Dungeon #6 or 'How I learned to hate the Wizzrobes'

As you can see, that's only two more pieces of the stupid Triforce of stupid Wisdom than I had previously and in case you're wondering whom to blame for this slowdown, may I introduce you to the Wizzrobes:

Doesn't look like much, does he?

Well meet his jerk of a big brother...

The orange Wizzrobes are great, we're pals basically.  They'll port around in a semi-random fashion and then pewpew some magic junk at me.  Whatever.  Mr 'roided up blue version though takes a gazillion more hits and doesn't disappear but instead stalks me around the room, waiting to pounce and take off a full heart every hit.  Even this wouldn't be too bad until we come to....

THE ROOM OF DEATH

Seriously, this room accounted for so much frustration.  See, I had this lovely magical shield that would at least stop the magic pewpewing of the Wizzrobes, but then nooooo, those weird pile of mashed sweet potato things jumped on me and STOLE MY DAMN SHIELD, leaving me again wielding what basically amounts to a hunk of driftwood taped to my arm.  Needless to say, driftwood won't be stoping anyone's magic anything.

Anyway.  To put it into short sentences:  Entered that room many times.  Beat head against wall.  Would have thrown controller if my cool new SNES replica USB controller hadn't just shown up that same day.  Finally killed boss and dungeon 7's boss.  One last piece and then I rumble with Ganon!

Playing The Legend of Zelda hungover is definitely interesting...

More to come as I shake the memories out of my head :P

Well Saturday night was pretty much a fantastical shindig, great to see some of the old guildies from Ronin/DF/Cataclysm, but oh man did it lead to a rather hung over Sunday.  I think the real lesson I've taken away is frustrating things in old games get GREATLY amplified when all that really sounds good is a liter of water and a nap.  This could also be brought on by dungeon #6 being a big old pain in my butt, grumble grumble grumble.

I'll probably expand upon it more after completing this game but I'm definitely feeling the burn of playing a 25 year old game; it's age really shows with some of the things I take for granted that are missing.  Saving and not having to start back at the stupid entrance to the world, with only three freaking hearts full, no matter how many total I have...  hmmm actually that really is my biggest issue right now.  Navigating around can be a bit of a hassle but apparently the game itself shipped with a map of the entire overworld, so once I found that out I didn't feel bad pulling it up on my iPad and being able to more easily see where the heck I was going.

Only three more pieces of the Triforce to go and then I assume I'll have to slap Ganon around a bit before we get to the smooching times with Zelda!

The real moral of the story though:  Drink more water and don't use the breathalyzer your police friend brought over as a means of competition.  :P

The Legend of Zelda, deux

Last night saw a bit more Zelda action going on, and this time I had a very cabitzy audience.  Nick and Scott were over as we were going out later that night, so they sometimes helped, which quickly devolved into just yelling that I was doing everything wrong.

The surprising thing was the amount of random stuff they remembered about the game.  Remember, this came out 25 years ago but both of them were able to point out unmarked areas to bomb or set on fire to reveal secrets.

Overall didn't get too much of a chance to play, but thanks to their coaching I knocked out two more of the dungeons, bringing my Trieforce piece count up to three of eight collected.  I also picked up some more hearts and the amaaazzzing blue ring, which halves all damage I take.  I'm a machine of death now!

I've gotten more used to the fidgity controls and am thankfully able to dodge things better overall now, which, when adding in the extra hearts and ring, my life expectancy has gone way up.  Hurray!  I'm betting I'll have this game finished by the end of this week, and then it's on the the much reviled sidescrolling Zelda 2....

The Legend of Zelda, Part 1

So...here we go!  Last night I rummaged around online and found a well recommended NES emulator (jnes for those who are curious) and a rom for The Legend of Zelda.  (Yes, I own the physical cartridge but finding a working system is a pain, don't freak out about pirating. (For reference, I enjoy nested commentary using brackets.) )  I tossed both these on my media PC, hooked up a 360 controller, and got down to business rebuilding the Triforce of Wisdom.

I only ended up playing about an hour before duty called me away to League of Legends, but it was an an enjoyable and at times frustrating hour.

I think the biggest thing I noticed right off the bat is how the game just throws you in there.  Modern games spend a good chunk of time (sometimes way too much time, looking at you Final Fantasy 13) holding your hand and guiding you through how to play.  Zelda 1 just pops you in and hopes that you'll head into the cave north of you, otherwise you get no sword and the game is going to really suck to play.

I've never actually played the first Zelda much more than a couple minutes fooling around with it over the years, so I have no real memory to go on for how I should proceed.  I wandered around for a while, picked up some bombs, found a couple extra hearts (hurray life buffer!) and died a few times.  This leads into the other big thing I noticed, the controls are definitely not that snappy.  It could be due to the fact I'm running it emulated and using a 360 controller but Link feels rather spazzy and prone to not quite going where I want him to.  Regardless, I powered through like a Hyrulian boss and found then beat my first dungeon, picking up the boomerang and a third of the Triforce in the process.

After that, duty called and so I'll soon head back to a game that has been more entertaining to play than I really expected.

Kicking it off

We'll keep this brief, since no one really likes reading blog introductions.  I've been feeling recently like I've missed out on a lot of 'important' video games.  Sure, I've played a goodly amount, but in series that are 'iconic' there are definite holes in my gaming record, plus if you ask my friends, one of the things I'm known for is starting a multitude of games but never finishing them.

I'm going to fix that.

My new goal is to take a series at a time and play through every game in the order they were released.  I'm not going to be trying to get 100% completions or anything too too insane, just complete the main story, probably knock out some side quests on the way when applicable, and in general hopefully have a good time.

After a very in depth poll on Facebook (five six SEVEN! whole people answered) it was decided I'd start with one of the most popular series out there, the Legend of Zelda.

Over the course of growing up I've played a lot of the games in this series, but I've definitely missed a couple of them and haven't completed a few others.  Tonight I'll be loading up my NES emulator (good luck finding a working NES to play things on) and playing the first game in the series, the self titled The Legend of Zelda.

Side note:  I really should have started with Mario.  Half the games and way less daunting time per game in the later parts of the series.