I see the Switch 2 everywhere I go. When I put off going to the doctor due to cost, it reminds me of Switch 2 Welcome Tour, something else which should absolutely be free. When I consider buying expensive concert tickets, I have to remind myself: Andrew, you could break the bank to see The Weeknd live… or, for roughly the same price, you could buy a couple Switch 2 games. And when I return to old Nintendo games, I now find myself wondering how much better they would play on the Switch 2. In these times, I've found myself turning to The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and wondering how well the hidden gem's best tool would translate to the newer hardware.

I know what you’re thinking, “Dude, it’s been two days.” Well, I do a lot of pondering.

I'm rapidly approaching the end of Spirit Tracks and just got introduced to a tool so good I can't believe it hasn't appeared in a Zelda game in 12 years (that's when it was featured in A Link Between Worlds, which is also a great game, but I completely forgot it was included in that one). I also can't believe it isn't routinely topping lists of the greatest Zelda tools ever (or lists of the most important innovations since fire and the wheel). Okay, now I'm overselling it. But seriously, the Sand Wand is extremely cool.

Walk Sand, You Don't Have To Play DS Tonight

So, here's how it works. When you have the Sand Wand equipped, tapping any sandy area of the screen will cause the grains to rise up in a pillar. And, wouldn't you know it, the Sand Temple is full of sand to use it on. If you come to a sand pit, for example, you'll sink down into it if you jump in. But if you draw a path first, you can safely walk across on the sand, now as a ground level.

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You can also raise the sand above the ground while you’re standing on it, creating elevated paths to reach ledges that would otherwise be inaccessible. Raising sand has other uses, too. The temple is filled with spiky rolling pins that will bowl Link over if he stands in their path. But, if you raise some sand, it will stop the roller in its path. The best part? The rollers are only spiked on the edges, so you can use them as bridges once they're stopped.

Nintendo finds some more interesting use cases for the Sand Wand later in the dungeon. At one point, you find a room where there are slots in the ground for a blue pyramid and a pink oval, and corresponding shapes jutting from nearby cubes. You can maneuver the blocks by using the sand towers to flip them. Learning to use the Sand Wand this way pays off in a cool dual-screen boss battle against a skeletal snake. You can use sand as a shield to block the boulders it sends speeding at you, but that's optional. You need to use it to guide those boulders to a hammer/catapult device that you can activate to shoot the boulders back at the boss. It’s good stuff.

An Elegant Weapon From A Less Civilized Age

As cool as this is, using the stylus to do everything — as the DS Zeldas required — can be tough. I died multiple times during one section that asked me to raise the sand in a pit and then quickly run along the resulting bridges before they disintegrated— all while avoiding projectiles. It kinda sucks to do this on a DS, without the option to maneuver with a thumb stick or D-pad.

But, with the Switch 2’s new control scheme, I could see the Sand Wand working particularly well. In her Metroid Prime 4: Beyond preview, TheGamer’s Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley talked about how effortless it felt to use the console’s new mouse feature in concert with the control stick on the left Joy-Con. It’s like playing a PC FPS, but with the ease of a joystick replacing the weirdness of WASD.

I can also see this working well for an updated take on the Sand Wand. Imagine it: you control Link with the left Joy-Con, while using the Sand Wand with the mouse. It would make it so easy to draw paths in the sand, use the sand as a shield, and maneuver cubes and boulders with the sand towers. Will Nintendo ever return to this idea? I don’t know. All I know is that it’s too good a tool to only be locked away forever on old hardware.

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