Zelda Retrospective: Part VI - Majora's Mask - Day 6

Sorry I'm late, I had a busy weekend. Anyway, on to Zelda!

For this post, I delved deeper into Ikana Canyon. Frankly, I meant to play through the Stone Tower, but I didn't make it that far.
Appalled that I had done the Ocean Spider House on the wrong day and not received the Giant's Wallet, I went to the ocean once again to complete that task. Actually, I began that bit twice because there was a game crashing freeze once again. That's the second time that's happened. I had to restart the system and redo what little I had done on that day cycle. I'm once again wishing that I had downloaded Majora's Mask on Virtual Console rather than play it on the GameCube disc.
So, with thirty Gold Skulltulas dead and the morning of the first day all used up, I obtained my big ass wallet and proceeded to Ikana Valley to tackle the Gibdos' Well. Now this is one of the more annoying sections of the game. For some reason, a bunch of mummies regret that they never got to have some Deku Nuts and bombs, or never got to eat a fish. So they've spent eternity standing guard next to doors in some underground chambers. Its only when you give them what they want that their souls can rest and the doors will open.
Also, the mummies find bugs creepy.

The only tool you need to fool a mummy.

Unfortunately, there are a couple things that you can't get a hold of inside of the Gibdos' Well, like a blue potion, that forced me to go searching around for one. I didn't want to fetch the ingredients for it to take the witches in the Swamp, and I couldn't remember which Business Scrub would sell me a blue potion. I checked in Lulu's room in the Zora Cape before I remembered that he's right there in Ikana Canyon. So I dropped 100 rupees (And thanks to the Giant's Wallet, I made it back and then some) to buy the potion. I did have to break down and look at my old player's guide at the map of the well, if only to remember where I needed to go with the time-sensitive hot spring water. Yes, a mummy's only regret was that it had no scalding water to look at.
Once I wrapped up (Ha!) my business in the well full of mummies, I obtained the incredibly creepy looking Mirror Shield - much creepier than a bug, thank you - and made my way into Ikana Castle.
Since there are only four main dungeons in Majora's Mask, it's kind of nice having the small sub dungeon that is the Ikana Castle. It involves a lot of ReDead, which are pretty easy to kill when wearing the Gibdos Mask, Captain's Hat or Garo's Mask, since they begin to dance and not attack when you wear one of those masks. And because ReDead drop about fifteen to twenty rupees each, that new Giant's Wallet filled up quick. The goal of Ikana Castle is to get to King Igos du Ikana, a skeletal warrior king who looks like the winner at last year's Day of the Dead costume contest.

The runner-up didn't think to carry a sword.

After dispatching his two henchman, a murderous, skeletal version of Laurel and Hardy, you get to take on Igos himself. I always find it's fun to wear the Captain's Hat that is given to you by Captain Keeta, Igos' military commander. This brings about a quick, but rather funny cut scene that shows that Igos might have had a little too much royal blood in his system. Cue "Dueling Banjos." He isn't the sharpest of skeletons. Once you defeat him, he realizes how much he and his kingdom had lost its way, that their failure to trust in each other led them to a long war that destroyed their kingdom and their lives. He then teaches you the Elegy of Emptiness, a song that creates statues of whatever form Link is in, so you can create up to four statues at once as Hylian, Deku, Zora and Goron. Unfortunately, the Hylian Link stature is creepy as hell.

That's going to haunt me.

And so, with the Elegy learned, and midnight passed (my time, not game time), I played the Song of Time, saved the game and called it a quits.
I might double up on the Zelda blogs this week, since there's not much to this one and I've probably got a good three blogs worth of Majora's Mask left at least. I'm eager to finish and move on to Wind Waker and then Twilight Princess.

Zelda Retrospective: Part VI - Majora's Mask - Day 5

Sidequests, sidequests and more sidequests! Unfortunately, I didn't do much in the main quest this week. I logged in a little time earlier in the week and started up in Ikana Valley. This is another point where I wish I'd never been given that damned player's guide. I can't remember anything! And what do I do? Instead of trying to work everything out for myself, I keep deciding to steal a peek at the guide. But hey, it does cut down my play time so I won't be playing Majora's Mask for the next 6 weeks.
Anyway, I forgot how much I love the Ikana Valley section of Majora's Mask. It has such an excellent atmosphere. The whole area is set up as a land of the dead, where a mighty kingdom that ruled Termina fell to ruin during a war with a far off nation. Now the spirits of the soldiers are trapped in the land of the living as ghosts and ghouls of various kinds. Combined with the prominence of the falling moon, the Ikana Valley is probably the most moody and eerie portion of the game.
The other sections of Termina all feel so full of life, whereas Ikana only has a handful of living people - just Dampe, the researcher and his daughter, the thief, Sakon, and a soldier who's so boring that he's invisible. Everyone else is dead. Maybe it's just my fascination with skeletons (it's very evident in all the doodles I draw as ideas for band logos and such), but all the roving skeletons looking for solace and release for their souls just sucks me into the story. I guess I just have a thing for the macabre. Crap, does that make me emo?

"Yeah, you're totally emo," said the vanishing, stick-wielding hooded cyclops. What a prick.

Anyway, I played a little ways into the Ikana Valley quest before deciding to go after some more heart pieces and upgrades. First off, I made Captain Keeta feel like a little bitch, despite the fact that he is a huge skeleton with a killer hat - which he then gave to me once I played him a ditty on my ocarina. Then I hung around the graveyard each night and ordered some Stalkids/Former Ikana Soldiers to dig up the graves so that I could get at the goodies, as well as healing the researcher to get the Gibdo mask.
There's another screwed up thing in this part of the game. The paranormal investigator guy dragged his little out into a section of the world where there are ghosts and the undead surrounding them at all times if their house, which doubles as a giant music box, doesn't have the water power to play the song that wards off the walking mummies. Good job on the parenting skill there, dude.
From there it was collectormania!
I saw that I had a measly nine hearts and decided that, rather than go on to conquer the hazards of the Ikana Valley further, I would pump up Link further. Thus today was spent with minigames and trading quests galore.
I managed to collect thirteen or fourteen of the game's fifty-two total pieces of heart. With only four bosses to collect heart containers from, you have to do a lot of collecting to get all twenty containers. I also managed to upgrade to the biggest bomb bag and the biggest quiver. In the case of the quiver, it involved playing some minigames that would have the Terminan version of PETA ready to kill somebody. See, in Hyrule, the target shooting games were innocent, involving targets like moving rupees and giant dartboards. In Termina, they use living creatures, trained to appear at the blow of a whistle only to be shot down by twitchy archers looking to win a prize.

The shooting gallery's proprietors at least tried to replicate their natural environment, so they can feel more at ease while they're being shot at by blood thirsty elven people.

What makes it worse is that the Swamp Shooting Gallery has Deku Scrubs as targets. We've already established that the Deku Scrubs are sentient beings with a language, monarchical government and even a bureaucracy. At the shooting gallery, they're being round up and murdered for sport. Seriously, this world just seems more and more screwed up the more I play this game. Termina has a moon with an angry face, big rock-eating bipeds who can roll around in balls, sentient plants, fish people with poor taste in music a land where the dead roam about and can't get any rest and pointy-eared humans who don't mind wantonly killing their neighbors. I know it was water pollution that caused all of Hyrule's problems. But what about Termina? I haven't figured that out yet.

I'm blaming this guy though.

He's freaky.
Coming next week, Ikana Valley and Stone Tower Temple.


As a side note: I'm moving these posts to Sunday nights, since I seem to play more Zelda on the weekends. Or in this post's case - early Monday morning.

Zelda Retrospective: Part VI - Majora's Mask - Day 4

Sorry this didn't go up on Friday, I was busy with Halloween plans.
Holy three days of accomplishments, Batman! I got a lot done in this three day cycle.
Before we go into said accomplishments, let me point out once again that if you want to play Majora's Mask, either dust off your N64 or download it on the Virtual Console for your Wii. The emulation on the GameCube collector's disk that I'm playing the game on is terrible. It only seems to be Majora's Mask that has issues. I started playing this cycle earlier this week, but had the game lock up. All I could do was reset and lose all the progress I'd made since the last cycle reset, that included nabbing the hookshot and first egg from the Gerudo Pirates.
Heh, all female pirates. The guys must really enjoy it when the pirates come to rape and pillage.

Had Link been a day earlier, he might have been exposed to the filming of Gerudo Casting Couch 17.

Luckily, on this play through, despite some paranoia that I would suddenly lose hours worth of game time due to another game crash, I got through without losing any progress. Yay!
So once again, I met Mikau, who enthusiastically cried "Baby!" several times in his death throes. Maybe if he hadn't used up so much energy singing to Link, then Link could have gotten him to a Zora doctor? That old dude in the big hook-for-a-hand-shaped building seems like he could have helped. Oh well. Now Link gets to assume the life of another famous guy who no one knows is actually dead. Really, I find that kind of messed up. Link is compressing these people into masks, though it supposedly heals their souls when he turns them into masks, and then stealing their lives. And what happens once Link's quest is over? The moon won't fall and all, but as far as the Gorons and Zoras are concerned, Darunia is dead and Mikau just plain disappeared. Maybe the Zora's will find Mikau's grave... oh, wait, no. Link buried him in sand. All it will take is one good high tide, or maybe a hungry scavenger that's willing to dig to make that body disappear. In ten years, there will be an episode on the Zora version of Unsolved Mysteries, Lulu and the rest of the band will have moved on and Mikau will be utterly forgotten because Link turned the poor guy into a mask.
Oh, here's a scary thought. What if the Mask Salesman lied and the "Song of Healing" doesn't heal at all? Maybe it just turns everybody into masks and steals their soul or something? Link could be stealing people's souls without even knowing it. I wouldn't put it past that Mask Salesman. He's creepy.

And let's not forget that this "innocent" mask salesman happens to carry around a mask that can destroy the whole damn world. That's all kinds of screwed up.

 

Anyway, I got the Zora mask and then went on to the whole pirate fortress thing. I've never once done the fortress without the Stone Mask. So I made it a point to run over to the entrance to Ikana Canyon to find the poor dude who was just so damned boring that you couldn't even see him without the Lens of Truth. I mean, when you have to practice being noticed, then you've got some serious problems. I'm talking intensive therapy, not just a bottle of red potion. Poor schmuck. The main problem is I received a player's guide when I received the game, so I always played the game with a bit of a crutch. I've never made a crack at the fortress without the mask. I told myself I'd try it this time, but truth be told, I was feeling too damn lazy and I wanted to get all the eggs before the dawn of the second day.
After the fortress, I took a picture of one of the pirates to the horny dude who lives alone on the beach. Thanks, Nintendo, for making me provide that guy with something for his wank bank. He gave me a talking seahorse in return, but then I had to take the seahorse out to Pinnacle Rock. There, I had to commit the genocide of what seems to be an endangered species of Giant Sea Snake so that I could rescue some eggs and free the talking sea horse's girlfriend. I was given a piece of heart in return and then left to deliver the last of the eggs. I assume the sea horses started boning after I left.
I delivered the eggs, then learned a song from some tadpoles. Sperm symbolism here? I think whoever designed the whole Great Bay area must have been horny. Then I rode a big ass talking turtle with palm trees growing out its shell - not quite Discworld sized - to the Great Bay Temple.
I found this temple to be relatively easy. It involves a lot of redirection of water flow, but so long as you pay attention to the network of pipes, it's pretty easy to reason out what to do in this temple. You might forget a step or two and have to explore to find the proper room, but it's really not that hard. I also really like the giant waterworks design of the place. The whole temple is essentially a big water-powered machine, which lends itself to the semi-steampunk elements of Majora's Mask, such as motorized boats and such.
After a lot of valve-opening, I made my way into the lair of Gyorg. This is where I think the Great Bay Temple is weak. For one, I couldn't remember what the boss was. I can remember the bosses from the other temples clearly, but when it comes to Gyorg, I didn't remember him until I saw him.

To me, you're just another ugly fish. Sorry, dude.

Because of this, I thought maybe he'd be a fun challenge. But, no, this boss is horrible easy. Hit him with an arrow, turn into a Zora, jump in the water and zap him with my electricity shield. Repeat. Then he changes it up. He swims around spitting out the tiny Gyorgs he keeps in his mouth like an archerfish, while I spam the electricity shield until he's dead. Boringly simple. Oh well.
I actually had more challenge trying to play the horny fisherman's platform jumping game. I just kept falling off the platforms and into the water - at one point with less than two seconds left in the clock. And he just kept laughing that "Heh heh" laugh like some kind of rapist. Weirdo. But I got a piece of heart out of him. Oh god, I hope he didn't rape the seahorse.

Happy Halloween (there's still nine minutes left!)

Zelda Retrospective: Part VI - Majora's Mask - Day 3 - But A Year Later...

Okay, so, I fell behind. Way behind. This is like getting those TPS reports in, well, a year late.
Rather than restart my game and begin blogging over things I'd already blogged about, I figured I would continue the file I started a year ago. I found it with Goht and the Snowhead Temple already defeated. Guess I kept playing and didn't blog about that. Oops.

And I thought Gorons were weird in Ocarina of Time.

I do recall, though, that I always found Snowhead Temple particularly infuriating due to the central pillar that you have to raise and lower in order to access different sections of the temple. I'd say it's like the Water Temple of Majora's Mask, but the Great Bay Temple also involves manipulating the water. As I recall, save for the Windfall Temple, the dungeons in Majora's Mask tended to be more difficult than the dungeons of Ocarina of Time.

However, I did end up defeating Goht two more times today for various sidequests. I could have skipped the second defeat of Goht, but I forgot to retrieve my Powder Keg License after blowing up the entrance into the Goron race track. That is one thing where I can say I see why some people didn't like the 3-Day reset cycle in Majora's Mask - if you forgot to do something, you had to to repeat it all in order to finish it.

Goht is one of those bosses that can be either really fun or really frustrating to fight. If you're quick and can avoid the obstacles that pop up while you chase him down as a rolling Goron, it can be a fun and exhilarating fight. But if you're unfortunate to have rocks fall on you or be hit by Goht's beam attacks, it can be a long and aggravating boss battle. I actually had one of each of those instances when fighting Goht today.
Amongst the side quests I performed today were upgrading to the gilded sword, the best version of the sword you can get in the game and one of my favorites, helping out around Romani Ranch.

Did Link ever learn the importance of "Klaatu-Barada-Nikto"?

I love the whole '50's sci-fi approach to the creatures that invade Romani Ranch on the night of the first day. From the design of the aliens, that are beamed down by a giant ball of light, to the thermin-esque music that accompanies the early morning battle with the cow-stealing extra-terrestrials. So instead of Mars Needs Women, it's Mars Needs Bovines? Why would aliens come once a year to steal cows? Do they just make enough jerky to last the year? Regardless of ridiculous plots, it's a fun side quest to play. From there it's on to racing the brothers at Ingo Ranch to grab the Garu Mask, get the Bunny Hood, and safely stave off raiders from grabbing a milk shipment. Along with the Don Gero Mask and Kamaro's Mask, I managed to nab five masks in that three day cycle.
I started a new cycle after that, but only played far enough to get the Zora mask. You know that Zora Mikau was one hell of a rocker if he spent the last of his energy to spend his final moments improvising a song to tell you what happened. That's hardcore.

As a side note, I believe I'm going to make Friday the weekly Zelda day until I finish playing through these games. I figured those of you who read this blog would appreciate more variety in subject matter. I think I'll try to have two other blogs per week besides the Nerdy News on Thursday and Zelda Retrospective on Friday, perhaps with the odd TV, movie, music or game review here and there. I hope you guys enjoy the rejuvenated Smashing the Gnat.

Zelda Retrospective: Part VI - Majora's Mask - Day 1

Ahhhhh!!! Two posts in two days?! Holy crap! What's wrong with the world? There's fire and brimstone! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
Anyway, yes, I managed to find some time in my somewhat delirious sleep-deprived state to start playing The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. It is, in my opinion, the most underrated of all the Zelda games. There are exceptions, but it seems like whenever the subject of Zelda games comes up amongst friends and acquaintances, I hear the phrase, "I loved the Zelda games, except for Majora's Mask."
When I ask why, it always seems to be an answer like, "It's just weird," or "I really hated that time gimmick, it annoyed me having to start over all the time."
Yes, it is definitely a departure from the standard narrative structure of the other games in the series, but the originality of its gameplay and tone is what makes Majora's Mask so endearing to me.
From the opening title cinematic and into the first three day cycle of the game, especially in Link's initial pursuit of Skull Kid, the game sets up a moody and atmospheric take on the world set up by Ocarina of Time. There is a much more surreal quality to things here. In some ways, it's almost reminiscent of Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam, where things are both dark and absurd simultaneously. The game mixes in a lot more character drama (like the infamously long Anju & Kafei side quest), more humor (like the absolute bizarreness of the Mask Salesman) to the slightly disturbing (the mask transformation sequences or just the fact that so many people are going about their lives idly when the world is literally about to end).
In the terms of gameplay, I find Majora's Mask to be vastly interesting. It takes the now tried-and-true formula of Ocarina of Time and adds extra mechanics like the mask transformations and the time cycle to give it a unique feel. While, yes, it can be a little tedious to have to worry about the passage of time so much, I think it gives the game a dramatic urgency that was unprecedented and has never been replicated quite the same way in the series.
But that's enough of my prattling on, let's get to tonight's play time.
I admit, I find the first three day cycle in the game to be very annoying. Essentially, it consists of a few small fetch quests and then a whole lot of waiting. Plus, you have to play through until you can get the Ocarina of Time and reset the clock to save, or you lose all of your progress. If you already have a decent familiarity with the game, you can complete every task you have to do before the dawn of the second day, leaving a lot of time to have nothing to do. So I went around filling the time with talking to people (which I quickly remembered actually freezes the clock) or trying to find ways of making the time pass faster (like having dance parties with the scarecrow or having the old lady in the inn tell you stories).
Very quickly, we get a sense of the tension this game tries to instill. The urgency of the sped-up Clock Town music on Day 3 and the fact that we can actually watch the moon get bigger really adds a lot to this sense. It is odd that Skull Kid is so easy to stun in the first confrontation with him. One bubble hit does the trick. It would have been nice if this had been a little more like a boss fight, since this is the first time there's anything resembling combat in the game. Oh well, I'm about nine years too late for suggestions.
Also, we learn early on that Link has gotten far more agile since the end of Ocarina of Time. Look at those back flips!
I will say, I'm a little annoyed with the lag issues on the Zelda Collector's Edition GameCube disc that I'm playing the game on (on my Wii), but I long ago gave my N64 and copy of Majora's Mask to my sister.
I suppose that will be it for tonight, my delirium is growing and I need some sleep. I'll hopefully get some more game time in sometime soon, but it definitely won't be tomorrow. The Righs have a gig in Tulsa with The Toasters.

- Nate

Zelda Retrospective: Part V - Ocarina of Time - Day 6

Okay, yeah. It's been a month and a half since the last update. This semester has been pretty busy for me, despite the fact I made this schedule convinced it would be an absolute breeze. I could have gotten to this sooner, but a lot of my down time has ended up being spent with friends, off doing things away from my apartment, watching Hulu or working on my next novel project, so I haven't really been playing much in the way of video games. There's even been plenty of movies and TV shows that I've seen that I could have blogged about but didn't for reasons unknown, like Zombieland (awesome), Surrogates (meh), Stargate Universe (it's trying to be both the next Stargate and the next Battlestar Galactica) and Flashforward (pretty interesting so far, though the writing is a little haphazard at times).
That being the case, I suppose this is really more of an "Ocarina of Time - Days 6-8" entry. Late one night following my last entry, I finished off the Shadow Temple. I got tired and decided to put off the entry until the next day, but things happened, as they often do, and it got back seated. I have since forgotten all the clever quips I had come up with about it.
Then, some time a few weeks ago, I sat down and went through the Spirit Temple. Again, I ended up putting off the entry. Sorry.
Today, however, I played through the entirety of Ganon's Castle.
I always found this section of the game relatively interesting. For one, we get a hodge-podge of the different dungeons from around the game, some of the rooms fitting the theme and some not so much. We get Shadow Temple elements in the Forest Barrier section, for example. Also, we get a glimpse at what the Light Temple, a dungeon originally planned for but ultimately scrapped in development, might have been like. It was very much like the Shadow Temple. Ironic.
I once again fell upon the muscle memory I've developed over the many times I've played Ocarina of Time and breezed through to Ganondorf. A few of the rupee collecting rooms, namely the ones in the Forest, Fire and Shadow sections gave me a few problems due to a few misplaced jumps that led to automatic restart of the room.
One touch that I've always loved about ascending the staircases toward Ganondorf is the way the ominous organ music builds in volume as you get closer to your destination. It's a very nice touch.
Maybe if Ganondorf had invested all his energy into music, he could have brought world peace like Bill and Ted were supposed to with Wyld Stallions? But no, the water pollution ruined that chance.
So, Ganondorf gives his obligatory villain monologue, we had our little tennis match and then he was down. Another detail Nintendo did a good job on is how you can see holes appear in Ganondorf's cape as you do more damage to it. I'm sure if it were an M-rated game, we'd be seeing holes in more than just his cape, but, then, who really wants to see an M-rated Zelda game? It'd be a bad business move for one. But I digress.
As I played the escape sequence, an idea which I bet the developers got from Metroid, I found myself getting typically annoyed with Zelda's incessant gasps as flaming rocks hit me. We passed that one annoyingly placed ReDead and then that part was over.
Then Ganondorf turns into Ganon, I shoot him in the face, hit him in the tail, rinse, and repeat until he's down. Really, after playing this game as many times as I have, fighting Ganondorf and Ganon is just a little boring. All the challenge is gone. Oh well, I still love the game.
One thing that particularly interests me is the ending of the game, wherein two separate time lines are created. There's the one in which Ganondorf succeeds in taking over and is defeated seven years later by Link and Zelda, and then the one created after Zelda sends Link back to his original time and then, presumably, goes to warn Zelda about what will happen. The sci-fi nerd in me loves this kind of stuff.
So from here, it's on to Majora's Mask, which I feel is the most underrated of the Zelda games. Not sure when I'll get a start on that, but I'll try to make it soon.

- Nate

Zelda Retrospective: Part V - Ocarina of Time - Day 5

Hello everyone, I'm very sorry for not posting in so long. I started getting really busy around the time of the last post with friends, birthday plans, band activities like recording and gigs and then school. I doubt I'll be posting as regularly and I might have to condense future posts in the series based on weeks and not days. I'm not quite sure yet. Anyway, on to the brief time I played Ocarina of Time today, before I set off to work on school work.
My hour-or-so jaunt through the land of Hyrule today was rather uneventful. I went through the somewhat arduous trading process that results in obtaining the Biggoron Sword. Now, in no way is the sword a necessary item for the game, it definitely comes in handy. If you equip it and Nayru's Love while fighting the Iron Knuckles that appear later in the game, you can definitely dispatch them much more quickly and easily. It's definitely more handy in Master Quest, where you encounter a lot more Iron Knuckles.
There's some definite weirdness going on with the trading process. I mean, the "punk guy" who you give the blue Cucco, Cojiro, to is odd enough looking as it is for a Hylian. And the relationship he has with his mother, the "old hag behind the potion shop," seems a little less than loving.
But it's the Kokiri girl who takes the punk guy's place that's the worst. She gives me the creeps, man.
She just looks up at you with that weird little grin and says, "That guy isn't here anymore. Anybody who comes into the forest will be lost. Everybody will become a Stalfos. Everybody, Stalfos. So, he's not here anymore. Only his saw is left. Hee hee."
Yeah, creepy.
Of course, if you talk to her again, she goes on to speculate whether or not you will become a Stalfos too. More creepy. Seriously, what's with that girl?
Then it's off to give a saw to the head carpenter, punk guy's father. From there, the prescription for eye drops, the eyeball frog (which the doctor at the lake wants to turn into fried eyeballs... okay...) and then the drops themselves. It's the last one that can be a pain. Getting the drops to Biggoron requires some pre-planning, because without the strategic placement of a magic bean plant at the mouth of Dodongo's Cavern, you might not make it in time before the eyedrops expire.
So, I got the Biggoron sword after playing the Sun's Song a bunch of times. I mean, really, do you expect me to sit around and wait for three days to pass naturally in-game? Hell no.
Then it was on to nab the Lens of Truth. This is where things are a little stupid. They set up the Well as sort of it's own little mini-dungeon, but the truth is, all you have to do is go in, play Zelda's Lullaby to drain the moat, crawl through the hole at the bottom of the pool up front, go through the door, fight the Dead Hand and get the Lens. There's absolutely no need to go into any other room besides nabbing any Gold Skulltulas that might be lurking about. Master Quest had it right in that you had to go through the whole thing to get to the Lens of Truth. Oh well, at least I've got it.Huzzah, I can see through bullshit now! If only I had one of those in real life...

- Nate

P.S. - I totally stole the fisherman's hat while I was getting the Gold Scale. Ha!

Zelda Retrospective: Part IV: A Link to the Past - Day 3

Question: Is Link's hair pink in A Link to the Past? I mean, I know it's reddish/blondish in the artwork for the game. But in Link's actual pixelated form in the game, is it, in fact, pink?
I mean, the pink could be his hair, or it could be his hat. But when Link gets turned into a rabbit in the Dark World, his fur is pink. Why do I seem so concerned about this? I have no idea. Simple curiosity, I guess.

Anyway, I'm glad to say that I've gone through A Link to the Past all the way to the end of the third dungeon in the Dark World (the one in the Lost Woods) without any advice from a guide. The game is harder than the other 2D Zelda's I've played prior to this series (i.e, Link's Awakening, Oracle of Ages, The Minish Cap), but I've managed to get through. I didn't get the flippers until I went into the 2nd Dark World dungeon, only to find that I need to be able to swim and I think it was sheer luck that I remembered somebody in Kakariko Village mentioning somewhere with Zoras where you could get the "power of a fish" or something like that. As it turns out, the first house I tried in Kakariko was that very guy. Then trying to find a route across the river to get to the Lost Woods in the Dark World proved to be time consuming until, after probably close to an hour of searching, I noticed a subtle arrow made of grass pointing across the river. I whipped out the Hookshot, and whaddyaknow, I got pulled across. Nice.
I also never realized the Hookshot had its origins in A Link to the Past (unless it was somewhere in Adventure of Link after the point where I quit). I had always thought it was new to Ocarina of Time. Hmm, well now I know.
I am finding it more difficult to get through dungeons without getting Game Over screens as well. Especially in the last two dungeons that I've completed, my Game Over count has dramatically risen. I imagine one is supposed to use the Fire Rod against the boss in the third Dark World dungeon, but I kept finding myself low on magic when I got there. And all the Wallmasters sending me back to the beginning where frustrating. There was one room in particular where there were two Gibdos, two blue, floaty electrical thingies and a switch that needed a statue pulled over it to open a door. Of course, you had to pull the statue through a narrow passage, leaving you very vulnerable to the Wallmasters above. I don't know how many times I had to redo that single room. I think some of the angry expressions I threw at Adventure of Link resurfaced for that one.
I need to track down those other two bottles so that I can keep more fairies. And I imagine that there's an upgraded shield somewhere too. If I could find more Pieces of Heart, that would be nice too. I'm debating whether to go to a guide just to get those extra side quest items in order to make the main quest easier.
The dungeon in the Lost Woods turned out to be a pain in the ass, but I was rather intrigued with how reminiscent it was of the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time, since it incorporated similar enemies - Wallmasters (which are even more annoying in this game than in Ocarina of Time), Gibdos, Stalfos and all those other undeadish-seeming enemies. It would seem that, like the Zelda games that would succeed it, A Link to the Past features themed dungeons, like the one I just finished.
Oh, and the Fire Rod? Much fun against Gibdos.

Zelda Retrospective: Part III - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - Day 3

Folks, I just don't know what to do here. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is quite simply kicking my ass.
I have made no progress since the restart. I just now got all the way to the bridge after Spectacle Cave. But guess what happened? I received one of many game overs thanks to those red axe-throwing assholes that populate Death Mountain and the bridge that follows it.
This is a game that requires incredible reflex and observation. I simply just can't seem to progress. The fact that every time I game over puts me all the way back to the Northern Palace, where Zelda sleeps, is ridiculous. It means making any actual headway in the game is practically impossible (for me, at least).
As I've said before, this game is merciless.
Unfortunately, I don't have much else to say. I had an amusing series of pictures planned out that would have made up this post rather than the words preceding this sentence. Unfortunately, my camera was stolen some months ago and I can't get my webcam to work. Sorry guys!
I suppose I'll keep at it for a few more days, but I might have to just go ahead and move on to A Link to the Past soon, or else Adventure of Link is going to keep me in some kind of eternal limbo.
I feel like Sisyphus in Hades pushing the boulder up a hill only for it to come tumbling back down, for all eternity.

Ugh.

- Nate

Zelda Retrospective: Part III - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - Day 2

Okay, so, I haven't been playing much. I've spent much of the time between this and the last Zelda blog. I played a little last night, trying desperately to get through Death Mountain without a guide, only to fail miserably each time. One of the biggest problems I have with this game, and it might just be a result of the port onto GameCube disc, but every time I lose all my lives, I get sent all the way back to the very beginning of the game. This makes making progress incredibly difficult. I felt that perhaps I hadn't levelled-up Link enough and then had a Final Fantasy-inspired idea that I've done a couple times after going to nearly the end of the game and discovering my characters weren't powerful enough (and was at a point where I couldn't dungeon crawl to upgrade).
So today I picked up the controller for a few hours and decided to start a fresh file. I made the quick jaunt to Rauru Town, then went up to Parapa Palace, where I levelled-up Link enough to where I needed 1200 to make it to the next level. This time, I made mince meat of Horsehead on the first try and got the upgrade after placing the crystal. So that left Link with level 4 attack and level 5 health and magic. Much better than the first file.
So, I went to tackle Death Mountain yet again, trying to make my way to Spectacle Rock. I was almost there when I got hit that one last time.
I've been seeing that screen way too often for my tastes. This game is absolutely merciless. If I have to start from the very beginning every time I get a game over, retaining only my level and my items (but none of my gained experience points), I don't know how I'm possibly going to get through this game in a reasonable time frame. If I could play the game non-stop and without a single game over, then maybe I could get through.
I guess I just suck at Zelda II. I'm going to keep at it though.

- Nate

Zelda Retrospective: Part II - Legend of Zelda - Day 2

You know what they say: "Once a cheater, always a cheater."

Well, for me, it held true. After thirty-nine deaths and about eight to ten hours of game play, I beat Ganon today and completed the main quest of Legend of Zelda. And, oh boy, I definitely had to rely on that IGN walk through to get me through it.
I booted up the game (I was playing using the Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition disc for GameCube) at around 11AM this morning, after finding out that I wasn't going to be recording with the band. I started from the good ol' starting position, collected some rupees to buy a potion, grabbed some recovery hearts from some downed enemies to fill my life gauge back up, and then went back to dungeon six, the bane of my Zelda-playing experience of yesterday. This time, going in fully prepared, I went in and kicked that dungeon's ass in no time flat.
I was doing well in the seventh dungeon too, until accidently pressed X in the start menu. On the Collector's Edition disc, X is equivalent to Select on the old NES controller, so that took me to the continue/save/quit screen. I hit continue, but I didn't realize that selecting it would take me back to the start of the dungeon and removed all but three hearts from my nearly full set of heart containers. Rage ensued.
What kind of design choice is that, seriously? I mean, how many people who have played this game since it came out in 1987 have accidently done that? How many veins have popped from necks from the fury that issues forth from occurences such as this? I sat and pondered this a moment, then resumed my gameplay.
It turns out, dungeon seven was quite the maze and it took me a long time to finally find my way to the boss. But I quickly dispatched him and moved onto eight. I'm guessing I went through eight all right, because I'm already having trouble remembering even playing through it, other than being frustrated with the large number of Blue Darknuts, who are hard to kill, and that was only a couple of hours ago.

I made my way to dungeon nine, the home of the pig-man himself - Ganon. Well, okay, I relied on the walkthrough for this one. When I realized how immense the dungeon was, I decided that, rather than waste hours trying to get through it, I'd make my way toward Ganon that way. I got all the way there with little problem. I saw where it took four blind hits while Ganon was invisible followed by a silver arrow hit. Well, as I hit Ganon the third time, I died.
So, I went out to find rupees for a potion and then ninety more to replace the magic shield I'd lost to a Like-Like. That in itself probably took half an hour. Killing hordes of ghosts in the graveyard helped quite a bit. I made my way back to Ganon, wiped him out and then hit the end. And then I hit the most story-intensive part of the game: a whole two lines of dialogue!

So, what does playing through this game tell me? For one, I can tell you know that, thanks to technological advancements, the series quickly became far more story driven. The lack of dialogue means less opportunities for hints, making the game that much harder. I never owned an NES, and I'd heard from many people that all the good old games were really hard. This game confirmed that notion in my head even moreso than my attempts to play other NES games. I suppose, back then, video games were more of a niche, so the audiences wanted more of a challenge. Now that gaming is more broad, games needed to be eased up for the sake of the layman's sanity. Also, this game allowed for a lot more imagination. It's far less linear than the Zelda games that succeeded it. Granted, you might need a certain item in one dungeon to access something in another, but you could potentially do these out of order because the game doesn't direct you from one to the next. The only hint that you should be playing them in any particular order is that a "Level-#" shows up at the top of your screen when you're in a dungeon.

I'm not brave enough to try to second quest. Plus I would like to continue on to the next game in the series. So, that's game number one down. Six to go. Tomorrow I'll be hitting up Zelda II: The Adventure of Link in Part III of the Zelda Retrospective. This is another one I've never played through, and many call it the worst of the Zelda games. I'll be sure to let you know if I agree.

- Nate

Zelda Retrospective: Part I - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest

Okay, so this is going to be the first in a series of blogs that overlook the Zelda franchise. I just recently finished playing through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest and it gave me inspiration. This is an announcement that I will embark upon a journey through the various console Zelda games, namely The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. This will be a long on-going series of commentaries that will review the games as games themselves, analyze how the franchise and games in general have evolved over time and maybe to have a little bit of fun at the games' expense. I expect this series to take a long time because we're talking about a lot of long games, and since I'm trying to get a job and will be going back to school in a little less than two months. Also, I'm leaving out the Zelda titles that were released on Nintendo's handhelds, because that would just take even more time. But perhaps later on? Anyway, on to Master Quest.
Back in 2003, as an incentive for pre-ordering The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the GameCube, Nintendo offered up a free bonus disc. This disc contained two versions of the same game. The first was the standard version of Ocarina of Time, the game that kicked off my love of the Zelda franchise and ignited the burning desire to own a Nintendo 64 that consumed my ten-year-old heart. The second was what made me want this particular disc so badly: Ocarina of Time Master Quest. Back in the late 1990's, Nintendo was working on the 64 Disc Drive (64DD), a disc-based add on for the Nintendo 64. Master Quest was known in Japan as Ura Zelda, but it was never released since the 64DD was sold at very underwhelming numbers. Essentially, Master Quest was meant to be in the same vein as the second adventure in the original Legend of Zelda, in which you could go through harder dungeons by naming your character "ZELDA" after completing the main quest.
Master Quest isn't really a different game from Ocarina of Time. The story, dialogue, cutscenes, items and everything are the exact same as the regular Ocarina of Time. When you get into the dungeons, however, all bets are off. Though the maps are identical, with the rooms layed out in all the same positions, the puzzles, enemies and progression through the rooms is drastically changed. This version is meant for Ocarina of Time veterans, because you have to be very familiar with the original game to stand a chance of getting through some of the game's more merciless puzzles and also because there are several sidequests from the original that now become mandatory if you hope to get through a dungeon. Items like Din's Fire and the Fire Arrow and the Scarecrow's Song are now essential if you hope to solve certain puzzles. Harder still are the many extremely well hidden switches that I often spent large amounts of time trying to track down or missed completely and had to look up on a walkthrough to understand what I needed to do to move on. It's interesting to note that now, there are less enemies overall within the dungeons, but there are a larger number of harder enemies that take multiple hits like Lizolfos, Dinolfos, Stalfos, ReDead and Iron Knuckles. Also, because of the progression changes, you might find yourself completely bypassing certain rooms or unable to get into them until you've gotten an item from later in the game. This, of course, tends to mean that there are Gold Skulltulas in those rooms. While the Gold Skulltulas outside the dungeons remain in the same places that they are in the original quest, they are in drastically different places in Master Quest and are often much harder to find.
The various changes make a huge change to the overall difficulty of the game - everything is now much harder.
The switch to GameCube also allowed for a few minor upgrades to graphics. The game runs at about 24 frames per second (according to some articles I read on IGN), as opposed to modern games which run in at least 30 frames per second but tend to aim for 60 frames per second. This means that movements on screen might look a little rugged and choppy, especially if you're used to the high definition games that are on the market today. But you'll get used to it after a little gameplay and, really, the game is still great to look at for something that essentially came out eleven years ago. Plus, the GameCube disc can run in progressive scan, so if you have a 'Cube or a Wii set up on an HDTV with the right cables, you can get a slightly better picture out of it.
The gameplay of Ocarina of Time was revolutionary back in 1998, with its Z-targetting system, such a huge game world, and an unheard of camera system that could move into a 1st person free-look. This all worked fantastically on the N64, but on GameCube, it misses a few points. For one, I had the problem of forgetting that this particular Zelda came before the free floating camera that could be manipulated to any position via the C-Stick, as it can in The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. When I first started the file, I kept finding myself trying to manipulate the camera only to bring out an item, since items have been mapped to the C-stick and also to the X, Y and Z buttons. I found myself always using the buttons rather than the stick for my items because it is a much more intuitive and responsive way to do it.
The mapping of C-Button functions from the N64 controller to the GameCube controller's C-stick is most problematic in the use of the ocarina within the game. Because there is no button assigned the the C-Up button from the N64, the ocarina's C-Up note must be played via the stick. This makes many of the songs that use that note much more difficult to play. If a song didn't use C-Up at all, I would always use the X, Y, Z and A buttons just for the sake of convenience. This would be a minor gripe, but considering the prolific use of the ocarina throughout the game, it's tedious. It also makes the ocarina mini-games with the Skullchildren in the Lost Woods and with the Frogs in Zora's River much more difficult.
I hadn't played Master Quest since I first received and played through the disc in 2003, so I've come back into it with fresh eyes. The game still holds up remarkably well and is still very challenging. It's not for Zelda newbies, but veterans who haven't played it should take a look. The game disc is pretty hard to find these days, I'd recommend checking around local or online stores that sell used games. Luckily, the Wii is backwards compatible, so, so long as you have a GameCube controller and memory card, you can play the disc on a Wii if you still don't have a GameCube.

Oh, also, I discovered while playing this that Ganondorf has Obama ears. I'm serious.


Tommorrow's post will be on the first day of play of Legend of Zelda for NES (I'll be playing it on the Collector's Edition GameCube disc). I've actually never played all the way through the NES Zelda games, so this should be interesting.