Zelda Symphony Concert Dates

As part of the 25th Anniversary celebration Nintendo announced concerts all around the world. However, it seems there will be only one concert in each major region. There's one in Los Angeles on October 21st and one in London on October 25th. The one in London is the only one in Europe and I'm quite disappointed. I was hoping for one here in Berlin or at least anywhere else in Germany. Going to London for this is too expansive... I guess I only get the CD then. And I really hope the CD will be easily available to everyone. Because if not then this turns out to be quite a bad way to celebrate the 25th Anniversary. What's the celebration good for if only very few fans can enjoy it? UPDATE: I forgot that there will be a global tour next year, so never mind...

But the Zelda Symphony website really looks nice, the map in the background seems to be a mix between the maps of Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess.

DM-Kokiri_Forest (Beta)

Two of my absolute favorite gaming franchises, Unreal and Zelda, collide in this map made for Unreal Tournament 3 by Chris Pow aka ChangingZephyr. It's a remake of the Kokiri Forest setting as a Deathmatch arena. It's still in beta phase and far from perfect, but worth a look.

Over at Epic Games Forums you can download the map and give some feedback like I already did. If you do not have UT3, you can take a look at this Youtube video and these screenshots:





Lightning needs to be improved as well as item and weapon placement. And overall the Kokiri Forest isn't really the ideal place for a Deathmatch environment, it's too open and the Deku Tree area is completely disconnected from the action. Kakariko Village probably would have been a better setting, it's not as open thanks to the various houses and the tower in the center could be used for an awesome but very risky sniper spot. If I had the time, I would make a Kakariko Village Deathmatch map myself...

Well, I'll keep you posted about this map.

Replaying Oracle of Seasons

After replaying Oracle of Ages I linked the game to Seasons and continued my quest.

Overall I thought that Seasons was more fun than Ages. The story of Ages is definitely more developed and Ages has the better puzzles, while Seasons on the other hand is more straight forward and action-oriented. However, what I don't like about Ages is the overworld, while it's more realistic and consistent than the very colorful overworld in Seasons, it's just too empty, especially in the past. I mean there are actually screens with nothing but water on it, what's up with that? Couldn't they add at least some islands or something? A third of the overworld is ocean and the ocean area is just boring. Also travelling isn't much fun, because certain areas like Talus Mountain and require you to switch between present and past all the time, which gets annoying easily. Switching between different seasons on the other hand is fun. And Subrosia is one of the most unique and fun "overworlds" in the entire Zelda series, I just love this place. I'd also say that the dungeons in Seasons offer more variety and are more entertaining.

And Seasons has definitely the better gear. No, really, Seasons got all the good shit like Roc's Cape, Magnetic Gloves, Magical Boomerang or the Hyper Slingshot. You also get items more quickly in this game. A good example are the seeds, you just pick them up on your way and got most of them before the third dungeon, while in Ages at the same point you need to plant a tree and let it grow in order to get the Scent Seeds.

The best way to describe this game would be a mix between Link's Awakening and The Hyrule Fantasy. Because that's what it is. Originally Capcom was working on a remake of the classic NES The Legend of Zelda using the engine of Link's Awakening. At some point they added the seasons theme and the game would then become Oracle of Seasons. But the remake is still in there, the most notable part being the first dungeon. Same entrance, same layout, Aquamentus as a boss, it doesn't get more remake than that. The second dungeon, Snake's Remains, was also quite inspired by the 2nd level in TLoZ. All the bosses are there, you get Dodongo, Digdogger, Manhandla, Gohma, Gleeock and even Ganon when you're playing a linked game. And there are old men living in hidden caves under burnable trees and in some dungeon rooms, this is the only other Zelda game to do this next to the NES original and the one occurrence in Oracle of Ages, which I've mentioned in my last post.



Originally I planned to get all the items and upgrades from the linked quests (like Biggoron Sword, Bombchus, L-3 Sword & Shield, etc.) as soon as beating Level 2, but I forget to write down the random seed for my Hero's Quest and so I had to do it the traditional way. However, with an emulator using quick saves switching between games is much faster and easier than back then on the GameBoy Color.

I also screwed up the growth of Bipin and Blossom's child. I wanted to get the singer/musician this time, because I never had that one. I got the Slacker, the Arborist and the Hero on my GBC cartridges, so it would have been nice to see the fourth possible outcome. Well, maybe next time. In case you want to know what I got this time, it's a Hero.

One major complaint about both games is that getting all Pieces of Heart is way too easy. And I'm only comparing this with Link's Awakening, there you would have to check every wall in every cave if it's bombable or not and one Piece of Heart was even sunken in the ditch of Kanalet Castle. And some of the Secret Seashells are also very cleverly hidden, so in Link's Awakening you literally can't leave a single stone unturned, you have to check every wall, dive in every pool and dig through the whole island. And this is totally missing in Oracle of Seasons and Ages. As a big fan of Link's Awakening I was used to checking absolutely everything, but in both games I only got disappointed all the time. There's nothing really hidden anywhere except for some of the Gasha spots and all the supposed to be hidden stuff is way too easy to find. The only hard to get collectible items are the ones gotten randomly from Maple or Gasha Nuts... but this is not challenging in terms of exploring, it only exhausts your patience. It's not as terrible as getting enough treasures in Spirit Tracks, but it's an issue. Since I already got all 64 rings I only needed to look for the random Pieces of Heart during my replay, it's still annoying though.

As a sidenote, why is there no warp point in the Mt. Cucco / Goron Mountain area? It really sucks that you need to get up there from the Sunken Village, where you have to take an underwater path each time. (Update: There's another way up there from the Subrosia portal in Horon Village, which leads to the pirates' hideout. From there you can quickly reach another portal, which leads to Mt. Cucco.)

I really like the Golden Beasts. That's a really cool idea, which was sadly only copied by The Minish Cap so far. And The Minish Cap doesn't have as cool stuff as Golden Moblins, Darknuts or Lynels. I think Golden Monsters are a concept that has some potential.

I also made an exciting new discovery while playing the game. I never tried that before, but it's actually possible to beat Level 5 before 4. You need the Zora's Flippers for the dungeon, but not the Slingshot. As soon as you're done with the Sunken City, you can head there and play Level 5 first if you like. Or at least you can the Autumn and Spring upgrades at the same time and gain many advantages from that.

One of the main reasons why I decided to play Ages first and then link to Seasons was the Hero's Cave. I thought the one in Seasons was much cooler, however, this time around it felt like no challenge at all. Only the Boomerang puzzles would take some attempts and when I reached the end of the dungeon I asked myself, "that's it"? Well, the Hero's Cave in Ages at least has this nasty room with the colored cube and the lava, where you need to freeze the lava with the lever and quickly move the cube. If you fall into the lava, you get teleported out of the room and you have to start over again. I hated that room. Well, but there's an interesting fact for all those timeline theory gurus out there who only play the games for the story details. There's a friendly Sea Zora waiting for you in the Hero's Cave in Oracle of Seasons. Otherwise the game only features hostile River Zoras. See screenshot below.



I wonder how timeline theorists handle the fact, that there are four possible ways to get the Master Sword in the Oracle games. And in one case the sword is even fucking broken! I guess the timeline theorist's favorite case is the one where you find the Master Sword hidden in the Lost Woods of Holodrum:



That's more like it.

Well, replaying the Oracle games was quite cool. Both games really offer quite some replay value thanks to all the different choices you can make. The most important choice is the game that starts your adventure. Depending on that decision one dungeon (the Hero's Cave) and all the linked game events will look completely different leading to a different experience and different items. Your next choice is your animal buddy, there are three options here and it's not just what animal you would prefer, one entire area in the game will look different (see my post about the animal buddies for more info). Last and least there's Bipin and Blossom's son with four possible outcomes. So, you can replay both games at least four times and there's still something new for you to discover.

Replaying Oracle of Ages

Well, after watching some Four Swords sessions (man, this game really looks like fun) I was in the mood for some more GameBoy Zelda. And since I've already beaten Link's Awakening and The Minish Cap this year, only the Oracle games were left. And the Oracle games are celebrating their 10th birthday this year, which is definitely a great reason to replay them. Actually I wanted to wait until the games appear on the 3DS Virtual Console, but this might take a while. So, I decided to play them on emulator, which has always the advantage that you can quick save and take screenshots. And I don't want to use my original GBC copies of the games, because they are "full" and I don't want to delete any of my old savegames.

I decided to start with Ages and link to Seasons. There are some reasons why I prefer this order. First of all, if you play Ages first, you'll get this super awesome Link statue:



Actually there's two of them. The second one stands next to the Maku Tree. Another reason is the Hero's Cave. I think the Hero's Cave in Seasons is much more fun and enjoyable than the one in Ages. The Hero's Cave in Ages has one of the nastiest traps in the entire series and I didn't feel like playing this again. Also, when fighting Twinrova you have a greater advantage with the Hyper Slingshot and Roc's Cape.

Well, I did use the Oracles Secrets Generator to start a Hero's Quest for an extra Heart Container and instant 64 rings. You might call this cheating, but I've earned this. Back when the games were originally released on the GameBoy Color I played the hell out of them. I played the games in all possible ways and I got all 64 rings along the way, which was a lot of work. The Hero's Secret, which you unlock by beating Ganon, gives you the main advantage, that you can start a new game and copy all your old rings right from the start. This saves a lot of time. Well, I still go for the rings hidden in treasure chests and other fixed locations just for the sake of beating all sidequests, but you don't have to worry about the randomly gotten rings anymore, the ones you get from Gasha Seeds or minigames. Especially the Goron Dance can be a pain in the ass, so I'm very happy that I won't have to do this ever again (except for the Mermaid Key).

My animal of choise was Ricky of course. For reasons check here.

There's this popular misbelief, that there were originally three Oracle games and Flagship scrapped one. And then some Zelda fans wonder what happened to the content of the third game. And while it's true, that three and at some point even six games were planned, Flagship never made three games. For most of the time there was only one game, a prototype. It all started as a remake of the classic NES game The Legend of Zelda using the engine of Link's Awakening. At some point they added the idea of changing seasons and this game would later become Oracle of Seasons. And this prototype was all they had for most of the time, "The Mystical Seed of Courage and Wisdom" were only games on the paper. Wisdom was supposed to feature color puzzles and Courage was said to have different times of a day, morning, noon, evening, night. However, they realized early enough that the link system was too complicated for three games, so they only made two in the end. So, don't worry, I bet every content ever made by Flagship was actually included in the Oracle games. Nothing was scrapped.

In the end Ages got a time travelling theme, but it still features a lot of color puzzles. For example the rooms with the blobs who change their color according to the color of the floor. Or the those blue tiles that get red when you walk on them. I blamed The Minish Cap for featuring dumbed down versions of this puzzle, so it was nice to actually have a little challenge in Ages again. Usually you would say, that puzzles have no replay value (typical Malstrom rand). Once you know the solution, a puzzle is boring. However, this is not the case in Ages, this game has some really smart puzzles, which will get you to think again, even though you've already beaten the game a couple of times. May it be the blue floor tiles or navigating Jabu Jabu's Belly, this game has some of the best puzzles in the series. But the fact, that this game features many color based puzzles is interesting. It's like they started to make the planned color puzzle game (which was supposed to feature Nayru), but at some point it became Ages.



It's also strange how around Level 6 the game suddenly feels a lot like The Hyrule Fantasy. It starts with an old man living under a tree at the base of the Rolling Ridge. I like the gag, how the old man in the presents charges you for door repairs and the old man in the past gives you money. Well, old men used to be much nicer back in the day. And in the Mermaid's Cave there's suddenly an overload of classic NES Zelda dungeon enemies, something you've never encountered before in Ages. There are suddenly Floor Masters, Red Bubbles and Blue Wizzrobes (the ones going through walls) all at once. It feels quite strange, but it's only the part around Level 6. Seasons is the game, which actually got all the Hyrule Fantasy remake stuff, Ages only got few things, like Eyesoar, who is remake of Patra.

When you play the games on emulator, it usually crashes when you switch floors in the map screen. This can be really annoying, I had to replay lots of dungeons parts because of this. But I guess you can't complain when using an emulator and ROMs. The original games work fine for me.

Nintendo 3DS: Massive Price Drop, GBA and NES Classics on Virtual Console

I might be buying a Nintendo 3DS next month. As of August 12th the price will go down to 170, which is one massive price drop and looks much more effortable.

Also, 10 GBA and 10 NES game were announced for the 3DS Virtual Console. This includes The Legend of Zelda and Metroid Fusion. That GBA games are coming to the service is really nice, however, the NES games might look like an overshoot, because we already have a Virtual Console for NES games on the Wii. Also, some NES and SNES games will be already ported as 3D Classics. I mean, where's the end? They could basically re-release the entire Wii Virtual Console library, which would be too much. It would be much more classy, if the 3DS Virtual Console focuses on portable games only. So, what I believe is that these are actually not NES, but GameBoy Advance games, namely the ports from the NES Classics series. There were a couple of NES games ported to GBA, which includes The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II - The Adventure of Link and Metroid. And I think all Nintendo does is re-releasing the NES Classics series on the 3DS Virtual Console. I could be wrong though, it's just a guess. For example they announced Donkey Kong Jr., which originally wasn't part of the NES Classics series... But it just seems so unnecessary to re-release NES games a third time, I don't know...

GameBoy Advance games are awesome though. I guess everyone would see it as a natural development, when the Virtual Console offers GBA games at one point. However, right now Nintendo has no plans to make the GBA games available to the general public in the future. They are only available to people who bought the system before the price cut. If you've already bought the 3DS, you must feel pretty pissed right now, so Nintendo offers you all 10 NES games and all 10 GBA games for free, which is not a bad deal, not at all. And those GBA games are said to be exclusive to the so called "ambassadors". However, I doubt that there are really no plans for GBA games on Virtual Console. They say so now to make the ambassadors feel better, but I guess same time next year they'll make GBA games available to the public because of "popular demand". Nintendo loves making money from re-releasing games and not offering GBA games would be a missed opportunity, a big one.

Well, the ambassador-program only works if you connect your eShop before August 12th. But maybe you're lucky and you get a price cutted 3DS early, so you get the cheaper 3DS and all 20 free games. I'll definitely try this, because this would be a hell of a deal.

Source: Nintendo / Kotaku

Operation Moonfall

Operation Moonfall is an initiative by Zelda Universe, Zelda Dungeon and Zelda Informer and an answer to Aonuma's recent statement, that a Majora's Mask remake for the 3DS would be possible if fans want it. Here's the quote again:

It’s been 13 years since Ocarina of Time was originally released, and one of the big things that we made this remake possible was that there was an outpour of emotions from people who said they would like to see this game done. We said we could do it in 3D, so we did. I think certainly if there was a similar output of emotion and clamor from fans for a remake of Majora’s Mask, it wouldn’t be an utter impossibility.

I totally support Operation Moonfall, I already signed the petition and I'm following them on Twitter, Facebook and stuff. However, I'm very skeptical, that this will have any impact at all.

First of all, why does it have to resemble Operation Rainfall? Is this a mocking or something? Operation Rainfall failed big time, Nintendo just replied with "no", which fans answered with hard feelings. Why in all the world would you want to copy this campaign? The whole thing left a sour taste and you don't want to carry that over to the Majora's Mask 3D campaign... you might have more luck joining my Operation Reinfall, at least that one doesn't take the whole thing seriously.

I'm also not sure, what "outpoor of emotion and clamor from fans" Aonuma meant exactly. Did he mean last year's E3? Because prior to the E3 there certainly wasn't anyone even thinking about a remake. Then at E3 they showed a demo of Ocarina of Time 3D and maybe the positive reactions further lead to the development of the full game, but it really looks like Ocarina of Time 3D was already in development at that time. I'm not buying the "giving fans what they want"-speech, because Nintendo is way too busy with their own creativity. It's the sad truth, but they rarely listen to the fans. In case of Zelda this never really bothered me, because pretty much every Zelda fan wants something different from the games, for example some are all about the story and timeline theories, while I couldn't care less about these things. Nintendo certainly listens from time to time, but not on a level, where fans could have a major impact on the games. Nintendo usually does, what they want to do. And Ocarina of Time 3D was made, because Miyamoto wanted to see it in full 3D and because Aonuma wanted to fix the Water Temple. We can only hope, that Aonuma has enough regrets about Majora's Mask (like the saving system, which he already mentioned), which might lead to a remake. Because there certainly won't be a Majora's Mask 3D demo shown somewhere, where fans can directly express their "outpoor of emotion and clamor".

Well, but Operation Moonfall is certainly better than doing nothing and has my full support. And if it really somehow manages to have an impact, I will be impressed and certainly happy.

Majora's Mask 3D in Discussion

There's an interview with Aonuma in the latest Nintendo Power magazine. There he confirms again, that Skyward Sword will be rich of content, but he also discusses the possibility of Majora's Mask 3D:

It's been 13 years since Ocarina of Time was originally released, and one of the big things that we made this remake possible was that there was an outpour of emotions from people who said they would like to see this game done. We said we could do it in 3D, so we did. I think certainly if there was a similar output of emotion and clamor from fans for a remake of Majora's Mask, it wouldn't be an utter impossibility.

Thinking on it now, having a handheld Majora's Mask where you could kind of just set things down on your own time - close it, set it aside and come back to it later - might be a game play element some fans will actually take to and might really appreciate. Especially considering how you really had to rush through the original game, in a sense.

It's important that the game somehow benefits from the remake. Link's Awakening DX was made, because the original version was the only Zelda game without colors. And Aonuma wanted to make Ocarina of Time 3D badly, because he wanted to fix the Water Temple. The game really benefitted from the new interface, switching boots was never so easy. Majora's Mask didn't really have the same problem, because switching masks was already easy enough. However, one big issue with the game is saving. Either you play your current quest to the end or you would need to use the inconvenient save system with the owl stones. With the 3DS you would just turn the system into stand by mode and then pick up your last session easily. That's really something that the game would make more comfortable. Well, and there's always the fact, that this would be a portable version of the game.

Now all we have to do is make noise. Show Nintendo your "output of emotion and clamor" that you want this remake. I already bought Ocarina of Time 3D and I would also want a Majora's Mask 3D. Pretty please.

I'll ignore the part about the Zelda movie. Insulting idea.

Source: Zelda Informer