Listen to the Rain

So over the past few years, I played through every mainline Legend of Zelda game, in order of release, in Japanese, and wrote a review of every one after I beat it. Here they are:

1. ゼルダの伝説: the Hyrule Fantasy / The Legend of Zelda


2. ゼルダの伝説：リンクの冒険 / Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link


3. ゼルダの伝説：神々のトライフォース / The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past


4. ゼルダの伝説：夢をみる島 DX / The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX


5. ゼルダの伝説：時のオカリナGC裏 / The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time Master Quest


6. ゼルダの伝説：ムジュラの仮面 / The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask


7. ゼルダの伝説：ふしぎの木の実 -大地の章- / The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons


8. ゼルダの伝説：ふしぎの木の実 -時空の章- / The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages


9. ゼルダの伝説：風のタクト / The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker


10. ゼルダの伝説：４つの剣+ / The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures


11. ゼルダの伝説：ふしぎのぼうし / The Legend of Zelda: the Minish Cap


12. ゼルダの伝説：トワイライトプリンセス / The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess


13. ゼルダの伝説：夢幻の砂時計 / The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass


14. ゼルダの伝説：大地の汽笛 / The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks


15. ゼルダの伝説：スカイウォードソード / The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword


16. ゼルダの伝説：神々のトライフォース 2 / The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds


17. ゼルダの伝説：トライフォース３銃士 / The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes


18. ゼルダの伝説：ブレス オブ ザ ワイルド / The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Remakes:

• ゼルダの伝説：夢を見る島 Switch版 / Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Switch Version

Non-canon entries:

• Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition
• ケイデンス・オブ・ハイラル: クリプト・オブ・ネクロダンサー feat. ゼルダの伝説 / Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda

More later as I get to them.

I wasn't a huge Zelda fan before I started this, but I certainly am now. What a great series.

Friday afternoon, my father showed up and picked up Laila and left to take her back for a grandparents' weekend (about which more later), and sashagee and I were left to our own devices. I had taken the afternoon off and we originally planned to go do something in the afternoon as well, but sashagee didn't want to feel rushed, so I made reservations at a "dark, romantic" restaurant per her request and at 5:15 we left to head to the L and arrived at our destination just in time: Nomonomo Japanese-Pub + Grill in Logan Square.

I haven't been to an izakaya in years, ever since Izakaya Mita closed after the owner tragically died of cancer in his forties, so I'm glad that sashagee picked it! It was dark (though I'm not sure about romantic) and we arrived just in time for happy hour, so I immediately ordered the sake and sashagee ordered a beer, then we looked at the rest of the menu:

( Japanese food ahead )

Not pictured: the kara-age. The happy hour special had its own specific kara-age that we got and it was amazing, just fantastic, and then we wanted more kara-age so we ordered the normal menu kara-age and it...had bones? It was basically just American fried chicken except with kara-age skin. We ate it, but we had to be careful and sashagee had to use her hands because she doesn't have as much practice with chopsticks as I do--I ate it with chopsticks, which makes me want to try eating fried chicken with chopsticks to keep my hands clean.

The only problem was the service, which was abysmal. We were there for almost two hours, and much of it was waiting around for someone to ask if we wanted more drinks. Getting the check and paying itself took almost half an hour! I would go back because the food was delicious but I'd definitely make sure to block off the appropriate amount of time.

After a mile walk down Milwaukee we arrived at the Stan Mansion, just set among other houses on Kedzie, but with (fake) candles set up outside. The last Fever concert I attended had someone come out in person and give a brief speech advertisement for Fever itself, which was weird because we had obviously heard of the company since we were at their event, but at that time they were trying to establish themselves and I think had only been founded in the last year. Now they're years old and had survived the Plague Years, but we still got the pitch, though thankfully only as a pre-recorded advertisement. Once that was over, the musicians came out:


The concert was shorter than I expected, only an hour, and it only covered the console games with none of the handheld titles. They started with the overworld theme from The Legend of Zelda--perfect for a string quartet since the NES had four sound channels--continued with the palace theme from Zelda 2, and moved on through the other games. The song I was most looking forward to was the Gerudo Theme from Ocarina of Time, but I just didn't like the interpretation where the violinist plucked the strings--it was no Spanish guitar. The best song was the opening theme from Wind Waker, perfectly designed for a quartet.

They ended with a short field medley from Breath of the Wild, a game whose music sounds like nonsense when played by a string quartet, and then after they set down after the bows, someone off to our right yells out "Spirit Tracks!" and much to my amusement, that turned out to be the encore song--the Super Smash Brothers arrangement of the overworld theme from Spirit Tracks, which they called "Full Steam Ahead."

They skipped Twilight Princess, which was kind of sad because I was really hoping to hear the Western showdown song ("Hidden Village"), and they hadn't rehearsed together quite as much as they should have because I heard more than a few instances where someone played the wrong note and had to quickly correct to the right one. But like when I went to go see Vivaldi's Four Seasons by another candlelit string quarter, it was a lot of fun.

I wish they had had more comfortable chairs, though. sashagee told me she kept getting distracted by the people who were shuffling in their seats.

So Nintendo of Australia came out with an ad for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and it's...hitting some people a little hard.

Watch on YouTube

A man lives his daily life. Every day is the same--he goes to work, does his work, comes home late. He sees his wife for a few minutes before she has to go to bed to get up early. The next day, it starts again. The article where I originally found it ended with the author saying they hoped that this isn't what most middle-aged men's lives were like and a lot of comments on the order of "my sympathies on your future crushing depression" mixed in with "That dude's house is huge! Can I have his life?" Some internet sleuths learned that the ad was based on a review left on Amazon.jp for Breath of the Wild, and I translated a bit of it elsewhere, but here's the full translation.

( Bright and early for the daily races )

Happy Friday, everyone!

Edit: ahahaha someone did the Mad World version.

People keep complaining that Nintendo has nothing this year, but Nintendo's determined to prove them wrong

Watch on YouTube

I thought that Hyrule Warriors was fun enough, but I wasn't interested in playing it for the hundreds of hours that I'd need to fill out all the unlockables. But a game that's much more closely based on Breath of the Wild, where Koei reportedly worked directly with Nintendo on the story and lore, with BotW's physics engine? That sounds far more interesting. There's bits of it in that trailer, with Link hurling a bomb at a bunch of bokoblins and sending them flying, or playable Zelda (!!) using the Sheikah Stone's Vitalock function to freeze a charging Lynel. And I'm really into playing the Champions fighting against Ganon's armies!

I am a bit curious about the story, though. Obviously if this is a real Breath of the Wild prequel, then it's a tragedy where Ganon wins in the end. The article I linked said:

In addition to all the action, the game is loaded with a robust story that depicts the events, relationships and dramatic moments of the Great Calamity in captivating detail.

...so the Calamity is still happening. I can see a compelling narrative around the rising tide of darkness as Ganon gets closer and closer to awakening--Memory 8: A Premonition shows that monsters were getting more and more common in the time leading up to Ganon's return, so the Champions will still have plenty to do even though they're destined to enter their Divine Beasts and die at Ganon's hands. And a final mission, with Link fighting off like a hundred Guardians leading up to Memory 17: Awakening, would be a fantastic conclusion.

Video games generally don't end tragically and more of them should.

aaron.hosek suggested that we get this and play together, and even if I weren't going to get it because it's another canon (ish?) Zelda game, I'd be in favor of that. I would have had more fun with Hyrule Warriors if I had played it with a group, and multiplayer with a real physics engine sounds amazing.

I'd better beat Chrono Trigger and Deus Ex so I'm ready.

I don't know if I've mentioned Reclaim the Wild, the fan-made Legend of Zelda TTRPG by one of the creators of the old Final Fantasy Returners RPG, but I read it a few months ago and other than Exalted, it's probably the system I most want to run a game of right now. And last night before I went to bed, I thought of a great game premise, starting with the same basic background as Breath of the Wild:

The Calamity is coming, all the signs are there, but it has been so long that anything more than that is legend. Instead of preparing to fight, the people of Hyrule decide to hide. Following the research of the goron sage Kenjoro, the wizards of Hyrule develop the Ritual of Harrow, which can be used to build an impenetrable Sanctuary underground beneath a Sheikah shrine. The gorons are the first to enact the ritual, burrowing into the slopes of Death Mountain to wait out the coming storm, but soon the other tribes do the same thing--the gerudo into caverns with walls of hardened sand, the zuna into hollowed-out spaces beneath desert oases, the zora into vast underwater grottos, the twili into shadowed caves, and even the rito overcame their fear of enclosed spaces and left their aeries. The hylians were the last, but eventually they realized there was no option but flight and sealed themselves away, watching the Malice Harbinger installed in every Sanctuary that would tell them when it was safe to emerge. Entire generations lived and died underground, locked away behind a magical barrier, never seeing the sun, hearing stories of the verdant lands of their ancestors.

And centuries later, the Malice Harbinger in the PCs' Sanctuary has finally indicated that it is safe to go outside, and the elders are planning to open the gates.

Yes, it's Legend of Zelda and Fallout. Or rather, it's Legend of Zelda and the TTRPG Earthdawn, which came out four years before Fallout and already did the fantasy post-apocalypse that looks like a magical nuclear war first. Much like both of those games, there'd be Sanctuaries that opened early, Sanctuaries that were breached by Ganon's minions (a naturalistic explanation for dungeons!), emergency Sanctuaries with members from multiple tribes--the PCs would come from one of these, to expand the range of character options--and a whole world of ruins and monsters and treasure, ripe for the PCs to rebuild society.

Reclaim the Wild is very focused on crafting and scavenging, with extensive rules for what kind of ingredients monsters drop and how to make food and potions from materials, and there's an entire supplement called "Rebuild the Wild" with rules for building and creating settlements, so the system is already perfectly calibrated toward the kind of hardscrabble treasure-finding that's common in post-apocalyptic gaming. If I make Malice more like 50s sci fi radiation, and have it mutate plants and animals and people from breached Sanctuaries into malevolent monsters, there's a bunch of extra angles I can take with that. Is there a cure? Is a corrupted hylian or gerudo still a "person" in a meaningful sense? How much can the land be saved? And is the Calamity still out there?

This lets me play to the system's strengths and get entirely away from the hero chosen by the Goddess, so I'm all for it. It's like the original Legend of Zelda, with the land a howling waste overrun with monsters and treasure. Perfect for adventuring.

"Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel Reveal Trailer! (E3 Nintendo Direct)" (Watch on YouTube)

This is basically exactly what I was hoping for, that they'd use the Breath of the Wild engine and assets to make a new game, the same way they built Majora's Mask on top of Ocarina of Time.

Something buried under Hyrule Castle? Ganondorf's corpse? Demise? It's really just a teaser, but I'm so glad they're taking the route I hoped they would.

My Road of Zelda continues.

(This post is somewhat subdued, but I was half-tempted to just make the subject AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, if that's a hint at how excited I am)

Just some things I'm thinking about that never come up in the games.

( What if Zelda was a girl? )

That's all for now. Probably more in the future!

I found this fanart on Twitter and it really got me thinking.


So, Hyrule in a modern setting.

Link is a provincial from a farming town, come to Hyrule City to make his fortune at the urging of one of his childhood friends. After being the victim of a crime and having the police take a statement and then do nothing, he becomes a private detective, determined to work outside the system and right as many wrongs as he can. He teams up with

"Princess" Zelda is the daughter of the chancellor of Hyrule, who defied her father and went into law enforcement rather than politics or philanthropy. She worked her way up through the ranks to sergeant, but she's getting tired of the bureaucracy and yearns to return to solving crimes herself. Hyrule City needs someone to clean it up who cares, who won't be corrupted by all the dirty money flowing through the streets.

Link and Zelda meet at a (milk) bar and strike up a friendship over drinks. When Link finds a trail that runs all the way to the very top, he tells his friend "Princess" about it, and she immediately sees a chance to make a difference. With Link working outside the system and Zelda working inside it, they follow the trail until it implicates

"Demon King" Ganondorf, the President of the Black Desert Group, Hyrule's largest corporation. He gives generously to charity and supports dozens of initiatives designed to improve the lives of the citizens, but there are persistent rumors about him. That he's a terrible man to cross, that those who too-vocally oppose him suffer mysterious accidents or personal misfortune. Ganondorf smiles when asked and says that the Goddesses must favor him, and then changes the subject to his latest corporate philanthropic venture.

Link and Zelda know he's dirty, but they have to find some way to prove it. The game would be gathering evidence, dealing with Black Desert Group thugs sent to stop them, and meeting the quirky characters of Hyrule City. Of course at some point, they learn that the legends about the "Master Sword" are real, and that they need it to stop the Demon King from getting his hands on the legendary Triforce. End with Link, gun in his right hand and Master Sword in his left, side by side with Zelda, fighting their way up the Black Desert Group skyscraper headquarters in downtown Hyrule City on their way to the president's room on the top floor.

Here's the themesong.

...you know, maybe I should write a fanfic of this.

Newbies can't Triforce.

Someone linked to an article on Kotaku about this game, saying that it was a take on the original Hyrule Fantasy, but with puzzles involving warping of space and perspective. I loved Antichamber when I played it, the way that the puzzles all involved changing how you thought and trying actions that would be nonsensical in a normal game. Walking backward through a door led to a different room than walking forwards through it did, A window might look on two separate rooms, neither of which is the one on the other side of it. I grew disenchanted with Antichamber when it turned into more colored goop puzzles than unorthodox thinking, and I was hoping that Triforce would recapture the feeling of the first half-hour of Antichamber.

It was fun, but being another Antichamber isn't what it was trying to do.


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I'm trying to tell myself that winter hasn't really begun if I haven't had to button my coat yet, even though it was -6°C when I left the apartment this morning and I had to wash my hair last night so it wouldn't freeze. The weather report says we'll have snow tomorrow. I guess I should be thankful we actually had a Chicago fall instead of going straight from summer to winter like last year.

My favorite zone in old World of Warcraft was Azshara and more than half of it was because it was eternally late fall there. 🍁🍂

You'd think after years of listening to podcasts and playing all the Legend of Zelda games in order I would have combined the two, and before last week you would have been wrong. But after a seeing a tweet from Zelda Universe about their own podcast, I did some searching for Zelda podcasts and subscribed to three: ZU's podcast; Another Zelda Podcast, which has themed episodes like one about forest temples and one about Breath of the Wild's ending; and Tandem Legends, which is two people playing through the whole series except they're doing it in timeline order instead of game release order. I've only listened to a couple episodes of AZP, but I'm halfway through the Skyward Sword part of Tandem Legends and I really enjoy it. Both of them have played the games before, but not all of them and not the same games, so they have differing perspectives and don't just gush about how amazing everything is.

There's also a section in each podcast about the music, which is amazing.

My nightmares seem to have gone away, other than a dream a few days ago about vampires that woke me up an hour before my alarm. That might have been caused by nuVampire's problems, though, since I have vampires on the brain.

questionoftheday asks: Is your hair its natural color? Or do you regularly dye it? Is it a naturally occurring color, or a wild one? What's your hair story?

My answer: My hair is naturally already a wild color--it's "copper blonde," according to the marketing copy on drugstore hair dye products. It's also almost waist-long, so I figure it's eye-catching enough. I've dyed my hair only once--black, to cosplay Kaji from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I used temporary dye so it washed out over a few days. I checked a few months ago and sadly there are no pictures.

Alright, back to work.

I almost bought a 3DS because of this game.

I stopped paying attention to gaming news for a long time--basically from late 2005 to 2011-- because 99.9% of my gaming time was taken up with playing World of Warcraft. I don't think I even knew Skyward Sword existed untl I played it at melishus_b's house, for example. But A Link Between Worlds came out in 2013, after I had tuned back into the general gaming consciousness, and everything about it looked great. A game made in the same style as A Link to the Past, set in the same world as A Link to the Past? My favorite Zelda game? And then all the reviews game out and praised it as the greatest Zelda game in years, free of the handholding that had slowly tightened its grip over the series as the years went on. Nonlinearity, with the ability to tackle dungeons and explore in whatever order you want due to the item system? Another system of two worlds like A Link to the Past's Light and Dark World, with intricate connections that need to be navigated to beat the game? All of that sounded like a dream.

Oh, and also Link turns into a painting? Well...I guess it's no stranger than Twilight Princess...

I did not end up buying a 3DS because I had no money, but I never stopped wanting to play A Link Between Worlds. And now I can tell you that it lives up to all that hype I felt five years ago.

The Japanese title makes the connection between it and A Link to the Past even more explicit. A Link to the Past is 神々のトライフォース, "Triforce of the Gods," and A Link Between Worlds is 神々のトライフォース ２.



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Other than Ocarina of Time, this was the Zelda game I was most worried about playing. But whereas in Ocarina's case it's because it was so universally loved, in Skyward Sword it's because of the opposite.

Skyward Sword is a console Legend of Zelda game, so when it came out it got plenty of perfect or near-perfect reviews (AV Club, IGN, Eurogamer, Game Informer). I even listened to an old Nintendo Voice Chat podcast episode a couple months ago where they gushed about how great the game would be. But since then, opinions turned on it a bit. People talk about the motion controls, of course, but they also complain about the fetch quests, the backtracking, and the hand-holding, which have gradually been escalating through the Zelda series and find their ultimate expression here. So when I loaded it up, I wasn't sure whether to expect a complete mess or a maligned masterpiece.

What I got was a game that tries very hard but sadly falls short of its lofty ambitions.

The Japanese title is just a transliteration of the English "Skyward Sword."


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​Phantom Hourglass is the most recent Legend of Zelda game I've played until now, other than about five minutes' worth of Skyward Sword while visiting melishus_b in December of 2011. In preparation for moving to Japan, schoolpsychnerd and I bought a DS--we had a PSP before then, but weren't that happy with it--and several games. schoolpsychnerd picked Puzzle Quest and The World Ends with You, and I picked Final Fantasy IV DS and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I played it almost entirely on the train, as we went to and from Hiroshima City and on the shinkansen throughout Japan, and I thought it was cute and fun. It wasn't until years later that I looked it up on the internet and discovered I was supposed to hate it.

Playing it again I still don't hate it, but the shine has worn off.

The Japanese title reads Mugen no Sunadokei, "Visionary Hourglass" or "Hourglass of Dreams."


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