Tag: zelda

Sundry Sunday: Zelda Animation Roundup

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been out for a week now and the internet is still abuzz about it. (Can’t you hear it? The incessant buzzing?)

Recently I had the opportunity to do a roundup of a number of Zelda fan animation videos. A few of these may have been shown here before. (We’ve been at it for over a year, it’s possible!) I’m sure some haven’t.

Racing for Rupees (4 minutes) was made with Source Filmmaker and Sony Vegas, and is a standout. With 24 million views it’s hardly obscure, but it’s eight years old as of this writing:

Shield Bash (2 minutes) is a lot newer. What are either of these two doing stealing items off the wall of a library?

I’m sure I’ve linked Something About Zelda: Breath of the Wild Animated Speedrun (5 1/2 minutes) before, but it’s a highlight of the Something About series for how many of the seemingly random elements, this time, have actual antecedents in BotW speedrunning. But not the “Excuuuuuuuse me Princess” part. That’s from the old Zelda TV cartoon.

Terminal Montage’s How To Get To Goron City (1 1/2 minutes) is also BotW related, and is also hardly obscure at 14 million views.

Pringus McDingus’ Breath of the Lovers (3 minutes) is not really much related to the games, but is still funny and cute.

Chasing Rupees (2 1/2 minutes) has only a third of a million views, but was made in stop motion, and rather well animated for that.

Let’s finish for now with Anger Management (5 1/2), starring everyone’s favorite put-upon money-grubbing shopkeeper, Beedle:

There’s tons of Zelda animations on Youtube, so you can bet we’ll be returning to this well eventually….

Tears of the Kingdom: More From The Dopiest Hero

Rök continues his adventures through Hyrule, as well as Hyrule and, eventually, Hyrule.

Being an alien, various aspects of the Zelda series escape him, but they love triangles, and they eagerly await seeing the first. They may have a while to wait yet.

Let’s join them where they left off, still on the Sky Islands, a.k.a. Tutorialia.

There are some spoilers here, but only for fairly early things.

For decades, since Ocarina of Time, Zelda fans have wondered what the hell was up with that Rauru guy who gave you the first medallion, without even having to do a dungeon for it. Turns out he was named, not just for a town in Zelda II, but after a goat. Unless… he’s a llama? No that can’t be true! ¡Y llama est un quadrupedo!
Lies. The main purpose of the Tips and Tricks screen is to tell you “Yo! Maybe develop some skillz!” after you DIE.
I’m sure many of you already know this, but this tool is a deep reference to Nintendo history, bearing the name of their first toy, an extendable grasping gadget released in 1966 and designed by Gunpei Yokoi himself.
All the grimdarkness of BotW and TotK is leavened nicely by the design of the gadget dispensers.
They spent two billion rupees to convince the Olympic Committee bring The Games to Hyrule, but don’t have anything to do with the stadium afterward.
After the encounter with that bird a few days ago, Link forswore all interactions with animals, vowing only to commune with plants from then on. See how well that went.

No real joke here, I just wanted to point out that Purah and Robbie are two of my favorite characters from all of Zeldadom, right up there, for me, with memorable characters like Midna, Linebeck and Groose. Robbie built an ancient equipment vending machine that continually calls Link [InsertNameHere], and Purah is Impa’s sister, and over a hundred years old, but due to a freak self-inflicted accident was turned into an 8-year-old in BotW. There are people who would kill to have that kind of accident in our world. Oh also, both characters are clearly, absolutely insane. Purah here subjects Link to one of those experiences that lots of Links have suffered throughout the series: being blown out of a cannon-like contraption to humorous effect without warning him.

Tears of the Wild, Breath of the Kingdom

Like most of the game-playing internet, I picked up Tears of the Kingdom and played a bit of it. It’s good! The opening tutorial seems to be slightly harder than Breath of the Wild’s (that cold water is instantly deadly to fall into now). That there’s a bunch of secret stuff to find even before you get out of the tutorial is awesome. I found a “Bottomless Cave” area that actually gave me a couple of real enemies to fight.

I’ll probably be obsessing over this game for a while, so I figured I’d make a special recurring feature for the blog about it, complete with its own pixel art character. May I introduce Röq, an inhabitant of Set Side B’s unnamed alien home planet who’s fixated on triangles, since they’re vaguely triangle-shaped themself. (They work out in order to sharpen their corners.) Please don’t mention they look like a Hershey’s Kiss, they’re very sensitive about that.

I know it looks like I’m trying to make an ostentatious point with pronoun use in this paragraph, but the fact is, no one on the Set Side B planet seems to have a gender! Except maybe The Gripe Monster, that one’s definitely male.

Here’s a few screenshots and videos from my first morning of play:

Just so you know who she is. BTW, how is she still a princess when her pop iced it a century ago? Coronate her already, she should be Queen Zelda, she’s not a My Little Pony or owned by Disney!

BTW, I bring this up only because strangely I’ve never heard anyone comment on it… why the hell is Zelda not an old woman?! Link was in stasis for a hundred years but Zelda was alive and fighting a psychic battle against a giant misty slime pig all that time. Impa became a prune! Zelda must moisturize.

Link, like many heroes that have the misfortune to be played by me, spent the first few minutes of his life tearing around the starting cave like a dog with too much energy.
Legwear? It’s obviously just a miniskirt.
This should be a moment of terror! If it weren’t for the music and the camera angle and Link’s carefree angle it’d be obvious he was about to be turned into a twink smear with pointy ears sticking out. He lands in a pond, but water hurts to fall onto!
Gargantuan lily pads should breed terrible frogs.
Oh hello birdie how’d you get up here? Do you want some seed, I think I–OOF

Stay tuned for our dubious hero’s continued badventures.

Impending Zelda

As you read this, Tears of the Kingdom, the ludicrously anticipated latest sequel to The Legend of Zelda and direct followup to the most popular Zelda game ever made, Breath of the Wild, is just being released. Yes, I pre-ordered my copy.

I say Breath of the Wild is the most popular Zelda because of sales figures. At over 29 million sales it far outstrips the previous best-selling Zelda, Ocarina of Time, at 14 million. The third best-selling is actually Link’s Awakening, but only because of the Switch remake. The original Legend of Zelda is down in 7th place.

Given that the game was leaked early and hackers are already combing through it and seeking to repurpose its assets for their own use (and godspeed to them in their efforts), I thought we might do a link (heh) roundup of a category of Zelda fanwork that would be impossible without their efforts: randomizers!

Zelda Randomizer and Zelda II Randomizer were two of the earliest randomizers to achieve high popularity, and they’re still probably my favorites. Zelda II Randomizer will even remake the overworld, a scrambling of the original game that few randomizers will dare try. Infinite Hyrule will redesign the overworld of the original game, and it’s compatible with the main Zelda Randomizer so you can remake that version as well. (I’ve linked to ZR and IH in the past.) Together, they’re as a long-time NES fan can get to the experience of playing the original game, before all of the secrets were discovered.

There’s two especially notable Link to the Past Randomizers, both implemented as web applications. A standard one, and a really fancy one that combines it with Super Metroid into one glorious trainwreck of a game.

There are also randomizers for Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask (especially interesting given that game’s unusual structure), a version that combines both Ocarina and Majora into a single game and randomizes their fusion, a couple for Link’s Awakening, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and for both the Switch and Wii U versions of Breath of the Wild.

There, that oughta hold you for long enough for me to play a bit of TotK. See you tomorrow! Probably.

3D Zelda II Revisited

With Tears of the Kingdom released soon, some people have been speculating, based on leaks, that it and Breath of the Wild actually take place on the “downfall” timeline of Hyrule, the very first games to follow chronologically from the two NES Zelda games.

It’s a good time to revisit one of the weirder, and unexpectedly well-made, fangames out there, a FPS re-envisioning of Zelda II. This was originally release to the internet in 2010, but it turns out its creator Mike Johnston updated it back in 2019, to include some of the initial overworld areas of the original game. He included a couple of shops too, which are not in the NES Zelda II game, so the player can get a few aids to make the game easier. Have a look at some of these screenshots:

Sadly Johnston is a bit dismayed by Nintendo’s absurdly litigious defense of its oh-so-sacred properties, even if they are pushing 40 years old now, and has no plans to continue working on his project. I can’t blame him, and am glad for what he’s given us. Thanks Mike!

Zelda II FPS (browser playable, $0, requires Unity)

Romhack Thursday: The Winter Lion

On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

You can find romhacks of all kinds and levels of quality. Professional translations that seek to produce what an official localization would be, and slapdash language conversions. Graphic hacks that make Mario into Wilford Brimley. Total conversion games that turn the original into something so different that it seems like it would have been easier to have started from scratch, and juvenile dialog hacks.

This week’s hack lies on the middle ground. Alfonso De La Vega’s The Winter Lion is a game where it feels the creator’s ambition exceeded their grasp, a little. The title screen and overworld of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past really weren’t changed much, and where they were changed it’s kind of ugly. The plotting it a bit clumsy. But the writing has real poetry to it, there are some interesting ideas behind the way it uses the game’s item progression to enforce making difficult choices that fit along divergent plotlines.

I try to put a title screen into these posts to introduce the hack, but The Winter Lion doesn’t change it, at least in the current version–hacks can be updated, after all. For now though, we’ll just have to settle for gameplay images.

The Winter Lion is an interesting take on the Zelda formula in that, instead of a Link as a kid or teenager, he’s an old man. Arguably the best-realized aspect of the hack as it stands is the pixel art that puts a white beard on him. He’s still pretty small compared to the other adult characters in the game, but it looks good enough in play.

The writing is another strong element of this hack, it feels like it was written with poetic meter in mind, although I couldn’t place the type.

Sadly the alternate paths aspect is a bit janky. Bombs have been removed from the early game, except for a single one in the first palace. There’s a political aspect of the game where you can either follow a military path in the story by using that bomb to activate a switch, or a revolutionary path by using it on a certain building in Kakariko. If you use it anywhere else you’ve blocked Link’s progress and have to start over. It doesn’t help that some cracked walls can be opened with either the bomb or the Pegasus Boots; if you open a Boots wall with the bomb, you’ve messed it up. There is a walkthrough in the readme on the Romhacking entry, but you may want to make a save state before using that bomb, just in case.

Some of that good old-fashioned romhack glitchiness!

The story is pretty one sided. It makes it clear that picking the military option is the bad one, and the revolutionary option is the good one, which, regardless of what you think about the moral choices involved is pretty obvious writing. But it’s implemented in an interesting way at least. And it’s not too difficult overall! So many romhacks are made for hardcore players that it’s refreshing to find one with only a modestly higher difficulty level. And it shows a lot of ambition by a first-time hack creator! We await future revisions of this hack, or whatever they choose to turn their attention to next.

The Winter Lion (romhacking.net, hack of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past)

Pretty lurid!
Didn’t we all know a girl like that in college?
Some more romhack glitchiness. The art for Old Link is pretty good though!

News 2/16/23: Switch Online, Google Share Prices, MS v Sony, Toaplan

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

Welcome shlorbs and foobs to our mostly-weekly text-based internet news program! I hope you enjoyed our techno/bicycle horn fusion theme song! It’s the number one chart-topper on my homeworld, but admittedly my species doesn’t have ears. Images includes in this post are ultimately from Mobygames.

Emily Olson at NPR (swanky!): Google’s shares dropped by $100… (holds paper in front of eyes, reads twice to make sure I see it right)… billion after a disastrous AI demonstration. As a wise cartoon butler once said, “You people have too much money!” I guess we see where everyone’s looking for the next unsupportable tech bubble now that crypto’s in what I understand humans call “the crapper!” I never understood that saying personally. It isn’t the thing that craps!

Liam Doolan at Nintendo Life tells us that the game lineup on the Japanese version of the new Game Boy game collection on Nintendo Switch Online is different than the Western lineup. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare replaces video mahjongg player Yakuman. Interestingly the article tells us that Japan-only classic For The Frog The Bell Tolls is coming eventually, although it doesn’t say if it’ll see U.S. release, let alone if it’ll come out on my planet, drebnar!

I’ll admit, Kirby’s Dream Land is pretty nice.
Just look at the smile on that bomb-throwing Poppy Bros. Sr. That’s not the look of a sane person.

Also, Andrew Webster of The Verge says that the addition of the Game Boy games make Nintendo Switch Online the ultimate retro subscription. I mean it’s pretty good, but how was it that Gameboy titles were what pushed it over the line?

Matt Bassil of Wargamer brings us the surprising news that Bank of America thinks that Hasbro is harming its business by over-monetizing Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. When a bank thinks you’re too money-grubbing you might want to sit down with some hot tea and reflect on your life.

Kotaku. Luke Plunkett. Sony claims before court that Microsoft’s request for documentation goes so far that it’s “obvious” harassment. I mean I am at a point in my blobular life that I don’t see anyone representing a corporation as saying a single syllable that isn’t mathematically calculated to four decimal places to improve their balance sheet, so who the hell knows if it’s true. Maybe it is? I am staying neutral in this fight. Acids and bases hurt my cell wall.

Metroid Prime

Oli Welsh of Polygon really likes the HD remake of Metroid Prime that Nintendo put on sale a few days ago, noting that it includes the pointing interface improvements introduced with the Wii rerelease.

Will Shanklin of Engadget tells us that a “Minecraft mad scientist” has recreated The Legend of Zelda in Minecraft, and in true mad scientist fashion is holding the work hostage, refusing to release it unless a video demonstrating it hits 5,000 Youtube likes. The article said it was at 500 likes; at our own press time it was up to 4.5K, so by the time you read this it should have enough. I will pass it along to Editorial as possible blog fodder (“blodder”) for Set Side B!

Ron Amadeo brings us the news that with the switch to monthly updates of Android 14, Google will begin just blocking apps on it made for versions of Android before 6. The reason given is security, but bah to that, old software and its preservation simply isn’t a priority for megacompanies like Google. Does anyone remember the days when it seemed like they might be a different kind of tech company? Me neither.

Nicole Clark at Polygon says Okami is the best Zelda-like. Sal Romano at Gematsu reveals that M2 is planning a collection of Toaplan shooters, including the infamous Zero Wing, the game whose U.S. translation brought us the “All Your Base” meme a 100 billion years ago. And Justin Carter at Game Developer reveals that Double Fine has made a documentary about the making of Psychonauts 2. Drebs out!

News 2/2/2022: Konami, Link to the Past, Listicles

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

My cell walls are feeling kind of rigid at the moment due to a computer issue that caused me to lose the first draft of this post. All of my witty remarks, lost to the electronic void. You missed out on my entertaining usage of the phrase “odoriferous blorpy.” Truly we are in the worst timeline. It’s all left me feeling kind of cranky, let’s get through it quickly this week.

Ted Litchfield at PC Gamer on a RuneScape player playing a minigame for eight years and turn turning in all his progress at once. RuneScape is an early MMORPG that began in 2001.

Several things to do with Konami, a once-great publisher that’s become pretty hidebound lately:

Dustin Bailey at GamesRadar: fans are working on a PC remake of Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. I’m sure this won’t get obliterated by legal threats. They should have gone with the cheeky route taken by The Transylvania Adventure of Simon Quest. The article mentions that its creators consider the fact that many townsfolk lie to you to be a problem, instead of awesome as it really is.

Charles Harte at Gamespot organ Game Informer says Dead Cells’ upcoming Castlevania-themed DLC is really big.

Also from Charles Harte, Konami is shutting down their recently-released game CRIMESIGHT, not just removing it from the Steam store but even making it unplayable. Great way to reward people giving you money, K. It’s not even a year old yet!:

Tyler Wilde, also from PC Gamer, on a $2,000 game on Steam and what it’s about. Summarized: it costs $2,000 but is short enough that people can finish it within the return period, and it amounts to a screed against women. Blech!

Dean Howell at Neowin: a fan-made decompilation of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past can now be compiled for Windows and (presumably if your device is jailbroken) Switch.

Christ Moyse at Destructoid tells us that Taito’s classic The New Zealand Story is coming to the Arcade Archives series. Gandalf could not be reached at press time for comment.

Two listicles:

Zoey Handley at Destructoid on the 10 best NES soundtracks. The list is Bucky O’Hare, Kirby’s Adventure, Castlevania 3 (Japanese version), Contra, Dr. Mario, Super Mario Bros. 2, Mega Man 2, Castlevania II, Journey to Silius, and… Silver Surfer?

Gavin Lane and the NintendoLife staff on the 50 best SNES games. The list is compiled algorithmically from reader scores, and can change even after publication. At this time, the top ten are, starting from $10: Donkey Kong Country 2, Earthbound, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV, Super Mario RPG, Yoshi’s Island, Final Fantasy III, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario World on top.

Tom Phillips at EuroGamer mentions that the original developers of Goldeneye 007, recently rereleased after 25 years on Switch and Xbox platforms, were a bit miffed that they weren’t asked to participate in the festivities. At the time most of its developers were completely new to the game industry, and they’ve been generally snubbed by its publishers in talking about the new versions. Does feel pretty shabby, Nintendo and Microsoft!

Andrew Liezewski at Gizmodo talks about the graphics in an upcoming Mario 64 hack made by Kaze Emanuar. I’ve followed Kaze’s hacking videos quite a bit (I think one’s been posted on Set Side B before), and the optimizations they’ve made to Mario 64’s engine are amazing, not only eliminating lag but great increasing its frame rate and making it look better to boot.

And, at Kotaku, Isaiah Colbert reports on various things being done to celebrate Final Fantasy VII’s 26th birthday, including official recognition in Japan of “Final Fantasy VII day” and a crossover with Power Wash Simulator. Maybe they can do something about cleaning out all the grunge from Midgar, that city could use a bath.

News 1/24/22: Pokemon Collecting, Universal Mario World, Commodore 64 of Theseus

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

Let’s make it quick this week-

Oli Welsh at Polygon tells us what we already knew, that No Zelda Game is Closer to Breath of the Wild Than The 1986 Original. We can’t recommend it whole-heartedly though because it gets in some digs on the older game, saying it’s nowhere near as much fun as Link to the Past, a statement I disagree with.

Hope Bellingham at GamesRadar tells us that U.S. Customs wrecked a sealed-in-box copy of Pokemon Yellow valued at over $10,000. I rather disagree with that valuation too. I thought all the misguided young people were losing their money in crypto these days? (Note: GamesRadar is one of those sites that waits until you start reading an article then puts up a blocking box begging you to subscribe. Hint to GamesRadar: NO, and if I were interested in subscribing my generous impulse would have been destroyed by your prompt!)

Image from The Guardian, probably ultimately from a promotional photograph

At the Guardian, the very British-named Oliver Wainwright reviews Super Mario World, not the game but the theme park in California, a part of Universal Studios Hollywood. The verdict: 8/10, good graphics, some replay value. I’ve been in a melancholy frame of mind as of late, so seeing those brightly-painted dioramas makes me wonder what they’ll look like in twenty years, when Universal Studios’ attentions have drifted to another big thing. Nothing ages quite as badly as a happy prop painted in primary colors.

I said I was going to make this quick, let’s keep moving. Maya Posch at hackaday talks about a project to build a Commodore 64 using new parts.

Ollie Reynolds found some Donkey Kong design documents on Twitter, from the days when it was planned to be a Popeye game. He found them retweeted by blogfriend Mike Mika of Digital Eclipse, who in turn found them looking through Mario history site Forest of Illusion.

Romhack Thursday: The Legend of Zelda Automap Plus

On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

Last month we brought you Metroid + Saving, a passable attempt to make a classic game, that has a number of quirks related to it being a fairly early NES game, less frustrating to newer (younger) players. This week’s hack is another with that theme, snarfblam’s hack of NES The Legend of Zelda that adds a working automap to the game.

Like Metroid, finding your way around 128 screens of Hyrule is challenging, even if the game isn’t as large as, say, the Gameboy Link’s Awakening, which had 256 screens. But the limited number of tiles also decreases each screen’s visual distinctiveness, especially up in the mountainous regions.

The map appears in the upper-left corner of the overworld screens, which you can see in these screenshots. A special touch is that the map isn’t revealed all at the start but fills in as the player explores, and doesn’t consist of blank squares to show explored areas but even shows some detail. Places where screens are blocked internally are shown on the map, which is a great aid to both navigation and memory.

It immediately becomes evident that, like with Metroid + Saving’s mapping feature, it’s how the game should have been written originally, and probably would have been if design trends had evolved just a bit further at the time.

There are a couple of other graphical niceties in the hack, like health being shown in the life meter in 1/8th-heart increments. But overall the map is the main attraction here. It’s such a fundamental change to the game that the much more involved hack Zelda Redux uses it too. It is also worth trying out, if you still find the original Legend of Zelda to be a bit too hardcore for you.

Zelda Automap Plus, by snarfblam (romhacking.net)

Zelda Podcasts

Ryan Veeder has made (and continues to make) podcasts about playing various Zelda games.

The Hero’s Path is about replaying Breath of the Wild. 54 episodes, about 42 hours in total. Here’s the RSS link.

The Complete Guide to Koholint was his first Zelda podcast, and it discusses each of the 256 overworld screens of Link’s Awakening. 256(!) episodes. They vary in length between one minute and 47, with most being just a few minutes long. RSS.

The Complete Guide to Termina covers various elements of Majora’s Mask. It’s at 21 episodes, and is ongoing. RSS.

News 1/5/2022: DidYouKnowGaming, Pocket Card Jockey, Unionization

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

Hiya hiya hiya Earth pleps, it’s your favorite alien gaming newscaster, here again with all the news that’s fit to blorp! Let’s get underway–

Ethan Gach at Kotaku notes that Nintendo had a video from DidYouKnowGaming about a failed pitch for a Zelda game that Retro Studios put together, but DYKG managed to get it reversed! Judging by the fact that like 90% of the posts on this blog seem to be about Nintendo one way or another you might think we’d be on their side in this, but nuh-uh! Nintendo abuses copyright law way too much, it’s good that this video was allowed to stand, yet it’s bad that ultimately Nintendo doesn’t suffer from these egregious actions. They can effectively throw out these legal threats with impunity, and their fans will just forgive them every time! I know that it certainly makes us feel a little bad about talking up their games so much!

So, more Nintendo stuff. At NintendoLife, Ollie Reynolds says that 2023 will be the year of 3DS GamePass. They even got an unshaven video maker on their staff to make the case for it. I mean, we’d like nothing better than to see that, but Nintendo themselves largely gave up on the 3DS and all its features years ago. It’s a nice thought though!

Pocket Card Jockey
Official image, from the Mobygames site

Also from Reynolds, good news: Pocket Card Jockey is getting a new edition! And they call it Game Freak’s secret best game! Yes, sweet vendication! And to think they gave its 3DS incarnation a “solid” 7 out of 10 at its release. But wait, there’s also bad news: it’s not coming to the Switch! It’s an exclusive release for Apple Arcade! Seems pretty boneheaded to me, but I don’t have an internal skeleton so what do I know?

While we’re on the subject of folk with heads of bone, Chris Moyse at Destructoid tells us that, in one of the most ridiculous decisions within memory, Square-Enix is doubling down on blockchain support in their games.

Mega Man Battle Network
Image from Mobygames

We love it when we can link to an article outside our usual stable, so here’s an article originally published in Japanese on Rockman Unity, translated into English and presented on Rockman Corner, an interview with the director of Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection about its upcoming release. Those games don’t get nearly the love they’re due, and it’s nice to see them given another chance to shine. Particularly, we’re told that the link cable battle play of the original games has been replaced with online matchmaking!

And to continue the upbeat tone at the end of our post this week, an article on Vice from Emanuel Maiberg about the formation of the biggest union in the US games industry!