It’s Zelda Day! (What is Zelda Day?)

Back in 2010, over on Metafilter, three posts on The Legend of Zelda went up on the same day, on the day after Christmas, December 26th. Since then, I’ve tried to commemorate the event by making a post there about The Legend of Zelda each year. I typically tag these posts with “zeldaday,” to make them easier to find.

Since we have Set Side B now, I figured I’d crosspost the main content of this year’s Zelda Day post here as well. Here it is!

GameSpot has a long series of interesting discoveries of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:

This is just the first video….

48 things you still didn’t know21 more31 more than that29 on top of thoseand then still 28 moreand 30 additionalfollowed by another 33and then 27after that 25then, 26and 19and 20and 22and 18and 23and another 24and then, 16then ANOTHER 16then 12then 15, and then, finally 14 — as of this writing, that is. That’s 497 things in all, over nearly three hours! Here’s their playlist with the whole series.

The Youtube channel Looygi Bros. has done a couple of similar series, covering Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask:

15 cool things about Ocarina of Time10 morethen 13then another 13then 19then 7then 11then 11 morethen 10 after thatthen 10and then 13. Then, later, another 10, another 8, yet another 10, and then 9, and 9, and 8, and at last another 8.

But there’s more, on Majora’s Mask! 11 cool things about Majora’s Maskand then 10and then 9and then another 10then yet another 10and another 10 againand another 10 once moreand 9and 7and 7 againthen 6, then 15, then 7, then 10, and then finally 7.

And now, a new series has started on the Wind Waker, with one video so far and 12 facts. Here is a playlist with all of them. All together, I count that’s 841 facts of Zelda esoterica to watch. I figure that’ll keep you going until Zelda Day 2023!

News 10/6/2022: Deku Stick, Stadia’s Demise, Chaos;Head Noah

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Ollie Reynolds at Nintendo Life reports on why the Deku Stick item in Link’s hands looks different between Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. It has to do with a subtle texture reference error.

Oli Welsh, demonstrating that there’s nothing good that can last, tells us that three Disco Elysium developers have left the company. Details are scarce, but it seems it was not by choice. Is it possible that there’s an NDA involved, or else, a non-disparagment clause?

At TechCrunch, Devin Coldewey claims that Stadia, Google’s streaming gaming service that they just finally killed, died because no one trusts them to keep anything alive. I still remember (and tend to repeatedly mention) how frustrated I was when they killed Google Reader back in 2013, in order to make way for a social networking service that no one remembers, and that feeling never really went away.

Chaos;Head Noah, screenshot from Mobygames

Kyle Orland at Ars Technica mentions a visual novel Spike Chunsoft is releasing for Switch that they’ve cancelled for Steam, due to mandated content changes by Valve. The game is called Chaos;Head Noah (their punctuation, not mine), and was originally released for the Xbox 360, with a Vita re-release, that both received very restrictive ratings. Later releases had an edited script which allowed it to be released with a lighter rating, which an anonymous source says is the version to be released on Switch (and not on Steam). Chaos;Head Noah is a sequel to the previous Chaos;Head, and both are part of the same series as Steins;Gate.

The mainstream gaming press suffered another blow. John Walker writing for Kotaku mentions that the ubiquitous Fandom wiki empire, formerly known as Wikia, has purchased a variety of other websites, including Gamespot, GameFAQs, and Giant Bomb, in addition to TV Guide, Metacritic, Cord Cutters News and Comic Vine. The NetHack Wiki changed over from Wikia many years ago, yet Fandom’s out-of-date version of it still confuses Google search results today. And it doesn’t feel great that so many properties have their primary source of knowledge about them owned by one business, which now engulfing a much larger percentage of the fan media landscape. I point you again to the line in our sidebar that says, “Just say no to Fandom.com!” And yet, if you want to find information on some things, Fandom sites are largely inescapable.

Final Fantasy V, image from Mobygames

Marshall Honorof at Tom’s Hardware goes through the six English releases of Final Fantasy V and tells you which is the best to play-although, pointedly, it is challenging to buy these days. It contains a screed about game preservation that I am entirely on board with.

Video Games Chronicle’s Jordan Middler discusses a Bloomberg report that controversial Activision chief compliance officer Francis Townsend has stepped down, a former Bush administration officer who was unpopular with both fans and employees for not addressing reports of harassment.