Skyward Sword Has Gone Gold

Nintendo has confirmed that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has gone gold. To those that have no idea what that means, I will explain: There are generally 3 phases in a video game development cycle: Beta, Alpha, and Final, sometimes referred to as Bronze, Silver, and Gold. In the beta version, the game will play very similarly to the final product, but may not look exactly the same, sometimes looking incredibly differently.

Screenshot from the beta version of the game once tentatively titled Zelda 64

The reason a beta version doesn't always look like the final product is when a new game engine is involved and the developers are figuring out how to backwards engineer the engine for a new type of game, which was the case with Ocarina of Time, which used the exact same engine as Super Mario 64. In these cases, it is more important for the game to play like the final product rather than look like it.

After the beta version comes the alpha version, or the silver version. In the silver stage, the game looks and play exactly like the final product, but may differ in menu icons, button configuration, and of course, glitches.

Alpha version of Ocarina of Time, showing the reversal of button configuration between B and A, a different map in the bottom right, and a "Whip" action command instead of "Faster"

Once all the bugs have been worked out and other tidbits have been worked out, the game goes gold and is officially ready for release, which is the stage Skyward Sword is in. So why does Skyward Sword still not have release date? Because Nintendo is busy translating the game to English! Nintendo is being awesome and they will have a simultaneous worldwide release for Skyward Sword, reportedly to avoid spoilers from breaking. Nintendo has been very careful in what they reveal about the game's story, giving only small details, the biggest of which are considered that Zelda is not a princess this time, Link travels to the Siren Realm where he cannot use a sword, and the name of the spirit of the Skyward Sword is Phi.

Best Buy listed the release date to be in September, and at this point, that is looking incredibly likely.