Zelda Retrospective: Part IV: A Link to the Past - Day 4

Sorry folks, I've been a little remiss in posting this blog. Been a crazy few days filled with laziness, a party, some fried chicken and some Shakespeare. Okay, maybe not crazy. Mainly just lazy. It still has "-azy" in it.
In the meantime since the last post, I've tackled the fifth and sixth dungeons in the Dark World, used a walkthrough, only to find heart pieces, I swear, and discovered the Waterfall of Wishing and upgraded my shield and boomerang. Sweet.
The icy fifth dungeon located in the middle of Lake Hylia once again saw a themed dungeon similar to the ones that would come along in later Zelda games.
Things I hated about the fifth Dark World dungeon:
1. No traction! There were several rooms where I was going through and just wanted to go up or down the stairs. But, try as I might, Link just couldn't quite line himself up right in order to use said stairs because the ice had him sliding all over the place. Very annoying.
2. Green, fanged penguins. What assholes.
3. The fact that I just kept getting lost! I'd die thanks to those damned penguins or some other thing and I just could never seem to find my way back to where I wanted to go.
Things I liked about the fifth Dark World Dungeon:
1. There's only one. The boss was ridiculously easy, so it was just a breath of fresh air to have worked so hard to get all the way to him and not have to die four times to beat him. Though I was a little concerned when I found him frozen over and was kind of low on magic with no potion to replenish it. I started shooting the Fire Rod and on the very last bit of magic I used, the boss thawed out. I would have been have been pissed if I had to leave just to get more magic.

After that I did some heart collection and then found my way over the the big swamp, where the desert is in the Light World. Upon entering this dungeon, I had a little bit of Post Traumatic Stress. Why? Because populating the large, main rooms of this dungeon were beasts that bore a strong resemblance to Horsehead, the first boss from Zelda II. Needless to say, I was overjoyed when I discovered that they were easy to kill, taking only one or two sword swipes depending on their color. So I went on a Horsehead killing spree to gain some slight vengeful satisfaction from the suffering of that reverse-Centaur race of creature. Bastards.
This dungeon turned out to be moderately easy in comparison to some of the other dungeons, I had it figured out pretty well, and once I found the nifty Cane of Somaria, the last bits I couldn't get through came together and I went off to fight yet another floating eyeball boss.
Then a thought occured to me: Why were the developers so obsessed with floating eyeballs for bosses? There are three of them in this game. Look for yourself!





So, now I can embark upon the quest to rescue the final maiden (Link's pimpin' in this one) and then tackle the final dungeon in the game after that. Then it'll be on to the game that started my love of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. Nice.

- Nate