Eiji Aonuma

The New Generation – Part Two: Masterminds

  • Reading time:23 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation.

Something is happening to game design. It’s been creeping up for a decade, yet only now is it striding into the mainstream, riding on the coattails of new infrastructure, emboldened by the rhetoric of the trendy. A new generation of design has begun to emerge – a generation raised on the language of videogames, eager to use that fluency to describe what previously could not be described.

First, though, it must build up its vocabulary. To build it, this generation looks to the past – to the fundamental ideas that make up the current architecture of videogames – and deconstructs it for its raw theoretical materials, such that it may be recontextualized: rebuilt better, stronger, more elegantly, more deliberately.

In the earlier part of this series, we discussed several games that exemplify this approach; we then tossed around a few more that give it a healthy nod. Some boil down and refocus a well-known design (Pac-Man CE, New Super Mario Bros.); some put a new perspective on genre (Ikaruga, Braid); some just want to break down game design itself (Rez, Dead Rising). In this chapter, we will highlight a few of the key voices guiding the change. Some are more persuasive than others. Some have been been making their point for longer. All are on the cusp of redefining what a videogame can be.

The Wii that Wasn’t

  • Reading time:6 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation.

Market analysts call the Wii a return to form after the relative flop of the GameCube. Design analysts call it a potential return to form after the relative rut of the previous fifteen years. Whatever the spin, when people look at Nintendo’s recent misadventures, generally the Gamecube sits right on top, doe-eyed and chirping. Its failure to do more than turn a profit has made its dissection an industry-wide pastime. Everything comes under the microscope, from its dainty size and handle to its purpleness to the storage capacity of its mini-DVDs. The controller, though, has perplexed all from the start.

A very old story

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I keep harping on this, yet the original Zelda really isn’t that sequenced. There are certain barriers you can’t get past without certain items, yet you find most of those items early on — and you can at least explore most regions and dungeons to a certain extent, whatever equipment you have. You can beat the entire game without a sword, if you want. You don’t require half the items the game offers; they’re just convenient to have. Most of the things you do require, you can buy in a shop.

What Wind Waker kind of does is try to pull the design back in that direction, only more so — yet it doesn’t completely have the confidence to break with the sequencing and hand-holding. Which, for such an otherwise free-spirited design, is kind of frustrating. It’s like it’s taunting you with excellence. This is almost such a great game. It just needed more encouragement. Or a rewrite.

You know that business at the start where you’re picking up weapons and items all over? Imagine if the entire game were kind of like that, until you found the Master Sword. Instead of necessarily having specific “treasures”, each with its own specialized use (grapple versus hookshot, for instance), you’d mostly just find and hang onto whatever objects seemed convenient to the task at hand, or looked like they’d be useful down the road. If you found really special, “permanent” items, they’d mostly just serve as a shortcut for tasks you could perform otherwise only with a bit more effort and inconvenience. Kind of like how paths open to earlier areas in Metroid games, to allow you to cut back and forth instead of taking the long route every time.

I like that Link is a real character, for once, with his own life, ideas, likes, dislikes, and priorities, that the player and the quest are just intruding on. I like the way it treats all the previous Zelda games as, literally, a legend; a relic of an unthinkable time, that doesn’t really matter to anyone anymore. I like the implication that Link actually failed at one point, by not appearing when he was needed. Someone suggested once that Wind Waker is sort of the follow-up to Majora’s Mask, in that the historical Link went off somewhere and never came back, without growing up to save Hyrule as he was supposed to. That’s pretty interesting.

And, again, I like that nobody except Ganon really cares. Hyrule is gone; life goes on.

The world has a certain coherence and thought put into it, strictly for its own sake, that the main series rarely has. It’s very much a reinvention of the franchise, in the form of a storybook; an acknowledgment that the same story will keep repeating, even if nobody believes in it anymore. Somewhere out there, maybe in the real world, there is a Link and there is a Zelda, even if they don’t know it. There is a Hyrule, buried somewhere, if you know where to look. This is pretty good stuff.

Mechanically, the game feels smooth and cozy to play. For a while, anyway, there is a real sense of adventure and discovery; that anything could be out there. The fact that you can pick up and use all manner of stuff even if it’s not an “important” item adds to the sense of improvisation. The game puts a lot of work into this feeling. It also undermines most of that work, but we’ve had that discussion.

The entire game is sort of jaded about the idea of a Zelda-like quest. (In theory; it becomes credulous as hell, in practice.) Yeah, we’ve seen this all before; tell us a new one. Isn’t the whole thing a little twee? I mean, look at this green outfit. Who on Earth would wear something like that? Yet it’s also joyful and energetic, almost driving home the message that although, yeah, this story has been told countless times before, what matters isn’t the broad structure and gestures; it’s the individual lives that are affected, and what it feels like for them to take part in that story.

It’s a very postmodern take on the series, and pretty sophisticated. Again, though, it just doesn’t go all the way — which keeps the game from really making its point as solidly as it might.

Aonuma’s Reflections On Zelda

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Check out the comments section on the original article. Seriously.

On Thursday Aonuma candidly, and with self-effacing humor, spoke of his period of aimlessness and mistakes that began with the release of The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker, the way in which they reflected the Japanese industry as a whole, and how they led to Nintendo’s shift of focus over the last few years.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

It’s-a Heem! Again!

  • Reading time:3 mins read

So far, New Super Mario Bros. isn’t as annoying as I expected. Kind of flavorless, yes. Well-made, though. Some nice ideas in here.

I like how they’ve stripped down everything except the mushrooms, fire flowers, and turtle shell — and then refocused the game so it’s basically all forward momentum. There’s plenty of stuff to dink around and find; that’s kind of peripheral, though. The overworld map pretty much drives the point home: it’s a straight line from the first level to the final castle, with only the occasional tangent to access an alternate route or a special item. The levels themselves are much the same. And the way the secret routes and items are hidden is nice and old-fashioned; reminds me of Mario 1 and Sonic 1.

Likewise, the focus on Mario’s size-changing is interesting. In past games (except Mario Land), there’s never been much point in being small. Here, not only is being small occasionally of value; you can also be smaller than small. And to trade it off, you can be bigger than big. Conceptually, it’s definitely got its stuff together; this is kind of like how Gradius V focuses on the Options. In execution — well.

The problem, as Toups pointed out earlier, feels like a lack of confidence. That seems to be an issue with a lot of Nintendo games these days. A shame. I mean. With more confidence in its own ideas, Wind Waker could have been really amazing. And again, whoever conceived of this game was a really clever person. You want to revive an imporant series, you break down what defines it and you build upon that. In this case, you focus on Mario’s growing/shrinking ability and on forward momentum; ditch all the suits and playground design and as much clutter as you can get away with, then slowly build back up with an eye toward the central themes.

Even the level design is often quite snazzy. Same with the very limited treasure hunt aspect, and how that ties into the world map: spend the coins however you like, whenever you like; go back and dink around to find the other coins whenever you feel like it. No pressure to complete everything; to the contrary, the game’s constantly pushing you forward. Yet it allows leeway if you want to explore. Again, sorta reminds me of early Sonic. Heck, Mario even runs like Sonic now.

Partly because of all that, I really wish this thing felt less generic. Less… cardboard. Whereas Gradius V and OutRun2 almost supplant Life Force and OutRun, this comes off more like a tribute game than something important in its own right.

EDIT: Actually, I want to say it reminds me a lot of a milquetoast follow-up to Super Mario Land. You’ve got some of the same ideas in it: better use of Mario’s size and working it into level logistics; more thematic enemies, and levels with memorable one-time quirks. I keep expecting the fireball to work like the Power Ball, and bounce all over, allowing me to collect coins. Instead, it just creates coins. (Not sure of the in-game logistics there. I think the Mario Land model would have fit better.) What Mario Land has that this doesn’t is a bizarre and quirky personality of its own, allowing it to stand as a response to Super Mario Bros. rather than just a new take on it.

The Nintendo Syndrome

  • Reading time:12 mins read

by [name redacted]

Part two of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation.

So Nintendo’s at the top of its game again – or near enough to clap, anyway. The DS is one of the bigger success stories in recent hardware history. People are starting to buy into the Wii hype; even Sony and Microsoft’s chiefs have gone on record with how the system impresses them. Japan is mincing no words; 73% of Famitsu readers polled expect the Wii to “win” the next “console war”, whatever that means. And these people aren’t even Nintendo’s target audience.

Satoru Iwata has done a swell job, the last couple of years, taking a company that was coasting on past success, whose reputation had devolved to schoolyard snickers – that even posted a loss for the first time in its century-plus history – and making it both vital and trendy again.

So what happened to Nintendo, anyway? How is it that gaming’s superstar was such a dud, for so many years? What’s the white elephant in the room, that everyone has taken such pains to rationalize? It is, of course, the same man credited for most of Nintendo’s success: Shigeru Miyamoto.

This Week’s Releases (Sep 26-30, 2005)

  • Reading time:15 mins read

by [name redacted]

Week twelve of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Catching up from a strong PSP showing at TGS, the DS has begun its cavalcade of fall delights. Also, some decent compilations and a creative D&D game. Check it out!

Today (Monday, September 26th)

Trace Memory (DS)
Jinx/Nintendo

In Japan, this is called “Another Code”. Neither name is that memorable, I’m afraid. The game itself is (as with Lost in Blue, below) one of the new slate of adventure games that serves to demonstrate how the DS hardware might be used. Trace Memory is in essence a Myst-style adventure game – nothing special on its own right, except that point-and-click games have generally been alien to the console and handheld side of the industry, due in part to interface issues, in part to the different mindspace projected by a PC and a TV environment.

In their intimacy, handheld games are a little closer to PCs than are console games – so in theory, the only real hurdle should be the interface. With its stylus and touch screen, the DS is perhaps even more ideal than a PC-and-mouse setup; simply tap where you wish to look. Beyond this, Trace Memory blurs a few edges between PC adventure games and console-style adventures by displaying an overhead view on the top screen and leaving the bottom screen for your character’s first-person perspective. Use the control pad to precisely navigate, or use the touch screen to point your way around. You can think of the bottom screen as a heads-up display or the top screen as a mere map, if you like.

The game is short, from what I gather. That seems just as well, for what the game is. There was a little buzz around Another Code a few months ago, even before people stopped dismissing the DS out-of-hand – so it should gain a small and reasonably loyal following on release. Even if it doesn’t sell through the roof, it still should be valuable to study.

I can feel the walls closing in on me

  • Reading time:4 mins read

So everyone around me kept saying how great the new Zelda was

I don’t know. It struck me as another Zelda game, from what I saw of
it. And. I understand that some of Nintendo’s trends have been worsening. Even though Capcom’s making all of their games, these days.

Zelda used to be a thing of wonder. Now it is a template. Metroid is starting to go the same route, too. The series has been stagnating since the third game. Both series have been. It just gets more obvious, the more often it’s iterated. And the more out-of-touch and patronizing each iteration becomes.

Metroid Prime is a nice exception.

Wind Waker brings a lot of nice things to the series, just as Metroid Fusion does. The problems with them are the same, though. They don’t really succeed because in the end, the template rules. They have to answer to it, so they don’t get away with as much as they might. It’s mechanics, not experience, that Nintendo chooses to deliver these days.

I don’t give a damn about the rules. I want to feel something.

Here’s the part where I’m a wiseguy and ask which series has undergone more substantial changes over the years, Zelda or King of Fighters? I suspect most fans of either would pick the other, which is only natural. Fans of something pay attention to the small but sometimes crucial changes between iterations, while non-fans shrug their shoulders and say that they all sort of look the same.

I adore Zelda and Metroid — or at least, what they once stood for. The series have certainly changed; they’ve regressed. It’s pretty sad when the first two games are the most sophisticated, and everything else has just been about weeding away what made the games stand out from the crowd. A process of prolonged blanding. That’s what distresses me. I have come to be dismissive through one mediocre decision after another.

As far as fighting games go, KOF has evolved more in concept, and covered more ground, than any other series I can think of. If you can even compare it to other games; the series operates on its own terms. It’s more a serial novel than anything. Yet it’s a serial that only becomes richer and more rewarding as it unfurls.

Meanwhile, all of Nintendo’s series become more generalized and mathematical, drawing from the same proven design documents.

Metroid isn’t as far along the decay as Zelda, of course. Nintendo avoided the series for nearly a decade after Yokoi died. And Intelligent Systems isn’t EAD. Now Retro is doing some insightful stuff with the concept, fleshing it out in a way Nintendo never did. Zero Mission gets a lot right, especially where it borrows from Retro rather than from Miyamoto. I like the way it prepares the player for how to deal with Metroids, for instance. It is, however, still mired in the same hyper-safe, inbred theory that Nintendo’s been using since 1991. And with every generation, that theory generates more genetic defects…

If every chapter of KOF were 2002 or NeoWave, I would feel the same as
I do about Zelda. (Conversely, this would probably please a lot of people.) If a game like Wind Waker or Fusion were allowed to follow through on its own ideas, rather than bow to the Miyamoto machine, I would be inclined to care more.

I’ve not really played Majora’s Mask. It’s the only Zelda game aside from Wind Waker to look interesting to me since the NES. I played for about half an hour, and in that time noticed that all of the models were recycled from OoT. That wasn’t too encouraging, though I suppose it doesn’t mean anything on its own.

Sunder Land, where all is asunder

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I just beat both scenarios of Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams in one day. In one sitting, really. I first had to play to where I left off in the PS2 version, although that took an atom of the time it did the first time. (I notice that James no longer comments, of a map of the United States, “It’s a picture of something. I’m not sure what.”) Perhaps I was in a better mood or perhaps I was just prepared; the goofy world-logic did not distract me as much, today. Instead, I was distracted by the atmosphere and narrative. This really is a sophisticated game, artistically; one of the most-so I have encountered. Although it falls short on the actual game mechanics, that’s okay. Its mind is elsewhere.

I think I actually respect this even more than the first game, although they are rather different in their approaches and intentions. Where Silent Hill 1has its crushing sense of fear, that makes a person think twice to play it in the dark — or even to play it at all, at times — this does something more subtle. It is about all-encompassing, numbing sorrow and guilt — with all of the haziness and tempermental bursts and aimlessness and self-effacement and strange obsession that come with it. It is a portrait of a man willfully falling apart. A trip through his head, as he fights to either self-destruct entirely or to confront his demons and accept what he has been unwilling to accept. Whatever brings an end to the murmur. The entire game is focused around illustrating that picture.

A common enough theme in literature. In videogames, not so much. It’s too adult a depiction of pain. The scope of the game, by which it does illustrate this theme, is far more ambitious than I am used to. The original Silent Hill deserved enough praise just for being bright enough to understand how fear works better than any of its contemporaries. That seemed like a stroke of genius. This… is something else entirely.

Then Silent Hill 3 seems like an attempt to go mainstream with the series. It plays (and, in general, feels) much more like Biohazard than either of the first two games do. It tries to directly follow the plot of the first game, and to provide some more stable answers about just what this “Silent Hill” place is — something that really did not need to be done. It has a sassy, sarcastic lead. The music is more oriented toward pop, over the metal machine of the first game and the drones of the second. It’s just so… polished, and pretty, and palatable. Then The Room is supposed to follow after the second game, in some respects. I… well.

I guess I should reserve comment until I have seen them through. Something just feels a little unnecessary here.

Anyway. I am making progress.

A while ago, Justin Freeman made reference to a list of the top five (or was it “only five”?) significant games in this hardware generation: Metroid Prime, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, ICO, Rez, and Grand Theft Auto III. He said “Maybe Silent Hill 2” — although that would make an unusual five. I’ll throw it in. I will also throw in Ikaruga, Wind Waker, and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. These nine games seem, to me, to be the sum of all of note that we have learned this generation. I have yet to find a tenth candidate.

Some will be surprised that I include Wind Waker, given my attitude toward the game. Some who know me better will know that it is precisely that attitude which puts the game on the list. Evolution finally comes through and admits what a meta-fighter Virtua Fighter has always been, as a series. It says some things about fighters, and about videogames, and the way we interact with them in a broader sense, that should do some permanent damage if you think about it too hard. And Ikaruga is, frankly, one of the most perfect and elegant game designs around — one which helps to illustrate on a base level, along with Rez, what videogames are, at their spine — and one which demonstrates the “pure” videogame (that is, videogame-as-design) at its most ideal. There is a level of truth here that, although related to the games of the early ’80s, could not exist in any previous hardware generation.

I might talk about this all in more detail, later.

Or. Maybe not.

The Evolution of a Franchise: The Legend of Zelda

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

We arrived late; the conference was already half-over, and the crowd had spilled to standing-room-in-the-hall-outside-the-conference-room-only. An Asian woman with a nervous smile asked us if we wanted headphones — sort of like what people wear during international debates. “Channel two is English” she said. I had no trouble setting my radio to channel two, or turning it on, or even adjusing the volume. Somehow, though, it still refused to work. Being the tall one, Brandon suggested I wedge myself just inside the door. I could see over everyone’s head. Eiji Aonuma stood on-stage, pontificating as if on a PBS special. To his left (and my right) was a large screen, showing a clip of Link, from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, running through the first few scenes of that game.

I turned to Brandon. I pointed toward my radio. Brandon pressed the power button. He adjusted the volume. He fiddled with the antenna. Then he shrugged and began to turn away. A moment later, he grabbed the end of my headphones and plugged them into the radio. My ears began to melt with Hell’s very own translation. I seized the radio and spun the volume dial to half of what it was.

When my senses recovered, Aonuma was talking about all of the little, insignificant details in the Zelda series, and how they bring reality to the game. He spoke of the difference between reality and realism. “To Miyamoto, reality is far more important,” Aonuma explained. This seemed fair enough, if a bit obvious. He then took the time to give several examples of just what reality means in the context of a game like Wind Waker.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

And Tingle is not gay.

  • Reading time:1 mins read

In the most recent EGM (or at least the one handed out at E3), Eiji Aonuma admits that two dungeons were cut from Wind Waker. He claims that the decision was made because game was “just too big” as it was.

Considering how small the game is in its current state, and how awkwardly its flow is broken at those points, somehow this explanation doesn’t… exactly ring true. Again, the game was rushed. This doesn’t sound like the kind of thing for a Nintendo director to speak up about, though. Nintendo has enough problems already.

However: Yes.

So was I the only one who really picked up on this, or what?

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GCN/Nintendo)

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Miyamoto comes from an older school of game design, from a time when we didn’t know as much as we do now — and so we didn’t know what was impossible. We also had little history, so it was up to bards like Miyamoto to create one for us.

With a handful of details, a rough outline, and his whims, Miyamoto spins tales for his audience. With every telling and every audience, his stories go down a slightly different path. No one performance is more accurate than any other; the truth is in the telling. Save the odd sequel, every Zelda game is a new beginning, with a new, yet always familiar, Link and a new Zelda. It’s getting so there are nearly as many interpretations as of Journey to the West or the legend of King Arthur. And for the same reasons.

Legends like these are ancient; they’re from a world before our linear sense of time and our concrete idea of history. Back then, the world moved in cycles. The seasons came and went; life flourished and waned — and then it began again, a little different, mostly familiar. Reality is in the moment and in that faith in the cycle.

The way that videogames age, this cycle has turned into a death spiral. Every five years there’s a new generation of players, with its own collective assumptions and its own built-in innocence to history. For each new wave of gamers, the story must be adapted and retold again.

The problem is this modern concept of progress. Whereas only a few generations ago one year was much the same as the next, technology has now placed us on a non-stop rocket train to anywhere-but-here. So our perception is warped from the speed, and so we are blinded to the cycles that used to define our reality.

Our rhythms have been broken, replaced with the dull whine of progress. The future is our salvation, while the present is a blur and the past is our collective shame. We live in a society that has invented history as a straw man for our pursuit of an illusory perfection.

Wind Waker is a game caught in an unfortunate dilema between these two world models.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Those a’ nae the jaws of which I speak, lass.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I still taste the bread from a submarine sandwich that I ate over twelve hours ago. Talk about value for your dollar!

My toy symphony, as it were, is beginning to find some kind of direction for itself. I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that I need a good sample or two which comfortably sit in the bass range. As one might anticipate, were one to pay attention to such spectral issues, all of these dinky instruments and knicknacks tend to be pretty strong on the high end, but they generally cut off somewhere within the midrange.

Maybe I can fudge a bit by introducing a couple of pure waves; square and triangle, say. They’ll sound cheesy, and yet honest and warm enough that they might not clash as an overly synthetic addition.

Plus, they can be cleanly downsampled as much as I care to do so.

I really am not fond of square waves when used in the mid-range; I’ve known this for a long while. They just sound hollow. But my word, do they make good bass patches. They even have some neat uses in the higher registers, as a chirpy kind of seasoning.

Wind Waker is sitting in my Gamecube, very close to completion (as it has been for a few days) — but I return to it joylessly at this point. I suppose I might as well just get the darned thing over with. If I didn’t have a review to write, I don’t think I’d have the motivation to finish.

Today has been a day of crankiness. Perhaps repeating another three or four boss battles is just the cap that I need.

Storytelling as a craft

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Wind Waker just came today.

Jesus. I had no idea how right I was about the whole legend/storybook aspect. That’s precisely what this game is. The introduction sequence lays it all out.

Link has a lobster on his shirt!

In terms of gameplay and general structure, Wind Waker is almost identical to OoT. The controls are much more polished, mroe responsive, and generally nicer-feeling than in OoT. We’ve still got the god-damned fetch quests. (In fact, I think we’ve got more than in OoT.) Dungeons and towns and shops are generally laid out in the same way as before.

So, yeah. Basically imagine a really buttery OoT, with just about all of the interface problems removed, and you’ve got a good starting point.

At least in the first few hours, the game seems oddly linear. The player is given a boat right near the outset, and free roam of the ocean (which now covers almost the entire world) — but if the player decides to head off on his own whims, the boat begins to complain.

Yes, I know I’m not going in the right direction. Thank you. I don’t care if I’m not ready for that island yet; I want to visit it anyway.

There are more natural contraints for the player than simply not allowing him to go where he pleases.

Honestly, I’m starting to get tired of the post-Adventure of Link Zelda gameplay style. I wasn’t fond of most of the changes in Link to The Past, but one of the things which most irritated me was the way that items came to be used.

I’m not going to elaborate right now on exactly what the distinction is, but OoT backpeddled a bit in this regard; its item system — the items available; the manner in which they, the player, the environment, and enemies interacted; the manner, timing, and order with which the items were acquired — reminds me far more of the way things worked in the NES games than in LttP.

Wind Waker feels more like LttP, as far as items go.

Take that as you will.

Actually, given how integral the whole item collection system is to the game structure (as in Metroid), this has a pretty big effect on the general tone of the game.

In Wind Waker, I feel like I’m just collecting random doodads. Some of them are useful; some aren’t. But the only reason the game is giving them to me is to enable me to progress. At the point I’m at now — around five hours into the game — I’m ceasing to be thrilled when I find a new inventory item.

What’s worse is that about half of the items in the game so far seem to serve no purpose other than as keys in fetch quests. Argh. I don’t care! This is an adventure game convention which needs to die. Soon.

Further, even the interesting items — such as the grappling hook — are often hindered a bit by needless irritation. Every single time the grapple wraps around a post, for instance, the game halts to show me a four-second cutscene. I don’t need this more than once ever, thank you.

The good parts so far: the atmosphere and general graphic design are just fantastic, now that I’ve got some context for all of their elements. Link actually has a lot of personality; his facial expressions add a bunch to the game. Almost every object in the environemnt is interactive in some vague way or another. The water and fire and smoke and heat effects are very well-executed.

There’s this one kid on the first island who has a perpetual, enormous drip of snot hanging from his nose. I don’t know if that was really necessary.

I have a feeling I know who Zelda is. I’ve had this feeling since about half an hour into the game.

Where the atmosphere is original, it’s great. Where it’s not, it’s tiring — at least for me. All of the forced OoT-ish trappings quickly began to wear on me — but in the cases where the game takes a full left turn into its own universe, there’s a ton of life to be found. These moments tend to evidence themselves when the player is either left free to explore and bond with the environment, or when the game locks the player into a tightly-scripted plot sequence. Where I begin to lose patience is where the game tries to yank me around and force me to do things for it for no other reason than the fact that it’s a videogame.

I’m not fond of manipulation. I don’t mind wasting time of my own accord, but I don’t like my time to be wasted for me.

To be fair, I’m still only a few hours into the game. The plot hasn’t fully picked up yet, and I’m not yet as free to wander — so perhaps things will become less annoying in the future.

As far as sailing goes — it’s a mildly interesting mechanic, for a few minutes. The problem is that it takes so long to get anywhere. And once you set your coordinates, you don’t… really do anything. If you try, you’ll probably end up stopping the boat. The best thing to do when travelling is just to put the controller down and get a sandwich.

Again — maybe something else happens with this later. Right now, though, I’m perplexed. There are a lot of really good ideas in this system — so why did they combine them in such an obviously tedious manner?

I hope there’s more use for the telescope in the near future. About an hour in, I found a camera of sorts which has exactly the same functionality, except with the added benefit of enabling me to take pictures. I don’t see what I need the telescope for, if I’ve got this other item sitting around. I hope this isn’t just an oversight. We’ll see.

So — to boil it down:

The good — the graphical style; the atmosphere; the expressiveness of the characters (similar to Skies of Arcadia in this respect (among many)); the smooth controls; the non-annoying menu system; some interesting potential with a few of the new items; the self-reflective sense of humor of the dialogue; the Koji Kondo score; the introductory sequence.

The bad — how manipulative and needlessly annoying the actual game tends to be so far; THE FUCKING FETCH QUESTS; the overall structure of the item system so far.

Again — in its best places, this game has a different atmosphere from any previous Zelda game. I hope the game takes more advantage of its advantages than it seems content to thus far. It feels like a real shame to me that with all of these great new ideas, Eiji Aonuma felt compelled to make a Zelda game out of the pieces.

So. We’ll see, we’ll see…

I’ve yet to pay for a Gamecube game.

  • Reading time:6 mins read

I’ve got the OoT disc now. It’s… a decent port.

At the point I’m at now, I just beat Gohma and hit Hyrule Field again. Golly, it was a lot quicker this time around. The first time I played this portion of the game, I think it took me several hours to get as far as this. Now it’s taken me only around half an hour. Of course I did poke around quite a lot, before.

There are a lot of ads included for Wind Waker (both on the disc and in the packaging), which seems superfluous considering that the only way to get this disc is as a pre-order bonus with that game.

This compilation disc is apparently labeled, officially, as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Master Quest is called “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Master Quest” Which… makes sense. It’s not really a novel game in its own right so much as it is a second quest of OoT. (The instruction booklet doesn’t even bother to distinguish between the games.)

So collectively this disc kind forms the complete version of OoT. OoT DX, as it were.

The actual presentation of this package, I’m not sure about. It was thrown together pretty quickly.

The game disc is printed with the logo and the game title in red and black. The side of the case again simply lists the game as OoT. The back of the case actually goes into a fair amount of detail, considering that this isn’t intended for direct sale. The front is graced with a disappointing excuse for cover art (even more so than usual for Gamecube games). heh. It’s just the two logos against a gradiant background, with a few blurbs.

Just the logos would have been fine, if they were presented elegantly. Not so here. It’s not terrible; it’s just not… amazing.

When you boot up the system, tou’re presented with a screen that’s got an ocarina in the background and then logos (with corresponding pictures of link) in the upper-left and upper-right, for each of the two quests. Then down at the bottom is an option to allow you to view trailers to several other Gamecube and GBA games.

A new mix of Hyrule Field/the original Zelda theme plays in the background.

Below the logos, some… rather loud, overly large text explains the current selection in greater detail; a one-sentence synopsis which honestly seems a little condescending to me.

When you choose either quest, it gives you a splash screen that illustrates the controls for you and asks you if you want to use the rumble feature. Seems again kind of superfluous; they could have just thrown that into the options menu. And the game already teaches you how to play, and the instruction booklet is quite thorough.

The game takes a good while to load once you select one of the two quests. I understand why, of course. But you just get a black screen with a progress bar and a bit of related clip-art pasted above. That could have been more seamless.

The only changes are that it’s in a higher resolution now (and there’s no more of that palette dithering), and the issues with the controls. Any text and icons in the game have been altered to reflect the Gamecube pad a little more closely. The button colors at the top of the screen, for instance.

It’s strange. Not even the frame rate has been brought up. It’s just as choppy as on the N64. Draw distance seems the same.

It’s basically a perfect port. It emulates the positive and the negative of the original game. Including all of the text that you can’t skip and Navi’s over…Naviness. Even the small issues which could have been repaired, generally aren’t. Or they don’t seem to be; all of the graphical and camera engine peculiaries.

The controls are fine. They feel as natural as possible considering the differences between the N64 and Gamecube pads. I think the L trigger, being analog, is a little mushier than what we had before with the Z trigger.

The secondary items work okay. Right now I have slingshot on Y (the missile button in Metroid). Deku nut is X. And I’ve the ocarina set to Z.

It’s a little annoying to have to reach for the C-stick every time Navi starts to whine, though. And I’m not sure yet how it’s going to work once one has to start playing melodies on the ocarina (that’s the only place to access one of the notes).

So that should be… interesting.

The music stutters slightly when one brings up the menu screen.

The game takes a lot of memory for saving — fifteen blocks, to compare to Metroid’s two. This accounts for both the normal game and Master Quest, though.

It also takes a while to save. And as with the loading sequence, the method isn’t as polished as it could be. The screen just goes black, and a clumsy message appears to instruct you NOT to touch the memory card or the power button. Then it says the game has saved, and requires the player to hit “okay” to continue. And it drops back into the game.

Again, that could have been more seamless.

I also… Hmm.

The demo movies are interesting, but I think they’re kind of out-of-place here. They take down the tone of the disc in general. If it were just the two quests, with an elegant selection interface, I think that would take up the respectability several notches. As it is, this feels like… a free bonus disc.

Oddly, Sega’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on the F-Zero trailers. Nor does that of Amusement Vision. I’m not as surprised that Treasure isn’t mentioned in relation to Wario World.

In a big, edited sequence that shows off most of the big games which have been released since the Gamecube’s launch (all the way back to SSBM), PSOep1&2 and Super Monkey Ball 2 are amongst the last two or three items shown.

And there are some odd ones in there. A random James Bond game from EA. Timesplitters 2. Some other things which have little specifically to do with the Gamecube.

It’s more like “we’ve got this too!” than “look at what we’ve got that no one else does!”.

There’s nothing really wrong with the disc, and it’s certainly worth having around. It’s just — I’m surprised that it wasn’t handled with more care than it was. It wouldn’t have been at all difficult to have made things feel a little less cheap.

The games themselves are basically fine, from what I’ve seen so far. It just feels like an N64 perfectly emulated on my Gamecube.

Things To Do!