Seeing as my fellow admins wrote their own Thanksgiving-themed posts (a long time ago…) on games they were thankful for, I thought I better get my tail into gear and write one of my own. I intended on publishing this quite some time ago, but Listmas came up, and I wasn’t able to get to it until now. Well, I better not put it off any longer.
Ahem. And so, in celebration of (a super late) Thanksgiving, I shall make a list of a few of the games that have a particularly special meaning to me. Continue reading So Many Games to be Thankful For→
You may or may not be aware of the existence of an elusive fish in “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”, the Hylian loach (which is actually referenced when you catch a loach in the first “Animal Crossing”). I am not certain how I came about knowledge of this particular fish, nor do I know what, if anything, you get from catching it. As far as I can tell, nothing. Nothing but the satisfaction of telling people, “Hey, guess what, I caught it.” Nevertheless, as with all secrets, once I learned about this thing, I knew I had to try my hand at catching it.
Unfortunately, I am actually better at catching fish in real life than I am in video games. Quite ironic, really, as quite the opposite is true in most situations. For example, I am far more adept at sword fighting and welding magic in video games than I am in real life. (What’s that, you aren’t able to wield magic in real life at all?) Continue reading Overlooked: The Hylian Loach→
You may remember a post I wrote about a rather monotonous game called “Quest 64”. It is truly one of the most boring games in existence (even worse than “Chain of Memories”), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its secrets. Like all secrets, this one took me a while to find out about. Nevertheless, there had always been a location of the game that just seemed strange to me. Because every time I played this game, I always wondered why the desert was so darn big. If you wander about Dindom Dries, you will reach a part of the desert that consists of nothing but an endless expanse of dunes, while the map fades away to nothing. Of course, I knew the desert couldn’t really go on forever, but there were times I’d try to see where I’d end up if I just started walking, and I never got anywhere. It would always just get to a point where, no matter how long you walked forward, you would never get any farther from what lay behind. Continue reading Overlooked: Shamwood→
Sometimes, the past makes me sad. I look back at years that have gone by, and I notice that there were once so many great games back then, of series that are no longer around or have since gone bad. Like cheese. Old cheese. One such series that greatly saddens me is “Banjo-Kazooie”, which held a place of utmost glory during the Nintendo 64 era and has since become…old cheese. Fuzzy, old cheese.
Many of us probably have a game that we keep, even if we, well, kind of really don’t enjoy playing it in the slightest. Or not. I don’t know. But, I do, and that game is “Quest 64”, a game that certainly has its fans, while the rest of the world’s population either steers clear of it (for good reason) or has never even heard of it to begin with. You might be asking, then, why in the world do I keep this game if I don’t like playing it? Well, I kind of like playing it. Sometimes. A little. But, not that much… I guess the main reason I keep this game is because it’s different.
But, first, a little summary of what the game is… Okay, I think the story had to do with the main character, Brian (I always spell that name as Brain…), looking for his father. I think. But, I could be wrong. There are barely any characters to speak of in this game (aside from townsfolk), and it also appears to lack a villain, the final boss being a creature that I don’t see how it relates to anything in the game whatsoever. The graphics are rather depressing, and characters and creatures look kind of like the chunky people of “Final Fantasy VII”. (Though, speaking of that vastly superior game, “Quest 64” has a battle theme that sounds suspiciously similar to that of “FFVII”…. Hmm, do I smell a little bit of thievery perhaps?) And worst of all, the game is just a pain to play. For one thing, items are limited, since you can find them, but not buy them, so once you eat all your loaves of bread, you’re doomed, as apparently people don’t like to bake anymore than necessary in this game. And the random battles involve your character standing within this bizarre octagon shape, and you must use your turns inching closer and closer to your enemies until you finally get close enough to actually whack them. Yeah, it’s weird.
I can distinctly remember the first time I played Super Mario 64.
It was the last time buying a video game console was a family event. My father had purchased a Nintendo 64 the day it released and brought home one of the two launch titles for the system. This was the third time over 11 years that we had all gathered around the television to watch our favorite plumber run and jump across the screen. After hooking up the console to the TV in our den, my father passed the torch of first play to his sons; handing the controller to my brother. I slid the power button on, and sat by my brother as the Nintendo 64 launched in our household.
Today, the Duck (blogger of The Duck of Indeed, of course) has the pleasure of sharing with all of you a post on the game that ranked #5 in our top 10 list, “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask”. I was so happy to see that this game made the top 10 to begin with, as from what I understand, it’s a rather underrated game. While many people dislike how different this game is from other “Zelda” games, including the whole time concept, it is these very differences that make this game my absolute favorite of the series and one of my favorite games of all time. But, first, a quick summary.
In this game, Link ends up in a strange land called Termina, where the moon is about to fall in just three days, thanks to the evil Majora’s Mask that has possessed a Skull Kid. To be honest, while I adore the game, I do admit that the plot is a bit odd, and the way Link even ends up in Termina to begin with doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (which has caused some people to theorize that all of “MM” is a dream, while others go so far as to say that Link is, in fact, dead). In many ways, this game is very different from your typical “Zelda” game, as it actually has nothing to do with Zelda, and there isn’t really even a villain to speak of but a spooky, apparently sentient mask. And as you’d expect, masks make up a big part of the game, many of which can do pretty useful things, including several that can turn Link into a Deku, Goron, or Zora, while others are actually not so helpful. At all. And unfortunately, the dungeons the series is known for are…well, there’s not many of them. There’s actually only four, and while they are four good dungeons, there’s still, you know, just four. The rest of the gameplay is made up of various sidequests, but that’s not really as boring as you’d expect…. It really isn’t.
