I considered making this post quite broad, about the minor races in Zelda and how they can’t always show up in every game but they’re always there. But frankly typing too long makes my back hurt and my fingers cold. So I’m just going to explain my theories/backstories for the nationalitites of three minor characters from Twilight Princess! You know you love it! Officially, these three ladies are “references” to other races in the Zelda series, but I’m here to tell you why they are definitely members of these races, and thus prove that those races are still alive and kicking in Twilight Princess, and perhaps other titles, despite not being prominent.
You know these three are linked because their establishments are all in a line on the south of Hyrule Castle Town, and they each have a distinctive three-dot tattoo under each eye. My theory does not cover the tattoo, I feel that’s just an indication to the fans more than anything (how hypocritical of me to ignore a detail rather than rationalising it… fine, they belong to the Castle Town Minorities Club, it’s just the three of them taking tea together on Thursday afternoons; membership requires face markings to be applied).
I first learned from Zeldawiki that the three represent three races that are not present in the game as a whole, but are important to Zelda mythology and so they are essentially easter eggs or something like that. More meaningful than those three fangirls outside the Tingle-guy’s tent who resemble the Oracles/Goddesses. Or the Tingle-guy himself, for that matter, as his demeanour and motivations are very different from Tingle, except perhaps the acquisition of Rupees. Enough sidetracks!
Fanadi is the fortune-teller. You know, the one with the obnoxious and forced backwards-masked (somewhat fourth-wall breaking) chant? Yeah, the one you never have to use because the objective in Zelda games is always pretty obvious. Maybe the heart piece finder is useful, but I never felt the need for more hearts than I naturally found.
Anyway, the middle dot in her tattoo is purple (Sheikah are linked to the Shadow Temple and dark magic). Her eyes are red, like most Sheikah that we know of in the games, Impa for example. And, most tellingly, she has the Sheikah eye symbol tattooed on her forehead. Self-explanatory really. The Sheikah are an ancient race, sworn to protect the Royal Family (although it has been hinted that this has not always been in the case, and they have been linked to the Dark Interlopers who became Twilight Princess’s Twili). Fanadi’s role as a mystical fortune teller fits with the secretive and mystical nature of the race.
Just to make this clear, none of these characters is specifically referred to as being a member of these races. But we can connect the dots ourselves. Fanadi is the most obvious, with her third eye tattoo. She’s not actually the only Sheikah in the game, though (not counting the Twili who are possibly linked). Impaz, the appropriately-named old lady in the Hidden Village, also has the red eyes and connection to Old Kakariko, not to mention the significant name which is called out as a reference to a historical figure. Now despite my premise, the Sheikah do not have a strong numerical presence in the series as a whole, but they are very important to the mythology. Their symbol is very common, and Impa as the most prominent individual has at least three confirmed Sheikah iterations, as well as one or two who are not confirmed to be Sheikah. So in a way the appearance of another member of this reclusive race is more important to the overall series.
Telma owns the bar that is a major plot area of the game, and is helpful and sympathetic to the restoration group which meets there. She is also, by virtue of several factors in her appearance, a Gerudo. Her main dots are red, and her red hair and dark skin are distinctive of the all-female desert race. She also sports a stylised Gerudo symbol on her apron (squint, it’s there!). The redesigned symbol, that is, not the original OoT religiously insensitive Islam symbol.
She’s interesting in that she is the only Gerudo in a game that even includes the Gerudo desert by name. That’s not including the ubiquitous Ganondorf, of course, who is their rightful king, as the once-every-100-years male born to the tribe. Supposedly they survive by visiting Hyrule Town to find men. So my theory goes that on one of these conjugal visits she liked the town so much she stayed and opened a bar. She seems interested in Kakariko’s shaman, Renado, but he resists her advances. Why she didn’t move to Kakariko I don’t know, too boring probably.
As for the rest of the race, I believe they live outside the explorable area of the desert, probably avoiding the beasts and creatures of Twilight that may have come from the Arbiter’s Grounds in a slow incursion unnoticed by Hyrule proper until the Twilight invasion during the events of the game. They are certainly still alive and out there, as they appear later in Four Swords+. Apart from their appearances in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask though, they’re fairly scarce in the rest of the series. The witches Twinrova and Ganondorf are rogue members of the race, and I theorise that General Onox of Oracle of Seasons is the next 100-year male after Ganondorf, or perhaps the one after that. His resemblance to Iron Knuckles which in OoT and MM were Gerudos in armour, and the Gerudo symbol on his chest suggest this to me, along with his allegiance to Twinrova.
Lastly, and most tricky, is Agitha. She has the appearance of a young girl, and lives in a house that has a tree growing in it. She desires the company of shiny golden bugs and enjoys frolicking in the fields. She wears green, has blond hair, and has a green dot under her eyes. She is obviously a reference to the Kokiri, a fae race of forest creatures with a childlike appearance. But how is it possible that she is one, living outside the forest? She is the hardest to reconcile of the three.
It is said that there are consequences for Kokiri who leave the forest. The nature of this is unclear. Here is what we know about Agitha: unlike most Kokiri, she has no fairy, but she appears to have grown a tree in her house. She has a normal Kokiri-type appearance, albeit with different, more detailed clothes. She seems overly obsessed with bugs, and seems detached from reality, with a strange manner of speaking.
So let’s try and explain her. We don’t see any deep forest natives in TP, only Skull Kid, monkeys, and the people of Ordon Village. But I see no reason for the Kokiri not to be out there. We do have a precedent in Wind Waker for Koroks (the Kokiri’s descendants) to attempt expansion of the forest by seeding saplings in other parts of the world. This would explain the tree in Agitha’s house. Alternately, she may have planted it simply as a requirement for her survival outside the forest. She seems slightly mad, either a side-effect of being a semi-magical creature outside of her natural habitat or the result of trauma, resulting from the loss of her fairy. Her fixation on shiny insects must stem from this loss of her lifelong companion. Let’s pick one theory then.
Unlike in Wind Waker, the forest is not dwindled or under threat, so expansion is not a priority. Agitha must have gone rogue after an accident involving her fairy and some monster in the forest. She had a breakdown and fled her home, eventually finding herself in Castle Town. As an apparent orphan, she was taken in by an elderly couple. Not knowing what she was, they took care of her and clothed her, giving her things that made her comfortable, such as bugs and a sapling in a pot. Eventually they passed away, while she remained in a childlike state. The tree that eventually dominated the home kept her stable, a small piece of her forest home to hold on to. She now seeks out shiny bugs in an effort to replace her lost friend, and maintains her nebulous existence in Castle Town, not knowing what she’s doing half the time or why but maintaining the grace and kindness of a child of the Deku Tree.
I did have a theory that the Kokiri were gone and their fairies spread to other forest dwellers such as the Ordonians, hance Link’s Cursor Fairy. But I think now that fairy must be Navi, being unique to Link, and the notion of the Kokiri being dead is just too sad. It also implies a bit more happiness for the tragic Timey, who became estranged from Navi.
Well I think that satisfactorily explains those three. I always try to make things make sense, and turn little nods and references into full-blown fanon. If you have any doubts or questions, reply to this post and I’ll try to address it. Thanks for reading!
Very busy week. Seems like I’ve been spending more time looking at E3 stuff than playing games. My impressions over all are pretty similar to most people, I think. Microsoft was awful and the Xbone looks like a bad thing for gamers. Sony was boring as those two usually are but had some impressive rebuttals to Microsoft. Nintendo was perplexing (3D Mario and Mario Kart 8 look pretty but the gameplay and other choices are questionable), mind-blowingly exciting in parts (Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze and Smash Bros trailer including Mega Man!), and covering old ground in other parts (third party and indie stuff, and their other games).
I am so happy about Smash and new DK, but I keep getting more disappointed with Wind Waker HD. No new OR restored content, Tingle Tuner removed and replaced by an admittedly interesting implementation of Miiverse. It seems like the only thing they added were new item button options and a “go fast” button on the ship. You really need more than that to make the Triforce quest not boring to people (I didn’t mind it, I liked the ship). The Tingle thing was the last straw to me. There you are with all these control schemes and one has a screen on it, just like the GBA! You show the GBA-GCN connection in the trailer! Then you just cut the whole thing out to tack on a feature you can access any time with the Home button. In its original form, the Tingle Tuner was an interesting way to get a second player involved for an “asymmetric” experience. Well Nintendo, isn’t that your magic Wii U word? Ridiculous. That turned me off, and I think not restoring the content they planned but had to scrap for development constraints in the original will lose others. And rightly so, what’s the point of a remake if you remove content? All the other Zelda remakes have had an extra dungeon or a Master Quest (except BS Zelda, which was actually smaller, but the graphics were leagues better). Anyway enough Zelda ranting.
So excitement! Donkey Kong looks simply amazing, and I squee’d like a fangirl when I saw Dixie. Other details like the level archetypes, the cool new baddies, just how nice it looks, and the coup of securing David Wise for music are making it shape up to be a must-have for me. For the baddies, the worst case was getting Tikis back, we all wanted Kremlings back, but this third option is intriguing. A rumoured fourth character is also cause for speculation and interest. Another great piece of news about this is Miyamoto’s supposed lack of involvement! Great stuff! Keep your meddling hands off, Shiggy! In case you don’t know, he enforced the weakest mechanic of DKCR, the blowing. He also ruined Sticker Star :’(
And Smash. What can I say, I knew I was going to get both versions even before I knew anything about it. Mega Man is the best news, even if the reveal was spoiled by the Wii U’s eShop front page, which is where I went to watch the Direct. I’m drinking in every little detail that leaks out, and loving it.
I don’t think I need to say anything about all dem Mario games. That’s what the masses are drooling over, I just think they look bland. Good thing for Peach to be playable again, but why Blue Toad not proper Toad? Sigh. Dream Team looks good, still haven’t decided about that one.
I approve of the strategy Nintendo has been easing into, with regular Directs instead of blowing a massive load once a year. So E3 will get less relevant, to me anyway. But enough E3 rubbish. What have I had time to play?
Since I haven’t written in a couple weeks, a few things actually. Did I mention I finished Doodle God? And I’ve completely sworn off Rockman Xover, haven’t touched it since. So on my phone I’ve opened up Lego Harry Potter 1 again to complete it (it’s quite easy once you’ve unlocked the automatic spell caster thing). Good times, the handheld games seem to be a little more baked than the console ones. Having said that, I have fallen through the world several times and had a few crashes. Ok I guess they’re not too different. ;)
Since my SNES died, I tried emulating Yoshi’s Island to check how hard those Super FX graphics are to emulate (rumoured to be the reason YI is not on the VC). Turns out Snes9X handles it perfectly, Nintendo is just lazy. I did notice it seemed to run fast, then I realised I was emulating the 60Hz American version, rather than the 50Hz Pal one I was used to. No big deal though. I then went though the GBA remake, also emulated. If you recall, I got to the second-last boss before the SNES stopped, so I still had a bit of game to go. Plus the Advance version has a new set of secret levels, and I don’t think I ever originally unlocked the first set on the SNES version (too hard for my childish skills). It’s inferior in a few ways. First, the sound effects they added (voices for Yoshi and Shy Guys) sound out of place, and others are modified and lack the impact of the original. Second and more importantly, the screen is much smaller while the sprites are the same size, which is a huge bummer. It’s harder to see hazards or items you need to get, you can’t take in the environments as much, it’s a very claustrophobic experience. But hey it’s Yoshi’s Island, the quality shows through and I really want to get to those extra levels.
On the console front, me and the wife started a new co-operative game. Lord of the Rings: War in the North got our attention as a sidestory to the main events of the books/movies. It interests me as an example of the Western action-RPG genre that is so big now, and also as a local two-player game whose difficulty can be toned down, in addition to the lore and universe stuff. It’s really good for both of us, me being kinda new to the type of game and my wife being, well, “not a gamer” per se. We’re playing on easy and both loving it. Setting up a game is tricky and unintuitive but the menus in the game are quite good. The gameplay is pretty standard I think, but that LOTR touch makes it engaging. The cutscenes are quite uncanny, in the “Uncanny Valley” sense, but at least I can give my guy a sweet mustache and customise his hairdo. (I’m the ranger btw, Everbloom is the elf mage). It’s one of the things the PS3 has allowed me to enjoy, which I appreciate. You can’t be a Nintendo fanboy forever (well, you can, but I found some other things that are good too).
And that’s about it. I’ve got some posts on game series and lore and fan theories and stuff in the works, as well as some scanlations ticking over in the background. So er, expect posts in the future on this blog. Thanks for reading!
I’m taking a break from refreshing E3 speculation sites to write a blog post. Who cares about new games when we have great old ones we can still enjoy! Well, Twilight Princess is only 6 and a half years old, but it is (kinda) 2 generations ago now. I got this game for my birthday, from my older brother. At the time I was trying to decide between it and Skyward Sword. The contrasts are interesting, but not something I’ll go into here as I’ve developed something of an irrational aversion to that game, for a large amount of small reasons. Having not played it, I also imagine the worst about the experience—a mechanism that helps me cope with not owning and playing every game I lay eyes on. On the other hand, here’s a game I have played: Twilight Princess, and I did enjoy the experience.
Approaching this game as I did probably gave me a very different set of expectations to those players who seized it brand new, full of expectations and concerns about the direction of the franchise and the new hardware that the game had been accommodated to (it was developed for Gamecube originally, then ported to Wii with added motion controls and released simultaneously on both). I mentioned earlier that my first impressions were occuppied with the jagginess of the visuals. That’s one factor of revisiting slightly older games that were still striving for what has arguably been executed better since with more experience. However, it is true that this quickly becomes a non-issue as you play and adjust.
In fact, it’s the most realistic Zelda that exists, as I believe SS went back a bit on the cartooniness spectrum. Not that that’s a bad thing, but being of the generation that reveres Ocarina of Time, the increased fidelity of the world and the detail were very helpful to the immersion factor. I’m sure Miyamoto would say the motion controls helped too.
Since I bring it up, the comparisons with Ocarina of Time are inevitable and apt. I think since its phenomenal success, so groundbreaking and different at the time, subsequent 3D Zeldas have spent perhaps a little too much effort trying to recapture it, and in popular opinion this one most of all. I think though that there is enough to make it unique while being in recognisably the same world, the balance was struck very well here.
Where to start. How about the shipping, get that out of the way. While Wind Waker mercifully avoided it, this game embraces pairing Link up with different gals over the course (again, like OoT). Ilia, Zelda, Midna, oh and Hena too. The ambiguity and the confusion was very well summed up in the final sequence, though. This didn’t carry through too much in the game, though. A very tricky problem, developing relationships in a subtle and effective way through gameplay. I must admit though, I did have a little fun filling in the blanks in my mind. I haven’t made up my mind about it one way or another, which is for the best I think. I prefer not to be a rabid single-minded ship captain.
Now that I think of it, the game did a pretty good job conveying emotions most of the time. They worked hard on the faces to bring that through, and it really helped. There were a lot of memorable characters, like the Resistance for instance. They even had a few scenes actually doing stuff, although to me these brief cutscene-only events only served to highlight how static they were functionally. Still, it’s a step forward.
While playing I was helped by reading stuff on zeldawiki or elsewhere, about connections, small details, or fanservice-type stuff. By which I mean it helped with my appreciation of the world I was inhabiting in this game. Knowing that the Yeti mansion probably belonged to Ashei and her father; or the fact that Fanadi, Agitha, and Telma were references to the Sheikah, Kokiri, and Gerudo races despite those races not being represented much otherwise; these facts had me making connections and thinking about the world when not playing the game, which was fun and good. I thought up backstories both for the absence of those races and the presence of those individuals, for example. I’ll tell you all about it sometime.
As for the game itself, it made a good use of motion controls, I thought. You didn’t often have to be too precise, and I wasn’t resentful of the requirement like so many seem to be. I actually prefer it for aiming, which most of the subweapons required. Oh, with one exception (aside from curse you, ROLLGOOOAAAL!!!): thrusting the nunchuck to shield bash never worked for me, it doesn’t work. I always did the spin attack instead. That made some of the sword techniques seem useless, a factor also contributed to by the difficulty in scoring hits on some of the tougher enemies. Fighting them just wasn’t very fun when you only have one or two techniques you can use. Link’s vast array of equipment he always amasses makes it seem like you might have options, but often they only have specific uses which makes half of them seem like junk most of the time.
So the enemies weren’t that impressive, although I liked the Twilight versions. Dubstep birds, I called those Twilit Kargorocs, because they made unearthly sounds when attacking. It was a cool effect, and the visual effects were cool too. Slight tangent here, the pacing of the whole game was a little strange, with the twilight areas being resolved pretty quickly and then a long time without them, and then… oh I don’t know. And the wolf’s abilities weren’t utilised for a long time so i forgot about them. Well, I’m rambling so let’s talk about one of my favourite aspects: the dungeon design.
Specifically, some of the dungeons were absolutely awesome, a couple were a little bland. I loved that after so many Zelda games that had “X Temple” these ones were very flavourful, tonally internally consistent but not externally consistent and just explored some interesting concepts in ways that made a lot of them seem fresh. Of course, again living up to OoT, the Water dungeon (Lakebed Temple I think it was called) was poorly designed and frustrating. But the Snowpeak Ruins just blew me away. It’s an actual mansion, and there’s Yetis squatting there, and you get the map from the Yeti, and there’s snow coming in through holes in the roof! The presentation really impressed me, it felt so natural. Ok this paragraphs a bit all over the place, let’s start a new one.
No wait, I’m not done gushing. Going through those doors in the ruins of the Temple of Time into the sepia-toned splendour of the ancient Temple was breathtaking. The Hyrule Castle courtyard had a great sense of scale, even if it was annoying to get around. The City in the Sky had chicken men everywhere! Meeting the Gorons in the mines was great! Anyway most of the dungeons were great. Great everything is great!
Oh let’s whiplash back to a huge negative which I’ve mentioned before, the money. I was too often at max Rupees and putting them back into chests. There wasn’t enough to spend them on and they gave you too many in a too-small wallet. Other games since (and even before) have spread out rewards with treasures and other stuff, and more things to buy. I feel like the Magic Armour was added later to suck up some money that you always have. I liked seeking out hidden treasures and stuff but too often the reward was just more Rupees I didn’t need.
Anyway next thing. Oh there’s no more next thing? Wrap up? Ok. Well there’s certainly a lot to say about Twilight Princess, I haven’t even mentioned how cool Midna and Zant are as characters yet (super cool) or how the concept of the Twilight stuff is introduced so well but kind of peters out while you’re collecting Mirror Shards, then jumps right back (part of the pacing thing I mentioned earlier). It’s also interesting to examine it as part of the greater Zelda series, but I don’t feel I have the space to do that any more justice. Suffice to say, overall I feel it’s my favourite Zelda yet. Ok, I say that about a lot of games I finished recently but this game is damn good. It takes lots from Ocarina but also brings in so much new stuff, and it does both of these very well. If you loved Ocarina and let’s face it, everyone does, this is great as a follow-up. Ok that’s enough. TP gets 3/3 Fused Shadows, 4/4 Mirror Shards, and one flustered chicken from me.
I already posted once this week, but some more things cropped up and I just couldn’t wait! Firstly, I beat Twilight Princess. I’ll talk more about that in a bigger post but I will say something about how I finished. I got through the disjointed final boss battle not long before having to leave the house. Consequently I had to pause the Wii (Home button) while the final cutscene was playing. Then I got home too late to watch it, so had to leave the Wii on like that all night. I started it again in the morning but only had a little time before work so had to pause again. So the Wii was on, paused during this cutscene for over 24 hours. I found it amusing. But now that’s done, and I did all the sidequests too so I can move onto something else.
I’ve been forgetting to play Rayman for a few days this week. Well, I made up for it today and also found out the range on the WiiU Gamepad. The big thing was you know, you could play games on the toilet or in bed by carrying this thing away, depending on your house size and walls. Well, those factors in my particular apartment mean it loses connection if I take it to bed. It took me a long time to figure this out, apparently I’ve never tried til now. It got all choppy too.
I have now totally given up on that horrible Rockman Xover. The real final straw was when a sudden prompt splashed up to seemingly get an instant stat increase for premium currency. It’s that awfully cynical game design that makes the game broken and unplayable unless you pony up cash. Not the right way to do the freemium model. But lots of people have talked about that so the important thing to me is that I kicked the habit. Who knows what I’ll do with this freed up time?
Well, one thing I tried was Angry Birds Friends. I’ve played and loved all the Angry Birds iOS apps. There’s lots more web apps and flash versions and stuff but I’ve covered the main bases. Generally, I found Space a big let down but loved Star Wars. The Seasons updates tend to be the best. So this one gives you a small set of levels each week and encourages competition with your Facebook friends. Problem is none of my FB friends play it. The other problem is the friends sidebar and the power-ups menu slam down into your playing area each time you attempt a level, including restarts. This is distracting, obnoxious and gets in the way both of the playing area and of the fast-paced experience of Angry Birds that involves trying again quickly when you mess up. The power-ups thing is a larger problem that has spread through all of the versions of this game: it’s the freemium model again, insidiously trying to suck money from casual gamers. Hey, buy these things to make the game super-easy! Buy some more now! I find it offensive, and it’s becoming so widespread in so many games. DESPAIR
Ah well there’s still cool games that you can just buy and play, like Spirit Tracks. I just beat the Fire Temple, I’m kicking through the plot and saving all the sidequesting for later. Woo!
Oh yeah, I’ll just talk a bit about board games. I’ve been to two separate board game nights in two days. One was unexpected but both were fun. The first one I didn’t know the majority of the people but managed to have a fun game of Dominion with the people I did know. I had vague memories of that from my uni days playing games at the Spot with my Spot friends. That’s where my Milo name really stuck. Good times. Then I played 7 Wonders with the people I didn’t know and managed to win quite well despite it being my first time. Only got those two games in between pizza and going to the wrong end of town initially due to faulty directions.
Second board game night was shorter, a last minute change of plan after some domestic disturbance (misbehaving baby) had left our hosts unprepared for the usual bible study. Also we were down a few people, so we put it off for a week and played Cranium and King of Tokyo. We love Jesus but we also love board games (although this is the first time this has happened, usually we love Jesus more ;) ). Cranium is a normal people’s board game, ie. I’ve played it a lot with my family. Our hosts are the aficianado type though, with the German games and all, but for some reason we went for that and it was fun. Boys vs. Girls. Afterwards, we learnt King of Tokyo which is an odd but fun little game where you play as Kaiju type monsters destroying Tokyo. It was designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic the Gathering, a game I am very familiar with. He’s a good game designer apparently. This one was good too, like Yahtzee but with a ton of mechanics added on. It somehow manages to stay simple and engaging though.
So that was video & board game talk. Hey if Idle Thumbs can get away with talking so much about board games, so can I.
Hi everybody! I’ll get the sad stuff out of the way first: this week my SNES bit the dust. My beloved childhood friend, this dusty old console. It was a little unreliable even then and these past few weeks getting it to start has been touch and go. I figured out to wedge that wedding invitiation in the cartrdige slot to ensure contact, but now, for some reason, it seems to have died entirely. I was booting up Yoshi’s Island in the evening (after playing it a while during the day) to show my wife the Raphael the Raven fight (very memorable), and it just futzed out. On the title screen the sounds started making low groanings and repeated watery sounds. I reset to find that all three save files had been wiped. After that, repeated resets just gave a black screen, freezes on the title screen, or a garbled green mess.
I guess the poor thing’s time has come. I still hadn’t got a chance to play multiplayer Tetris & Dr Mario one last time. I take solace in the knowledge that SNES games are oh so easy to emulate. I think we have that pretty much perfect now, and it also allows you to find the best version of the game from different regions and revisions, and apply mods if need be. There’s no hardware or controller issues either as the control scheme is so simple and digital. I still feel a sense of loss, though.
So what else has been going on? Well, I’m nearly done with Twilight Princess. Yesterday I clocked the Palace of Twilight and the Cave of Ordeals. And I’m powering through Spirit Tracks too. I think there’s some interesting comparisons to be made there. Perhaps later, but for now I will say I like the currency system of Spirit Tracks much better. Finding random different tresures around the world is more fun and satisfying than just rupees everywhere. Especially since I quickly reached the maximum rupees in TP, whereas in ST there’s also a lot to spend them on, with quiver upgrades, heart containers, potions (which I use more often in that game), more minigames, etc. Too often in TP I find myself opening a chest, having to put the rupees back because my wallet’s full, then equipping the Magic Armour for 10 seconds to drain my rupees, because I don’t want to leave unopened chests. That’s not good.
I haven’t played too much else due to a staff retreat that took a lot of my weekend. I tried to play Spirit Tracks on the way there on the bus, but there was so much background noise that the microphone was constantly triggering, and I was up to a bit with heavy microphone use and flute playing. So I had to stop. I’m also reading the first volume of Akira Himekawa’s Ocarina of Time manga adaptation, thanks to an awesome birthday present of the Himekawa manga box set—10 volumes of Zelda manga in English. So great!
Really struggling with titles here. Oh well. Kind of a slow week too, but there were a few big highlights. I was occupied for some of the time with seeing friends and family, so that was nice. In terms of games it was more of the regulars such as Rayman and the same iOS distractions.
However, I did coax the SNES into life several times to play one of my all-time favourites, Yoshi’s Island. I think the supertitle is stupid and misleading so I never use it. It holds up. I do notice some slowdown now and then, some frames dropping that I’m sure I never did before. The level design and so forth is something that I’m also more aware of as a mature gamer with analytical skills, and it’s really good in those terms. (I’m also following along in my playthrough with Reed’s (or Rodanguirus’s) excellent analyses on nintendo3dsdaily.com.) References to other Mario games are also there, while as a child this was pretty much my first Mario game without that context. I still loved it then and I love it now. It’s a similar feeling to my BC Kid experience, my muscles remember everything. Playing the game for me is literally child’s play. It’s one of the reasons the DS sequel was fun for me, familiar mechanics but new levels and harder overall. And while that sequel was somewhat lacking in execution, this is very polished.
An amusing side effect of me playing this game is a large wedding invitation sticking out of my console. You see, the plastic is a bit loose on the old thing and the cartridge isn’t always in contact with the, er, contacts on the interior necessary for the thing to function. So it has to be wedged forward slightly to ensure it works, necessitating a physical card stuck behind the cart. I might try this for future games too, might not need so much blowing and reinserting.
So that’s fun and I’d really like for my wife to see why these games I loved are great. Perhaps nostalgia is too big a part, or maybe she’s not enough of a gamer, but she’s not too interested. Can’t blame her really. I’m not one of those people who gets annoyed if people don’t like the same things I like. But I do like to show her anyway.
Speaking of that, and something I forgot to mention last week, we did find a game that we love playing together. We regularly play Little Inferno and Royal Envoy 2 on her iPad, and also Puzzle Agent until we finished it. This week we were having a go at Botanicula, which has such a great atmosphere. From the makers of Samorost and Machinarium, which I think I played with her help. This time she initiated it and controlled it for the most part, with me looking on and making suggestions, etc. It’s really the way adventure games were meant to be played, or it seems like it. Many of the challenges are not skill-based, so it works. Often adventure games do seem to include arcadey segments, and this was no exception. That was my time to shine.
So the game looks and sounds fantastic. It’s chock full of unique, weird little characters that you briefly interact with. Some let you progress, some just do a weird thing and you move on. The sound design is adorable and really imaginative, with all sorts of quirky musical and sound effects. I’m coming up with lots of adjectives here to say that it’s a really imaginative indie game, basically. As for the game, it’s a point and click adventure game. Very similar to their previous ones I mentioned earlier, especially Samorost. Your character is a party of 5 little plant people, like a seed and a mushroom and stuff, each with their own skills. You just click around and stuff happens. It’s great! It’s got a rich world and a recognisable story which is told completely non-verbally. Anyway it’s very compelling and it was gratifying to be able to play it together.
What else… I started playing Spirit Tracks. The latest Zelda game, apart from that silly Wii one. Just kidding, I’m sure Skyward Sword is great! Spirit Tracks is… quite different to most Zelda games, which is a good thing. The DS games are like a totally different thing, not 2D Zelda, not 3D Zelda. Completely touchscreen controlled, which is well executed I think. The dungeons are quite short, and have a few large rooms instead of many small rooms. The enemies have started getting more interesting and the items are cool too, although I’m glad I have the boomerang now and don’t have to keep blowing all the time, it was making me dizzy. I thought the game itself would be short, but I had a peek at some stuff on the Internet and was excited to find there was more to the game than I thought, I think it will start opening out a lot more soon.
It’s just great to see the formula shaken up a bit. Zelda as a series is quite rigidly formulaic, so it’s the standout games I love the most, like Majora’s Mask. Twilight Princess is good too as I’m playing it, who knows what hindsight will bring though. Having said that, this game apparently closely follows the formula established by the other DS game, Phantom Hourglass. But I haven’t played that and there are only two, plus this one apparently does it a lot better. Anyway I really like being in that Zelda world but having a whole new way to interact with it, by tapping things and the trains and all that. The setting started out a little boring actually, with the empty-feeling castle and town, but I really warmed to it once I found the Anouki guys in the snow area, they were well written and I liked the forced interaction. I also look forward to meeting people in other lands, such as the Gorons, and fleshing out this world of New Hyrule in my mind.
Well that’ll do for this week. I seem to have followed my plans from last week pretty well, but I kinda forgot about Run That Town and I didn’t have my friend over, I met him somewhere else. Didn’t make any TP progress either but that’s life. Oh and I still haven’t given up on Rockman Xover completely. Oh well.
I almost wrote weekly update, but I don’t want to commit to any sort of schedule. I played some great games this past week though, so I wanted to talk about them.
Finishing Metroid Prime 3 freed up some console time, but I couldn’t not go straight back to Twilight Princess which I had dropped. Just before the Wii online shutdown was announced, I was really looking forward to doing some fishing, and filling out my fish logbook and Hena’s aquarium. Oh, if I’d only known. Good guides were hard to come by but it didn’t take long at all to get all the commoner fish. I’d already slogged through the trial of Rollgoal to get the frog lure, and I wanted to use that to catch the Hylian Loach rather than resorting to the Sinking Lure. It was one of those situations where I just tried and tried, for over half an hour, then the next day had another go and knocked it over on my third try. Catching the Loach fry with the bobber was then really easy once I found out that they can be found reliably in the Kakariko Graveyard. So all in all it was pretty good, except for the initial long fight with that damn Loach.
Having then completed all the sidequest stuff except the Poes (got all the bugs, sword skills, inventory upgrades, etc) I entered the Cave of Ordeals. Got most of the way through then discovered I arbitrarily needed the Double Clawshot. Frustrating, they should let you attempt it with your skillz and not require the items. So I got on with the plot and went to the City in the Sky. Very cool dungeon, nowhere near the level of the Mansion in my personal esteem though. Having just played MP3, it really reminded me of Skytown, Elysia. Not just the floating city thing but the structure, the Spinner mechanisms, the inhabitants wandering around (in this case chicken people instead of clockwork robots). So yeah, now I have the Mirror of Twilight, I guess I’ll see what the Twilight Realm is like.
To my shock, I realised yesterday that I’d forgotten about Rayman for a couple of days. I guess since I reached the fourth level of Awesomeness, unlocking the Extreme Weekly Challenge (and thus having no content left to unlock) my interest dropped off a bit. It’s still awesomely fun, but by now I’ve identified the types of challeneges they set, and which ones I am super into and which ones are not as interesting. I feel I’ve gotten a great deal out of it, hopefully I can keep playing for a while.
Speaking of games I play continuously, I’m very very close to putting Rockman Xover down again. Almost all of my current rotation of cards are maxed out at level 50, and I’m still almost no closer to beating some bosses. They just introduced a new mechanic that would change the whole way you upgrade cards to get better, meaning a lot of wasted effort and more grinding needed. It’s a good excuse to stop, I think, although I may wait until World 7 is released first (probably won’t be able to beat it).
Also, Doodle God stopped being intuitive when I got a massive amount of elements. Now the only way to play is use a hint and try to do that. It’s valid, I think. I had a go with Tentacle Wars on iOS, it’s a variant of Galcon basically. It was addictive and very fun, until it started just getting too hard. Didn’t take me long to hit my ceiling, but I had to delete it after attempting a level multiple times and the result feeling random.
Speaking of iPhone games, just last night me and Everbloom discovered that (Australians take note) the Bureau of Statistics (ABS) had made a city-planning game that used actual census data. So you pick a postcode, then experience what it’s like to plan new buildings and stuff for the suburb based on the demographics and demand, which are pulled from actual population data. It’s a super-well made game. Like, extremely smooth and professional, looks fantastic. Can’t figure out who made it, if it was internally developed or contracted but man, a lot of companies could learn some lessons from this game. Also it’s fun, it’s educational, and it’s narrated by Shaun Micallef! And it’s free! Good stuff. Oh it’s called Run My Town.
Oh yeah and on the weekend I fired up the Super Nintendo that I’d brought up here. It’s exactly as I remember it, sometimes it just doesn’t start, you blow on the cartridge even though that probably does nothing, you hold it in while you turn it on, it takes a couple tries. I had a quick go with Nigel Mansell’s World Championship Racing, just as boring as ever. Checked my save file on DKC2 was still there, but I’d just played it on VC recently. Actually the first thing I did was went straight to Super BC Kid.
Super BC Kid (AKA Super PC Genjin or Super Bonk… seriously three franchise names for three regions? GAH) was the fourth in Hudson’s popular series that had started in the previous generation. Despite being a mascot for the PC Engine, the little caveman had quickly made the jump to cross-platform as well, appearing on the Famicom and Game Boy. This game was one of the several platformers we had, and I just remembered every level layout perfectly. They were a bit smaller than I remembered actually… My superior gaming skillz got me through much quicker than I ever did in childhood—this game has no save or password function. You have to complete it in one sitting. This marathon nature means we very rarely got to the end back then, either because of dying or parent-enforced stoppage. This time it took me about two hours to clock it, although I pretty much avoided all the bonus stages, as they were unnecessary and slowed down the game (I find this a frequent thing in older games, such as all the Mario ones and DKC1).
I had a blast, the nostalgia and wackiness, the old muscle memory, even some bits I would exclaim “I don’t remember this!”. The second-last boss gave me a particularly bad time, had lots of trouble there. The final one is also an appropriately gruelling test of skill, but didn’t feel as unfair as the second-last. I got through the final platforming challenge super-easily though, with spikes emerging from walls you have to climb, which as a child was very frustration-inducing. It was a great time. The setpieces and settings were really bizarre and entertaining, the type of thing that children just accept but adults go “what??”. So that was cool.
Oh yeah and N was updated after a lot of work to version 2.0 by Metanet Software. During Uni I got a ton of mileage out of that game. The player doesn’t work on my current computer as it’s PPC only and now Macs are all Intel, so I played a fair bit of that. So good, pure platforming and so hard but so satisfying. Yesterday after realising I’d been trying the same level for half an hour, I had to quit though. My hands had all cramped up. Can’t wait for N++ to come out so I can buy it and support those guys. I really enjoy those kinds of games: I got all the way through I Wanna Be The Guy (to my shame, I never beat the Guy), I loved Super Meat Boy except that it kept crashing on my computer, so then I loved Meat Boy until I found my save deleted. Rayman Origins hits that same feel sometimes too, which is great because up til then it was something more indie developers did. Mario is certainly nothing like it (stupid Mario).
Well I think that’s it for now. Hopefully I can wrap up Twilight Princess in the next couple of weeks, and I can get started properly on Spirit Tracks. More Rayman, start Yoshi’s Island on my old SNES, more Run My Town. That’s my plan, we’ll see how that goes. Got a friend hopefully visiting this weekend, I’m planning on a Nintendo Land sesh like I did with my bro. Ok, tata.
After getting a bit tired with my very long reviews, and having to wait until finishing a game to do one, I decided to write more shorter posts. Actually I was inspired by starting listening to a new gaming podcast (Midnight Resistance), and hearing their “what have you played this week” segment. Not really unique to them but I thought: “That sounds fun, I should do that too”.
So this is the first new format post, I’ll probably keep the reviews as well. I don’t know what to call this kind of post yet, I’ll work that out. But enough meta-blogging, let’s do some blogging!
I didn’t mention this in my Metroid Prime 3 review, but I got one (1) reply to all my various queries for PAL Friend Voucher trading. Slicer1000 was a very nice trading partner. Friendly, reliable, and I got my credits so yay! Apparently there were plans on the Gamefaqs board to make a save file with the 15 credits that you can download, so that you’ll be able to unlock the stuff even after NIntendo switches off WiiConnect24. I also realised, thanks to my lovely wife everbloom, that I was doing it the sucker’s way, and that I could transfer my save to the WiiU by SD card, then send myself the vouchers to the Wii. 1) Good point, but 2) it was fun to do it the way they intended, even if the intended way is annoying. What I mean is seeking out other people who love the game enough to unlock the bonus content, using the features of the console (creaky and underutilised as they are), connecting with other gamers. Kind of like this blog, in a way.
Anyway that was cool, but since Rayman Legends Challenges App came out, that has hooked me in completely. At the moment that’s the majority of my console gaming time, while Prime Hunters continued for handheld gaming time. Every day I’m on there, at least until I get a trophy. The one downside to seeing friends and family in my hometown this weekend was missing three days of challenges. It’s so much fun! An issue I see is that it’s maybe not a relevant representation of what the actual game will be like, which the included demo levels are. But what it is doing is very well executed and very addictive (see that Internet, I said “addictive"—"addicting” is not a word). It’s just a great example of what you can do with the WiiU, with the Gamepad controls, the online stuff with NNID friends, etc. It’s super smooth, very finely tuned, looks like a great successor to Origins while fixing some of the issues that game had. Plus, it’s got me to use my WiiU which had been looking a little sad. Now my PS3 looks sad! You can’t win.
Since Rayman has me logging on everyday, I’ve been using the other features more as a consequence. I’ve made friends with everyone on DKVine who’s posted their NNID, I’ve been checking the shop for new releases (eve though I don’t buy any—got enough games for now, thank you), and I’ve been checking out the Miiverse. It’s pretty cool, if a little slow and the interface is a little clunky. Social stuff has never been my strong suit (my friends can tell you that), so I don’t use the thing for that. My favourite part of Miiverse is looking at Juliusaurus’s awesome cool art. Seriously, go check him out. It’s on browsers now. Here you go: https://miiverse.nintendo.net/users/Juliusaurus. The quality of that drawing and the breadth of Nintendo fandom there is breathtaking.
So I mentioned console gaming time and handheld gaming time, but there’s also mobile gaming time around here. I use my iPhone a fair bit for games, although to my regret I have a lot of “proper” games on there that I often pass over for the more casual, throwaway ones. For instance, this week instead of playing Lego Harry Potter 2, Ghost Trick, Carmageddon, or Mega Man X, I fired up Doodle God after its update and had some fun combining elements to make new ones. I finished it a while ago but there’s new stuff now, also at some point I restored my iPhone from a backup and consequently lost a lot of save data. Stupid developers store it in the wrong places, and stupid backup doesn’t backup the right subfolders. Anyway I’ve also been playing my secret shame game, Rockman Xover. Every day. It’s so bad, but I can’t stop! Fortunately, the spell was partially broken recently when I read some comments on how the game becomes impossible after a while unless you buy special items for real money. I think I’m at that point now, and also it revealed to me just how much of a cynical, money-grubbing, dirty-feeling, in-app-purchase-powered free-to-play it is. Think if Zynga made a Rockman game. I hope to give it up soon.
Oh and I had a huge windfall this weekend as a result of said family visit. I managed to convince my brother to let me take away our childhood gaming consoles, our SNES and N64, which to be fair were sitting in a bag in the corner of a room so I don’t think anyone’s going to miss them. I’ve mentioned before how the SNES was the one time my parents got into gaming beyond Freecell and Words with Friends. We played a lot of Tetris & Dr. Mario in the day. Point is, they don’t play anymore and neither does anyone else so I took them to cement my place as a Ninty fanboy. It’s also a good place to play Yoshi’s Island as it was never given the VC treatment. Laziness, I say. But yeah once I work out the connections and stuff I can bring back some sweet childhood memories, and now we have more storage space under the bed to stash them in as well! I’m very happy to have these pieces of history here.
And that’s that so I hope you enjoyed this new format post, I’ll be back soon with some comic news! EDIT: oh the comic stuff posted from my queue before this post, so er yeah it’s below this one now!
A while ago I posted a scanlation I had completed with the help of Caramelman for translation:
http://miloscat.tumblr.com/post/39620620143
Well, that post is obsolete now. I got my hands on some way better scans (higher quality, larger, no watermark), and when I found them I decided to redo the whole release. There were a few other issues I corrected as well, with small typos, some additions to the credits page since I’d also got the original comic’s credits, and a much better speech bubble technique that resulted in better looking speech bubbles. This new blanking technique that I’d discovered also dramatically sped up the pace at which I could do this: doing it the original way all over again would have been a daunting task. As it is, I pretty much breezed through it.
So here, now I present to you, version 2 of the DKC2 comic! I won’t repeat all the background and details, check out my original post linked above for all that stuff. I’ll just link to the new one.
I want to try using Flickr instead of the new Google pictures thing. It seems very good so far. The pictures look a bit small, but by clicking on them to zoom, there’s then a button called View All Sizes and you can see the original. Also for those interested in quality or archiving or more convenient viewing, there’s the cbz file download. A cbz is easy to work with, it’s just a zip file renamed so you can easily extract the images or use comic reading applications (CDisplay is apparently good for Windows, I use Simple Comic on Mac).
This time, both sources use the highest quality pngs exported straight from my working files. Who knows if that is the right thing, they’re a little big but after seeing the text artifacts on my previous jpgs I don’t want to compromise on quality. Also Flickr scales them down anyway so I don’t think size is an issue if you don’t want it to be.
Well, I’m very excited that I was able to improve so much on this comic. If you’ve already read it, it’s basically the same but if you want to reuse it, cut out panels or whatever, it’s now much better for that. Also if you previously downloaded it, delete the old one and get this one. Trust me. Ok here’s some links:
Whew. My big Metroid rush is over for now. Or is it? Tomorrow, the new Famicom sale game is going up on the WiiU and it’s (you guessed it) Super Metroid. I’d been considering picking that up with the last of my Wii funds, but this is much better. Anyway let’s talk about these other two games, shall we?
What’s interesting to me is how many similarities these games have. MP3 was made by the same developers as the other Primes, Retro Studios. It really changed up the formula that had been established by the revolutionary first game and the evolutionary second. It did this not only with its control scheme that made heavy use of the Wii remote, but also in terms of structure, conventions and scope. It’s the first Metroid game with proper voice acting (MP1’s unused spoken intro aside), it involves moving Samus’s ship and travelling to other locations, planets, and even systems, it brings in a large amount of NPC interaction, and it has a dynamic plot. In most other ways it’s an extension of the first two games, but even then a lot of gameplay things were tweaked: stacking beam weapons instead of selectable, the new Hypermode which introduces a different type of strategy to fights, using the ship to affect the environment, and all the grappling.
When I looked into Hunters though, I found it had got there first on a few of these. Taking your ship between different planets, encountering other Bounty Hunters, a redesigned control scheme for new hardware. On the other hand, while it had a lot less suit upgrades, it actually added a ton more weapons, some a lot less useful than others (I’m looking at you, Volt Driver). The two were developed alongside each other for part of the time, and Retro were consulted on many things by the developer of Hunters, NST. But I’m wondering which company had these ideas first, especially the other Hunters and the planet-hopping. In any case, it was cool to play them together as they had these common elements—it also highlighted how different the execution of them was.
Now we could easily talk about how crummy Hunters looks as an early 3D DS game. I looked past that for most of my playthrough—I guess I’m good at ignoring visual shortcomings when I want to (I played on my 3DS for at least 6 months in power-saving mode—not recommended). Just accept that the textures are super-blocky and play the game. There were other limitations on the smaller system though, such as a noticeable lack of enemy diversity and especially boss diversity. The scans were also very laconic compared to its console counterparts. Everything is just a lot smaller in scale, but again the limitations of the system understandably imposed this to some extent (would it have killed them to make one or two more boss designs though? There’s 2 reused 4 times each!).
So obviously the fidelity of Corruption was much higher. The production values were very high for the most part. Perhaps for such a cinematic game, I was starting to see the long-whined about visual limitations of the Wii, but for the most part it looked and felt excellent. Comparing it also to the other two Prime games in such a short time, it was a big step up. I also loved the variety of environments, and how each planet had a completely unique and at some points beautiful visual design, right down to the style of doors giving a sense of place for each area.
Some complaints: Ship Missile upgrades were useless, the final boss battle was underwhelming, and the Wii remote movement stuff was overused in some parts and underused in others. While we’re here, Hunters complaints: too many arbitrary force fields, not enough weight behind the rival Hunters, I got lost a lot.
But let’s talk about some good parts! I loved those two key differences to the other Prime games that these brought: the planet-hopping allowed a more convincing and interesting reason for different environments, and more unique places that gave a more frequent sense of exploring a whole new space; the greater presence of NPCs reduced the usual lonely feeling of Metroid games, but that was still there—more importantly, it gave the world a lot more depth.
Of course, the heavier emphasis on setpieces in Corruption undermined the usual Metroid thing of wandering around, exploring and backtracking. I think they still managed to incorporate those feelings and experiences very well into this new structure, though. The appearances of Hunters randomly in levels also gave a deeper feeling of sudden excitement and peril, plunged back into cool, steady exploring afterwards. So both found very effective gameplay hooks in there while shaking up the Metroid formula.
Speaking of the Metroid formula, Hunters had no Metroids or Space Pirates. Weird. Still, a compelling story with perhaps not enough justification for when there was an appearance of common enemies such as Geemers (how did they come to a whole other galaxy?). In fact, the stories of both games were fantastic (although obviously the story was a lot more “there” in Corruption).
I’m trailing off a bit so once again I will intentionally end my post before I get really out of hand. But I will say, having now experienced all of the Prime series (except Pinball), um it was fun. Sorry don’t know where that sentence was going. I’m definitiely a bigger Metroid fan now. Luckily not enough to feel bitter about the zero 25th Anniversary acknowledgments. It’s just a B- or C-lister now, oh well. But I’m glad I gave Hunters a chance, it was a very neat little game that was an adequate translation of the Prime gameplay to the system. Curruption was a very enjoyable conclusion to the series, easily my favourite of the three at this stage (maybe after replaying I’ll join the prevailing opinion of the first being best by far… not at the moment though). Really, all the added elements made it such a great experience, a real sci-fi epic. I just hope NIntendo aren’t too discouraged by Other M’s reception, and pull their finger out and make some more great games! Give them to the West again if you have to! And Retro, hire more developers! So that’s that, Mission Completed! (If you read this post in under an hour and picked up all of my references, you’ll now see me in my underwear. Enjoy!)
Some gaming papercrafts me and Everbloom made the other day. It was heaps of fun, but some were more fiddly than others. I made Zero, Samus, and Mr Saturn, she made Toon Link, Chibiterasu and this super complicated Japanese-style bridge that she took to work. They come from various sources, nothing beyond simple google searches.
I just noticed now that we ended up with two competing franchise styles from Nintendo and Capcom, as Metroid and Megaman are often compared and Okami took more than a few cues from Zelda. Mr Saturn’s a bonus. ;)
So I’m playing through some games at the moment, haven’t finished any in a while. Loving the Rayman Legends Challenges App too. But I did recently finish watching a Let’s Play of Zelda Four Swords Adventures, or Four Swords+. I can’t decide which title is less generic. I don’t watch Let’s Plays that often, usually just small parts, but sometimes it’s fascinating to go through the complete experience and get someone else’s take on it at the same time.
I had to choose between two here, and ended up going with Goron50’s one—it had the best quality video, he didn’t talk too much and his voice was ok, and he was doing single player so it was easier to follow when he did everything. In single player mode a GBA connection is not required, and anything that would normally be displayed there is but up on screen in a GBA border. It’s an interesting accomadating technique, and made it very easy to follow in Youtube video format, unlike the other LP I considered which had four players and was confusing, especially as only the main screen was shown and not the GBAs. I did, however, switch to ShadowMarioXLI’s 4-player one afterwards, for a look at the Tingle Tower minigames and Shadow Battle deathmatch mode.
As for the game itself, it was actually very interesting to me. It’s often overlooked, not least because of its peripheral-heavy and exclusionist control scheme. It feels like a game not worth getting unless you have 3 friends with GBA connection cables. Goron50 taught me though that the game is perfectly playable with 1, and in that mode it’s pretty similar to other 2D Zelda games, but with a very different stage-based structure. You can’t help but feel that you’re missing out on all that the game is trying for, though. Seeing parts of ShadowMarioXLI’s run showcased a lot of shenanigans and fun co-op/competitive tension—not to mention those two whole modes that require multiplayer.
Speaking of missing modes, the Japanese version included, in addition to Hyrulean Adventure (the main mode, in which a post-TP Child Timeline Hyrule has to deal with the scheming of a reincarnated Ganondorf releasing Vaati and numerous “Shadow Links”) and Shadow Battle (a multiplayer competition, with coloured Shadow Links fighting amongst themselves), a third mode called Navi Trackers (originally intended as a standalone game called Tetra’s Trackers). As the beta title suggests, this mode is set after Wind Waker with Tetra and her pirate crew playing a treasure-hunting game with Link, who apparently and without explanation has split into four (even he seems confused about it in the intro). This mode supported multiplayer and single player against Tingle, and featured voice acting, including Tetra and other NPCs voicing a customisable substitute name made up phonetically of two morae (ie characters). This is speculated to be the reason for its removal from international releases of the game, as it would be hard to do outside of Japanese. Pretty lazy, huh? Could’ve just removed that feature, instead of cutting 1/3rd of the game modes out entirely.
This makes the Japanese release, the original intent, seem more like a “Kirby Super Star”-type game, with sub-games that are smaller in scope and more variety. Having that Wind Waker setting included also adds to the feel of the game being a total Zelda mashup—this is one of the most fascinating aspects to me. The menus, some sound effects, some visual effects (eg explosions), some enemies, and the bosses in the main mode are taken from Wind Waker. Many environments, sprites, enemies, and plot details are from Link to the Past. The appearance of the Links and the GBA-displayed graphics (not to mention the gameplay) are from the original Four Swords, and these graphics were repurposed for Minish Cap. The plot involves Shadow (Dark) Links (Zelda 2, Ocarina of Time), Vaati (Four Swords), and Ganondorf (Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess) who transforms into pig Ganon with trident (Link to the Past, Zelda 1). This game, much more than others in the series, takes elements from other Zelda games in a good way.
Also the NPCs. As an actiony arcadey stage-based game, they did well incorporating dungeons and towns. You find such people as Deku Scrubs (Majora’s Mask), Gerudos (Ocarina of Time), and Gorons. More important NPCs include the Six Maidens (Link to the Past), Kaepora Gaebora the owl (Ocarina of Time), Great Fairies in their Wind Waker appearance, and Tingle (Wind Waker). It just seems that it has a larger amount of reused or repurposed elements and characters from other titles, rather than making its own. In this case, I really liked that as a Zelda fan. Sure, they can’t do that all the time but for this game to have that role makes it totally sweet.
After talking about that, the best part to me, I’ve lost enthusiasm for the rest of the game. If I get bored and stop, sorry! I’ll try. So the game obviously relies heavily on the difference between the TV screen (the main area you’re in) and the GBA screen (for sub-areas such as a cave or building). It’s based around the four people in the same area but doing different acitivities. Now it might seem obvious to ask why this wouldn’t work on the WiiU, but each person needs their own screen to be equal, so they can all be in sub-areas or have information the others don’t to encourage co-operative sharing (or competitive taking all the loot). So a single Gamepad is good for asymmetric stuff as they’ve shown and talked about, but this experience is very symmetrical.
It’s a rather inventive use for the GBA-GCN connectivity, but one of the big problems with this stuff is Nintendo has these wacky ideas that never really go anywhere. So you’ve got maybe 2 or 3 games that use this cable in a really cool way, but man that’s not worth buying four of them! So it’s a good idea, but there wasn’t a widespread use of it and it was optional. But now there’s all this stuff built into the WiiU, and you know they’re not going to use it when everyone has it! Ok, now I’m stereotyping Nintendo.
My point is, this is a very niche game. Which is a shame because it’s got cool ideas, it just has so many requirements to get into it—including being a big Zelda nerd to get all the references and stuff, just another requirement kinda. But having acquired all the necessities, is there really enough game here to justify it all, especially with Navi Trackers missing? I mean, maybe there’s not enough content given all the hoops you have to jump through for it. It is a different kind of content to your standard Zelda game, with menus into stages and minigames rather than exploring a world. But what is Hyrule Field but a big menu anyway?
I digress. The fact that there are two ways to play this game is cool. Many gameplay aspects are unique and interesting. The sheer amount of Zelda stuff mashed together is a total delight, even when they don’t mesh together perfectly (eg the Wind Waker boss art style clashes with other sprites). I regret not having the hardware/friends to be able to play the game myself, but the amount of conditions makes it impractical. The way the game feels so much like Link to the Past but with upgraded graphics and sound, and cool zooming effects makes me wish Nintendo or others would try a 2D revival-type thing like this with more polish and utilising modern stuff to expand on that experience, instead of going whole-hog into 3D or new control schemes or whatever. People like retro games, you could make some great stuff by shooting for that feel but enhancing it in other ways. Not like Megaman 9 and 10, though.
Ugh, I’m not getting my point across. I guess stuff like Donkey Kong Country Returns is kinda like that, but this game is all (mostly) 2D sprite art, but more high-fidelity, with zooming out in large areas and sweet water effects and stuff. I feel like you could take some great ideas from this game, and I haven’t seen them done that much elsewhere. Or maybe I have I don’t know. I guess the really specific instance of explicitly Link to the Past-style graphics but enhanced without overblowing them into 3D or something is what I’m talking about. The new 3DS Zelda is an example of that, not that I’m saying it’s bad, it’s just another way to do it.
Sigh. Anyway I should end this rambly, incoherent post before it gets, uh, too ranty. This game is cool, watch a Let’s Play some time. You don’t have to watch all of it. Sorry I went off the rails there. I’ll get this writing stuff down some day. Until next time, may your sword always be filled with the power to repel evil.
One day I’m going to include at least one screenshot or image in these reviews, but this is not that day! Ok fine, here:
Trials Evolution is the sequel to the cool motorbike with cryptic hidden secrets game, Trials 2. As far as I currently know, Evolution doesn’t have weird hidden clues but it does have multiplayer. I’ve heard it’s good and it’s kind of a posterboy for XBLA, but it’s also on the (much better) Steam platform. Now, I can’t normally play this game as 1) my computer kinda sucks and 2) it’s not Mac-compatible. But lucky for me, I have a cool family.
So I actually played this game while visiting my family back in my home town. My little brother, this blog’s #1 fan, is a huge PC gamer. I guess you could say that after our childhood playing Nintendo consoles and PC games, he took one path and I the other. The PC is his only gaming device, his phone is even still a monochrome brick. Last year he managed to ditch the aging shared family computer and built his dream gaming rig. As such, many games on the old Steam catalogue that had been purchased and waiting were finally able to be downloaded and played. I’ve enjoyed watching some of these while on visits, such as Europa Universalis 3, Serious Sam, Just Cause 2, and lots of others too, including Minecraft and League of Legends.
But enough about his gaming habits. Often I’m content to watch him play games that I would normally never pick up, but occasionally we’re able to play co-op or take turns. This game supports both, which was much easier due to the wired controller he also picked up at Christmas (he’s been known to emulate Smash Bros 64 and fit 3 guys on one keyboard).
For those who are unfamiliar, the game is an extension of many older games that used the concept of a bike and a reliable physics simulation to pull off tricks and stuff, whether for racing, doing sweet jumps, or exploring a strangely-deisgned level. A few that I’ve played are Bike or Die on the Palm Pilot (exploration) or the more recent Mad Skill Motocross (racing). Trials has elements of the spectrum of these games, especially with the user-created content which can cater to different tastes. Obviously, being a modern game, it does it with sweet graphics and 2.5D presentation (2D play in a 3D world, sometimes with curving tracks etc).
My experience with this, as with those other games, was really fun until the difficulty starts to ramp up, and it gets to be a pretty steep ramp (the game also features literal steep ramps), at which point it becomes very frustrating and you need a break. Having the co-op experience and egging each other on really enhanced it though, whether in direct competition or taking turns.
I could say that there’s maybe not enough multiplayer tracks and content, as we seemed to get through most of it quickly before resorting to the taking turns in single mode, which wasn’t as fun an experience, even if the levels themselves were more varied in that mode. The “challenge” levels were a highlight as they used and abused the mechanics of the game to get you to do some wacky stuff, but the straight biking race challenges which often involved traversing obstacles were very solid.
I’m kinda rambling; the game was lots of fun, but when we tried to explore some of the user-made tracks it got complicated, as we seemed to keep coming up with excruciatingly difficult levels. Apparently you can find some amazing stuff in there though, but I dunno. I wasn’t sold on buying the game myself (even if I had the means to play it) because it seemed to reach that frustration level too quickly, which would likely be even worse when playing by yourself.
I suppose if you found some levels that really suited you, you could have tons of fun replaying them with friends. I tend to like completing content, and moving on to other content but we did replay some tracks and just the act of getting through the track, and bailing before the finish line to try and cross just in front of the other person was a really great experience.
I have on more big nit to pick: for some reason, at a certain point in tracks (we theorised it was when the finish line was “in sight” or one checkpoint away or something), if you crashed you wouldn’t respawn and you got a DNF while the other person kept going. I suppose that’s fair enough, but on the really hard levels when it took ten or fifteen tries to clear an obstacle, it meant we slowly got through most of a track but because of the final or even second-final obstacle were never able to cross the finish line, which to some extent invalidated the progress. The point system could have been tweaked or tweakable in this regard too. That brings up that in a game where users can create tracks with such detailed tools, the gameplay itself wasn’t very customisable. Just a niggling point.
The main thing is that the game just allowed me to have a really fun experience shared with my brother. For that I love it dearly and give it twelve ragdolls gyrating through the floor geometry. Some games can be used as a means to facilitate human social interaction or experiences or relationships; yeah anyway that’s gaming theory from Milo right there. Before I overthink it too much, I’ll bail and flail.
An emergency has rather cropped up. As you may recall, I had finished Metroid Prime 2 recently and was having a break before starting 3. I’m interchanging Metroid and Zelda, with Twilight Princess for console while I play Hunters on the DS. I then planned to go onto Spirit Tracks on DS, and play something else on console, possibly Prime 3. The news that Nintendo is squashing most of the Wii’s online functionality has forced a different plan on me. I need to find the Friend Vouchers in Prime 3 so I can trade them for Green Tokens, before Wii Connect 24 is disabled, or else I will never ever be able to unlock all the content in the game (image galleries and the like). To make this more difficult, I need to find someone in the same region as me to trade the vouchers with who either hasn’t already traded them or is spoofing them for the benefit of others. I’m planning on going to Gamefaqs for that one; if you happen to be an Australian reading this with 15 unused Prime 3 Friend Vouchers, contact me! I’ll have them hopefully soon. I’m not sure what other regions are compatible; most Australian Wii stuff seems to be fine with all of Europe, or at least the UK. So that could work too.
So, tomorrow I hasten my plans, put both Twilight Princess and Hunters on hold for now and focus on Prime 3. Fortuitous timing, as I have just started a two-week holiday. As I work in a school (not a teacher), I get all school holidays off. It’s sweet. But it looks like I’ll be gaming hard for a little while; I don’t know exactly how long I’ll have to play to get these vouchers. I should also have time to start the next comic scanlation I’m planning on, though. It’s a Yoshi’s Island comic and looks kinda fun, but I’m waiting on word from my translation buddy.
Hm. I haven’t done many ordinary “update”-type blog posts. How about some feedback? Should I do them more often?
…And I was looking forward to some fishing in TP. I just unlocked the frog lure after an absolutely gruelling session of Rollgoal. Agh. Oh well.
Fanadi is the fortune-teller. You know, the one with the obnoxious and forced backwards-masked (somewhat fourth-wall breaking) chant? Yeah, the one you never have to use because the objective in Zelda games is always pretty obvious. Maybe the heart piece finder is useful, but I never felt the need for more hearts than I naturally found.
Telma owns the bar that is a major plot area of the game, and is helpful and sympathetic to the restoration group which meets there. She is also, by virtue of several factors in her appearance, a Gerudo. Her main dots are red, and her red hair and dark skin are distinctive of the all-female desert race. She also sports a stylised Gerudo symbol on her apron (squint, it’s there!). The redesigned symbol, that is, not the original OoT religiously insensitive Islam symbol.
Lastly, and most tricky, is Agitha. She has the appearance of a young girl, and lives in a house that has a tree growing in it. She desires the company of shiny golden bugs and enjoys frolicking in the fields. She wears green, has blond hair, and has a green dot under her eyes. She is obviously a reference to the Kokiri, a fae race of forest creatures with a childlike appearance. But how is it possible that she is one, living outside the forest? She is the hardest to reconcile of the three.
A while ago I posted a scanlation I had completed with the help of Caramelman for translation:
Trials Evolution is the sequel to the cool motorbike with cryptic hidden secrets game, Trials 2. As far as I currently know, Evolution doesn’t have weird hidden clues but it does have multiplayer. I’ve heard it’s good and it’s kind of a posterboy for XBLA, but it’s also on the (much better) Steam platform. Now, I can’t normally play this game as 1) my computer kinda sucks and 2) it’s not Mac-compatible. But lucky for me, I have a cool family.
