Asian Addicts Anonymous

Hello everyone! Chani here again! I am going to try something a little new and blog about a video game! I have chosen to blog about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 3DS. Yes, this game is most definitely Asian though I obviously played the American release – Zelda games, along with Mario and Donkey Kong, as most people know, are the genius creations of Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo and his staff.

Of course, as almost everyone surely knows, the original Ocarina of Time was released in 1998 for the Nintendo 64 (ah, nostalgia!), and now as of 2011 it has been revamped and re-released for Nintendo’s latest handheld system – the 3DS! Now I am a Zelda fan from way back – I still fondly remember the early 90’s when I played A Link to the Past on Super Nintendo for the first time. As a matter of fact, A Link to the Past is still my all-time favorite video game, for its story, music, gameplay, and nostalgia factor… actually, I think A Link to the Past still has the most dungeons ever featured in a Zelda game – there are 10 main ones, plus Ganon’s Tower, and Hyrule Castle in my opinion could be counted as two, since you visit the first floor/dungeons and then the upper floors at completely different points in the game. So 13 dungeons! Even if you said 12 that’s still more than any other game. And one more bonus one if you unlock it after playing Four Swords in the Game Boy Advance re-release… sadly, I have never done that as I didn’t have anyone to do the Four Sword multiplayer with… though now it’s been released single player for download on the 3DS, but I haven’t gotten that far so I don’t know if they include the Link to the Past bonus dungeon part – I’m guessing they probably don’t. Oh! And I just recently acquired Skyward Sword, the new Zelda game released for the Wii, which I intend to blog about in the near future! So stay tuned for that! Okay, I digress… on to the review of the 3D version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time!

I am assuming that most or at least many readers have played at least the N64 version, or the GameCube or Wii Virtual Console releases, so I won’t summarize the game itself much. The version released for the 3DS is much the same, with a few changes made, the main one being the 3D effects themselves! I must admit, when I first turned on my 3DS I was floored by the “natural” 3D – no glasses required – that served as the gimmick for the system. The 3D effects were especially amazing when you “get” an item (accompanied by the famous Zelda “get” music: Doo doo doo dooooooooo!!!! Well, anyway, many people are familiar with the tune, LOL) and it spins around on the screen. You can literally seem to reach out and touch the items, the 3D is so realistic. You can also get the 3D to pop out at you if you’re in first-person view and are looking, say, “down” to the ground at a flower or bush or some such that is sticking up at you – then it seems to pop out as well. The rest of the 3D seems to go “in” instead of out, but then it’s like you’re looking down a long hallway, that sort of thing. I really enjoyed the 3D, but at first it does take some time for your eyes to get used to it, and then once you’ve played it for a while you don’t notice it as much, though it’s still obviously different from viewing it in 2D. Yes, it’s still sort of a gimmick, but overall, I would say it’s definitely a fun gimmick. ^_^ See below for the new design of the Kokiri Emerald when you get it. It’s something that spins around and you could reach out and “touch” with the 3D:

The above image is also a great segue into the next big change they made to the game, and this one floored me with how amazing it was. Namely, the graphics and backgrounds were completely cleaned up and re-done. The Deku Tree above has so much more detail than the basic, polygon-form from the original N64 release:

Comparing the former image of the tree with the latter you can see that there is more depth, more shadow, more details in the design and pixellation (is that a word?), and you can see individual leaves in the canopy rather than a big green blob. The forest floor, too, has more detail, which you can’t see so well in the above picture but you can see if you look at the two pictures from the Forest Temple area below:

You can see, especially in the upper pic, where there are little flowers and spirally things (closed ferns?) poking up from the ground. In the lower pic you see some detail in the grass, and also the upper area of the Lost Woods, which was before a “sheet” of flat, cardboard-looking “trees”, has now been revamped to show more lush foliage and individually-detailed trees. It’s just lovely. Hard to believe we can have this much detail in a handheld system now, where back in 1998 you only had half as much detail on a console system for the television… just wow. I feel old. LOL.

The character designs, also, have been redone and so much detail has been added. While the original characters were pretty basic-looking polygons, they now look much more human. As I understand it, the game designers wanted to make the characters look more like they did in the official art for the game as you see below:

So we have adult Link in 1998:
And adult Link in 2011 (along with young Link):

And Zelda in 1998:

She’s kind of boxy-looking, huh? I’m not a fan of that high collar. Contrast with her in 2011:

Muuuch better, the collar doesn’t look nearly so strangling. 😀

We also have the updated, 2011 image of Ganondorf:

Basically the characters are all much more rounded and have a lot of extra detail. I think they did a very good job at the revamp, how about you? 😀

I was especially floored, and I mean FLOORED, when I saw the environmental detail that they added to the Fishing Hole. There are just no words to adequately describe it, so look below:

It is lush and beautiful. I’d love to spend time there. Where originally it was just a flat pond with a couple logs and reeds sticking out and some flat lily pads, now there is dense foliage and rocks and boulders. A little trickle of water that had come out of a crack in the wall before is now a gorgeous waterfall – unfortunately I have no picture of the waterfall, but really the whole effort made on redoing the fishing hole was mind-boggling.

Here are a couple more images from the newly revamped game:

As you can see, I was very impressed. Unfortunately, not ALL of the changes to the graphics pleased me. First of all, I didn’t like how they changed adult Malon. Originally, she had shorter hair and looked a bit different from her younger counterpart, like so:

Whereas now she just looks like a taller version of her young self, and her face hasn’t really aged at all, making her look in my opinion more like an overgrown kid. It really didn’t please me. You can see young Malon from the 3DS game below, just imagine the older one looking similar:

Incidentally, what highly amused me was the face young Link (and adult Link too, to a certain extent), made after learning an Ocarina song. You can see the look in the above picture. Quite curious, no? ^_^

Another thing that ticked me off about the new designs was what they did to Gerudo Valley, Gerudo Training grounds, and the Desert Colossus areas. The background music for the areas has not change. All the music has been kept from the original game, and as many know the music for the Gerudo areas is nothing less than phenomenal. Unfortunately, I used to associate that beautiful and exciting tune with a bright, sunny valley and desert and periwinkle-blue skies. Not so anymore *growls in frustration*. Instead, they decided to change it to some kind of “dust bowl” theme, and the sky is grey and dusty and cloudy in all of the areas. WHAT GIVES? I don’t care if it seemed more “desert-like” to the creators (I’m guessing this is their reasoning), it didn’t to me. I’m pretty sure it’s sunny in most deserts and that there are blue skies, unless there’s a sandstorm or something. Not that I live near a desert or anything but… yeah, eliminating the blue sky from my favorite areas just did NOT make me happy, and I’m always going to be annoyed about it. Hmph.

The Spirit Temple, also, is more brown/grey and has less of a glowing, orangey feel to match the music – another phenomenal tune, in my opinion. I preferred its glowing, orangey-ness. It’s like they decided to take my favorite area in the game (the desert) and mess it up everywhere they could. “Hmph”, again!

I have no pictures of the desert from the new 3DS icky version, but here is an N64 image of how it SHOULD look, blue sky and all (Thank you, 1998!):

Okay, enough of my whining. 😀 A couple of other things were added to the game to change it from its original release. First, you have the option of crawling inside “Sheikah Stones” to obtain game hints in the form of videos:

I didn’t really need to use this as I’ve probably played through the game at least 20 times since 1998 so I already know where to go and how to do everything, but this might be handy to the newcomer.

They also added an option where you can go fight each boss as many times as you like in the “Boss Challenge”. You can track your time and try to beat your personal best for each boss :):

I don’t know that I’ll use this feature too much myself, though I have messed around with it a bit. Bosses aren’t really my favorite part of Zelda games. I’m more into scenery, background music, story, and puzzles. Bosses are more of a necessary evil , LOL. But I know a lot of people are very big fans of this feature, so it was a great addition to the game. 😀

One more new thing: After you beat the game normally for the first time, you unlock the option to play “Master Quest” mode, where the dungeons are changed around and quite a bit harder (except for the Water Temple, but that was just weird. Don’t ask). This is basically the same as the Master Quest that was included on a rerelease of the game for GameCube some time ago, with one major change: On the 3DS, the Master Quest game is set in a “mirrored” world. In other words, what was normally on the left is now on the right and vice-versa, as though looking in a mirror. You’d be surprised how different that makes the game both look and feel. For someone like me, who had played through it 20 plus times and was starting to feel stuck in a rut with it (although I still love the game of course), that was a very refreshing change.

All in all I give this new release of a classic game a 9/10 – It was a great experience, so many good things added, and a worthy addition to my gaming library. I’m sure there’s plenty more to say about it, but you should go out and play the game for yourself to find out more! 😀 I highly recommend it!

Thanks for sticking around and reading this review blog. And again, stay tuned, because as I play Skyward Sword over the coming weeks I intend to blog on my experience. My goal is to do a blog post after I complete each main dungeon, as well as a post on the intro and the ending, and maybe more 😀