Zelda Dungeon Alliance - Zelda Blog Zelda Blog 02 May 2008 In 2005, the Zelda Community saw a brand new, unique site come to life, the Zelda Blog. Zelda Blog was a site that didn’t provide basic game content, Zelda news, media, a forum, or any of the ‘standard’ features at a Zelda site. Instead, what the blog offered was, a blog… about Zelda. Various webmasters collaborated together at a single website where it was strictly devoted to articles that were in blog fashion about the Legend of Zelda. So what is a blog exactly? It has been one of the more recent fads in the world of the internet over the last several years. By definition, a blog is simply a set of articles made available by a writer with users able to comment on them. It is a place where various webmasters just use their keyboard and talk about whatever is on their mind. Topics at the Zelda Blog range anywhere from discussion of a specific character, the future of the franchise, miscellaneous humor, timeline issues, and basically anything you can ever think of. Fast forward to May 1st, 2008 and the Zelda Blog has re-launched. Darth Citrus, the webmaster of one of the original Zelda Blog contributing sites, Exploding Deku Nut, is the brain child behind the project, and has worked together with numerous webmasters to get the site back up and rolling. You’ll see many familiar faces from the original Zelda Blog including site founder, The Missing Link, who is the webmaster of the now closed, Grand Adventures. There are also a ton of new contributing webmasters on board this time around including myself. If you head on over to the new Zelda Blog, you’ll also notice the same old classic Link to the Past based layout. The layout is still as lovely as ever, with the same animated chickens making appearances in the site banner. Darth Citrus has made a grand opening article available, Chance and Xizor of LoZ.com have each contributed an article, The King of Hyrule of Zelda Capital has posted his own article, and even I posted my first article. The articles are all pretty good with topics about Link Talking, Voice Acting, one mans take on where the series has been going lately, and Ocarina of Time for the DS. All four articles are interesting reads and a good way to start off the Zelda Blog. I myself wrote the Ocarina of Time DS article, which was a continuation of an update I made over at LoZ.com about a week ago. Rest assured there are plenty of other webmasters who will be submitting articles at the Blog, so checking back on a daily basis would be strongly recommended. As part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance, I’ll frequently be doing a recap of recent articles and perhaps even featuring specific articles that are really well crafted. I look forward to them being apart of the Alliance and I also look forward to contributing to the unique site myself. So Zelda Blog, welcome back and welcome aboard. Zelda Blog Comment on our Forums!

Community Round Up Part 2 Community News 29 Apr 2008 Before getting into community news, I'd like to give a quick mention of things going on over at the Dark World (The Zelda Dungeon Community Forums). We recently have made the upgrade to vBulletin version 3.6.10, which includes a ton of miscellaneous security fixes. However, a new version, 3.7.0, has just recently been released and we will be making the upgrade sometime in the next week or so. From the beta versions that I've seen available at a variety of Zelda sites out there it really does look like quite an upgrade. We also got a huge surprise contest that we are working on behind the scenes which will go into affect once we launch the new layout in a few weeks. I'll keep you informed on all the progress over at the forum. After going through my random surf through the Zelda community I came across a few things that were pretty interesting. Our friends over at Zelda Legends have announced that a brand new Zelda Manga featuring Phantom Hourglass is being created. In the last few weeks we heard news that a lot of the Zelda Manga that was available in Japan is being brought over to America, fully translated for our American eyes. For those of you who haven't had a chance to look at any of the Zelda manga, it really is some good stuff and I'm working to get some of these pages available for you all to read here at the Dungeon. It's been an ongoing project over at Rauru's Return to create a complete revamp of their sites game content. A few years back there was some unforunate events that led to a lot of their material going offline. Archaic Sage, their webmaster, has been working to get this material back online and just the other day they have re-launched their sections for the original Legend of Zelda. There really is some good material there, including their boss guide, enemy guide, and items guide. Sure some of it is in a similar fashion as some of the same guides that we have here, but his work has sparked a few new ideas in my head and hopefully those will be implemented sooner rather than later. For now, head on over and check out their awesomeness. For those of you who keep up to date with other Zelda sites in the community, you might have heard that the torch was passed over at The Hylia last October, with the new webmaster going by the allias of DSCUBED. After having a nice chit chat with him the other day, I discovered that he not only runs The Hylia, but also runs his own Nintendo Podcast where he discusses all the most recent happenings in the Nintendo world. The podcasts run roughly between 45-75minutes and they are quite informative and entertaining. The more recent ones discuss Super Smash Bros Brawl, an Economic look at Wii Shortages, Mario Kart for the Wii, and even a tidbit on the next Zelda title for the Wii. All in all, if you have some time to kill or just like listing to podcasts while surfing the net, why not support ours friends and head on over to his website, LITHcast. Zelda Legends Rauru's Return The Hylia LITHcast Comment on our Forums!

Zelda Dungeon Alliance - Zelda Wiki Zelda Wiki 23 Apr 2008 Before getting into the next Alliance site, I'd like to give a mention of a few minor changes that have been going on at the site. With the change in direction of Zelda Dungeon, our staff openings page has also changed. The page was a bit outdated but it has since been updated. While we are not in dire need of any new staff members at the moment, we are currently accepting applications for any writers who are interested in helping out Zelda Dungeon with game guides. Specifically, we are in need of help for the Wind Waker and a few of the handheld titles. The main reason we are in need of some assistance is simply time. Currently Caleb is fine tuning our next layout in addition to working on the Ocarina of Time walkthrough, while I'm currently working on various projects, one being a Twilight Princess Walkthrough. Both of these projects will likely last much of the next several months, but there are still other games out there that need attention and need it now. Thus, if you are interested in helping us out, check out the staff openings page for more details. Be sure that we won't just put you to work on long tedious projects, but rather we will work together to accomplish our goals and better the overall content at Zelda Dungeon. Now to our newest member of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance, the Zelda Wiki. Some of you might recall a post I made here at the site some several months ago when I voiced my displeasure with the Zelda Wiki over a few of the behind the scenes politics. This led to ZD's departure from the Zelda Wiki and also led to a few other sites working together to possibly release a new Zelda based Encyclopedia. Word of this project had gotten out to the Zelda Wiki members and changes were made to accommodate many of the complaints we had. While I do not know the status of the other project I briefly mentioned, I feel that it fully served its purpose as it has led to a big improvement at the Zelda Wiki in terms of policy and identity. I strongly encourage any Zelda site, big, small, new, or old to look into joining the Zelda Wiki to help furthering the project. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Zelda Wiki, perhaps a more detailed description is need. It is a collaborated project amongst several Zelda sites to create the definitive Zelda Encyclopedia on the web. It originally was a subsidiary Wiki of Zelda Universe, but soon branched off a few years back and now serves as the Wiki for 7 Legend of Zelda fan sites. It is filled with over 2500 different articles with these covering the enemies, locations, items, characters, games, and basically anything you can think of in the Zelda series. While it is the largest encyclopedia on the net, it is still in need of a lot of work. One of the benefits of the Zelda Wiki is that it is run on the MediaWiki software, much like Wikipedia. What this means is that anybody who takes all of 30 seconds to register on the Wiki has the ability to edit articles at the site. With the entire community working together on the Wiki, articles are constantly being updated and the quality of the Wiki is always improving. Here at Zelda Dungeon, we will be sponsoring specific projects to help improve overall quality of the Wiki. One of the projects I'm currently working on is managing the improvement of the enemy pages from the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. I'm also going to be working to help spread the word of the Wiki and gain any additional supporting sites. I have a lot more to talk about with the Zelda Wiki over the next few months, but for now, I'd just like to give a formal welcome to Zelda Wiki as the 8th member of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. Zelda Dungeon Staff Openings Zelda Wiki Comment on our Forums!

Community Round Up Community News 18 Apr 2008 Hey guys, I'd first like to say that the tentative date that was set for the layout will be not be reached. The layout was all but ready but after getting some critiques we are going to need some extra time to get the layout up and running. I think 2-3 weeks should be enough to get the layout ready to go. So a new 'tentative' date is now set at May 9th. In some unfortunate community news, Zelda Dimension is no more. After an insider of their forums took it upon themselves to destroy the Zelda Dimension community a few weeks back, the forums went offline. Since then the site has gone unchanged for a few weeks and just the other day Henry & Alicia made their final announcement of the closure of Zelda Dimension. Dimension was always a very graphically enhanced site that had some of the nicest webmasters out there. This dedication led them to winning one of Exploding Deku Nut's award for the most lively forum. They've been around for quite some time during some ups and downs, but they surely will be missed. Check out Zelda Dimension one last time to see their final message to the fans. Another one bites the dust. Let's shift gears to some more uplifting news. Our friends at LegendofZelda.com have had a successful server change last night. Their site suffered from occasional downtime and slow load times, but with the server change, everything is back to perfect condition. Along with LoZ.com, their hostee, Exploding Deku Nut is also up and running as fast as ever. Feel free to check out their sites and drop a word in their respective forums congratulating them on their successful switch over. There hasn't been much going on in the Zelda Community the last few weeks. Many sites have gone weeks with an update, although there is some news available. As reported by our friends at Zelda Elements, the Legend of Zelda Manga, which is an illustrated comic that takes the reader through the adventure of several of the Zelda titles. It will be making its way over to the United States this coming August. There are Manga comics available for the Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, the Oracle Series, the Minish Cap, and a few more. Most of these are available to us English speaking people through translations, (Of which we will have these available shortly). Be sure to check out Zelda Elements for the full details. Our friends over at Zelda Oracles have updated on some rare Zelda glassware that they found on the world of the internet and it is something that is worth a visit. Feel free to check them out as well. That about does it for todays update. Expect more information on the Alliance, the Layout, and a special Forum announcement in the coming days. Exploding Deku Nut LegendofZelda.com Zelda Dimension Zelda Elements Zelda Oracles Comment on our Forums!

Weddings, Alliances, Layouts, and Comics Zelda Comic 08 Apr 2008 While I'm late by a few days, I'd like to congratulate Caleb on the whole getting married thing. (No his announcement wasn't an April Fools joke, he REALLY got married). It really puts things in perspective when somebody you know... through a Legend of Zelda fan website...... actually gets married. I think it's really awesome for Caleb and the newest member of the Simpson (and Zelda Dungeon family... sorta) Michelle. I've gotten to know them very much since Caleb came aboard at Zelda Dungeon and the two of them really are into that love thing. I sure hope the Nintendo DS that I got them for their wedding (great wedding gift ain't it), is being put to good use. Now Phantom Hourglass is more than just a bunch of walkthrough pages that we created, it's actually a game Caleb could play. Hehe, anyway, while I'm sure the honeymoon is more important than this little news post, if you do take the time to check out the site... congrats Caleb and Michelle! A quick mention of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. While I did say there would be 10 sites a part of it, (still looks as if there will be 10 sites), 2 of them will not be ready for when we launch the layout. Thus, that means there is only one more to announce... and that should be within the next week or so. So about that Layout that we've hinted at for some time, when is it going to launch? I'm setting a tentative date of... April 19th (pending the date Caleb gets back home and returns to the slave life of working on Zelda Dungeon). For all intents and purposes, the Layout is... complete, basically. Many of you have seen a preview but you all should get a look at it in a few weeks. So a few weeks back I announced Zelda Comic as part of the Alliance and it seems it has sparked them to make a moderate comeback (just as I predicted :) ) Mario has released two more episodes in his long archive of Comics. The most recent comics relate to Link, Saria, Bub, Pit, and Navi's trip through the desert. Episode 302 discusses there trip to the Great Palace, 303 discusses some laser glasses, and 304 is what happens when they get lost. They are all great reads and highly recommended (especially 302... love that one). I should be back later this week with the next Alliance announcement. Zelda Comic Episode 302 Zelda Comic Episode 303 Zelda Comic Episode 304 Comment on our Forums!

The "Big Day" Approaching! Site News 01 Apr 2008 There's actually two events coming up, one being Layout 16, the other is... I'm getting married! I posted a few months ago saying I was engaged, and the big day is three days from now (April 4th). With all the wedding planning and all that it entails, I've been a little busy, and we'll be on our honeymoon here in a few days. Although I haven't been adding chapters to the Ocarina of Time Walkthrough, I have been working on them, but with the switch over to the new Layout, there are many coding changes that had to be done (on every single page *whew*) in order for it to work properly. This layout is going to be a little more dynamic, mainly focussed at making some pretty snazzy guide material. That's been my project off and on for the past few months, working behind the scenes, and it'll be ready to release soon. I'll be back in a few weeks, laterz Comment on our Forums!

Zelda Dungeon Alliance – Realms of Hyrule Realms of Hyrule 28 Mar 2008 Before getting into the next alliance website, I have some explaining to do. If you’ve been following the site lately, you may have noticed the steadily increase in affiliates along the right navigation. With the launch of the new layout, the grouping system of affiliates will be changed somewhat drastically. With the extra area we have on the index page of the new layout, we’ll have a much larger area to display affiliates. Thus, those annoying drop down menus that I reluctantly have up right now will be gone. We will also be able to display a ton of affiliates, many of which will have little buttons instead of text links. We’ll also have more of an emphasis on gaming sites. All in all, you can check out the new affiliation policy on the left navigation, but more importantly, if you have a Zelda or gaming site, apply now! The Zelda Dungeon Alliance is coming to the end of announcing sites. We have already released 6 of them, with 7th coming in a paragraph from now. We’ve all but finalized the 10 sites that will be a part of the Alliance and the other 4 (3 after this update) sites will be announced sparingly over the next few weeks. Our newest Alliance site is Realms of Hyrule. This site is fully dedicated to textual role playing in the Zelda series. Nowadays if you look at almost any Zelda forum, you’ll find a small area dedicated strictly towards role playing. Well, Realms of Hyrule is that small section, except expanded greatly, focused specifically on Zelda, and very engaging I might say. The problem with many textual role playing sections on most forums is the lack of set rules or limitations. You might ask yourself, wait, why would we want limitations? In the case of Realms of Hyrule, they do an excellent job of balancing openness as well as limitations, giving the site great integrity. The grounds of role playing take place in the western portion of Hyrule from the Adventure of Link. Click here to view this awesomely detailed map. Scrolling over any of the various sections of the map and clicking will take you to the corresponding forum that is dedicated to that portion of the map. This is a great way to setup the role playing as it lets people interact with the various surroundings. Anywhere from the Parapa Desert at the northeast corner, to the Midoro Swamp, Death Mountain, and any of the various towns in the western portion of Hyrule. So what if you are new to role playing all together and really have no idea what I’m talking about. Basically, the rundown of role playing, is you create an imaginative character and stick him into the world of Hyrule. The home page of Realms of Hyrule is currently being reworked, but it is meant to guide you in creating your custom character. The first thing you need to do is pick a name and a race for your character. You can pick anything from a Hylian, a Kokiri, a Goron, a Zora, or even one of those super cool Subrosians. There is a whole listing of items, magic, armor, and weapons that you can purchase, but these sections are currently being revamped. Wait a second Mases, I have to buy things with money??! No silly, with forum money, aka rupees. Realms of Hyrule use a rupee system much like the actual Zelda series. You can earn rupees from making posts in the forums or winning various contests that are held. These rupees can then be used to purchase various items to help strengthen your character. So what type of character are you going to be? A friendly Goron navigating the Death Mountain Region, a harmless Deku patrolling the Deku Forest, or an evil Wizzrobe destined for world domination. To borrow a quote from Back to the Future, “You're future hasn't been written yet! No-one's has……So make it a good one.” Realms of Hyrule Realms of Hyrule Map Realms of Hyrule Races Realms of Hyrule Boards Comment on our Forums!

A Decade of Destruction Community News 26 Mar 2008 Today is a historic day for our friends over at Zelda Power. 10 years in this business. Zelda Power now joins only North Castle in the illustrious 10year club for Zelda fan sites. It really is remarkable and in some ways, unbelievable. Although the names have changed, inside they are all the same, Zelda Power. Aaron Holt, the original founder of Zelda Power is one of the main reasons that Zelda Dungeon even exists today. The site was simply the best when it came to Zelda news back a decade ago. They were the first Zelda site that I ever visited, and much of the early ideas of Zelda Dungeon were directly based off of Zelda Power. Heck, some 6 years ago, I got in trouble for directly linking to some of Zelda Power’s media. Hehe. Aaron eventually set me straight and I’ve learned to grow from my mistakes. The current leaders of the site, KoSoVer and Kao have kept the ship at sea during the absence of Aaron and have done a fine job. With a forum community of over 4,000 members and nearly 700,000 posts, the message boards at Zelda Power has cemented their name in the history books of the Zelda Community. There really is not much else to say about this amazing benchmark other than simply, wow. Great job guys! Zelda Power Comment on our Forums!

Zelda Dungeon Alliance - ZREO Zelda Reorchestrated 22 Mar 2008 I’ve received a couple of questions about the Zelda Dungeon Alliance over the last few weeks and have stayed away from answering many of them for one reason or another. A few people out there have basically asked, why? Why would Zelda Dungeon go this route when there already is so much available at Zelda Dungeon? If you click over to the right and click the ‘Layout 16 Coming Soon’ button, you could get a slightly better idea of what’s really going on. There is no question game content is what we do best at Zelda Dungeon. Heck, I’m almost certain if you are just a regular fan of the site, you first came over searching for some sort of game content. With that being said, the new layout we are working on is going to completely maximize our content area allowing for a whole bunch of new options. Without giving away too many details of it, I’d just like to mention that with the removal of many of the current pages you see on the left navigation and with fancy new condensed and collapsible game menus, the need for the classic Zelda Dungeon two navigation bars will be gone. Once again though, why the Alliance, what does that really have to do with the new layout at all? There are a few main reasons why we think the Alliance will be successful. First and foremost, the sites that are being featured are some of the must unique that you’ll see anywhere in the Zelda online community. Some are, in some cases just not that big of sites and they are deserving of a larger audience. The updates that happen at Zelda Dungeon will be quite different than before. Of course, with the new layout and Alliance we will be working extensively on game content and will be updating periodically when we have new material available to release. However, as you may have come to notice, when big projects such as the Phantom Hourglass walkthrough that was written awhile ago, updates could become quite staggered from one another. There’d be times where we’d go days and sometimes over a week without even updating the site because we are working on content. If you were a fan of the site at the time and didn’t have Phantom Hourglass or had no interest in game anymore, what was the purpose of visiting for content updates? We hope that with the Alliance in place, the variety of the sites within it will be able to give your visitors something new and fresh and a much more frequent rate than we were ever able to provide at Zelda Dungeon. Without dragging on any longer, I’d like to announce the 6th site into the Zelda Dungeon Alliance; Zelda Re-Orchestrated, or rather, ZREO. I had announced ZREO awhile back as a brand new affiliate to Zelda Dungeon, but our site relationship will be a bit different than what is usually agreed upon in a Zelda site affiliation. ZREO doesn’t fall into the classic fan site description and doesn’t offer standard affiliation with other Zelda sites, quite frankly, because they don’t need to. They aren’t in the community to become the largest of Zelda sites out there and already know that their unique content will bring in all the visitors that they’d ever like to attract. Their site is the perfect idea of what I have envisioned with a unique site deserving of an Alliance position. ZREO is a site that doesn’t necessarily worry about what’s happening in the outside community but just works on what it loves and desires to do, make Zelda music. The ZREO project is dedicated to bringing all the classic Zelda tunes we have heard and bringing them to life, fully orchestrated. They feature music from the entire Zelda series and also have their own custom soundtracks that they have created. If you love the Zelda music in the games, then man are you going to enjoy the music you’ll find at ZREO. We are pleased to have ZREO on board as part of the Alliance and we look forward to posting on all their newest unique creations. Zelda Reorchestrated List to the Music Download the Music Comment on our Forums!

Zelda Dungeon Alliance - Zelda Comic Zelda Comic 18 Mar 2008 You may have noticed a change in the Site Projects along the right navigation. The Phantom Hourglass section is no longer an ongoing project but it has been replaced with Twilight Princess. Zelda Dungeon was really going through some rough times at the closing of 2006, just when Twilight Princess was released. Thus, our Twilight Princess section is mediocre at best. I hope to change this in the coming months and will be working on all of the various pages including a full blown site walkthrough. It will take much time and effort and may last through most of the summer. However, it is something that must be done and most definitely will be done. Moving on to the Zelda Dungeon Alliance, I have a rather unknown yet very unique site to reveal this time around. Much like most the sites in the Alliance, they are in no way your standard Zelda site and in fact have absolutely no coverage at all in Zelda games, very little in Zelda news, and by no means a standard layout. The next site featured as part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance is Zelda Comic. So what does Zelda Comic actually do? Well, quite simply, they run a… Zelda Comic. It is a comic strip created using Legend of Zelda sprite images, mainly from the Adventure of Link. The characters are not just the few characters from Adventure of Link. Mario, the webmaster of Zelda Comic, has created his own custom sprite images of many characters that were introduced in the future Zelda titles including, Saria, Ganondorf, Sheik, Din, Nayru, Farore, and many more. In addition to this, there are even appearances from characters that are in other popular game series, such as Samus from Metroid, Bub from Bubble Bobble, and Pit from Kid Icarus. All of these characters have been brought to the world of Hyrule through the works of Zelda Comic. Through the brains of the webmaster, Mario Panighetti, over 300 comic strips have been written spanning over 6 years! While the site has been a bit inactive over the last few months, there are new plans in the works to revive the comic and carry on. I’m proud that Mario has allowed me to post updates on Zelda Comic and I’m very grateful to have them as part of the Zelda Dungeon Alliance. Zelda Comic Zelda Comic Archive Comment on our Forums!

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