A Very Special Episode

 

The best part about playing through each of these Zelda games is the opportunity to be completely surprised.  That could be finding out a game is better than you remember, or in the next case, having no idea what you were about to discover.  

BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets was released for the Super Famicom add-on the Satellaview in 1997.  I talked much more about the Satellaview it in this post.  The game is a sequel to the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  6 years after that game, you play as a child sucked into Hyrule.  A new dark force is present but Link is off in another area.  You must work with Zelda and Agihna, Sahasrahla’s brother to find and decode 8 stone tablets.  

 

Zelda spends the final week working with you.

The game plays out over four one hour episodes.  You had to tune in on a specific night back in 1997 to play them.  You got one shot each week and your progress carries over.  The map is almost identical to Link to the Past and gradually reveals itself each week. 

 

Barely made it in week 3.

Because of the time limit, the game is always frenzied.  You need to beat two dungeons and collect heart pieces each week  If you are on target, you can have time at the end for some optional activities, including finding a mole to reveal hundreds of rupees or playing some optional mini-games.  None of these reveal until 45 minutes past the hour.  However, if you fall behind, like I did in week 3, the game is a stressful, mad dash.  I got the 6th tablet with less than two minutes to spare.  The final week, you can even fail the game if you don't beat the last boss (guess who) in time.

If I had played this game when I started the quest in 2015, it would not have been nearly as cool of an experience.  While the game was initially taking place live, there was an audio drama in the background.   You hear Zelda and Agihna mixed with other characters working to solve the mystery of the tablets.  At times, they consult a fortune teller who summons power ups for you (these can be anything from unlimited bombs to all of a sudden having 20 full health containers).  Once a week someone also comes on begging for you to help rescue them from something.  There was exclusive Zelda music that played during the hour too.  Amazingly, someone recovered VHS recordings of the initial broadcast.  In the past few years, a dedicated team of translators was able to use those to translate and record the audio play and put it back together with the game.  Through an emulator, you can try it yourself.  The process is a bit complicated but worth it.  You can find instructions here.

 

Playing the game as it was originally intended is an experience unlike any other I've had gaming.  I wish Nintendo would find a way to bring this back or do something similar through the Nintendo Switch Online service.  The thought of big, event gaming across the world would be so fun. 

My final score.

The game also gives you a score at the end of each week based on damage received and rupees collected.  By the end of the game I had nearly 10,000!  In the end, the game blew me away as a complete experience.  While parts feel like a re-tread of Link to the Past, the live elements made it so much more.  I played one hour a day and found myself anxiously awaiting the next episode.  I highly recommend you find a way to play this and try it for yourself. 

 Here's my updated list: 

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. BS Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets
4. The Legend of Zelda
5. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
6. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
7. BS Legend of Zelda
8. Link: The Faces of Evil
9. Zelda (Game & Watch)
10. Zelda's Adventure

Zelda's Adventure

There's a point towards the end of the Zelda's Adventure where I was swinging Zelda's wand and killing creatures without actually hitting them that my son turned to me and said, "Dad, why is this game like this?  It doesn't make any sense."  A few minutes later, he watched as I walked right past the boss of the final dungeon without fighting him and claimed the last stone triangle.  This game is broken in so, so many ways.  It was cancelled in the United States and should probably have never seen the light of day anywhere.  But it did and I finished it.

There was a moment just before the second dungeon where I got a disc read error and lost an hour of progress.  I quit for the day and almost quit on my goal to beat all the Zeldas.  The game is that tedious to play.  This game is set up like a traditional top down Legend of Zelda game.  You would think that would make it better, but it doesn't.  All the characters are digitized actors.  From the top down though, they look hideous and barely resemble people.  Every time you move screens, there is a 1-2 second load.  It is tedious, but you can get used to it.

 

That's supposed to be a woman talking to Zelda.

So it looks and plays more like a traditional Zelda game, then you might wonder, "Why is it so bad?"  The answer is, it is broken and unfinished.  I've read this game was completed in 1992, but then went through two years of testing and revisions after during which most of the staff was cut.  To get the game to launch, portions were just stripped out.  I believe that.  Characters will refer to locations in the game by three different names.  You will get items that are never used.  You will be told items work in ways they don't.  

The combat is also bad.  Some characters can only be killed with specific items.  The problem is you have 40 items or so and each takes rubies (they call them that in this game) to use.  You would go broke just guessing which to use (seriously, if you are going to play this game: use this guide).  Some of the enemies are broken and are just stuck in the environment.  The bosses have no A.I. and just follow scripted patterns around the floor.  That means on some levels you can stand in a certain spot and not get hit.  Another fun treat is that about half the dungeons just have slippery floors for no reason (it's not ice, just slick) and you can slide into enemies or pits that send you to the beginning of the dungeon.

 

The bartender is wearing a baseball cap while old western music plays.

The cartoon animations in Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon get made fun of, but at least the quality of the voice acting is decent.  They hired professional actors.  For this game, they just got whoever they could find for voices and mo-cap.  I read that Zelda is played by the company receptionist.  The acting is terrible and many characters speak in bizarre riddles.  The costumes are inconsistent and terrible.  You walk into the "Moblin Inn" and meet a bartender wearing a vest and a baseball cap. 

 

The Shrine of Strength is actually a fun idea.

There were a few moments I enjoyed.  The sixth dungeon was the Shrine of Strength.  It's set up like a midieval tournament.  Zelda starts at some vendors, then tries games to earn rubies before challenging the jousting and broadsword champions.  It was a fun idea and the theming remains consistent up until the boss, who is a giant bear for some reason.

 

Zelda fighting Diablo (I mean Ganon).

I mentioned the bosses.  There are three occasions where you can choose to just walk past a mid-boss or dungeon boss.  The final lair for Ganon has a boss rush of all the dungeon bosses.  But, true to this game, they forgot to include one of them.  Also, Ganon in this game is Diablo.  Not sure why.  It doesn't make sense and nothing in this game does.  This is going all the way down at the bottom of the list where it belongs.

 Here's my updated list: 

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
5. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
6. BS Legend of Zelda
7. Link: The Faces of Evil
8. Zelda (Game & Watch)
9. Zelda's Adventure

The Other One

Link: The Faces of Evil is similar to its counterpart, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, in many ways.  They share some of the same enemy assets, the art style is similar and there are some shared power-ups.  But where the Zelda game is focused a bit more on puzzle solving, Link's game is much more focused on combat.  The problem is the combat is not these games' strongest point.

 

This pig balloon man is supposed to be the "Face of Evil"

This is pitched more as a "dark" Legend of Zelda game.  Some strange guy on a flying carpet spouts some nonsense and takes Link to Koridai to fight the faces of evil.  The map suggests these bosses will be menacing, but that's not the case.  They are laughably stupid.  There's a strange clown-pig that deflates like a balloon.  There's also an old man inside a suit of armor.  The only creepy one is Glutko, a monster that is eating people alive.  I think there would be a place for a creepy Legend of Zleda game, but this misses the mark.

 

Okay, this guy is actually disturbing

The combat in this game is incredibly cheap.  You can shoot a beam out of your sword as long as you have full health.  That's great because the enemy and Link hit boxes are way too big.  Unfortunately, it seems like most levels start with something programmed to hit you in the first second and negate that beam.  Like the other game, this one starts difficult and gets progressively easier.  

Like Wand of Gamelon, the soundtrack is great. There's one part where this game is better: Link doesn't have to do nearly as much jumping.

 

The game literally ends with a close up of Link saying, "I won!"

In the end, this game is slightly worse than Wand of Gamelon, with much more obnoxious bosses and characters and a bit less of the charm from the Zelda game.  It was still fun at times and not nearly as bad as it's reputation. If you had to play one, I'd choose the Zelda game.

 Here's my updated list: 

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
5. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
6. BS Legend of Zelda
7. Link: The Faces of Evil
8. Zelda (Game & Watch)

 

I'm So Hungry I Could Eat An Octorok

Next up is the infamous CDi games.  Having now finished the first two, I feel a lot of the opinions of these two games is based solely on a small handful of YouTube videos that people have viewed and repurposed as gospel.  For starters, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Link: The Faces of Evil are nowhere near the worst games of all time.  There are actually a lot of parts that are pretty fun.  Given the difficulty emulating these hard-to-find games, I believe most haven't given them a fair try (which is something I'm working on here).

First up for me was Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon.  To save resources, it was developed simultaneously with Link: The Faces of Evil and they were released at the same time.  They often get lumped together as the same but are actually quite different.  The Zelda game is a bit more cerebral, focusing on collecting items from people around the world to outsmart bosses.  If you have the right item, most of them go down in a single hit.  Link's game is more combat focused (which I'll describe more in the next post).

Most of this game's notoriety comes from these infamous cutscenes:

Indeed, the animation is a special kind of terrible.  It was farmed out to a Russian-based animation group as the soviet union was falling.  I have two huge complaints.  First, most of the people look hideous.  Every person in every village looks disgusting.  Some of the scenes would also be okay, except the animations had to have every body part of every character moving at all times.  Link can't just talk to the king, his eyes have to be spinning around in his head while his arms twerk around and the camera zooms in and out.  It's so strange.  Half the scenes would be fine if they just stood and talked to each other.

 

Why couldn't they just make Zelda act normal in this scene?

There's a couple elements where I give the cut scenes a pass.  First, the video quality is amazing for the time.  Compared to video compression on contemporaries like the Turbografx CD and Sega CD, the video is crisp and pretty smooth.  I also don't think the developers can be blamed for some of the characterizations and dialogue.  You have to remember this was being developed at the same time as Link to the Past.  That means the most recent work the developers could look at was Zelda II on NES and the Zelda animated cartoon.  Indeed, the characters all talk and act like the cartoon characters (like Link desperately begging for a kiss at all times).  In that regard, the game seems to be succeeding at much of what it set out for.

 

What most of the game actually looks like

 

I mentioned Zelda II, that is the game that plays the closest to Wand of Gamelon.  This game is a side-scroller.  The levels would not be bad if not for the limitations of the console.  For starters, the CDi only has two button inputs.  This game needed many more.  Because of that, up on the control pad is jump.  Thankfully, I've been playing a lot of MSX games in the past year with a similar control style so that wasn't too bad for me but I know is tough for others who have played the game.  Button 1 is your sword and everything else is on button 2.  This leads to confusion when trying to go through doors (button 2), use items (button 2) and open the menu (button 2 while crouching).

The levels look pretty and are hand painted.  But there is no telling at times what is the background and what you can interact with.  Some levels (like the terrible Washubi Swamp level) require precision jumps but you can't tell where a ledge begins and ends.  Sometimes you can also wander around without understanding what is and isn't an entrance to another area.  Exploring the second half of the village of Sakado requires you to enter a certain home, stand on a specific window ledge and press button 2.  Seriously, don't attempt this game without a guide.

Thankfully, the levels, while tough, are short enough you can beat with practice.  The game starts very difficult and gets much easier when you upgrade your sword to shoot projectiles and gain a cloak to make yourself temporarily invincible.  It all comes together in a challenging and fun final battle through Reesong Palace.  I felt accomplished when I beat Ganon and am happy I played this game. 

 

 

I should also mention the music.  While it doesn't sound like much of the series, it is frequently fantastic.  I've had many of the songs stuck in my head since completing the game. 

 

Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon was fun at times, challenging and sometimes humorous.  Yeah the animation was bad and some parts felt cheap, but honestly no more cheap and vague than parts of Zelda II.  This would be the CDi game I would recommend if you can only try one.  Someone even put out a version for the computer recently that fixes many of the problems (and will run on your PC).  Either way, I think these games are worth a try for fans of the Zelda series. 

Here's my updated list: 

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
5. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
6. BS Legend of Zelda
7. Zelda (Game & Watch)

Game & Watch

Zelda Game & Watch

 

Next up, we're jumping back to 1989 and Zelda Game & Watch.  The original Game & Watch systems were some of the earliest handhelds; using LCD technology to play simple games.  Eventually, they got more complicated.  The Zelda system uses two screens (the idea was later reused for the Nintendo DS).  Unfortunately, these systems have become collectors items and prohibitively expensive for what they are (we're talking hundreds of dollars for the Zelda one).  But, I recently learned the Zelda game is also included on the Game Boy Advance cart Game & Watch Gallery 4, which is cheap online and also on the WiiU Virtual Console.

About $250 cheaper than the original.

Getting to the game isn't easy.  Game & Watch Gallery 4 requires unlocking stars as currency.  Getting them requires insane scores on difficult, cheap and tedious games.  It's one of the most brutal unlocks I can think of in a Nintendo game.  Of course, Zelda is the final game unlocked.  Thankfully, I was able to download a full save online after frustratingly trying to unlock games and realizing I would never have enough for Zelda.

The Zelda playfied.  The dimensions are changed a bit for the GBA.

The actual Zelda Game & Watch game is surprisingly deep and complex for an LCD game.  On the bottom screen, you have to defeat an enemy on the right hand side.  There are other enemies trying to stab you from below and one shooting projectiles from behind that you are required to block (this guy felt cheap at times).  You then have to work your way through the dungeon.  Along the way you can unlock a map, water of life (will refill your health once in the dungeon) and a tomahawk.  The tomahawk allows you to do triple damage on the boss.  You probably won't beat the boss without the tomahawk and therein lies the biggest problem with this game.  There are branching paths in the dungeons and you can't backtrack if you miss something.  This means you need luck or multiple playthroughs to make sure you don't miss the tomahawk and make the boss supremely difficult.

Fighting the boss

The boss fights are cool.  Each one is against a dragon.  It takes place on the upper screen so you have a completely different playfield for the fight.  As long as you have the tomahawk, they aren't too bad.  When you finish, you get a piece of the triforce.  Collect all 8, and you move to another screen in the upper left where you rescue Zelda.

Grabbing a triforce piece

The GBA is able to mostly reproduce the experience, from what I've learned researching the game.  For an LCD game, it's pretty amazing and gives you an experience that feels a bit like Zelda II.  I'd put it at the top of a list of LCD games, but it doesn't quite stack up to the rest of the Zelda experiences so far.  I'd love if we got a re-release of this LCD for Zelda's 35th anniversary year so more people could experience it.

My list now stands as:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
5. BS Legend of Zelda
6. Zelda (Game & Watch)

A New Hero Awakens

This Epic Zelda Quest became bogged down with the weight of life over the past five years.  Now, with the 35th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, I've decided to pick up the master sword and continue the quest.  

 

I can hear this image

I'm now determined to include ALL the games.  I'll only rank each game once (so not 3 different ports of Ocarina of Time) and play whatever I deem to be the best version of the game.  

First, let's catch up on the past few years.  Like the rest of the world, I played and enjoyed Breath of the Wild.  I'll save my verdict on it for later in the quest.  

 

Link's Awakening continues to get better with age

I also played through the Switch version of Link's Awakening.  It reminded me of just how great the original game is, enough that I bumped it up ahead of the NES version of Legend of Zelda.  That means as we resume the quest, my current ranking stands as:


1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
5. BS Legend of Zelda

BS Legend of Zelda

As part of this Zelda Quest, I really wanted to try one of the Satellaview Zelda games.  If you’re not familiar, the Satellaview was an add-on for the Super Famicom in Japan. 

The Satellaview

It was a service run by the satellite company St.GIGA.  The games, some exclusive and some standard games, were broadcast like a TV program for download (the B in BS stands for broadcast).  There were two Zelda games available for the service, BS Legend of Zelda being one of them.  This game is often called a 16-bit remake of the original Zelda game but I don’t think this is accurate.  It’s much more like a spin-off. 

Because of the downloadable nature of the games, many on the Satellaview have been lost to time.. Thankfully, people are working to change that.  I played an English translation on a repro cart.  During the actual broadcasts, there was spoken dialogue helping guide the players.  That hasn’t been fully reproduced (but people are getting close). 

The same (but different)

The game takes place over 4, one hour broadcasts.  One was played each week.  As such, there are some changes from the original Zelda game.  The map is more condensed.  In addition, the difficulty is lowered to make sure you can get through in enough time.  Despite that, you always feel kind of rushed; almost as if conducting a speed run.  Pressing select brings up a list of all of your goals for the week, you can only get two triforce pieces each week.

Your goal for the week

In addition, there are timed events that take place.  At a certain time, you will get unlimited bombs for a few minutes.  Near the end, there is a limited 10 minute window which is your only chance to get the most powerful sword and ring.  I believe the original vocal tracks would alert you to some of this.

On Zelda time

SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE GAME FOLLOW

At the end of the game, you enter the cave where the old man gives you the sword in the first Zelda game.  Gannon comes in and breaks up the fun leading to the final boss fight.  It’s a neat subversion for longtime Zelda fans.

I’m very happy I played this and it’s a very unique take on Zelda.

Here’s my latest ranking…                                                                              

1.      The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past

2.      The Legend of Zelda

3.      The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

4.      Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

5.      BS Legend of Zelda