What if Gaiden is a Flop?
By Belgarath
Yup, you read that title correctly. Chances are you
weren't thinking of this possibility were you? Well
listen for a moment. Many people believe that Zelda
Gaiden is the best possible game that will ever come out
for the Nintendo 64. Now, I am not doubting the
fact, and honestly believe that Zelda Gaiden WILL be one
of the best games for the N64, but I am here to give you
a worst possible scenario. Hey, someone's got to do
it, in the unfortunate situation that it actually could
happen... So now, unleash your mind from all you see in a
good video game and prepare for "The Legend of the
Zelda: The Discontinued Saga..."
The first part of the game
that is always the most noticeable is the graphics.
Well, when you started your new Zelda Gaiden cartridge,
the first thing you realized was the opening
"cinema." A crayon-drawn Link and Epona
are riding through the forest when t! his thing that
looks like a deformed Krusty the Clown jumps in front of
it. By now, you are keeling over in a huddled
drooling ball because the cinema scene resembles South
Park more than The Legend of Zelda. You try and
push start, but are forced to watch the entire
cinema. After that horror is over, you are taken to
the "title screen," which for all intents and
purposes is really a piece of looseleaf paper with
"Gaiden" written on it in childish
hand-writing. Then you start the game. Link is
composed of 3 green pixels moving through a blue
background fighting 2 pixel black monsters (and the
pixels are 1 cm large!).
Then you get to hear the
"music," or more appropriately refered to as 57
cats all scratching there claws across a blackboard at
the same time. Add some off-key background
vocalists and you've got the soundtrack for the
overworld. The underworld theme is a bit
different. Imagine an o! rchestra tuning.
There you go, the dungeon theme! Oh, and you must
add an obnoxious section of violins (playing the
accompaniment), struggling to play louder then everyone
else, while the flutes with the melody were barely
letting out any notes. Those are the only two
tracks in the game, save the ending track, which is
really just these two themes at the same time.
We are forgetting one
important part of playing a video game: controls.
Now, someone at Nintendo got the bright idea of not
implementing any of the A, B, or C buttons. Instead
you jump with the Z-button (that's right you can jump
now), but to move Link around the screen, you must use
the control PAD. To use your sword you have to push
the L and R buttons at the same time. The control
stick is used for controlling flight in different forms
of the masks. The only problem is that the controls
are so precise that you might end up jumping i! nto a
ceiling of spikes when just trying to use your
sword. You see, if you press only the L or R button
and do not synchronize them, it allows for a bug that the
testers didn't pick up. (testers? what
testers?) You see, instead of using your sword,
Link does a double-back flip into what ever monster is
nearby. And for some reason, it has this tendency
to always jump into the most dangerous monster, or leap
over a cliff.
Then there are the
cameras... it is very difficult to attack a boss if
the camera is behind the boss' head! And unlike the
newly released Jet Force Gemini game, the figure does NOT
become transparent when the camera is too close.
Have you ever tried aiming an arrow into the monster's
eye from the monster's point of view? Let me tell
you.. it is not an easy task! And how about trying
to jump over moving platforms if the camera keeps
rotating at lightning fast speeds w! ithout any sign of
slowing down? I spent 36 hours on that one level alone.
Speaking of levels, there
are 2 of them. The light dungeon and the dark
dungeon. The light dungeon consists of 62 miles of
dungeon to explore. It took me well over 5 months
to complete. The dark dungeon was a bit
different. I walked in and there was Ganon... all
16 pixels of him. It took me 5 hours to defeat
him... mainly because the game randomly crashes here and
there everytime you come close to beating him.
When I finally did defeat the prince of darkness however, the Triforce appeared on the screen... and then flew up into the heavens. You can see the pixels of Link chasing that yellow trail of 5 pixels into the heavens. And then when the game is over and you watch the ending (50 minutes of credits) one thing appears at the very end of the game:
"Hope you enjoyed it!"
-Ariana A.
Well, we can all safely say that this probably will NOT happen, but you can be glad that we will not be receiving a game like this from the people over at Nintendo. And you can all be glad about that. Now, maybe people will stop complaining that Gaiden may not be too good because of the supposedly integrated time limit. Hey, that's not nearly as bad as what you just read now is it?
As usual, questions and comments go to goldenpower3@yahoo.com
~Belgarath
