The below video was created via the power of computer animation. Alan Warner Grieve created the video using Twilight Princess character models as well as models from World of Warcraft. Quoted below is what Alan wrote concerning this project of his.
At the end of my postgraduate studies, I was required to create a short film that demonstrated “sophisticated, original and articulate animation”. Game models were taken from “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” and “World of Warcraft”, rigged using TSM2 and animated in Autodesk Maya.
Jump inside to view the embedded video. Read more…
Noah over at The Hidden Triforce has put together a short article discussing several enemies of the Zelda series that have since been lost over the years. In particular he looks at five enemies that once played a more vital role, but are now just another enemy in the grouping.
Where has Goriya even gone? This ugly but ever so lovable enemy has not been seen since A Link to the Past. Goriya got his start as a Boomerang throwing foe in The Legend of Zelda and repeated this performance for The Adventure of Link. Goriya even made several appearances in the notoriously good Legend of Zelda cartoons. InA Link to the Past he was weakened and made to just mimic Link’s moves. Bring Goriya back. Zelda Wii could use a Boomerang touting enemy.
I personally would like to see the Lynel’s from the original Legend of Zelda make a return. We saw them in A Link to the Past, Oracle of Seasons, and Oracle of Ages, but they have since disappeared. I always thought that they were some of the more challenging overworld enemies and it is a shame that such a cool looking and difficult enemy has disappeared.
So what enemies out there do you think should return to the Zelda series? What older enemies do you think should play a more vital role in the games? Post your comments below! Read more…
The folks over at Zelda Universe have posted up an article discussing their desire for Nintendo to open up a bit, and offer more exploration to the overworld, much like the games during the pre-Ocarina of Time era. Here is an excerpt from the article.
Aonuma has even said he wants Zelda Wii to make the gamer feel like “they’ve really been on an adventure.” If that’s true, allow the player more freedom to explore Hyrule (or as rumor has it, somewhere other than Hyrule) wand make their own discoveries. Allow the player to make their own decisions based off what they discover and what little information they are given. Don’t tell the player that the next dungeon is in Death Mountain; let the player discover it for his or her self.
Response: I cannot agree more and I think the linearity of Zelda has really been a problem. I think Ocarina of Time did a good job in terms of having somewhat of an open overworld. While the story was linear, at the very least, you were able to explore different parts of the overworld at different times. In games like Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks, this exploration seems to have been erased. The game is very linear and you only are allowed to go to certain areas of the game after defeating previous portions.
I also think that the open overworld exploration has never quite been perfect on the 3d games. I think the overworld for a game such as the Oracle of Ages was still fun to navigate. Going between the two time periods and noticing the differences in the landscape was interesting. Especially how past events effects the future. I think that type of overworld exploration and interaction is what we need to see more from the future Zelda games, and hopefully we see that with the upcoming Legend of Zelda title for the Nintendo Wii.
The image to your left is a short comic created by Cory Godbey. It’s a pretty sweet little Zelda piece that somewhat mocks the inventory system of the Zelda series. You can click the image to get a better version of the piece.
You can also check out the rest of Cody Godbey’s Bit & Run series by looking at his blog. While this is the only Zelda related one that I found, he does have a few Mario based comics which are pretty sweet. Definitely worth a look.
I particularly liked one of his images of some classic Mario enemies discussing what Mario has been up to lately. It’s pretty cool and gave me a quick little giggle, so hopefully you like it.
NOTE: The video embedded below contains some swearing, so you should skip this news post if that bothers you.
The video above discusses the recently released game for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 entitled Darksiders. So why is it relevant to us here at Zelda Dungeon? Well, if you’ve played the game or even heard much about it, you’ll immediately find that the game has a lot of similar aspects to the Legend of Zelda series. In the video above, the two hosts discuss the game and talk about some specific similarities between Darksiders and Zelda, and even offer some gameplay for you to see. Many critics online have labeled the game as ‘Zelda meets God of War’ in that it has a lot of similarities of the two. The game has gotten decent reviews, scoring just under 84% at Game Rankings so if you are an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 owner, it certainly looks like something that may interest you. Read more…
For those of you who have been gaming since the NES days, do you remember back in the day where instruction booklets were actually somewhat useful and interesting? The guys over at 1up.com have written an interesting retrospective article about none other than the instruction booklet for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Below is an excerpt from their article.
The Zelda II instruction booklet lays out Link’s fate with some pretty color illustrations. The whole package carries the flavor of an old fairy tale, despite essentially being a “How To Play” guide. The dark tone of the story is surprisingly appropriate for the ‘fairy tale’ label: most of us are too young to think of The Little Mermaid or Snow White outside of a Disney context, but children’s fantasy stories were not always gentle. Zelda II’s instruction booklet (and other instruction booklets from the same era) recalls an unaltered children’s story: it’s not exactly bloody (Link’s story is pretty basic and suitable for older kids), but it doesn’t feel sanitized, either.
You can check out the entire Adventure of Link instruction booklet over at our image gallery. Remember, you can also comment on individual images. I use to love old NES instruction booklets because usually this is where almost all the information concerning the game was held. There often times was very little story involved when you were actually in the game. The story usually was told within the game instruction booklet. The two NES Zelda titles were no exception to this as both of them had elaborate stories within the instructional booklets along with numerous pieces of official artwork. It really is a shame that most modern games and modern Zelda games in particular don’t really make much use of the instruction booklets. Read more…
The Legend of Neil is a web series about a guy who gets sucked into The Legend of Zelda and has to fight his way out. The show has been going on for two seasons now, and just recently the season 2 finale has been released.
I have to forewarn you that the show does use some sexual and explicit language, so it is not for everybody. While the show has been following a constant story throughout its two seasons, the finale can be watched without much pre-knowledge of what is going on. However, if you are brand new to the show, you can start all the way from the beginning and watch the first episode, which is cleverly entitled The Beginning.
Jonathan Mann, formally known as The Game Jew of The Mushroom Singdom and Screwattack, now has his own musical project in which he creates one new song every single day and posts them at his website and his youtube account. The songs range from folk, rock, pop, etc… with the topics being anything from recent news, politics, and… video games!
Jonathan is a huge Nintendo fan and one of his most recent videos has to do with the Legend of Zelda game series. It is titled ‘Link Mann’, which is a play on words since his last name is ‘Mann’, and the character of Link is supposed to make you feel like you are the character. Nevertheless, the song is about a dream that Jonathan had about Zelda. It’s really fun to listen to and I enjoyed the lyrics. You can check out the video at Jonathan’s website, Rock Cookie Bottom, to see the well thought out lyrics.
Like what you saw? If so, one of my personal favorite videos that Jonathan has made, is a video of him on a quest to actually sing to Shigeru Miyamoto in person… Rest assured he accomplishes his goal and it is glorious. You can view that video by clicking here.
February 5th, 2010 by Mases
