The Zelda Diary Part Two: The Adventure Continues

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So this is going to take longer than I thought.

Mainly because I just acquired a fancy, new flame-colored Game Boy Advance SP, which adds another three Zeldas to my list, but also because IÂ'm having a hard time depriving myself of all of the other tasty-looking games I own. I mean, the Zeldas are great, wonderful games, but Beyond Good and Evil just showed up at my door. And KOTOR 2 is gameflying itÂ's way across the country to me as we speak Â"…

WeÂ're still good though. IÂ've got until June to finish the legacy Zeldas before Super New Zelda comes out. ThatÂ's about 3 months or so. No problem.

Willpower! Willpower! Remember, itÂ's all for science and for the good of the country and a dozen other lines of poorly written propaganda that are only believable when delivered by a man wearing a lab coat, a fedora and wing-tip shoes. So here we go then, back to Hyrule. Again.

Day 6
Link to the Past
ZSNES

OMFG I turned into a rabbit.

Day 7
Link to the Past
ZSNES

I have seen evil incarnate, and his name is Mouldrum.

I generally donÂ't care to know the names of any of the enemies in games. Especially the Zelda games, which for some reason have the stupidest sounding creature names on the planet. Take Stalfos for example. Sounds Â"… Greek almost. But itÂ's a skeleton. Why not call it Â"… I dunno ... skeleton?

Anyway, the Tower of Hera (Greek again. Hel-lo.) is now the pit of hell, and Mouldrum is now my enemy. With my last breath, I spit at thee and then fall into a hole and then into another hole and somehow end up back at the beginning of the dungeon. Eleven times in a row. This sucks. Shall I, Rosencrantz, attempt to elude fate by trying for a twelfth? Or shall I just beat Guildenstern until heÂ's bloody and then dump his body overboard? Ah, the angst.

When I was nine years old I went to a county fair at the Fort Worth Stockyards, which oddly enough, is where they usually keep cows. You can smell it from the highway, two towns over, yet for some reason they hold a fair there. With food vendors even, and those stupid game tents that always show up at fairs, right next to the funnel cake cart. I bought a hat and ate cotton candy which tasted like manure, but thatÂ's not why I brought this up.

One of the games they had set up was a bowling-type game. There was a bowling pin set up at the end of a long, wooden table. The other end of the table was where you stood while playing the game. For one dollar you were given a hockey puck (yeah, this was in Texas before ESPN, we had no idea what they were really for) and told to slide it at the bowling pin. If you knocked over the pin, you won the prize. One try for one dollar. The only catch: there was a line drawn on the table that you were not allowed to cross over with your hand.

No sweat. I knew how to bowl Â"… with a hockey puck. I gave the nice, scrawny, bearded, slightly smelly man my dollar and threw. I missed. I gave him another dollar, he gave me another hockey puck. I missed. Another dollar, another hockey puck and although I missed, I began to see how one could go about not missing. I tried again. I knocked over the pin! w00t! (This was before w00t, but it seems applicable here. –ed.)

Â"IÂ'll take the –Â"

Â"Sorry kid. Hand crossed over the line.Â"

Right. Well the only remedy for that is to try again! Another dollar. Missed. Another dollar. Missed again, but now I had it! One more dollar and I nailed the bastard.

Â"Sorry kidÂ"…Â"

Yeah, yeah. The line again. Sharp guy that carney. ItÂ'd be another ten years or so before IÂ'd be able to recognize those scars on his arm for needle tracks. One more dollar, one more try. This time I was looking at the line, not the pin. So I missed of course, and then I was out of dollars, but even if I hadnÂ't been it wouldnÂ't have mattered because there wasnÂ't any prize in that tent worth more than three dollars. So even if IÂ'd won, at that point IÂ'd already lost, and my friend, the hockey puck pusher, knew it. ThatÂ's why he was smiling.

I used to call that man Mr. Asshole, but now he has a new name. In my memoirs I shall call him Mouldrum.

Seriously, the single most irritating thing about old school (some of my students taught me that phrase) console games is the mysterious fountain of health which is only accessible by boss creatures, and only when youÂ're not in the room. Need ten hits to kill a boss? Hit him nine times, leave the room for two seconds, come back and heÂ's fully healed! WTF?

Sure it was because hardware limitations made it difficult to track multiple values across varying game states simultaneously. I know this now. WhatÂ's depressing and sad is the crazy logic we would cook up to explain away the injustice of it all. Like cavemen reasoning that the sun had been chased away by the moon, we were sure that each boss kept a small vial of life potion hidden somewhere on his person, and could only use it when we werenÂ't watching. Or that the powers of evil that governed such things as the health of level bosses was diminished while someone of such amazing goodness as Link was in the room, but once he left: Poof! All evilled back up again!

Yes, itÂ's true that people used to be dumber. Thank Jeebus that theyÂ"˜re smart enough now to make cheat codes.

Day 8
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Game Cube

Not that I donÂ't enjoy a little torture at the hands of a 2-D video game, but I thought IÂ'd check out how much wisdom the Zelda team had acquired along with their jump up to the N64 spec.

Holy crap! IÂ'm stunned by how beautiful it is. I had no idea. ItÂ's like hooking back up with an old flame and realizing that not only do they still remember how to do that crazy thing with their tongue, but theyÂ've learned a few new tricks as well. And man, how a few years can make some people sexier. I say again: Holy crap!

I honestly wasnÂ't expecting much. I mean, I know Team Zelda has a stash of some seriously potent acid or something, but Ocarina? For crying out loud, why not just go with flute? Or piccolo, even. The Piccolo of Time. Works for me. What the hell is an ocarina?

At least the pot-throwing function works the same in this game. There has to be some level of cross-generation consistency and IÂ"˜m glad that the pot thing was it. I mean, honestly, how would I find randomly-generated powerups if not for cleverly-placed pots? Barrels? Crates? Hah! DonÂ't be foolish. This is Hyrule, where people keep their money in pots Â"… hidden on the Â"… outside of their Â"… homes Â"… hey, look! The moon is chasing the sun again!

No really. The sun just went down. In the game. How cool! Night and day. Who would have thunk it? Oh. And now there are Â"… stalfos Â"… es ... crawling out of the ground. Hey thatÂ's kinda creepy. Not sure how I feel about that. Is it just me or do they look like Day of the Dead puppets now?

Day 9
Ocarina of Time
Gamecube

Huh. Some little girl offered me an Â"eggÂ" sheÂ'd been Â"incubating,Â" and then it turned into a c*ck and then I had to use that c*ck on her father Â"… okay. IÂ'm down.

How do you pronounce Kakariko? Hey! Chickens! IÂ'm gonna get me one. w00t! I got me a chicken! Wait a minute. Did I just float? Oh man. This is gonna be fun.

Anyone crazy enough to devise a method of defying gravity with chickens gets my vote for game designer of the year. Even if theyÂ're stoned out of theyÂ're mind. Too bad IÂ'm a little late to get in on that pool. Speaking of; what was I so busy doing in 1998 that I had no time to play Ocarina of Time? Oh yeah. I was stoned out of my mind. Okay then, back to the game.

Day 10
Ocarina of Time
Gamecube

So that owl is really starting to piss me off. No I donÂ't want you to repeat what you just said. What are you {ableist slur}? I didnÂ't even want you to say it the first time. Leave me alone and let me play the game. Dude, I made it out of Kiddie Land just fine without you, and now weÂ're in Â"Real Game Time Â" land, so frak off. I have a sword, a shield and an ocarina! I think I can manage. IÂ've even got these great exploding nuts that literally stun my enemies whenever I take them out of my pants. How much trouble could I possibly get into?

Wait a minute Â"… did the owl just pick me up and fly me to the castle? Are you kidding me? What the hell am I doing all this walking around for then?

Day 10.5
Ocarina of Time
Gamecube

Okay IÂ'm sick of this walking crap. I found a girl with a horse. She taught me a song, and now the horse likes me. Great. Drive me around Black Beauty! Go! Giddyup! Heyah! Move. Forward. Go-o-o-o-o Â"…

Huh. No horse love. Maybe if I show her my magic nuts Â"… ? />

Comments

Reading this was sorta like watching Robin Williams Live at the Met.

While I understand where you started from and I understand where you arrived, I sure as hell can't quite figure out what we were doing in the middle.

Nice summary of Ocarina of Time though.

This is Hyrule, where people keep their money in pots "… hidden on the "… outside of their "… homes "… hey, look! The moon is chasing the sun again!

From now on whenever I play a game, I'll be thinking of this the enitre time. The crazy theories I've accepted over the years simply to explain fictional canon. You don't want to hear my theories on why the TIE Defender never saw large deployments against the Rebel Alliance.

You don't want to hear my theories on why the TIE Defender never saw large deployments against the Rebel Alliance.

Yes actually I would like to hear that, please continue.

Garrad wrote:
You don't want to hear my theories on why the TIE Defender never saw large deployments against the Rebel Alliance.

Yes actually I would like to hear that, please continue.

Agreed! Same here!

Those aren't just money. Those are Rupees. They're big. Storing them inside would take too much space in the house. Besides, they need a constant supply of fresh air to maintain their blingy shinefullness.

Then how does Link fit so many into his pockets if they're so big?

LeapingGnome wrote:

Then how does Link fit so many into his pockets if they're so big?

Plenty of room in his pants.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Then how does Link fit so many into his pockets if they're so big?

Duh, Leap. Magic pants.

Yes actually I would like to hear that, please continue.

Well there were several theories on the subject last I checked. The first theory involves the political structure of the Empire, and the governing style of the Emperor. The Empire was a fascist state, and as such the Emperor needed tight political control of the military to function as a leader. This control was gained through influence, through The Force or otherwise, over the leaders of the Imperial Navy, which in turn controlled large concentrations of military power by commanding the various starships of the Imperial Navy. This made it much easier for the Emperor to keep control over the military, as the total military power was concentrated in a few dozen starship captains. Now look at the TIE Defender. A single fighter so powerful it can take down capital ships quite easily. It's analagous to the castles of Europe, once Cannons were widespread the Feudal Lords had a much harder time maintaining control. Even if only 10% of the fighters in the fleet were TIE Defenders, the Emperor's system of political control over the military would fall apart as TIE squadrons became more relevant than the starships that carried them. The same could be said of the Missle Boat.

Another theory proposes that the TIE Defender was merely a measure of one-upsmanship with the Rebels and their superior fighter technology. It was to prove that the Empire had superior technology in all fields of study, and once a few starfighers were produced that proved this unequivicably, then the project was readily abandoned. The TIE Defender was merely a PR tool to instill fear in the Rebels by showing them they could no longer rely on superior technology to survive in starfighter dogfights.

There are a few other theories involving such mundane things as expense, raw material shortages, the decline of the Empire and Rebel sabotage, but those two are the most interesting and clearly the most freaking insane.

I dunno... the idea of the TIE Def's being too strong for use in a fuedal state (even if it is galactic in size) is a reasonable idea actually.

That said, it's very goofy catching all of his references in these comments on the game. Makes me laugh. I LOVE IT! Keep it up Fletch.

Razorgrin wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

Then how does Link fit so many into his pockets if they're so big?

Duh, Leap. Magic pants.

Did Elysium start working again?

Hilarious article!

Pyroman[FO] wrote:

Blah (too much to quote) TIE Defender blah

I actually always just thought it was because one of two things:

Either Vader's suit allowed him to control it better (as in all his electronics hooked to the thing)

OR

It was partially controled and powered by vader's hatred and use of the force... so therefore only he could use it.

I think the Hitler-esque explanation of developing and fielding limited quantities of highly advanced hardware makes sense. My theory was that it took such a high level of skill to drive the Defenders and Missile Boats, that most pilots never lived long enough to become adept at it. I mean, watching two TIEs collide with each other chasing the Milennium Falcon alone is proof that the Empire didn't really have the best pilots in the galaxy.