As Friday dawned, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released worldwide, kicking off the day with a bang. To many’s surprise, some bosses in Japan are also gamers who were eagerly awaiting the launch, so much so that they gave their employees a “Zelda Holiday“, or short breaks to enjoy the game without any pressure.
The cultural impact of the sequel to Zelda: Breath of The Wild is immense.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a lot to offer, as the beloved hero Link returns to the highly explorable land of Hyrule. One of the most anticipated releases of the year, the latest installment in this almost 40-year-old franchise features over 100 hours of gameplay and will surely keep players around the world busy for many weeks.
A curious case of this is that, apparently, many employees have taken “Zeruda yasumi” (“Zelda vacations“), paid vacation days with the express purpose of playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on its release date. Yahoo Japan reported to Japan Times that even the president of a company had happily approved his employees’ leave to play the new Zelda game.
This may be a sign that, when such popular games are released, it is common for several employees to prefer playing to working, regardless of the circumstances, and thus companies prefer that employees use their legal vacation days instead of seeing how they skip work and call to say they are sick.
Since companies know the old tricks of pretending to be sick or doing the bare minimum at work, it’s better to give them the vacations they haven’t used and save themselves the trouble. Plus, those who aren’t glued to their Switch consoles are flooding Twitter with fan arts, live stream links and much more.
Photos of themselves grabbing physical copies of “Tiakin” (the preferred Japanese abbreviation for Tears of the Kingdom), creations by various artists on social networks, monstrous creations within the game itself, among many other things.
Not only that, but thanks to the “Zelda Holiday” the official Nintendo stores in Tokyo and Osaka receive loads of customers who also want items branded with Tears of the Kingdom, such as t-shirts, ties, art booklets and much more.
If we add to this the draw for The Legend of Zelda-themed items at participating Lawson stores across Japan, Nintendo’s biggest game launch of the year will be a huge success.
About The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom:
In addition to the vast lands of Hyrule, the latest installment of the legendary Legend of Zelda series will take you to the skies! We hope that Link’s huge adventure will start again when you land on the new adventures in Tears Of The Kingdom.