 The Legend of THE ROSSMANMany moons
ago, when I was but a wee lad caught in the clutches of grade
school, I came across a video game that changed my life forever!
It taught me to think in brave new ways, to use items that
I found around me to beat certain death-trap puzzles that
life
may
throw at me, and that if I blow up somebody's front
door
they will
take the money for repairs from me whether I like it
or not. Yes, I speak of The Legend of Zelda.
I vividly
remember receiving both the original Legend
of Zelda and Zelda II -
The Adventure of Link for Christmas in '88.
It took me a week to beat the first quest of the original
Zelda, and another to put the smack down
on the second quest.
Zelda II took a bit longer. About 3 weeks
(that last temple was a bitch and a half! Just getting there
always wasted
1 of my lives). But I digress. I was first introduced to
the world of Zelda (the ever captive princess), Link (the
oddly
dressed
elf with a burning hatred towards pigmen and for some reason
chickens), and Ganon (the prince of darkness, in manimal
form) through a school chum of mine, David Schaemel (I have
no idea if I spelled that right... it's been years since
I saw him last). One day he showed up at school giddier than
usual, and he was usually known for squealing like a 6 year
old
girl when the mood hit him right. Anyway, Steve Littleton
and I approached him and asked him, "Yo, Dave, why you
be all namby pamby this morn, foo'?" To which he answered, "Zelda,
Zelda, ZELDA! Which... way... to... go?!?! Octorocks! Leevers!!!" I
reported him to the teacher after that, but Dave forgave
me and allowed me to come over to his house after school
that day to see what the hell he was babbling about.
Well, the
hell he was rambling on about was the original Nintendo Entertainment
System's The Legend of Zelda game, in all
it's 8-bit glory. It simply blew my fucking mind. At the
time, there had never been anything even close to it's sweetness.
Sure, I had already fallen in love with Samus Aran and her
KY jelly
mortal foe, the Metroid by the time that Zelda hit
our shores, but this was such a totally new experience. Nobody
even saw
it coming (Don't forget that this was years before the flood
of crappy video game magazines and the whole world wide web
of whorish spoilers came along, and
we only
became aware of shit like video games and movies once they
were released). It hit the U.S. square in the jaw like a
sack of bricks. But the pain was a good one.
The story
line for the series goes a little something like this (spoilers
for pussies who haven't beaten all the games yet)... And
keep in mind that this is all from memory because I'm too
damn lazy to look this shitake up on any of the countless Zelda sites
in existence out there:
Once
upon a time, the peaceful Kingdom of Hyrule
found itself under attack by the Prince of Darkness, Ganon,
who had
wanted the sacred treasure of Hyrule all for himself. That
 "sacred
treasure" would be the Triforce (a magical triumverate
of triangles that,
when brought together, could make the user's dreams come
true... Whether they be nice or naughty dreams). Ganon
was only able to grab one of the Triforceseses though,
before Princess Zelda broke apart the second one (the third
stayed hidden until Zelda II) and hid it in 8 dungeons
across the land, each one filled with more ferocious beasts
and hideous puzzles than the previous. Then Link, the boy
in green with the pointy ears, came a wandering into town,
heard
of Zelda's plight, found out she was a babe and decided
to help kick Ganon's portly pig ass back to the Dark World
from whence he came. And he did.
Then
came ZII.
Link decided to stick around and help rebuild Hyrule after
Ganon had been killed the fuck dead. Apparently
Zelda wasn't putting out any, even after all he did for
her and her people, and he still needed some massive brownie
points to get into
her
royal panties. Soon it was discovered that Link had a
destiny, and a picture of the Triforce on his hand! Impa,
Zelda's
nursemaid,  informed
the elfy hero that only he and he alone could rescue yet
another Princess
Zelda who'd been cursed by her arrogant, stupid brother
and an evil magician a long time ago for refusing to give
up
the
triangular
power to him. She was put into a deep sleep and basically
forgotten for a few millennia, despite the fact that all
princesses of Hyrule since her were named in her honor...
Go fig. Anyway, Link went out into the wilds of Hyrule
yet again in order to find the final Triforce, the Triforce
of Wisdom (the Forces
of Power and Courage were already safe thanks to Link in
the first game). After rafting the sea and getting through
some pretty damn frustrating
palace/dungeons (that the royal Hyrulians themselves built)
and planting some magic crystals in some giant statues,
Link made his way to the final, Golden Palace, where he
had
to fight
a fabulous
thunderbird
and
at last his own shadow... Which turned out to be a real
wuss. Then some old guy who'd evidentally been waiting
there for a few thousand years gave our boy the gold-plated
polygon and he rushed home to awaken the enchanted Zelda
and FINALLY get some princessy poontang... They never do
settle which Zelda is to rule the kingdom now
that there are two. There was probably a bloody coup d'etat
by Link and the old Z which more than likely crushed the
tight
pussy regime of the younger princess. Good. Fuck that tightwad,
and let it be a lesson to all of you! If some strange dude
appears from out of nowhere and saves not only you but
your entire
empire by his lonesome, and all he asks for in return is
a little mokori (i.e. nookie), for the love of Gods, just
give him a piece!
ZIII
jumped back a few hundred years before
the first two stories took place. It seems that some lame
wizard dude, Agahnim, was taking over control of Hyrule
by brainwashing
the King
and kidnapping lots of helpless maidens (note, this is
not the same evil wizard who took control  of
the Prince and Kingdom in that story that was told by Impa
in ZII...
I don't think, but maybe they were cousins or lovers or
something. They both seem to have the whole "raise
your arms in a terror pose" thing down). Link (supposedly
an ancestor to the Link in ZI and ZII)
was
awakened one
night
by the
dream
plight
of that era's Princess Zelda, who was trapped in Hyrule
Castle's dungeon. Link then proceeded to rescue the saucy
Princess because his inept warrior-class Uncle couldn't
even
make
it past
the
mice in the Castle's sewers. But soon Zelda was stolen
away when Link's moronic back was turned and she was sent
with the other six maidens (descendants of the original
7 wise
men
who originally fought the original Dark Lord Ganon) to
the Dark World, which was previously known as the Golden
Land, where the Triforce was created... or something. The
point is this, soon Link had to jump between the two worlds
(his original Light World and the newly opened Dark World)
in order to save the 7 maidens and stop Ganon once and
for all... Despite the fact that several hundred years
later pig boy ends up coming back anyway.
After
Link restored order to the Golden Land and
the Light World, he decided to take a little trip. He inexplicably
hopped
on a shitty little boat and sure enough got shipwrecked
on a disturbing little island named Koholint. There he
met a clone of Zelda, a talking wise ass owl, and a giant
egg that housed the "Wind Fish" that turned out
to be a flying whale. In case you were wondering, yes,
this was
all a mushroom and coke induced dream... except for the
singing, flying whale, which really sang and flew.... Yeeeeeeeeeeah. ZIV was
fun to play and all, but it was trippy.
Onward
to ZV, The Ocarina of Time. We
jump backwards in time yet again to just a few hundred
years after the creation
of Hyrule by 3 nymphomaniac goddesses (well,
we're not told for certain that they were nymphos, it's
just a kinky
feeling I got). These deitic babes were a little unstable
though, and they left the tres Triforces just lying around
as a symbol of their power.  Soon
an evil man from the desert (duh duh DUUUUUUUUH, Ganondorf,
before he became unhuman
and swiney) arrived in Hyrule, and it was up to the first
Link to work with the first Princess Zelda (that we know
about) to stop him. Unfortunately Link and Zelda were but
children at the beginning of the game, and also unfortunately
Link had the most annoying sidekick EVER, the fairy Navi,
bugging the living hell out of him by shouting "HEY!" every
3 seconds just to get him to pay attention to her pouty,
glowing, and pert ass. But back to the story. Link gathered
3 sacred gems from the
Goron rock people, the Zora water people, and the Deku
Tree in order to do something or another, and then he ran
into Ganondorf as the desert dude chased after Zelda and
a new and improved warrior Impa (who again appeared to
be an early re-incarnated character, if that is indeed
possible).
Link then tried to fulfil his destiny by activating the
Master Sword (which has made an appearance in most of the
games in the series), but fucked up and fell into
some kind of suspended animation which was just a McGuffin
Device in order to fit an adult Link into the story. Adult
Link, who somehow had a new change of clothes, and his
pony Epona, then had to gather the 7 sacred sages
together in order to do something to stop the desert pig
man from screwing up his town even more than he already
had.
It
turned out that the 7 wise men from ZIII were
the first Zelda, a hot fish girl, a rock man, a chick from
Ganondorf's
desert tribe, Impa, some Time Master guy, and Link's
elfy girlfriend from back before he slept for 7 years in
cold sleep!... Despite the fact that all of the maiden
descendants from ZIII were 100% human
and not fish or rock in the least. Anyway, Ganon was stopped
and locked
away in the Golden Land in what was to be known as the
Imprisoning War, and Link went back in time to when he
was a kid and none of the entire game could have happened
because of Doc Brown's theory of time travel.
But whatever.
ZVI
was Majora's Mask. And it was lame. It
seems that after Link saved the world in Ocarina of Time
he went on a journey
of enlightenment, just like his descendent in ZIV.
And just like his descendent bad shit happened to him when
he
tried to find his inner self, or some other worthless crap
like that. Some guy called the Skull Kid stole Link's Ocarina
of Time and Epona and brought our hapless hero to the doomed
world of Termina, who's moon would fall to the planet in
3 days time... God how I loathe timers in games! That was
always why I liked all the previous Zeldas!
You could wander around and explore as much as you wanted
to without a clock
ticking away in your face! UGH!.... Anyway, with the help
of a bunch of magical masks and some new friends who eerily
echoed
Hyrulian
peoples we'd already met,
Link
was
able
to win the day and save the something or another. Blah
blah blah.
 ZVII
and VIII then happen at around the same time and
Link (I'm guessing the Link from Ocarina and Majora though
it's
never discussed, like when your aunt touches you where
your bathing suit covers.... you don't talk about it, but
you like it) gets caught up in setting right both the
time
stream
and
the
seasons
themselves. The two witches who were killed in the desert
temple in Ocarina are back, as is the big bad pig himself,
Ganon. But you have to get through both games to get to
him. Not much to really tell here, VII and VIII were both
pretty straight forward.
Then
another few hundred years passed,
placing us in between ZVIII and ZIII,
and once again Hyrule fell into dark times (think Kevin
Costner's
WaterWorld). Ganon had figured out how
to leave the Golden Land a few lifetimes before the original
storyline told us he did, and an evil wind began to blow
through the land. Hyrule was flooded by the retarded goddesses
who created the world in the first place, and the  current
Zelda was in hiding... Again. This time she was a
pirate though, and not a faggy looking harp-playing dude
like in Ocarina. ZIX, the Wind
Waker, bucked a lot of the
traditional
storylines, but unfortunately it felt that it had to bring
back Ganon,
the Triforce, and lots of boss enemies who fought in the
exact same manners as previous enemies did. By this time
even the reincarnated Link was beginning to grow tired
of tradition.
But he
fought on with the help of his talking ship, a magical
baton that controlled the wind, and his lovable Grandma.
The kicker of Wind Waker was that it wasn't
originally Zelda
who needed rescuing, but Link's little sister, Aryll...
who just so happened to look almost exactly like Zelda.
I swear, Freud would have a field day with Link's infatuation
with Zelda's many forms! He traveled through temporal folds
and parallel worlds to see her and rescue her time and
time
again. And
I'm sure he employed some sort of primitive cloning experimentations
on his own mother so that his sister would be born an exact
duplicate of his eternally doomed desired one. What a perv.
After all was said and done and Ganon was predictably defeated
by Link once more and again with feeling, the world was
still flooded and all of the previous timelines seem to
be royally
fucked up with no apologies. But hey, it's a bleedin' video
game made by the same country that thinks that porno with
tentacle rape is good for the whole family. Honestly, what'd
you expect.
Whew! Now
to get down brass/gold tacks. Zelda I set
the bar high. Higher than high, actually. It was so innovative
for its time (and even still today)! The ability to gain
and use a vast amount
of weapons and tools in order to progress through each level
was never seen or done with such panache before (fuck Mega
Man!). The use of heart containers, warping flutes,
battery back up, gigantic overworld AND underworld maps,
puzzles
that stretched your mind but didn't injure it, a second more
challenging quest after the first defeat of Ganon, and the
use of dungeon bosses were never seen before in such a brilliant
light! My old friend David was right, The Legend
of Zelda was the most perfect game
that the NES would ever produce.
Plus it had the coolest theme music ever. In fact, I've had that musak on a loop
in my brain for close to 15 years now, and I've yet to grow
tired of it.
The first
Zelda was such a hyper huge hit that its
sequel was rushed into
production...
This turned out to be the series' biggest fucking fubar
mistake. The Adventure of Link was a fun
game, don't get me wrong,
but it forgot what made the original Zelda so
Nicole Kidman-fucking incredible. The huge list of weapons
and items was basically
forgotten for the sake of magics that the now adult Link
could learn. There were villages throughout Hyrule now, in
an attempt to RPG-up the game, but that was most assuredly not what Zelda was
all about. The worst and baddest mistake made
with
the sequel was the removal of the overhead perspective. Now
Link was in 2D Mario World. ZII was
a side scroller. And a nation of children cried out in pain.
Not only that, but
puzzles were all but done away with, Link could literally
turn himself into a fairy, and the game challenge level rose
through
the
roof! Nintendo had taken a great storyline and game and then
given us its mongoloid little brother as an afterthought
just to rake in a few more dollars.
ZIII:
A Link to the Past was released over 4 years after ZII.
But it was sooooooo worth the wait. The look of the original
Zelda was back,
and she was beautifully spruced up in a 16-bit world on the
Super Nintendo. Not only was the game gorgeous to look at
but most importantly it was fun to play! I remember spending
many
a sleepless and dateless high school night playing through
the Light and Dark Worlds of ZIII. And once
again, I never regretted a second of it! All of the secret
items to be found,
the trillion or so heart containers spread throughout the
land, the complex yet easy to understand puzzles and all
of the love and attention to detail that came pouring out
of my TV screen every time I turned it on totally took my
breath away. I mean, you could cut the grass with your sword
to find things in it! That was ingenious! Not to mention
the fact that it had a monkey in the storyline. Everybody
knows that monkeys make anything better than they would be
if they were simian-free.
Link's
Awakening was the first Zelda game for the Game Boy. People were expecting
something on par with the first Zelda in regards to gameplay
and graphics, so we were all completely surprised that it
in fact was almost a cookie cut copy of the SNES ZIII, just
with new dungeons, cool weapons and tough puzzles.
Then we
had the Ocarina of Time. It took an eternity
to get out, but it was oompa loompaly worth it! Sure, with
the jump from
overhead perspective to a full blown 3D realized world
a lot of the enemy encounters were left out, but the puzzles
were
amped up to eleven! The entire world that Link ran around
in while wearing his dainty tights was enormous, and there
were two versions of it, just like in ZIII.
There was a past and
present
(or
present and future, whichever). The horse, Epona, was a nice
edition to the game too, as it made crossing the main Hyrule
field a bit easier and faster later on in the game. One of
the most rugged nuevo featuros of ZV was
the passage of time. And
by that
I'm not
talking about Link jumping from past to present and vice
versa, but the passing of day to night and back again. Quite
a few brain teasers were based on what time of day it was
and some enemies only came out at night. The only problem
with this game was that it basically dismissed most of the
plot laid out in the first few games in the Zelda series...
but I'll just wait till I get about the Wind Waker to
get into that discussion.
Holy shit,
this is really dragging on, so let me just say that Majora's
Mask was a complete copy of Ocarina (nothing new
at all), and the Oracle of Seasons and Ages games
were both cut and
pasted
from Link's  Awakening (just
made by Capcom and overseen by Nintendo, curiously enough). NOW,
on to the Wind Waker....
Where to
start?... Well, ZIX was a fun game. I enjoyed
playing it very much. I lost at
least 7 full nights of sleep on this puppy. The cell shaded,
cartoon-like graphics were a very nice touch, and the choice
to make this Zelda game a bit more lighthearted
than Ocarina was
appreciated. Now for the problems. You travel across an
ocean to wherever you want to go. A goddamn ocean. It
literally takes 3-4 minutes of complete sailing to go from
island to island. That's 3-4 minutes of doing absolutely
squat but
watching a little green elf in a boat. What the fucking
hell was Nintendo thinking?! Sure, things become a trifle
bit easier when
you learn to warp from place to place, but if you want
to get more bombs, medicine or hearts early on in the game
you
have to travel for (literally, in game time) days on end.
That just plain sucks!
Buuuut,
that is my only real gripe about Wind Waker (well,
other than the plot, which completely rapes everything we've
been told about the entire Zelda legend through the previous
8 games. "New Hyrule?"... gimme a fucking blowjob!).
You get a better targeting system than in Ocarina,
more attacks to unleash with your sword, a lot more puzzling
puzzles to work your
way through, and a sense of humor about the whole situation
that has been missing since ZIII. All in
all a great capper to an incredible series.... and the longest
review I've ever
even thought of typing.
What
did I think of The Legends of Zeldas? So far I've played
and conquered all nine official and REAL Zelda games
over the course of my pathetic lifetime (some with two quests
even), and all of
them rocked my world in a way that I thought only Terra Patrick
could. Never before (or more than likely since) had/would
mankind witness(ed) such console-gaming perfection. I have many
incredigorgeous
memories tied into this series that it will always stay with
me until I contract old peoples' disease and forget my children's
names as I lay in a pile of my own waste in some retirement home
just praying for a loveless God to take me. I give the
LegendS of Zelda a 26 out of 26.87 Points of Courage, Wisdom
and Power. It would have gotten more if it weren't for Link's
LAME Adventure.
And
in case you were wondering, my rankings of the Zelda games
are in the following order: ZI is the best, followed by
ZIII,
ZV, ZIX, ZVII + ZVIII, ZIV, ZVI and lastly, ZII.
(FYI,
the Phillips CD-i games, The Faces of Evil, The Wand of
Gameleon, and Zelda's Adventure NEVER HAPPENED. No matter
what anybody might try and tell or show you. They were
never real.
Also
FYI, yeah, the continuity of the Zelda games is really fucked
up. I am quite sure that I did not tell it correctly, so
don't even try to correct me, you lifeless piece of shit
you.) |
