Zelda and Final Fantasy Mashup Fanart

An Artist called Shattered Earth made a series of Legend of Zelda title screens in the style of Final Fantasy.  They work out really nicely, my personal favorite is the Links Awakening one for how cool the wind fish looks. 

Have a look!

-D

Legend of Zelda Clockwork Empire

I understand that there has been a buzz for a Wii U Zelda game, especially since E3.  But what interests me just as much is this proposal for a new Zelda game, put together a year ago by the webcomic artist Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak.  As a proof of concept, this game design looks pretty good, in my opinion.  Diaz' art style lends itself to the Legend of Zelda, and his idea of swapping Link and Zelda's roles is a good one.  

As a matter of fact, it looks like the Zelda-is-the-hero idea may come into effect in the upcoming Wii-U Zelda game.  At least, that's part of the buzz, and I welcome it.  There have been a bunch of Zelda games, and the series is long overdue to be reworked.  The gameplay trailer looks fantastic, so I am pretty excited to see more.  

-D

Further Links:  (Or Zeldas)

• Also, the guy (Aaron Diaz) who put together the game proposal also is planning to do an illustrated Silmarillion.
• Zelda starring Zelda is a continual theme among Legend of Zelda fans.  Examples of sweet Zelda Hero art abound.
• The Brainy Gamer is a thoughtful video game professor, blogger and podcaster who loves Zelda, and has spent a great effort thinking about the future of Zelda (back in 2008).

Zelda Fan Art

Well, I don't have a post for you all, so I thought I'd just go through some of my bookmarks for some sweet video game art.  Fan art, on a whole, is an incredible thing.  Some amazing stuff bubbles to the surface on the internet.  Like that sweet Ganon picture up there.  Isn't it totally awesome?  That image is part of a series of of Legend of Zelda images I found over at this place called the Zelda Dungeon.

I really appreciate the art style, and I also appreciate that it is all images from the original Legend of Zelda game on NES.  We've waxed about nostalgia for this series before, and about the potential it may have lost over the years.  Images like this remind me of that potential, of how these simplistic critters could look totally sweet and how there could be a rich mythology behind the happenings in the Zelda games.Also, it reminds me of all the cool names the baddies in Zelda have:  Gleok, Dodongo, Keese.

The artist is called Deimos-Remus at deviantart.com.

Also at Zelda Dungeon, I found an interesting article about Skyward Sword that used terms like 'skill scaling'   'sub optimal dominant strategy' and the like.  I love this game theory stuff, and I harbor dreams of being that kind of a smarty pants and getting to talk about video game design all day.

The writer for this article GaroXIcon, and I like him so far.  In addition to the above article, he pitches a direct sequel to A Link To The Past, and says that Majora's Mask is his favorite game of all time.  How do you like that?  GaroXicon is my new video game critic crush.  and Deimos-Remus is my new video game art crush.

-D

Returning To Normalcy

Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays.

Happy New Year.

I'm now making this post from Conklederp's iMacpadairintoshBook, although it says MacBook right in front of me.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Apple.  I grew up on an Apple //e and every other computer I used until college was some form of Mac, but I digress from my lack of there being a point.

I got my computer back from [Name Omitted] after having spilt a small amount of beer on the keyboard.  I figured the keyboard was shot, due to the H, G, "Up Arrow" and 7 (on the 10 key) not working (and H is part of my password to log on to my computer; at least it was), I just wanted to make sure that nothing else was damaged, even after I performed a fairly thorough cleaning job right after the spill happened.  Turns out that it's just my keyboard that needs to be replaced, which the guy at [N.O.] sounded a little surprised at.  He then quoted me a price that seemed a little high, but maybe that was because I knew what had to be done, knew to do it, and how much a replacement keyboard would cost.  For a moment, it sounded like he was trying to hoodwink me when saying that it would be difficult/costly because of the metal shell that makes up the casing of my laptop, suggested that the keyboard was backlit, which I said it wasn't, then said something about the possible difficulty in removing the keyboard.  I thanked him for his time, paid for the diagnostics and check up that he ran and said I would perform the necessary repairs myself.  I was polite, but knew that I could replace the keyboard, minus the $60 labor fee.

Moving on to gaming now.  I fully admit that I have a weakness for games in a series.  They don't even have to be related to each other, just add a 3 or an VIII and I'm interested.  Bare in mind though, that this doesn't happen with all genres, just mainly RPG's but there are always exceptions.  I feel it'd be pretty obvious that I'm a fan of the Final Fantasy games with the only games that I haven't played are VIII, X, X-2, XI, XIII, XIII-2 and XIV.  I currently have Dragon Warrior/Quest I - VI, VIII and IX.  After playing through Doom 3, I immediately wanted to know about the story from Doom  and Doom 2: Hell on Earth, so I bought those shortly after acquiring a Steam account.  The Baldur's Gate and Diablo series I also love, although I've been resistant to buying Diablo III for reasons that I've gone into before.  I have also yet to play Warcraft III even though I loved the first two games, which is possibly because I've heard about the Orcs not really being evil, I call bullshit on that.  After seeing a lot of Fallout 3 (but not having played it), I really wanted to know what the Fallout series was like, so Vorlynx got me the first three games a couple years back.  Recently with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I fell in love with the world and backstory of events that may have happened in previous games or were never covered.  There was talk among people (as well as books) referring to "the Oblivion Crisis," so after some hunting, I was able to locate and download the first two Elder Scrolls games and only yesterday, purchased Morrowind and Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls III & IV respectively).  There's also the Professor Layton series, of which I need to play Diabolical Box (yes, I know I'm two and-a-half years late) and then get the rest of the series.  And dear god!, The Legend of Zelda series, although with the exception of The Adventure of Link, have avoided using numerals but instead have used subtitles, which is a nice change of pace for any genre.

I have missed this, our little moments together in our little corner of the internet.  I've since ordered a replacement keyboard which will hopefully arrive by the end of the week and will be installed within 10 minutes (as opposed the hour the guy at [N.O.] said it would take) and then I'll be able to get back to my regular routine.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Absence Makes The Heart Wonder Why There's No Beer In The Fridge.

The Legend of Zelda Becoming Legend

I've been a fan of the Legend of Zelda games since after we first got our Nintendo, which I talked about in one of my first posts.  Something about the simplicity of the game play and the memorableness of the music made for such an amazing gaming experience for a 10 year old.  Over the years I've played through many of the games that make up The Legend of Zelda franchise, with the exceptions of Oracle of Seasons, Oracile of Ages, Four Swords Adventure, Minish Cap and Skyward Sword.  Just for whatever reason, I never got around to playing the LoZ games that came out on the GBC and GBA; Skyward Sword I haven't played because I don't own a Wii.  However, with the two aforementioned games in the series that I haven't finished, because I had stopped playing them, because I began to lose interest, I've felt in recent years, a fading of The Legend of Zelda series.

Some of my views about the games in the series, while not necessarily controversial, I don't feel are common with the rest of the LoZ fan base.  For example, I feel that Majora's Mask is a stronger game and a lot more fun than Ocarina of Time.  I also feel that music MM is more of music that I can listen to by itself and less atmospheric than in OoT.  I also think that Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a great (albeit pain in the ass) game.  So much so that I can't imagine any of the polygonal Zelda games happening if it weren't for the side scrolling, expansive vision of Hyrule that Zelda II introduced.  I also love the animation and art style in Wind Waker.  No, I didn't mind all the sailing as the end of the game gave a fantastic explanation/reasoning behind the world existing.

And then it was great to see the same style of art/animation again in the two games on the DS, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.  Sadly though, this is where our tale ends.  After I finished Phantom Hourglass, I started Spirit Tracks, expecting a somewhat similar experience.  I played ST for a couple of hours before the Left Trigger button on my DS decided to stop, but by that point I had already felt like stopping.  I wasn't feeling engaged with the story and I felt like I had somewhat figured out the basis and arc of the game only after watching the opening cinematic.

I received a similar feeling while playing Twilight Princess.  I had reached a part in the game where I felt I needed more heart containers, which meant I had to forego the main storyline and wander around the beautifully created re-re-re-re-re-re-imagining of Hyrule looking for, what is it now? Five pieces of a heart container to give an extra heart?  I remember being annoyed in A Link to the Past when you had to find four pieces to create a heart container.  I however came to terms with this being another alteration in the series, so I accepted it and got over myself.

True, the LoZ series hasn't had a great deal of original-ness, with the main storylines being that you have to rescue Zelda from Ganon, or some itteration on the save the princess theme, but they've still been fun to play.  Just like the Super Mario Bros., Metroid and Castlevania games, there is not a lot of originality, but still loads of fun to play (except I haven't played through a Super Mario Bros. game since Super Mario World and Super Mario RPG, so maybe that's not the greatest of arguments).

On a similar, but slightly different note, a few months back I came across on Last.fm called ZReO or Zelda: ReOrchestrated, which initally billed themselves as symphonic orchestrations of the music from the Legend of Zelda games.  I was really excited.  I'd heard a number of symphoic orchestrations of music from this series, but the music from all the games not only sounded epic in it's attempt, but amazing in that it came from ALL OF THE GAMES!!  I began typing out an article about this ground a number of months ago but in the information gathering process, I discovered than the "group" only uses audio samples for the instruments that make up this "orchestra."  Don't get me wrong, the music sounds good and I would love to hear it performed by an actual symphony, but needless to say (which is why I'm saying it), I was a little let down.  But that shouldn't stop anyone from giving what they've done a listen as all their music is free to download.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And They Will Play On Forever More

Never Too Old For Video Games

I like to visit Cracked.com on about a weekly basis.  Conklederp knows which authors she likes while I usually don't remember who wrote what article.  I recently read two video gaming articles by John Cheese, whom I thought I didn't like after reading two of his articles, although I don't remember what those articles were about.  Anyway, one of his recent articles was titled "5 Ways to Tell You're Getting Too Old For Video Games."  It was a pretty good article, as far as Cracked articles go anyway, in that I was agreeing or disagreeing with what I thought were reasonable thoughts.

Here, I'll list his headlines along with my own thoughts on each topic.

5.  You Think Multiplayer is Bullshit.

While I don't think that multiplayer in its entirety is the collected fecal matter of our tasty bovine friends, I do not find it to be as much a selling point as other people.  Having grown up as a console gamer, multiplayer, let alone online multiplayer wasn't always an option.  The majority of the games I purchased and played were single player games (Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Eternal Darkness, Dragon Warrior, et cetera), and those that had a multiplayer element to them (Duck Hunt, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy III/VI, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Time Splitters), I didn't play to their fullest extent.  Sure I played a bit of multiplayer on Goldeneye whenever Dr. Potts was over, or a couple other friends, but it was never my main purpose for the game.  

With current generation consoles, each have some type of subscription/fee  component (Xbox Live, PSN and Wii Points), which I don't feel that I will ever need, partly because I don't have either system, but also because I don't want to interact with teenage douche bags yelling obscenities at me.  If I'm going to play multiplayer (most likely on the PC), I'd rather just play online with someone whom I know.

4.  You Think Games Are Suddenly Too Long

The three games that John Cheese references in this article (Skyrim, Fallout 3 and World of Warcraft) I have never played so I can't comment directly on any of these games.  I do know what he is talking about when he says that there seem to be a lot more side quests than actual story points.  I on the other hand tend to like side quests, but only to a certain extent.

I didn't do the Golden Chocobo side quest in Final Fantasy VII so that I could earn the "Knights of the Round" materia.  I liked the initial idea of breeding Chocobos, but the amount of time that it would have taken to find Chocobos from all over the world, to me seemed pointless; especially when there was a chuck of rock plummeting towards the planet.  In other games like Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Grimoire of the Rift, however, I did as many side quests as I could lay my hands on.  Maybe this is something with more recent video games trying to drag out the length of time it takes to "complete" a game, but then that just reinforces that I'm aging when it comes to video games, but whatever.

3. You Miss Game Storylines That Were Actually Compelling

I'm about 50/50 with Mr. Cheese's views on this point.  While I do agree that some of the Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior  (I'm also going to throw in Chrono Trigger) games had very in depth story lines that would rival that of some of the books that I was reading at the time, I don't feel that I was putting myself into the role of the characters that I was playing, which would be why I felt they were more "in depth" when I was a kid than now that I'm an "adult."

Part of my problem might be that as I don't have any of the "next-gen systems," I haven't played many of the newer games that seem to lack story lines.  However, how many people who played Super Mario Bros. felt that the story line was lacking and how did an Italian plumber, presumably from New York got to the Mushroom Kingdom.  That's never explained in-game.  In The Legend of Zelda, all the back story is told in the instruction booklet and just after the opening titles, which don't even play when you start a game.

But yes, I feel that story, for me at least, is very important if I want to have any emotional feelings towards the game I'm playing.  Sometimes I don't want there to be a story, for example, in the first Doom.  You start the game without any introduction, but you know that you need to shoot anything on the screen, and sometimes, that's all I want to do.

2.  You Think Originality is Dead

Sometimes I'll think "Huh.  I've played this game before, why do I want to play it again?"  Being the person that I am, I will usually look into games before I buy them (although with the Humble Bundles, I don't really care too much, and just think that this type of business model is very awesome).  That being said, I sometimes don't mind playing a familiar type of game over and over again.  

Yes, I do appreciate originality in video games, but sometimes I like to play something that I know, even if it's a "brand new" game that came out the previous year that's based on a platformer from 1990.  Mr. Cheese acknowledges this too when he says "The industry looked just as cookie cutter then as it does now." It's very similar to the movie industry. There'll be a period when westerns are all the rage, or where we're at right now, where anything to do with zombies or vampires will sell millions, just because of the subject matter.

1. You Miss When Games Used To Be "All About Fun."

To be honest, it seemed like Mr. Cheese began to ramble here, as if he didn't actually have "5 Reasons...." but only had four and desparately tried to come up with the fifth.  He starts off about the "look" of games versus the amount of "fun" and then trails off  about how the repetitiveness of games meant they were fun for younger players.

Maybe it's because I've been constantly playing video games for, roughly, the last 24 - 25 years, that I'm able to go back and play Castlevania or Donkey Kong Country and still have fun.  Granted some of that fun may turn into frustration, but I'd rather have that feeling than the feeling that I'm kicking ass at a game because it's too easy.  I actually remember not being able to beat a lot of games, which probably bothered me on some level, but yeah, I had fun.

Conclusion:  No, I don't believe that I'm too old for video games.  Like anybody in any genre in any form of media, I'm not going to like everything out there, but I tend to know what I like.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Road Goes Ever On And On....

The Legend of Zelda - Graphics and Exploration



Click on an image for a larger version

I think Zelda 1 is my favorite game of all time.  The reason for this is that I can very easily daydream myself into the world of Zelda 1.  All I have to do is take a breath, and Zelda 1 appears in my mind.  And it's always in a nice, dream-state, imprecise version of it.  It's like I can *smell* Zelda 1.  The visual representation appears the strongest, the colors and the general shape of the game, which are both very distinctive.  I'm going to try to describe and analyze what it is about Zelda 1 that makes it so distinct.  *I would also like to note that this post was not inspired by Jack's Memory Post - it was serendipity that we were both thinking at the same time, about the same phenomenon; of being transported into a game memory. 

There are some clear contributing factors to how easily I can imagine the Zelda world.  I played it when I was very young, and highly impressionable.  I played it a LOT.  But, in addition to these things, it is also a great game.  And it is on that fact that I wish to focus.  Yes, Zelda has been done before, but that's what makes it a great trial run for game analysis, that is, for game analysis on a good game.  The Legend of Zelda has a very distinct and consistent aesthetic, and it is an open-world exploration game.  I think these are the components which make the game particularly engaging.

Today I want to focus on the overworld map.  Particularly about the sense of exploration and how the visual style helps to facilitate that sense of exploration.  The game is viewed from top-down, and is divided by screens.  So when I enter a screen, I can see everything in the screen that I can affect or can affect me.  The game map in Zelda is essentially a series of rectangular pictures of screen size, positioned side by side and top to bottom to form a larger rectangle. I can only view one picture at a time, and I can move freely within the picture I presently inhabit.  Passing between screens is an important part of the game, allowing me to run for safety if danger lurks in my present screen.  The transition between screens is, for everyone who plays the game, a signature part of the visual aesthetic.

Each screen is made up by mostly tile-based images.  Bushes, Rocks, and Enemies all fit within small 16 x 16 pixel squares, as do all hearts, rupees and items (I discovered these dimensions when playing Mario Paint for the Super NES).  This consistent size and use of simple, primary colors creates a simplistic design that might be called minimalist.  There were never any real surprises, in a given screen, but there were always different arrangements of the small number of tiles.  The simplicity and limitations allow for everything to be placed purposefully, the consistency makes it so that the player is never pulled out of the game by bad design.

A great deal of my time playing Zelda has been spent wandering the map.  Just kind of looking around.  Early on in the game, it's pretty tough, because the enemy is tough, and Link is weak.  But after gaining a few more heart containers and a few more weapons, the world begins to open up.  Enemies and combat represent obstacles to be overcome, you have to earn each new screen you explore.  Because the games graphical consistencies, I can size up a screen in an instant. I really want to look around in that forest area, but is crawling with Moblins.  I'll stick to the Octorocks on the beach.Or I'd love to check out death mountain, but all those Centaur guys make that really tough to do.  It's fun to look around just for the sake of looking around, but if that's not enough, there's also a large number of hidden goodies to find.

It is possible to know this game completely; to literally leave no stone unturned.  No wall un-bombed, no bush unburned.  Jack points out that there was no visual cue as to when a bush was burnable or a wall was bomb-able.  You just had to give it a try an hope for the best.This method is was out of vogue by the time Zelda III came out, but I don't think it was necessarily a bad mechanic (Though it would have been nice to have gotten the red candle just a little earlier in the game -ed).  With no visual cue, I would burn every bush, but I would start with the ones that I thought made aesthetic sense, as though I could figure out and understand the programmer's visual style and thus, save myself time in the never-ending search for a new cave.  I felt more of a sense of exploration, knowing that I just might find something, and sometimes did find hidden caves that were secrets to everybody.

coming up next:  The Legend of Zelda:  Combat and Sound