a straight play through, not bug testing. Twilight Princess has some meat on her bones.

I asked how long it took Nintendo' s testers to complete the entire game the first time through. The answer is a whopping 70-plus hours. Adding insult to injury, diabolical Nintendo translator and localization manager Bill Trinen told me that he was working on his second play-through of the game. Knowing what to do and where to go, and skipping cut-scenes, Trinen said that he had logged about 27 hours to make it about two thirds of the way through the temples themselves - and that doesn' t account for any of the side quests or time sucks like fishing, a single operation that could easily add hours upon hours to Zelda' s depth.