Phantom Hourglass: Stylus controls

The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass will make extensive use of the DS touch-screen, with Link performing three different sword attacks depending on how you swish your stylus. He'll also leap or run to distant areas you poke at, while walking toward closer places you touch.

These morsels of control info come from Japanese gaming mag Nintendo Dream.

Our recent previewof the game hints at other controls (like nautical combat) however the only release we have so far is the Japanese street date June 23. We're likely to have quite a wait, so in the meantime we've been thinking up some new stylus features for Link's latest adventure:

1 Swatting away bothersome dialogue
While most of Link's fellow villagers are charming, sometimes even the nicest of neighbors can get tiresome. We'd love a feature that enabled you to swipe away a whole conversation, especially one you've heard before, animated by Link waving his hand at the speaker as if to say "Skip to the end..."

2 Graffiti artistry
Ideally, we'd like to write "Ganon is a big girl's blouse!" in ten feet high letters on the side of his palace. But we'd settle for being able to leave marks and directions in labyrinthine dungeons, to save us valuable wandering time through the winding corridors.

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.