Link vs. Gannon
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: N/A (begun 1993)
Levels: 5
Author: Don'Pan Software
Related games: Overworld, The Legend of Zelda: Harry's Awakening
There are three ways of approaching a set of limitations. You can fight them, you can work within and around them, or you can subvert them. If you fight them, generally you will lose and your work will suffer. If you subvert them, you can produce very clever tricks to wow your peers who know what you’re up against — but chances are the tricks will be glitchy, and will fail to impress anyone else. If you work within the limits, maybe the walls won’t be so obvious and your work will be able to stand on its own merits.
Link vs. Gannon was my first go at working with RSD's engine. It was clear to me that neither platformers nor RPGs worked to Game-Maker’s strengths, so I relented. If the engine was geared toward Zelda-style adventures, as it appeared to be, I figured I might as well see how close it could get.
The NES Zelda games are amongst my favorite things ever; the first for the actual moment-to-moment design, and the second for its weird atmosphere and its bold deviation from the original. I loved the claustrophobic focus, but I also loved that sweeping adventure too large to record in every detail — so I combined the design and dungeons from the first game and the free-roaming world of the second. Points of interest were scattered around a huge area, broken up by fields, rivers, hills, and bridges.
I doubt I meant to finish the game, and indeed Link vs. Gannon is the first that I left incomplete. I just wanted to figure out what the engine would handle well. The frustration came early on, when I realized that I was fighting far more than I had planned.
In Game-Maker’s engine, the character can interact with the background — change blocks, pick up objects, kill monsters, and increase abstract counters linked with things like keys and locks. If the player dies or leaves a level, all changes to that level are reset — yet all counters remain as they were. So if you have a level that contains a precious item, you can pick up the item, leave, return, and pick it up again. If you kill a boss then return, the boss is back. And so on.
For a game like Zelda, that is all about exploring, discovering precious tools, and making slow significant changes to the world, it is disconcerting when nothing the player does can stick.
There is a way around this issue, but it involves a bunch of busywork and a tangle of logical wires that are very easy to lose track of. I also didn’t hit on the solution for a very long time. If I did, then evidently I never felt it was worth the effort. And that was my ultimate decision with Link vs. Gannon; it wasn’t worth the energy to figure out how to make it work, or to draw custom background tiles, or to put real work into the level design. I filed the game away, and for a while I continued with my own projects.
Some of the elements in Link vs. Gannon would later be incorporated into Linear Volume and Explorer Jacko.
Contents
Story[edit]
Link has gone on an adventure. Who knows why? He just feels like it. Zelda? Who cares about her? He's saved her three times, already. She can take care of herself.
Link just wants to figure out puzzles, map mazes, and beat up on Gannon. Help him do so, okay?
He has to (Actually, he WANTS to) find the boomerang, lamp, arrow, bait, wand, block creating device, and potion, the wooden, metal, golden, and master swords, and the green, blue, gold, and master mails before facing the evil twerp, himself. No sweat!!
Instructions[edit]
Up, Down, Left, Right: Move those ways.
1-7: Use the items.
<SPACE>: Stab.
P: Pick up
D: Drop
IF ANY SCRREN BREAKUP OCCURS, PRESS F2 TWICE TO REMEDY THIS SITUATION.
Credits[edit]
NO!
NO!
NO!
This game is not made by the "big (Ha, ha!) N", although the Zelda games are the only things it does well. Sega rules!Who cares about dumb, fat middle-aged Italian plumbers? A young, fast, handsome hedgehog is much better (Yes, better than a wolf, Bill!) But enough making fun of "N". Let's play Link!!
Q&A[edit]
It's easy to guess that this game and Jario! came close to each others. They share the same "tribute/cover" feeling and likely the same graphics-cloning technique. Which one came first ?
Link vs. Gannon actually came somewhat earlier; it was developed with a less advanced version of Game-Maker (perhaps 2.0?), then grandfathered into later versions of the engine. As Game-Maker was updated, several features such as the boomerang no longer worked as intended, so I had to tweak a lot of things. That was frustrating, as I already had to make a lot of compromises that, at the time, I was too stubborn or single-minded to rethink. It's probably that compounding frustration where nothing quite worked as I had envisioned (as opposed to experimenting to find what I could do that was interesting, and building off that) that led me to abandon the project.
G-M had quite a strong support for quest games (inventory, keys...). Was that helpful in bringing Zelda to PC ? What have you been missing the most ?
Relatively speaking, yes. You would think that Game-Maker is built for something pretty close to Zelda. And perhaps it is, if you're not as particular as I was. As I said, I wanted things to work exactly "right" rather than to find what could work and then expanding on that. Although I couldn't exactly mimic some of the behaviors from the NES game, there were probably behaviors unique to RSD's strange game engine that I could have exploited in novel ways. I think I always meant to come back to Link vs. Gannon, give it a rethink, and finish it properly. It was just never high on my priority list, I guess.
I do know that I never intended on an exact copy of the NES game anyway -- as evidenced by the unusual and rough overworld map. I think my favorite Zelda has always been the second game; there's something both grand and psychologically unsettling about it that makes it stick in the head. I get the impression that, without exactly trying to, I was probably trying to set up an adventure more in the lines of Zelda II, but within the vague structure of the first Zelda.
You surprisingly mix Zelda graphics, revamped graphics (rasters on Link) and graphics coming from former G-M games (Houses ?). Had you intention of harmonising that later on ?
Yes, I think most of the visuals can be considered placeholders. I drew original/adapted elements as I felt they were needed to get the point across, and otherwise quite broadly lifted from existing sources in order to sketch out a rough working template.
Which is the NES feature you missed the most in this game ?
The biggest thing was character behaviors -- animations, and interactions with the gameworld. I didn't want a separate button for each attack direction for each item and weapon. I wanted more conceptual variety in the secondary items; not just straight-out attacking. A big part of the fun in Zelda games is using the inventory to "talk" with the landscape. I was also annoyed with Game-Maker's binary way of dealing with monster power levels. Either you can kill a monster, or you can't. There's no gray area, where a weaker weapon will hit for x% of a stronger weapon. If I had been more clever and motivated I could have found ways around most of this stuff. The game just wasn't a priority, I guess.
How would you compare Link vs. Gannon against e.g. Overworld or The Legend of Zelda: Harry's Awakening ?
The thing that Link vs. Gannon has going for it is that I never intended on an exact clone. It was to be a rougher tribute to the Zelda series as a whole, expanded in a different direction that I was sort of intuitively piecing together but hadn't thoroughly planned out. The other two games are more precise studies of how well existing game systems will map to RSD's engine. I think they both mostly exist to see what will and won't work, and what workarounds are feasible -- and in that respect I think they both do a few clever things. Overworld in particular is a new game; I only threw it together a few months ago -- the first thing I'd done with Game-Maker in close to fifteen years -- out of recognition that a Zelda-style game really should work within the engine, and curiosity to see what would happen if I did as literal as possible a port. As it turns out... with a little trickery and a few shrugs, there's a heck of a lot that the engine can mimic. I only spent an afternoon on Overworld; if I had devoted a little more time, I might have found behaviors for bombs, ladders, and so on. As I'm writing this, I've some vague ideas for how ladders might work.
Can we actually fight Gannon at the end of the game ?
It's a long time ago, but I seem to recall the idea was that Gannon would pop in from time to time for minor showdowns, and then that something more important and threatening would present itself at the end. As it stands, I think the game only has two very rough and tentative dungeons, and a vague sketch of an overworld -- the occasional house, long bridge over water, marshland. I think the first day I worked on it, I just threw down a bunch of elements -- I want this, this, and this structure in here in some way -- and then never got around to organizing everything.
Availability[edit]
This game was not distributed in any form.
Archive History[edit]
Link vs. Gannon was retained as part of the archive from the game's inception.
Links[edit]
Interviews / Articles[edit]
Misc. Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Link vs. Gannon (unfinished) (164 kB)
