Hello Zelda Dungeoners! This week’s Ocarina Time is for… Well, it is going to be late. But I have an explanation! Jump on in to see why.

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Sometimes fantastic action-adventure series don’t make it over to Nintendo consoles, leaving many Zelda fans–those most likely to devour such a game–completely unaware of their existence. This is unfortunate, but likely intentional: worried that Zelda will overshadow their games, sometimes developers will focus their releases elsewhere.

One such fantastic action-adventure series, Ys, has seen very few Nintendo releases. But with its battle system, puzzles, and cutely serious tone, I think many Zelda fans would be overjoyed with what these games bring to the table.

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The 3D Printer craze just got a lot more interesting. For those of you who haven’t heard about them, 3D printers are machines that are capable of taking a digital model and creating it in real life by adding layer upon layer of material in different shapes that correspond to the dimensions of the model. While people debate the possibility of making weapons with them, the Hyrule Foundry has created templates for 3D Printers to re-create the obtainable items from The Legend of Zelda for NES. Hit the jump to see what these items look like, and to learn where you can get them!
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There’s something to be said for variety.

Some would argue that the Zelda series has little variety. After all, with the exception of the second game, which could be called a failed experiment, the series has been following the same basic formula since its 8-bit inception. Each game represents a mix of action, adventure, and puzzle elements focused on item acquisition and exploration. The games have gotten increasingly linear and player-friendly, but otherwise, even someone without much knowledge of the series could boil its gameplay down to a set of predictable principles.

It strikes me as odd that I’ve seen this criticism leveled against the series, though, since I can think of few other successful series that don’t also follow a predictable formula with a predictable set of gameplay principles. First person shooters, for example, are a genre that has always followed trends, and while the modern FPS is very different from, say, Doom, the old and new eras have at least that much in common. If Dark Forces, for instance, was a Doom clone with its labyrinthine levels and solo protagonist, modern shooters, with their focus on, well, shooting, are clones of each other. You could say similar things about platformers in the 16-bit era, or RPGs in general, or even PC adventure games. Read more…

YES!!! It’s time to take a look at Nabooru! I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while now, partly because her presentation as a character is the same as those of past Sages, but done differently, which I really liked, but also because of her promise, which I’m really looking forward to hearing your theories, because there are infinite possibilities, some realistic, others being completely off the wall. With that said, I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t just get straight into this, so come on, let us find out what makes Nabooru such a unique character.

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In preparation for the upcoming re-release of Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, we’ve been working on our Oracle of Seasons Walkthrough. I’m happy to announce that this project has just about reached its completion and almost the entire walkthrough is now online. The only part not included at this point is the Linked Game section that happens in a second quest of Oracle of Seasons.

With Oracle of Seasons now completed, we are quickly working to bring up to date our Oracle of Ages Walkthrough as well. We’ve steadily been working on it behind the scenes and we will have the first several chapters available in just a few short days. We hope to have the entire walkthrough for Ages available when the game re-releases on the virtual console later this month. Stay tuned!

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Every now and again there comes one great person with a great talent that stuns people all around the world in one simple upload. Today is no exception. Today I present to you exactly what the title of this post says, the Zelda theme on an accordion app for the iPad. Music is such an integral part of the Zelda series that it’s almost refreshing to see the songs we love come back to the light in a different form. The video is after the jump and if you only want to see the Zelda theme skip ahead to 0:29. Read more…

Gameplay is without a doubt the most important feature of a Zelda game. Nearly every release has emphasized it over every other aspect — with the exception of Twilight Princess, which was designed to be a more cinematic experience — and rightfully so. Gameplay is the main feature of video games in general. The interactivity video games provide is something that no other visual medium can hope to recreate, making it an important factor in any video game, even if story is a major part of the identity of some games (such as the Metal Gear Solid franchise). There’s no way around it; if the gameplay of a Zelda game suffers, then the most fulfilling part of the experience is shot. This means developers must attempt to provide gamers with polished and fleshed-out mechanics when developing a new title. But what exactly does it take to achieve a goal like that? What must a Zelda game have in order to make its core gameplay a success? In this article, I’ll be presenting my thoughts on that very topic. I’ll be going over specific features that I feel Zelda needs the most for its core gameplay to be at its finest and will provide examples from various Zelda titles to help get my points across. I’ll start with what I feel is the most important thing for the Zelda series to get right.

Combat

First and foremost, the combat needs to have solid design. Stimulating combat is an absolute must-have for any game with lots of action in it, and Zelda obviously meets that criteria. There are two features that I believe need to be present for Zelda’s combat to be at its best, and they are as follows:

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An interview was recently conducted with Shawn Jackson of Precursor, the studio working on the new title, Shadow of The Eternals, the spiritual successor to the GameCube Cult classic Eternal Darkness. He was questioned about the upcoming game and what kind of characters would be in the game, the episodic format of the game and so on. Near the end of the interview he was asked if given the opportunity to work on any Nintendo franchise which one it would be, to which he responded “The Legend of Zelda!”

To see the full interview and more hit the jump!

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We’ve known for a while now that the two Oracle games (Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons) which were originally released on the Game Boy Color handheld, will be released on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in North America at some point “this Summer”. Well, in this morning’s Nintendo Direct, we learned not only the specific date, but also specific pricing for the two games as well as a special sale price for three weeks.

Jump inside for the details as well as two new trailers for the upcoming games.

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And so we reach the end of our journey, the last week of the Flute Boy’s Meadow Overworld series. This week, we come to the last category I detailed two months ago in the inaugural post for this series: Menu Overworlds. I had originally said these were “hardly worth the title ‘overworld’” and claimed I may not even give a post in attention to them, but in the end something changed my mind.

As I detailed before, there are only two games in the Zelda series that have a Menu overworld: Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures. They receive that title because they do not have a large, interconnected overworld for Link to travel from place to place in. Instead, they have a menu screen. Still, at least one of these games still offers a good selection of overworld music, so jump on in to see what makes them worth it!

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Released in March of last year and originally recorded as the background music to the Zelda art show in Portland, Oregon, composers Jake Fleming and Corey Warning created an 8-bit remix album in tribute of a variety of Zelda songs. Available on Band Camp, the duo known as Piasa, have deliberately allowed buyers the option of setting your own price. Though it is recommended and otherwise much appreciated to contribute a few bucks, the group also welcomes downloading the album for free, meaning you could very well set the price to $0.00

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Hey there guys! I’ve got your mailbag for this week. This time around the questions are pretty well-balanced again… not really sure why I got so many Zelda 3DS questions last week when I didn’t the week before that or this week! Anyway, there are 11 questions in all, covering Zelda 3DS, Zelda Wii U, as well as numerous other games, with a few extra for Ocarina of Time. Enjoy! You can watch the video here or check out the embed after the jump.

Questions and timestamps:

(00:28) – What was your favorite race in Ocarina of Time and why?
(01:14) – Do you have a defining moment in the Zelda series?
(02:27) – If Zelda Wii U was going to have voice-acting, would you try out for any of the characters?
(02:45) – Is it a possibility that Zelda 3DS is just a quick way to get money?
(03:50) – A Link to the Past is on the “hero dies” timeline, so might we see a new sort of Hero’s Shade?
(05:22) – What did you think about the addition of fairies? Do you think they’ll be in future games?
(06:02) – Would you like a game where it showed what Sheik did in the seven years Link slept?
(06:55) – Have you ever noticed that only two out of seven Sages are male?
(07:04) – Can you only 100% Oracle of Ages and Seasons by beating both twice?
(07:45) – Do you think that Fierce Deity Link deserves a backstory on how he was created?
(09:15) – Do you think the upside-down Triforce on Demise’s sword was supposed to be like an upside-down cross?

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Many outlets on the internet are devoted to gamer fashion and accessories. From Tumblr blogs, such as gamerfashion101, to online stores like the ever-present, artisan Etsy and to some extent Hot Topic and Amazon. Because of this wave of brilliant gamer and nerd clothing, there’s always something to draw attention to. The newest of these gamer fads comes from Etsy artist and designer DisturbinglyAdorable. From her diverse gallery of elegant and geeky bags, purses, jewelry, shirts, and even underwear, we have picked out this increasingly popular purse inspired by the fourth Zelda title, Link’s Awakening.

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Hi fellow Zelda Dungeon fanatics and welcome, once again, to another Timeshift Thursday feature! This week I’m looking forward to sharing and discussing a climatic battle scene with you from Link’s latest adventure, Skyward Sword, in which I’ve found the combat before the corresponding final battle to be a richer, more difficult experience. Because Skyward Sword doesn’t include the most amount of highlights for a Zelda game, in my opinion, I haven’t leaned toward writing a feature revolving around the title. Yet, because we are discussing famous Zelda battles now, I do want to write about, possibly, my favourite part of Skyward Sword.

Today, we’ll take a look at the extensive Horde Battle brought about by one of Link’s main antagonists in Skyward Sword, Ghirahim. This section of end-game battle sequence truly tests Link’s reasons as to to why he is blessed with the Triforce of Courage. It is an outstanding test of courage and we shall see that further along the article!

If you want to read more about Link’s excruciating battle with Ghirahim’s minions then click the jump below and take the full descent toward the Sealed Grounds!

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