ILX Plays: The Legend of Zelda for NES

wd read dr casino's paper

re that timeline: i spent an hour on the zelda wiki, about a month ago, reading about the 'timeline', and i came to the conclusion that the people who play videogames don't deserve videogames

yeah, that era of 16 bit gaming basically locks down the way i want games to look, then and forever. see also ten thousand odes to pixel art and stuff but basically i want my video games brightly colored, carefully but not fussily detailed, with big expressive sprites. i think chrono trigger takes this a step further than LTTP in terms of detail, atmosphere, and basically "special effects." but LTTP is magnificent no question. seiken densetsu 3 and FF6 get more detailed and 'tough' looking which fits their epic quest vibes, but imo isn't near as pleasant to look at.

it also had to do with the overlapping space of the dungeons packed underneath the landscape.

want to hear more about that! so if you compare the layout of the dungeons with the space "above" them in the overworld, what does it look like? do any of the dungeons come close to each other in the underground space?

why are the games where he's a kid on the "adult timeline" and vice versa?

i just don't understand this series

It's amusing to me that the lake in Hyrule features not one but two evil island dungeons, basically right next to each other.

evan i got halfway through the first sentence of that article and no, we all do not want to check out that article, what the hell is wrong with you

― thwomp (thomp), Thursday, December 3, 2015 9:37 AM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?? OK. Is it the fact that it involves a discussion around a hard to bear nerd celeb? Maybe don't watch that video then. Otherwise it's a similar conversation. It's relevant.

xx-post: The timeline splits after Ocarina of Time, into the adult timeline, which is what the game shows, and a kid timeline, where kid Link manages to avoid the whole thing, and then goes missing in Termina.

rmde at timelines, plots, plotholes, etc. i cant believe how hung up people get on that crap. they need every single plot point explained, there is no room for their own personal imagination, or interpretation.

it also allows people to say "this thing in the game is unnecessary" because it doesn't connect directly and literally to the main narrative. as if there was anything necessary about a video game. as if the game didn't exist to be merely played but to instead accurately detail the adventures of the player character avatar.

it also had to do with the overlapping space of the dungeons packed underneath the landscape.

want to hear more about that! so if you compare the layout of the dungeons with the space "above" them in the overworld, what does it look like? do any of the dungeons come close to each other in the underground space?

― Karl Malone, Thursday, December 3, 2015 3:34 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3uzz1xlaqU

Argh, so what was wrong with the link? Does it not also discuss the emphasis and importance of story vs. freedom of exploration across the Zelda titles? Touches on the pros and cons of linearity and gameplay dynamics and all that junk. I'm going to assume it's because it hinges on arguments originally made by someone annoying. Right? Sorry, I hate being dismissed.

i haven't watched it (i'm at work) but i'm sure it was fine! if it involves a yelling videogame dude, some people have higher or lower tolerances for that kind of thing.

for my part, i am wondering what the let's play of Links Awakening which shows where to get all the items has to do with the layout of the dungeons in comparison to the overworld. there are many video-related mysteries on this thread this morning!

i made a rule for myself whereby i can only play games i can find physical copies of, even if on an emulator, so instead of playing this i am going to go play landstalker probably

if i send you a copy of langrisser ii can you play it instead?

Yeah, though the yelling videogame dude can be ignored, the article mostly allows you to skip it by summing up the actual points. Don't mean to be sensitive, though!

When you were asking about the overlapping dungeons, which game are you referring to? The first? They don't exactly match up with the above overworld as far as placement goes.

xpost

the first game! i don't know, i just thought maybe dr. c had some cool old documents he could share. i am always a big fan of homemade maps and diagrams and the like.

Well, you may know that the dungeons all interlock together, as this was a space saving technique the developers used. Though from experience rebuilding this whole game in a more immersive way, we were forced to make our dungeons accessible via "warp" to another location, as it was tricky enough to fit all of the caves below the overworld (these are accessible via literal stairs) alone, much less with a whole network of dungeons which didn't line up with their entrances anyway.

xpost well that answers the following! cool!

re: dungeon layouts - they're gibberish. i mean the main, lame point i was making at the time was that they're a bigger-on-the-inside-than-the-outside kinda deal. they cover the whole overworld and then some, and overlap each other crazily (though this could easily be explained by just saying they're at different levels or whatever.) i have it in a PSD file with everything layered up in its appropriate spot - this was used to make some JPEGs which i used to make a powerpoint file showing it layering up one by one. the powerpoint file seems to be lost however.

i wonder if they do "fit together" in the sense that, say, all the dungeons and extradimensional places in Ultima VII: Serpent Isle are actually in the same space as the overworld, if you use the debug tools to jump around, so they all have to fit in the same x-by-y grid of space. so they had to find a place to put the things, the dungeons couldn't just be whatever shape or size:

http://www.zerker.ca/zzone/maps/U7/sSIin.png

i just had a weird vision of dystopian google maps where you can look into people's houses and see the layouts of their basements

I'd post a map of the dungeons but I don't want to be spoiler-y.

I found the PDF showing them layering up - will Dropbox in a sec.

Is architecture in games something that interests you, Dr. C? I feel like there could be a lot to say about it.

Okay - it's up here. The Zelda stuff starts page 28 of the slides, the mapping exercise on p. 45, adding second quest at 55 I think. I haven't let myself reread the text, and don't necessarily recommend you do - suspect it is me at the absolute heights of dizzying architecture-school verbiage, really stoked on the far-out readings we were doing for that (generally awesome) seminar but not necessarily feeling the need to make a lot of sense or support any arguments.

I've never really gone into architecture in games as a "thing" though yeah there should be tons of potential there. I think, and this is maybe the distillation of the paper draft in that link, that games are maybe most relevant as places to inhabit and explore impossible forms of space, or just ones we've never experienced before, in a really comfortable, identifying way where you 100% accept that that's you in there. VR is actually sort of pointless in this respect.

Actually linking architecture in games up to real-life architecture gets a bit silly; buildings in games don't serve the same functions (technical, social, economic, whatever) as buildings in real life, so it's not surprising if they get their Gothic wrong or have no clue how a hydroelectric plant is actually laid out, because it's laid out to make an awesome FPS map, or for maximum spookiness for the villain's lair. In this they're very much like film or TV - was thinking about this while watching Executive Decision the other day - pretty sure planes don't just have massive, open, unused "attics" for John Leguizamo to zip around in, but hey, you need that for the scene. The difference might be that in games, again, it's YOU... so while it's sort of fun to discover that houses in sitcoms make no logical sense and bear no resemblance to any house you've ever been in, it doesn't have the real mind-expanding potential (IMHO) of seamlessly and comfortably inhabiting these baffling non-Euclidean zones, like how Pac-Man's world is clearly a maze seen from above, but we see Pac-Man and the ghosts in profile, and never struggle with that for even one second. That's neat!

Fans, of course, will screw this up, by putting ALL their effort into resolving the many Hyrules and Brittannias. At least Castlevania has the excuse that the castle just will be different each time, due to Dracula's freaky magic, but I wouldn't be surprised if some loon has systematically compared each version of the clock tower, etc.

Yeah, when building the overworld map, the little inconsistencies between the sprites and the intended perspectives start to really stand out.

ha okay so i fell down the rabbit hole of re-reading my own paper from seven years ago. and yikes is it high on archi-school stuff. i do still mostly stand by these bits though:

This indeterminacy is heightened and deepened by the fact that the storyline of the games is repetitious in the extreme – one always plays a hero named Link at the cusp of manhood, who almost always proceeds to acquire the Master Sword, save the princess Zelda, defeat the evil wizard Ganon, and recover the powerful Triforce artifact, not necessarily in that order. So in addition to the geography, the scenario of the games is reiterated, obviously with numerous variations in each game. What this means is that a long-term player of the games is invested not so much in a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, but rather something more like folklore, in which the same tales are rehashed, recombined, and revived to respond to present circumstance. The “Legend” of the title lives up to its full implications of a nomadic text, a multiple or “minor” literature. (...)

While the Second Quest by its name seems to suggest sequence (and hence, primacy and originality for the “first” quest), there are two short-circuits to this logic. One is that the “first” quest is never actually named as such – it’s just that the other one is the second. Perhaps the one we first play through is the third or ninetieth quest! More convincingly: the second quest can be accessed without beating the first quest, if one enters one’s name as “ZELDA” on the opening screen. Given that the game is titled The Legend of Zelda, how many players may have unknowingly found themselves in the second quest the first time through? (...)

Thus, an expert player of the Zelda series constructs a nested set of irreconcilable mental maps, each taken at face value. Across the series, she knows a dozen Hyrules; within the game, she knows two Quests; within each Quests, she knows an overworld and a set of underworlds that do not reflect each other. The ultimate geography of Zelda’s world is anexact, not reducible to a readable or writable map – another lore, produced through exploration by the player.

wow thank you for linking this paper! really looking forward to reading this.

you just read the best parts! seriously, it's real amateurish stuff, clearly a lot of excitement but not a lot of...work. but thank you!

holy shit, that's bazonkers and interesting

haha thanks! one thing i now wish i'd added: the fractal quality of the triforce itself. somehow seems very fitting that you patiently assemble a triangle out of lesser triangles... and it's only one of three big triangles!

if the dungeons have different depths, they are not overlapping in space

perhaps somebody already said this

still a very fun map ty

i did say "this could easily be explained by just saying they're at different levels or whatever" but it was in the midst of a kind of rambley post.

Every time there is one of these side-view rooms I am happy.

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/312916-the-legend-of-zelda-nes-screenshot-finding-the-raft.png

yeah no kidding. even when it's just the stair down/stair back up, it feels really special.

The other thing I'm not sure you're even accounting for in the map is the space allotted for the caves as well? Really, we're just talking about some staircases being really really long.

i did say "this could easily be explained by just saying they're at different levels or whatever"

but yes, it's true, i probably should have stayed up at studio until 2:30 rather than stopping at 1:45, to add the caves. or taken a shorter donut break (possibly wendy's, or pizza) - based on date modified i was totally off the grid between 11:04 PM and 12:42 AM. architecture school is rife with pathetic work habits like that.

Heh, I only mean the caves add even more craziness to the twisted labyrinth of networks below the overworld, not that you weren't being thorough enough.

anyway, miyamoto probably wanted the player to feel the horror and confusion of an impossible space

the "moon's tears" in Majora's Mask are miyamoto basically admitting that he staged the US moon landing

ha, no worries evan! you've put way way more thought and effort into your zelda project than i ever put into mine, my hat's off to you.

for my part, i am wondering what the let's play of Links Awakening which shows where to get all the items has to do with the layout of the dungeons in comparison to the overworld. there are many video-related mysteries on this thread this morning!

― Karl Malone, Thursday, December 3, 2015 4:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in links awakening all of the dungeon/cave room are stored on two big grid 'maps' that the game pulls stuff from to make the dungeons. so a lot of the doors on the big map silently warp you to another bit.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/zeldaspeedruns/app/public/system/images/1041/original/LADX%20Underworld%201%20Map.png?1408116175

the links awakening let's play is using a glitch to move around on these two base maps and break the order of the game, because when you leave other than by a doorway it just looks for the next room across

like there is a 'real' architecture to links awakening which is different to the one the player experiences, i find this endlessly fascinating

lamp are the langrissers any good? i saw the hilariously packaged saturn omnibus the other day:

http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/6/4/1/31641_front.jpg

wwooooah that's crazy w/ link's awakening. must have been a nightmare to keep that straight while designing the game.

Yeah that's awesome thomp!

if you're familiar with the game you should watch that's let's play, it's a fantastic piece of comedy/games crit/performance

lamp are the langrissers any good? i saw the hilariously packaged saturn omnibus the other day:

i've been really, really enjoying 'langrisser ii' but its probably more satisfying than it is good. its genuinely challenging in a way that i find rewarding and i like the half-finished and awkward look of the game. the rom i have is translated from the japanese but the english font fits the text box poorly, accentuating the horse_ebooks quality of the game. also theres just lots of mostly unnecessary stat and class manipulation available that i am enjoying figuring out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyU7Fscd2KU

Has anyone played Oceanhorn? Is it more Zelda 1 or more endless tutorial 3D Zelda?

http://www.gog.com/game/oceanhorn_monster_of_uncharted_seas

the rom i have is translated from the japanese but the english font fits the text box poorly, accentuating the horse_ebooks quality of the game

yeah i loaded it up when you mentioned it before and i was like woah that's kinda crazy. it seems like a lot of work maybe, for something so unrewardingly early-genesis looking. i might play warsong first.

'landstalker' which is just started is also, man, such an ugly early-genesis festival of browns and greens

played this (LoZ) a little last night while projecting suffragette because cinema is dead. had forgotten it is by any definition an open-world game! such exciting scale and variation and yet no sprawl: you pass quickly from biome to biome like link's crawling across a terrarium, and though it suggests the kind of epic heroism the series would later chase it's also cozy, a little wild toy world. one-button swordplay visceral and tense. boomerang useful in top-down zeldas as it never is in the 3D ones, where it's mostly there to solve certain puzzles designed for it; in loz and lttp you can wipe out roomfuls of bats by maneuvering to change the boomerang's return path. not sure i've ever cleared more than four dungeons in this game--as a kid i wandered and wandered. (lttp is almost as open but much less cryptic; zelda 2 is linear in a final fantasy way, with successively opened zones. i found them both easier.)