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!