One of the older, better-known Neon Genesis Evangelion-related fan projects out there is ToastyFrog Thumbnail Theatre, which, in addition to other properties, distills all 26 episodes of the original Eva TV series into snippets of snarky commentary. My favorite is the one for the famously controversial Episode 26. In this Thumbnail Theatre, main character Shinji is personified as series director Hideaki Anno, his mecha EVA-01 is Evangelion itself, and so on. As silly as it is, it also makes a whole lot of sense.
The Rebuild of Evangelion movies, the first one of which was released in 2007, and the fourth and final one due for sometime in the future, don’t have Thumbnail Theatres, since Jeremy Parish doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore, but if they did, I imagine they might start off a bit like this:
Shinji: I am 1996 Hideaki Anno, director of the recently-aired smash hit Neon Genesis Evangelion. EVA-01: I am the Evangelion franchise. Gendo: I am present-day Hideaki Anno, director of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies.
(Lots of Rebuild of Evangelion spoilers ahead; familiarity with the original Neon Genesis Evangelion is highly recommended.)
There’s a series of Japanese figures called Pinky:st that I’ve been a collector of for a number of years now. These days, they aren’t nearly as popular as they used to be, but since I still have some interest in them, their dip in popularity simply means that I can get some of the previously expensive ones at much lower prices. As it happens, two of these figures were Pucchi and the second release of Evil, which were included in the limited-edition box sets for their respective DS games. Although my main interest was in the figures, I felt an obligation to play the games as well, and so I did.
These two were the rhythm game Pinky:st Kira Kira * Music Hour and its sequel Pinky:st Kira Kira * Music Night (there is a third Pinky:st game, a PS2 RPG titled Mahoraba Stories, but I neither own nor have played it). Music Hour follows Pucchi on her quest to become a great dancer and fashionista; Music Night stars Pucchi’s rival Evil in a similar story. Strictly on a gameplay level, both are reasonably import-friendly, with a handful of icons and English words in menus and the like. For those who can read Japanese, the text is entirely in hiragana and katakana, so one doesn’t have to worry about any complex or unfamiliar kanji. In addition, the first game was localized in Europe as Kira Kira Pop Princess, so one can forego the Japanese version entirely if they want to. I can’t find any evidence of Music Night‘s European version, Pop Town, actually seeing release anywhere besides Italy, and have to wonder if the German WWII military uniforms that a couple of the characters briefly cosplay in at one point had anything to do with it.
Not being well-versed in Japanese, I couldn’t read the dialogue bits in the cutscenes (although, after beating Music Hour, I was able to find fan translations of the script). There are a lot of cutscenes, too. In addition to the handful of cutscenes related to the core story, there’s one before and after each dance battle round. I must’ve spent just as much—or more—time looking at cutscenes than I had actually playing the games.
Cutscenes aside, here’s how the games are structured. The main character’s home base is at ANGELA, a club on George Hill. Here, Pucchi (or Evil) can practice dance routines for the songs unlocked to that point, save, connect to other players wirelessly, or access the wardrobe. This last part reflects Pinky:st’s core appeal: the mixing and matching of dozens of tops, bottoms, hairstyles, accessories, and so on. The sheer number of clothing articles is astonishing, and not only includes styles from the Pinky:st figure line, but also completely original ones. On top of that, each item has a total of three color variations, and up to ten complete outfits can be created and saved for easy access.
There are other neighborhoods in Rainbow Town besides George Hill. Each one has a ludicrously overpriced clothing store, an accessory-dispensing gashapon (capsule) machine, a place to take photos of the main character with a rudimentary camera feature, and a venue where the dance battles occur, devoted to a specific musical genre. Who participates in these battles and the number of songs for each genre varies between the two games, but the actual dance battle gameplay is the same. For these segments, the DS has to be held book-style, and the touchscreen is used to tap, swipe, and scratch the cues that pop up within three rectangular fields. It’s a simple enough system, but it breaks from the conventional wisdom of rhythm game design in some peculiar ways.
There are typically two schools of design when it comes to rhythm games: the “Simon Says” approach and the “scrolling cues” one. In a Simon Says rhythm game, such as Parappa the Rapper or Space Channel 5, the actions to be taken are played first by the game, and then the player repeats the same sequence. Those that use scrolling cues, including the Dance Dance Revolution and Rock Band games, offer a preview of the beats to hit as they scroll toward the goal. The Music Hour/Music Night approach lies somewhere in between. In these two games, cues for where the notes will appear briefly pop up in a small box at the top of the touchscreen, though these cues rarely indicate what type of action will be required (the aforementioned tapping, swiping, and scratching). This preview box also does not tie in to the rest of the playfield in any way, and in fact can distract from it.
The dance segments have some other unique features. How the notes of each music track sound depends on how precisely they are played, which can result in some rather clunky sounding melodies. While an interesting approach, it can make it harder to determine how a track is supposed to sound. Other than pulling off a completely perfect performance, there is a way to hear tracks played properly, but it requires hoofing it back to ANGELA and going through the practice menu, without actually activating a practice. Then there’s the dancing itself: not only is it difficult to watch the Pinky characters dance on the opposite screen while playing (note that a replay button does become available at the end if you want to watch the simple dance animations), but there are also two measurements of how well a performance goes—and only one of them determines if you pass or fail. As in DDR, a grade is given at the end for how well the notes were hit, chains, and so on. However, there is also the “audience” meter, reminiscent of a similar feature in the PS1 dance battle game Bust a Groove, which shows how well your character fares against the Pinky NPC they’re up against. This second metric is the one that ultimately determines success, and because of that, it’s entirely possible to get a great grade on certain songs and fail. To call such a setup contradictory and maddening is an understatement; the game’s designers should’ve gone with either the grade system or the audience meter, not both.
Once a dance battle has been won, a small amount of money and a prize is issued—usually a new wardrobe item, or said item plus a P-Coin for use with the gashapon machines (for losing battles, only the money and sometimes a P-Coin is given). Speaking of money, as I said before, the clothing stores are overpriced. One has to do a lot of dance battles to build up enough capital to afford even the cheapest items, and even selling off unwanted goods doesn’t help, as only a very small amount is offered for them. That said, the best way to build up a decent wardrobe is simply to win the dance battles.
Finally, this wouldn’t be much of a rhythm game review if I didn’t talk about the music itself. Although the graphics are mostly lovely, with bright colors and clear, crisp designs, the music is, unfortunately, not as memorable. It’s actually fairly generic, and the only tracks that I found stuck in my head were the ones that I had trouble with in the game, and had thus played a dozen times over in hopes of getting past.
As licensed games from a small, and now-defunct, developer, I wasn’t expecting much. That said, these two were pretty much what I was expecting: mediocre, brief, and laden with Pinky:st fanservice. The Pinky figures themselves are all right as well, though the pegs on Evil’s front hair piece and base are too large (either that or the holes are too small). Evil also doesn’t come with as many extras as Pucchi, but like too few other figures in the line, has a ball-jointed neck. Nevertheless, both girls are now on display in my figure case, and their respective games have been filed away in my library, two more for the “beaten” pile.
When Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny begins, it lets you know right away that this is an atypical entry in the series. After a brief battle sequence—the purpose of which is awfully vague—the two main characters appear in a completely different scene, where they’re spirited away and one is forced to share the other’s body.
From that point on, it continues as any Rune Factory does, on the first day of Spring with a strange new town and a lot of friendly locals to meet, but the differences start becoming noticeable again. For one thing, the house you’re given does not include an adjacent plot of farmland. In fact, it’s impossible to do any farming at all until certain story-related missions are completed. These seasonal farms, like the game’s dungeons, are islands spread throughout a vast ocean, which is traversed across with the help of a massive golem. This monster is both the game’s most important feature as well as the source of many of its flaws.
Exploring the world is done by walking all over the ocean via the golem. The golem is a neat feature, but as a form of transportation, it is far from perfect. As opposed to your typical Rune Factory dungeon, which is located close to home, Tides of Destiny‘s monster-infested islands can take half an in-game day or longer to reach. An instant-transport option is available for a good chunk of the game, but is later taken away thanks to story events. This setup can make it difficult to collect monster drops for crafting, but fortunately, reaching the farming islands is as easy as stepping into special portals within the golem.
The biggest single flaw, however, doesn’t have much to do with the golem and in fact messes with one of the core Harvest Moon fundamentals upon which Rune Factory has been based: the four seasons. This is the first Rune Factory I’ve played in which seasons are mostly irrelevant, mere points on a calendar. Seasonal areas are not dungeons this time around, and after restoration, can be used to grow just about any crop. Said crops are grown not through the use of seeds, but with Spirit Magic and captured monsters, each with their own specialty. All of this is fine, but aside from the winter-themed island, upon which only metals, gems, and crystals can be grown, any plant can be raised and harvested on any farm. For instance, with a well-groomed monster, it’s easy to quickly grow cucumbers on the Spring, Summer, and Autumn islands, discarding any need for the careful planning that typically goes into farming. On top of that, most monsters specialize in multiple types of crops, and the player has no option to tell them what exactly they should grow. Because of this, I wound up growing way more eggplants and far fewer tomatoes and that I would have normally.
The broken season system extends to the fishing as well. On the main island, the types of fish available to catch don’t vary much between seasons, and for rarities, one must venture out onto the golem to find special spots in the middle of the ocean—which are not added to the map once they’ve been discovered, unlike dungeons and seasonal islands.
Aside from the botched handling of ocean-crossing and seasons, there are flaws when it comes to the optional quests. For the most part, these quests, typically of the “fetch” variety, are all right, but there are a handful that appear early on and require high skill levels and/or rare items in order to complete, including one set which is informal in nature and impossible to get the details of again once it’s been triggered. There is also at least one quest which is impossible to even begin, an apparent victim of the worst bug I have yet seen in this series. As these sidequests are the only way to obtain new recipes for cooking, forging, and so on (though not all of them give out said recipes as rewards), this is somewhat frustrating. Also, speaking of technical problems, when multiple enemies or characters populate the screen, this game suffers from slowdown that’s worse than in some of the DS entries (note that I played the Wii version; I’m not sure if this is the case on the PS3 one). The localization is sub-par as well, with a not insignificant number of grammatical errors.
However, all is not lost with this Rune Factory, as it sports some above average dungeon design and carries over the great timing-based cooking/forging/crafting/alchemy system from Frontier, with a new addition in the form of woodworking. Loading times are also shorter than Frontier‘s, and the still character portraits that pop up during conversations have been replaced with animated 3D models. There’s also a neat musical easter egg that’s triggered by a certain Frontier character who appears for a cameo.
The story is a particular strong point, mixing certain themes from the older games (it must be noted here that all of the Rune Factory tales occur within the same world) with some interesting new ideas. The characters occupy the usual range of tropes, and are everything from charming to irritating, but as in Rune Factory 3, there are consistent mini-stories for each one that flesh them out over time. Two of the most interesting characters are the playable leads, Aden and Sonja, both of whom have more personality, for better or worse, than the rest of the series’ heroes. Aesthetically, and despite some odd decisions when it comes to what lines are given voice, the visuals and sound maintain the high level of quality I’ve come to expect from the series.
Tides of Destiny is one of the most ambitious, but also one of the most fault-ridden, Rune Factory games. It is highly experimental in its revamped approached to farming and exploring and unfortunately, the vast majority of these experiments are failures, but when the game does things right, it really shines. Still, this game is only for hardcore Rune Factory fans like myself. Everyone else would be better off checking out the slightly older, but far superior, Rune Factory 3.
It was a long time in coming, but I finally, finally managed to play Level-5’s space pirate action RPG Rogue Galaxy. I don’t know exactly how long I’d had it sitting around, but its presence there dates back from at least April 2008. After roughly a month and a half of playing, the Rogue Galaxy Era of my backlog officially ended on November 7, 2011 after watching the credits roll. Looking at my “Currently playing/in my backlog” list from that post, it seems that Persona 3 (or rather, Persona 3 FES, which I had acquired since then) should be my next major priority.
However, let’s not concern ourselves with that right now; this post is about Rogue Galaxy. Ah, Rogue Galaxy! I can still remember how excited I was about this game before it launched. The splendidly quirky Dark Cloud 2 had been my first introduction to a small development house called Level-5, and from that point on, I was immediately interested in anything they produced. However, since that time, I had played their masterful collaborations with Square Enix, Dragon Quest VIII and IX, and none of their other titles. The first Dark Cloud and Professor Layton games are currently languishing in my backlog, but Rogue Galaxy had been in the Pile of Shame longer than either of them. This is not the case any more, and now, I feel obliged tell you about this game which took me way too long to get around to playing.
Much like Dark Cloud 2, Rogue Galaxy is a beautifully cel-shaded action RPG (with even more beautifully cel-shaded FMVs). The story follows Jaster Rogue, a young man on a desert planet who dreams of going up into space. One day, his dreams come true when a pair of crew members serving under the pirate captain Dorgengoa mistake Jaster for one of the galaxy’s top bounty hunters and bring the young man aboard their ship. What follows is an adventure filled with planet-hopping, interesting characters, and gobs of clichés. Think Treasure Planet with touches of every JRPG ever, told through cutscenes as long as Xenosaga, Episode I‘s, but without the sluggish pacing. Finally, I’d like to mention one handy feature in relation to the plot: a brief recap of recent events that pops up when starting a new game or continuing from a save.
The game is jam-packed with things to do. In addition to the main quest, there are a handful of sidequests and optional goals, including bounties to hunt down, a multi-tiered insect fighting tournament, and a complex factory-based item creation system that’s reminiscent of the town-rebuilding aspects of the Dark Cloud series. Speaking of items, there are an overwhelming number of them—not just in the form of weapons and healing medicines, but shields, foods, metals, gems, machines, circuitry, random objects, event-specific things, a talking purple frog that can merge two weapons into one, and a handful of alternate outfits for your party members. These items are used in some of the optional activities I described above, as well as the Revelation Flow, charts (specialized for each character) from which new abilities and augmentations can be unlocked. Then, there’s the separate section for special items—three types of them, to be exact. This is a game that loves its stuff.
At the core of all this is some very good combat made use of in environments that are pretty but relatively monotonous, and all far larger than they need to be. The party-based battle system most closely resembles that of Kingdom Hearts; there are no cutaways to “battle screens”—instead, enemies simply appear on the field—and one character is directly controlled by the player while the other two are handled by AI. However, here the action can be paused at any time to access party members’ menus for special commands, and AI-controlled members will often ask for advice on which attack or item to use. All of the special moves, by the way, are accompanied by brief cutscenes, which are thankfully skippable, though not right away. Each character also has a set of “Burning Strike” attacks, which relies on a filling up a meter and timed button presses, as well as combo moves that recall the Double and Triple Techs from Chrono Trigger.
It’s an engaging, well-executed system… for the most part. Its major weakness comes about in the rare instances when characters find themselves in one-on-one battles. Although Rogue Galaxy tends to err on the easy side, once party strength is cut down by a third, you’re facing the toughest fights in the game. It’s easy to blow through a dozen or more healing potions during one of these battles, to say nothing of dying and getting “Game Over”.
As for the environments, as previously implied, they are generally gorgeous, but also wear out their welcome fairly quickly, with little variety within single areas, and wide, lengthy pathways that take a long time to get through. Backtracking to unlock special chests, defeat bounties, or seek out any other extra content is often tedious, to say nothing of going through the game’s dungeons the first time around. The save points, which double as teleporters, do help to lessen this tedium. Unfortunately, I wish I could say the same about the map system, which only allows for views of many different floors at once at save points, and can be unreliable once the ability to see all unlocked chests on a given planet is accessed.
The music is inoffensive and only occasionally ear-wormy. The regular battle theme in particular has a starting similarity to the one in a certain other game about pirates in flying ships. As for the voice acting and sound effects, much like the music, they get the job done reasonably well. There’s nothing truly outstanding about the sound design in general, but nor is there anything bad.
I’m sure I’m forgetting something; Rogue Galaxy has so much going on that it would be hard not to. It’s a beautiful, ambitious title filled with both great and frivolous ideas, and arguably one of the better Sony-published JRPGs of the PS2 era. However, it lacks some of the coherence and originality of the best that console has to offer. I hesitate to call Rogue Galaxy average—since it isn’t—but it’s also not the masterpiece it had the potential to be. That said, it is still a very good game, and although it took me ages to get around to playing it, I’m glad to have ultimately done so.
So I decided to play Halo 2 after all. On console. If I wanted to continue with the series, I had no choice in the matter, seeing as how the PC version requires an upgrade from Windows XP, which I refuse to do.
Although I wanted to play the game, I wasn’t looking forward to wresting with the control scheme, and wrestle I did. Though I play them infrequently, I have long been accustomed to keyboard-and-mouse controls for first-person games. The Wii offers a excellent console-based alternative thanks to the Wii Remote, but the dual analog sticks that are standard for Xbox and Xbox 360 FPSes were unappealing.
In fact, they still are. Early on in Halo 2, I spent much of the time fiddling with the settings, trying to find the sweet spot that would make up for the right stick’s (or rather, the surrogate mouse’s) lack of finesse. Finally, I found an okay compromise by turning the camera sensitivity all the way down to 1 and vertical inversion on. The irony here is that, when I played Halo: Combat Evolved on PC, I had the sensitivity set at its highest level, 10, and inversion turned off! Anyway, on with the review, and please note that as usual, this covers single-player only.
Y'all know this guy.
The Xbox game Halo 2 is, in many ways, your typical sequel. At a fundamental level it offers more of the same, but also builds upon the first game’s foundation, with some decent variety in the environments, new weapons and enemies, and a slightly more complex story. Spartan 117, aka the Master Chief, is back, as is shipboard AI-turned-sidekick Cortana, and though there are a few brief glimpses of their respective personalities at work, such moments aren’t as prominent in this outing. Military caricature Sergeant Johnson is, oddly enough, back as well; unfortunately, the circumstances behind his return are glossed over in one of the earliest scenes.
Of the new characters introduced, the most prominent one is an intelligent and honorable Covenant Elite who eventually becomes playable for a significant portion of the campaign. With the human UNSC well established in Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 spends less time with them and more with the Covenant, allowing the player to get to know both them and their motives a bit better. While splitting between the points of view of Master Chief and this Elite sometimes led to haphazard storytelling, I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about the UNSC’s enemies.
The story, by the way, is still sci-fi cotton candy, even with the obvious effort to give gravitas to the Covenant’s quest. As in the first game, there are well-placed touches of humor here and there, especially early on, and the game upholds its predecessor’s tradition of general lightweightedness—one character in particular does so to a fault. On a similar note, though we get to see much more this time through a Covenant point of view, they still lack some of the depth of certain other popular sci-fi aliens. Also lacking is the emptiness that the first Halo displayed every so often, not to mention the tension which came about thanks to that game’s big plot twist. Thankfully, the environments, as before, are not at all greys and rust, and instead display varied and judicious applications of color.
Speaking of the environments, there’s a bit more diversity this time around, though those narrow corridors—which I’ve suspected are there for buffering purposes—are back in some areas. A strange bug popped up in at least two areas, one which caused semi-transparent overlays of parts of the environment to become stuck on top of my field of view; this bug was not game-breaking, but distracting and, at its worst, annoying. Vehicle sections once again appear on a regular basis, with tanks playing an especially prominent role this time around; however, as much as I like Halo 2‘s tanks, there seemed to be one too many parts devoted to driving one.
As far as other gameplay elements go, the new Covenant weapons are excellent, and it was great to be able to use the cool-looking melee-based Energy Swords this time around. For the UNSC, there wasn’t much new weapon-wise, though the submachine gun’s recoil was realistic but annoying, especially since I wasn’t fond of the controls to begin with. One of the big new features touted on the game’s back cover was dual-wielding, which could only be done with some weapons and proved cumbersome whenever I wanted to toss a grenade, but worked well in general. Two notable subtractions from the game’s features are the health meter and medipacs, but I didn’t realize they weren’t there until roughly halfway into the campaign. The battles themselves were about as balanced as they were in the first Halo (note that I played on Normal difficulty for both), and I found myself using many of the same tactics that I had before.
Speaking of battles, the worst part of the campaign was the final one. It involved taking down one particular unit and was set in an arena-style map consisting of three tiers (going from large up to small, and the middle one with holes in the floor), and a central beam of light which can shoot you upward. Combine this with a healthy amount of backup, and I found myself not only constantly lost amid the chaos, but also robbed of the satisfaction of a killing blow. The campaign concludes with a teasing cliffhanger, as if to push more insignificance onto the ending which, much like God of War 2‘s, hammers home the fact that this is the second act in a trilogy.
So where does that leave me? Ordering and waiting on a copy of Halo 3, of course! As much as Halo 2‘s final act disappointed, the game as a whole left me wanting more. Despite the fluffiness of the Halo universe as I have seen it through these two games, and despite having to put up with the clumsiness of the right analog stick, I want to spend more time with these characters and the beautiful and terrifying galaxy they live in.
Until recently, I had never played a Legend of Zelda game before. This is true. I had gone throughout my entire life never having rescued Zelda, the Triforce, and/or Hyrule from the clutches of evil. With the exception of Twilight Princess, which I had watched my husband play through much of, my familiarity with the Zelda franchise had been mainly limited to everything outside of the games, including the infamous cartoon show, some of the comics, and the characters’ cameos in the likes of the Smash Bros. series.
This changed for good when, after PAX, I got the urge to play The Legend of Zelda, and play it seriously. As I implied in an earlier post, the Omegathon bears much of the blame for this decision. In the end, though, I’m glad I made it.
The Legend of Zelda came out in the US in the mid-to-late 80s, when the Nintendo hype machine was starting to build the company up to incredible heights. Zelda and its shiny golden cartridge helped usher in a new franchise, one which is widely loved and stands apart from so many other games. Often I’ve wondered what the deal is with this series. Why is it so special? The answer is undoubtedly different for each person, but after playing through the original game, I have a new appreciation for Zelda in general.
The game opens with a simple title screen, which is followed by a brief bit of text which establishes the plot. The Triforce of Power has been stolen by Ganon, and Princess Zelda broke the Triforce of Wisdom into eight parts before being taken away herself. It is therefore up to Link, the hero, to find the scattered pieces of this latter Triforce and rescue the princess. What follows next is a list of all the items which can be found in the game, along with a note to refer to the manual for more info. Seeing as how I was playing this game via The Legend of Zelda: Collector’s Edition for the GameCube, there wasn’t much information in the manual for this one game, and little about the items in particular. Still, I managed to figure out most of these details on my own.
My somewhat rudimentary but very useful overworld map.
Upon starting the game, I found myself in the middle of a path surrounded by green cliffs. A cave was in one of them. Walking eastward, I happened upon a forest full of monsters. At that moment, I realized I have nothing to defend myself with. I went back to the starting area and entered the cave. An old man was there with a sword; he said, “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.” And thus, my adventure began in earnest.
The game’s world is surprisingly big, but only little chunks of it are seen at any given time. There is a map at the top of the screen along with other crucial information, such as my health meter and the number of bombs I have on me, but it is Atari 2600 levels of crude. After wandering around and getting lost several times during initial play sessions, I decided to dig out some graph paper and draw my own map. This helped matters immensely. I must also note that the individual dungeons have in-game maps as well, but these are generally smaller in scope and much easier to read, and thus I didn’t feel the need to map these areas myself until I was past the halfway mark.
Another aspect of the overworld that I noticed early on is its openness. For instance, it is entirely possible to walk into the “Level-5” dungeon when you’re at a “Level-1” state. There are a lot more caves besides that first one, with more people to talk to (and/or get items from); also, the enemies get progressively harder the further out one explores. I can imagine being ten years old again, playing this for the first time and being genuinely impressed by this overworld. Hell, I found myself impressed by it here in 2011.
The wide variety of items available is also impressive. Aside from expected fare like health regenerators (hearts, potions) and currency (rupees, or “rubies” in the NES manual), there are secondary weapons such as the boomerang, which comes back to you on every toss—even if you move somewhere else in the meantime. However, it took me awhile to figure out how to actually use it (hadn’t yet downloaded the original manual at that point), and even afterward, it was pretty much useless until I got the upgrade. One item, the red candle, seemed not to work as described; same goes for the meat, until I found that it serves a very specific purpose.
My note-heavy late-game dungeon maps.
Certain items are needed in order to get further in the game, and become harder and harder to find as one goes along. One of the most devilish tricks the game pulls is the location of the Red Ring, which is the best armor available. On that note, there are (comparatively speaking) tons of secrets hidden throughout the game, especially in the overworld, in that old-school, tough-as-nails 8-bit-era way. There are hints about new items and areas scattered here and there, but a couple of them are awfully vague. Here then is the purest evidence that this is a video game from an era when such things were expensive, and (in this country, at least) were usually bestowed upon children as birthday and/or holiday presents, and thus had to last them for months on end. These days, such deeply buried secrets—especially those that are needed in order to progress—have rightly fallen out of favor amongst both developers and players, but there is, admittedly, an odd sort of satisfaction when randomly discovering something you had no idea was there. Still, that did not at all outweigh the mild frustration I felt over being unable to progress (or get a specific item) at certain points.
The game’s graphics are clear and simple throughout, with a limited palette that gets the job done. The animation is what one would expect from an NES game of this vintage, as are the sound effects. The Collector’s Edition does a good job of displaying everything in HD, though screens heavy with enemies are accompanied by an annoying slowdown. As for the music, it is repetitive. There are only about five or six pieces throughout the entire game, and two of them are heard constantly (on the overworld and in the eight Triforce piece dungeons), but are thankfully catchy. It’s little wonder then that these two pieces have since gone on to become much loved classics of game music.
All told, The Legend of Zelda has stood the test of time much better than other 8-bit games, and despite its more antiquated aspects, is quite playable today. It is a very important title in the history of video games, but it took my actually playing it to realize the weight of this importance. Its genre is hard to pin down—though I think it bears the greatest resemblance to a Metroidvania—but its influence is pervasive in many games that have followed since, clones or not. For instance, with only the first Zelda taken into account, a modern game series that strikes me as being very similar to it without being an outright clone is Grand Theft Auto. The GTA series’ open worlds, loose mission structures, hidden goodies, and so on are extremely reminiscent of its fantasy-based predecessor. I’m sure if I give it more thought, I can find touches of Zelda in countless other games, whether obvious or not.
My total experience as a gamer has been enriched by playing this one title—incredible it must have been then, and still fun today—and as such, I must recommend it to anyone wanting (or needing) a deeper sense of video games’ rich history. Finally, if you do play it, the excellent walkthrough at Zelda Dungeon is a great resource, should you feel the need for one at any point. After all, it can be dangerous to go alone.
Brainscraps Mailbag: So far, I’ve heard from one of the cosplayers featured in PAX Pix 2011, Part Four; a “cosplay credits” section has been added to the end of that entry (and its crosspostings). Anyway, here’s the email from Peter Jung:
Hi, I saw that you did a piece on the cosplay of PAX with a picture of me (as Community Outreach Gordon) on the front. Just wanted to say thanks, that totally made my day. I’m thinking next year I should start putting my email on the brochures, as they were a way bigger hit than I thought they’d be. Or just make a real HEV suit already. Anyway, glad you enjoyed it, I do it for the fans. And to say in a non-aggressive way to Valve, people still want a half life game.
Thank you,
-P.
Thanks for your email, Peter! And once again, if your cosplay is featured in that post, please let me know and I will be happy to credit you.
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This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
