Watch nine minutes of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2

Nintendo has put online a nine-minute gameplay demo of the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past successor for the 3DS.

When US Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime announced the successor to A Link to the Past in yesterday's Nintendo Direct announcement, we got to see a small snapshot of what the game will look like.

It looks pretty great, actually, for the small snippet we were shown. The game, set in the same Hyrule as A Link to the Past, will have an all-new story, new powers and abilities, new dungeons and new puzzles. However, even though the game had been made 3D, it manages to retain the look and feel of "classic" Zelda — as if the design team had simply filled the artefacts with air, like blowing up a balloon.

Fils-Aime mentioned that the game wanted to make use of the 3D capabilities of the 3DS, and to that end, there are puzzles and dungeons that make full use of the screen — puzzles that involve three dimensions of space, rather than two, and areas that have a real sensation of depth.

To that end, Link has a new ability: to become two-dimensional, slipping himself into walls to solve puzzles and access new areas. It looks like the kind of fun and genuinely useful dungeon reward we've grown to expect from The Legend of Zelda titles, not just a gimmick to make the game look fresh.

If you weren't convinced by Fils-Aime's announcement and the footage contained therein — or if you, like us, are simply tremendously excited for the new title and want to see all you can of it — Nintendo has now released a gameplay video on YouTube showing nine-and-a-half minutes of glorious Link action.

In it, we see Link fighting classic foes, such as Mini Moldorms and Hardhat Beetles, and solving classic puzzles, such as raised blocks and moving platforms — but also using his new abilities in interesting and exciting ways.