When it comes to the Legend of Zelda series, one game stands out in particular as something of a black horse: a game that defies the normal conventions of the series and introduces a bunch of new ideas.
That game, of course, is Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
What’s that? You were expecting it to be Link’s Awakening? Nah mate, Zelda II. It’s proper side-scrolling and everything. Give it a go, it’s good.
There once was a time, long before the days of the internet, when groups of friends would gather in playgrounds all over the world and discuss the games they were playing.
I grew up having daily lunchtime chats with my pals about the big game of the moment, sharing secrets and offering advice to each other along the way.
I told one of my pals about the warp zone in the whale area in Super Mario Bros 2. He told me how to solve the Deborah Cliff puzzle in Castlevania II (he got it from a magazine: there’s no way we’d have figured it out otherwise).
That sense of camaraderie is still there to an extent these days: when new games are released, they’ll enjoy the spotlight on Twitter for a week or so while people share screenshots and clips of stuff they’ve done.
Retro games, though, no longer get to enjoy this. Because the emphasis these days is on playing the big new games on day one because of the old FOMO issue, anyone trying to discover an old game for the first time will most likely be doing so on their lonesome.
It’s a shame, because older games are often the ones that most need to be discussed with others. In the days before hand-holding was commonplace and many games became about simply running to the next flashing point on your map, 8-bit and 16-bit games were regularly happy to leave you in the dark and make you figure it out yourself.
I miss the days when friends would come together and share their experiences, their advice and their enthusiasm for the purposes of helping each other out, rather than to try and get likes on Twitter. So I’m trying to get those days back.
Nintendo / Omega Force, Team Ninja Nintendo Switch (older versions also on Wii U, 3DS)
At times the Switch feels like a recently retired sailor, in that it’s currently going from port to port reliving old adventures.
Not only does this let me use terrible analogies like that one, it also gives those who shimmied the Wii U a chance to catch up on all the games they so cruelly shunned.
The latest example is Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition, which promises the ultimate version of a game that launched on the Wii U in 2014 (and the 3DS in 2016).
For those not familiar with it, Hyrule Warriors is a spin-off of Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors series, in which players explore large maps while hacking their way through literally thousands of sword-fodder enemies.
Naturally, whereas the Dynasty Warriors games feature a selection of notable names from Chinese history, Hyrule Warriors replaces those historical characters and locations with ones from the Zelda universe. So long Guan Ping, hello Ganondorf. Continue reading “Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Switch) review”→
I wasn’t fortunate enough to get to play the Breath Of The Wild Wii U demo back when it was doing the rounds after E3 last year.
By all accounts, the demo I played last week was the same as that one, with the only obvious difference being that this time it was running on Switch hardware.
Since the contents of the demo itself are more than half a year old now, I figured I’d spare you the same rundown of what it entails, what I got to see and the like. Every site worth its salt already has a hands-on preview of the Wii U version in its archives somewhere, so me adding my own would be like pissing into Lake Hylia.
What I can do, though, is tell you how it feels playing the game on the Switch, as well as going into other details like playing with the Joy-Con Grip and how easy it is to do the whole ‘switching from TV to handheld’ process. Continue reading “Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Switch hands-on preview”→
It’s fair to say that Nintendo’s offering this E3 didn’t exactly blow the world away.
Sony cleverly stole the show with three “ah but” games – Shenmue III (“ah but it’s crowd-funded”), the Final Fantasy VII remake (“ah but it isn’t exclusive”) and The Last Guardian (“ah but we’ve known about this for years”) – while Microsoft went down the “well, we’ve got loads of stuff actually coming out this year” route.
Nintendo, however, had what felt like one of its trademark ‘stop-gap E3s’, where it presented a bunch of seemingly less impressive games to tide fans over until next year’s big reveals of Zelda Wii U and the new NX console.
That said, some ‘gamers’ went a little overboard in terms of criticising Nintendo’s E3 wares. From some saying it was a disgrace to others outright petitioning to cancel the development of one announced game, I’m struggling to think of a time I’ve felt so ashamed to be associated with other so-called gamers.
I’ve been gaming long enough to remember when people were up in arms about Nintendo turning Metroid into a first-person shooter, or turning Zelda cel-shaded. Fast forward more than a decade and, surprise surprise, Metroid Prime and Zelda: The Wind Waker are heralded by Nintendo fans – many of whom whined at the time – as classics.
To be clear, my point is not that Metroid Prime Federation Force will be considered a classic a decade from now. All I’m saying is you should never judge a game until you actually get the chance to play it. Which is why I headed over to Nintendo’s top-secret post-E3 event in London yesterday to go hands-on with ten of the Wii U and 3DS games shown off in LA a couple of weeks ago.
When it comes to the Legend of Zelda series, one game stands out in particular as something of a black horse: a game that defies the normal conventions of the series and introduces a bunch of new ideas.
Tired Old Hack 