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This is a site about the video game series The Legend of Zelda. This website is webmastered by Conrad VanderWoude, World's Best Zelda 1 Player.
Welcome to
HYLIA.Com.
Heroic Young Link's Incredible Adventures
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Table Of Contents:
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Thank you for checking out this site.
At the moment, it's quite incomplete
and I don't have much ready for public viewing, which is why you don't see very
many pages up. I'll try to give indications on when I anticipate being able to
update the page again. Now that the site's been publicly announced somewhere, I
will try to make sure updates aren't more than a week apart, even before the
main site launch is ready (and after that time, updates should of course be more
frequent). For more details on the update schedule, see the FAQ.
December 6, 2004 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Status of sites Can you believe that HYLIA.Com had plans of daily updates? In fact, there were about nine different things HYLIA.Com was anticipating being able to update each week. What happened?
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December 9, 2003 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Two Zelda Bundles offered at once? I spotted on eBay an auction for a "new, unopened platinum (silver) Nintendo GameCube with a Gameboy Player" that comes with the Zelda bonus disc that contains The Legend of Zelda: Master Quest. The bundle also contains the Preview Disc with 5 games (which appears to be the one with 5 playable GameCube games and 2 Gameboy Advance games using the GCN-GBA link cable). If you must make a choice between this bundle or the one with Zelda: Collector's Edition, get this one, because Z:CE can be ordered as a free gift with a Nintendo Power subscription, whereas the Master Quest disc cannot. |
November 21, 2003 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
The iQue Player is a new Nintendo system
sporting a Zelda game (called "Zelda 64" by one web site, this is
likely Ocarina of Time).
Although there is some ambiguity in that list, each title probably refers to the first N64 game in the series (in other words, Ocarina of Time and not Majora's Mask, Super Mario 64, and the N64 versions of Doctor Mario and Star Fox, not the Super NES versions). As today is the release date of this little-hyped product, right now there's a lot more non-information about the system than information, like how to play 4 Player Doctor Mario if the system is shaped like a single controller. Most English-only speaking Americans are probably better off with an N64 right now, especially since the games need to be downloaded from a "Download Station" kiosk (so purchasing any new games just wouldn't be as economical for people in North America because we'd need to buy a 64MB Flash Memory Card every time) and because the games released aren't likely to be English versions. The official website, which uses the language of Chinese, is at http://WWW.iQue.Com/. |
November 14, 2003 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition is released. Here are four ways you can obtain your copy:
What exactly is it? It contains Zelda 1, 2, 5, and 6. It also contains a playable demo of The Wind Waker. It does not include Master Quest. The NES games are not substantially enhanced. Except for minor changes (each game displays a new Copyright notice) the games look pretty much like the originals. There are some sound issues (problems) which I've so far noticed in Zelda 1 and Zelda 6. The Wind Waker demo calls itself a 20-minute demo. The "short retrospective history of The Legend of Zelda series" (as it is named by Nintendo's Press Release) shows the title and a bit of game play footage of every official Zelda game so far, excluding duplicates (earlier versions of what were essentially re-releases) and games not primarily focused on the Zelda series (no Super Smash Brothers footage). Update clean-up My clean-up on April 2nd did not properly remove the changes to the date display in the upper-right corner of the website. Consequently the website said it was modified "Today" before mentioning the real date. This has now been corrected. |
April 2, 2003 | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
April Fool's Day is a tradition in the United States of America. Many web sites on the Internet post false information on April 1st. Please disregard the news item from yesterday, which was entirely made up. Although this site generally does not get involved in rumors, it does participate in the Internet tradition of completely made up stories on the first of April, so remember, be highly skeptical of any sort of news reported on this site and on other Internet sites on April 1. |
Update for April Fool's Day 2003 | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Wind Waker has been RECALLED: As part of Nintendo's contractual obligations in order to obtain a rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), Nintendo was supposed to reveal specific aspects of the game development to the Board including all textures, a list of functions in the source code to detect rogue code, and so forth. The Board of Directors at the ESRB has found an issue of non-compliance, where some material in the quickly-released English translation of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was not properly submitted. Nintendo is working with various retailers who have collected the names of customers who pre-ordered The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (there were quite a large number, in part due to the free Bonus Disc that was released to those who pre-ordered), and is going to send a request to return the game disc to as many owners of the latest game as possible so as to ensure that they do are not commiting any further infractions of their legal agreements. A refund will be available to consumers if desired, although Nintendo has promised "a sort of special treat" to those who instead are willing to wait for an updated game disc, which Nintendo has estimated to be available in about three weeks due to hold-ups at the ESRB. The next Nintendo Power is also expected to have a prominent notice regarding this recall program. There is some speculation that this may come in the form of an added mini-game, but if an updated disc isn't required to fulfill ESRB's regulations than it may be something completely different: Another speculation is that it may simply be a strategy guide or one free issue of Nintendo Power magazine. Be sure to ask for details. Nintendo of America, Inc., advises all consumers to retain any saved files from their original game disc to a memory card before returning the game, stating that the updated game disc should be able to fully read the save files from the original release. There is no word yet regarding any material that the ESRB objects to, and this is apparently a penalty designed to be a harsh lesson by the ESRB to Nintendo and to other developers that developers need to go through all the proper procedures. As stores have not been instructed on what address to ship the discs back to, it appears as though the new game disc may simply be the same as the original disc. More details are expected to be made available in the next 24 hours, so be sure to check back here tomorrow. If you have any questions, feel free to E-Mail us at letters@hylia.com. (Be sure to place "FHL" in the E-Mail's subject to make sure any mail For the Hylia Letters team actually reaches the team, bypassing any spam filter.) |
March 25, 2003 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Wind Waker Released: At a local store shipments were short, only about half of what was needed was available. However, another shipment which should be able to fulfill the pre-orders was expected the next day. The release date has been touted to be as early as March 24 to as late as March 27. The reality was: March 24, in multiple parts of the country. The Master Quest Bonus Disc was released over a month before Wind Waker. If you haven't received your Master Quest Bonus Disc by now, you may have been too late in picking it up. The best recommendation I can offer for you is to check eBay where this item, which was free with $15 down on Wind Waker, is currently selling for more than $15 (and usually for more than $20). |
February 27, 2003 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Master Quest SOLD OUT?: The following comes from an official Nintendo website (in the lower-right corner, below the Copyright notice): "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker preorder offer has been an incredible success! Due to overwhelming demand, it is possible that the special The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time / Master Quest Bonus Disc may no longer be available in your area."Augh! Nintendo can NEVER make this easy, can they? No, Nintendo never released an official public statement clearly confirming that they would have adequate supply until Wind Waker's release. Yes, Conrad tried to give the impression that there's no need to worry. This is because that was the best impression Conrad was able to get, but there's a reason why Conrad kept quoting sources and never said anything was confirmed: because nothing ever was. If Nintendo would have just said it was first come, first serve, then that's what this site would have reported, but nooo, once again Nintendo was vague about the exact terms and conditions. We've seen this kind of ambiguity with the N64 Ocarina of Time's gold cartridges promotion, where not all but most people trying early to get the promotional material by Nintendo from a local store were successful. Majora's Mask was also lacking details, but when the time came there were enough gold cartridges with the "3-D hologram" label stickers (and no non-promotional cartridges for quite some time). And now, now... now Nintendo does this: They give out few details and when push comes to shove it looks like they are shorting out the public demand again. So, if you didn't get the game yet, are you left out? We can't even say that for sure. The whole situation is one big giant unpleasant "I don't know". We don't even have enough clear facts to report that doom and gloom is certain. Some retailers have reportedly been saying that Nintendo informed them that the program is off. EBGames.Com says "Pre-order bonus ships now". A local store has told me they have seven or eight copies left in stock, but are not allowed to distribute them to new walk-in customers as the store is supposed to make sure that the people who pre-ordered first are the first and most likely to get the game. Despite this mess my local EB store has a large sign at the front of their door mentioning the bonus disc and say they have orders from the national company to keep on selling more pre-orders for the bonus disc. So, what does this amount to? Quick FAQ:
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February 8, 2003 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Master Quest is available! Nine days earlier than the official release date, the game has been available to the general public by at least two national chains. Since this has happened, stores everywhere ought to be able to distribute the bonus disc. In case you have troubles, here are some instructions to help you get ahold of the game:
To clarify so as to keep the record straight, it wasn't EB store 452 that actually violated the regulations. They are just the store that I, Conrad VanderWoude, demonstrated the broken street date to, and they started passing the word onto other EB stores. So, the chain effect which can affect stores nation-wide has been started, and there are instructions on what a customer may do if the store is worried about breaking the street date. When to get Master Quest is: now! I've been told that the local store is almost sold out of their current inventory of the games, with over 96% of the copies accounted for. My local store says their information from Nintendo is that Nintendo has agreed to have a bonus disc for all the pre-orders and so when the store has as many pre-orders as how many copies of the game they were given, the store will be sent another box of copies of the game. This certainly covers any pre-orders before February 16 so if your store doesn't have any copies in, get your pre-order started before that date. On Nintendo's website they say, "Starting Feb. 16, 2003, Nintendo fans can get a double-hit of Zelda. When a customer places a deposit for The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker" [...] "they'll receive" the game. HYLIA.Com is just relaying this information so be responsible for your own interpretation, but it sounds like anybody can place a deposit on Wind Waker anytime before March 24, 2003, and they will be able to get a copy of the bonus disc. Possibly, and ideally, the buyer should be able to receive the bonus disc at the same time they make the deposit. So go play your heart out! :) Site News: Letters List changes: Due to the massive amount of off-topic junk mail ("spam") this site's public Letters Team mailing list has received, a change has been made to how the HYLIA.Com Letters List operates. The subject of all E-Mails must contain "FHL" in the subject. (The quotation marks aren't needed.) (FHL is an abbreviation of: For Hylia.Com Letters.) In the future this website is likely to have a web form which will take care of this requirement, but for the time being you'll need to know these instructions to contact the HYLIA.Com Letters Team. E-Mail sent without FHL in the subject may be received but filtered out and never actually looked at by any of the staff here. This change to the HYLIA.Com letters list does not affect any mail sent to the ZHQ Letters List because that list hasn't been bombarded with spam-bots to the point of being truely unpleasant for the staff who continue to monitor any E-Mail sent to the zhqletters address at hyrule.dhs.org. |
February 7, 2003 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Master Quest is in stores. However, when I tried to pick one up for myself, the store wouldn't part with their copies. The employees were following orders not to distribute the game until the official release date of February 16. However, the employees told me, if the national chain received word that other people were distributing the game then the store expected the national chain would go ahead and give them orders to distribute the copies they have. Once these sorts of regulations get violated then game distributions tend to turn into a free-for-all, release date worries just tossed out the window. With so many stores selling video games around the nation, it is quite likely that some store somewhere will violate the rules. I've already heard of the game being obtained. If word of this gets recognized then the game should be made available all over. Otherwise, if the unimaginable happens, if the entire sales force of the nation actually respects the rules they are supposed to follow, the game will be available on February 16th. If you do want the Master Quest bonus disks, place your pre-order ASAP. The game could be available anytime now so check with your stores and see if the game is available yet. Case Review: Although reviewing the case a game in may be rather unprecedented, here's one. We Americans are once again getting a game later but better. Reports are that in Japan the bonus disc was shipped in a CD case made of cardboard, but here in America it looks like the game is being shipped in a standard DVD-style GameCube case. Americans everywhere can say "Yay!" to Americans getting better stuff! |
January 23, 2003 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Nintendo is releasing a disc containing Ocarina of Time for the Game Cube which will also contain the Master Quest. As part of a "Legendary Pre-sale Offer in the United States", Nintendo has stated in a press release, "When a customer places a deposit for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker at a participating retailer, they.ll receive a special, limited-edition playable disk featuring two games: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest -- an updated version of" Ocarina of Time released as a sort of expansion pack only for the 64DD add-on "which was never released outside of Japan." Master Quest, once known in America as "Ura Zelda" which was slated for the American 64DD until that N64 add-on device was cancelled in North America. Basically, it is like an expansion pack to Ocarina of Time. Nintendo's online description of the game says, "The Master Quest version of Ocarina of Time contains the same overall storyline as the original Ocarina of Time adventure. However, the dungeons have been upgraded to be truly challenging, even to a Zelda master." This game is definitely something that Ocarina of Time fans should consider, especially with it's great price of free when buying Wind Waker. Let's make this abundantly clear: The Master Quest disc is being released BEFORE Wind Waker. The $5 extra shipping fee which EBWorld.Com is charging is to cover their expenses for shipping the bonus disc as soon as possible. Buyers may select to "receive your pre-order bonus on the same day your Wind Waker arrives, and pay shipping charges for only one shipment". Unless requested to wait, EBWorld.Com will ship the bonus disc "on Feb. 17". (February 16 is a Sunday, so EBWorld.Com is scheduling nothing to get shipped out that day.) Because it doesn't look like there are any plans for Nintendo or stores to be selling this disc, pre-ordering looks like it is the only way to get it. If you have parents with an aversion to pre-buying something then you can explain that you'll be getting two games (the bonus disc) right away, and then at no additional cost, one more game (Wind Waker) a little more than a month later. Of course, as clear as this sounds, there's still room for troubles a plenty the way Nintendo operates. Many Zelda fans have terrible memories of the fiascos surrounding the pre-order program for the N64's Ocarina of Time. Claims that gold cartridges would be available only to pre-orders before a certain date, and then only to those after a certain date, just created confusion among the masses. In the end there were more than enough gold cartridges to go around in some areas of the North American market, which translated to all areas of the Northern nations if people looked hard enough including on eBay and at stores like FuncoLand. With that in mind, there should be less of a paranoia this time 'round, although people surely will be trying to avoid paying for something they should be getting for free. Already there's been claims that only certain stores will be involved in this program, including some national chains and not others. Since Nintendo did say something about customers who go to "a participating retailer", it would be good to see something written on a website or asking store employees. Just in case the employee is incorrect about the details of how the national chain you visit will or will not be participating in the program, make sure you can withdraw money if things don't work well. If you're able to do this, then there's no real reason to have to wait until after February 16, and depositing early may be useful just in case a store makes a mistake and erroneously refuses to give the game to people who didn't pre-order early. This shouldn't be a problem as there oughta be plenty of copies of the game to go around, but sometimes stores make mistakes and although you should be able to get yourself a copy of the game, there's no harm in avoiding hassle during a chaotic situation. Most game players like to wait until after they leave the store with purchase in hand and being to explore dungeons before they start feeling utter confusion and wonder if they'll ever manage to obtain the item they're after. Speaking of utter confusion, reports indicate that the bonus disc which is already released in Japan is basically Ocarina of Time running at a bit higher resolution. There isn't a gigantic amount of newly drawn graphics as IGN's November 22 news stated and this site's November 23rd news quoted. IGN since took the graphics off of their media page, but they are still available on their site (Gohma, Skulls, and Swimming) and now locally here too (Gohma, Skulls, and swimming). From as best as we can tell, the bonus disc will look NOTHING like these renders. It'll be very much like playing Ocarina of Time on the N64. |
November 30, 2002 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
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November 23, 2002 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Think that graphic looks nice? Well, it's being viewed at 1/2 size. If it's done being loaded, just click on the image to view it at full-size. To see a couple more, go to IGN's News Article and click on the link at the bottom that says "Media Page". Check out the ones under November 22 labeled "Zelda Render 1" and "Zelda Render 2: Ghoma". And re-load the page if they don't show up.
How does somebody top news like that? Oh, we can't. We can't. I don't think it can be done. But, we may as well try anyway. Here's our best shot:
The videos, news courtesy of Kris Smith's reports, are available on Nintendo of Japan's website. To find them you'll need Flash. Click on the second link in the left frame and then the movies are those bulleted items just above the file sizes (about 2 1/2 MB). Also on the website is some background music. Kris says it "is almost like a combination of the OoT overworld and Majora's Mask/original overworld music. Very nice!" To listen, click on the link in the left frame that says "BGM" just to the right of a music note. Once again, this website of Nintendo's is set up to be needing Macromedia Flash.
If you're adventurous, maybe you can find some other goodies on that
website, such as
confirmation by Nintendo
(using
BabelFish's
translations) that Cubed Game Boy Advance: The "Game Boy Player" is an official peripheral Nintendo is making which "when attached to the bottom of a GameCube console, enables gamers to play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games on a television screen.". IGN reporting on this is another newsbrief noticed by Kris Smith. News Fix: The lyrics to the movie posted in the last update were incorrect. The word indeed is "corners" as expected, not "cores" which is what I wrote since I just couldn't hear the word "corners" no matter how much I wanted to. Increasing the volume of my speakers remedied the matter. I changed the contents of the last update to reflect this. |
November 7, 2002 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Here's the lyrics from the video, although reading it now will give away what is said at the end, so don't read it here first unless you are too impatient and can't wait for the video download:
In the land of Hyrule This is the latest tidbit passed onto me by good ol' Kris Smith. There is other news creeping out here and there about the game. It seems IGN Insider members have been treated to some other game play videos demonstrating some really lousy game playing abilities by the IGN staff :) |
September 18, 2002 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Storyline Info: Jovi sent The Letters Team the following paragraph in a mail titled "Zelda 9(GC) news":
Hi, in my new Nintendo Power issue(#158), they have a interview with Shigeru Miyamoto. And its mostly about Zelda. One question they asked was "Where does the new Zelda fit in with the past games?", and Miyamoto said "Its the first story, if we just keep going forward we would lose interest, so its fun to jump back and forth". So I guess its a prequel to Ocarina of Time. Oh well, can't wait!
My (Conrad) own perspective: A Prequel to Ocarina of Time isn't likely to get too terribly entangled into the messy Zelda 1 - 3 timeline (or perhaps in America we should say "Zelda 2 - 3 timeline). MoH gets a break (for this game anyway).
The good news is this: Quicktime 6.0 came out. Why is that important? This website is just too quiet for my tastes. Consequently, the last several times I worked on this website, I tried to add music support, something which I thought would affect both the pre-launch and post-launch versions. I know many people would really like this website to be silent, and so I wanted to hold off on actually adding music until I could make an easy way for people to select whether they want to hear music or not. I was having problems getting this working in Netscape 6+, which is a browser I've decided to fully support in this site's earliest stages. Namely, Netscape 6+ doesn't have the Netscape LiveAudio plugin that worked for Netscape 4.x browsers, and I was having troubles controlling the QuickTime Plugin.
Only after numerous failed attempts to either get music working, or to find out why I couldn't, did I find the " Netscape 6/Gecko Browser Compatibility Handbook " on "Netscape Evangelism". Google Cached) which said that Quicktime 5.x didn't "expose JavaScript methods for DHTML authors" which is what I needed. By the time I found this out, though, I had grown a bit frustrated. Such frustration didn't really help me to want to work on this volunteer project much, and this combined with other reasons resulted in me taking some time off-- more than anticipated.
However, Quicktime 6 is now released and is said to remedy the problem with music I was having. This is just the incentive I needed to resume work on this site which I have put off for way too long. I anticipate having some more work done in a small number of days.
After I get the music working, I'll likely make a change on the main page shortly after so that you can enjoy music if you like. After that, I'll likely work on some more serious behind-the-scenes stuff just because this fluff site which doesn't do as much long-term help just isn't a very compelling way for me to use my time when I've got other work to be doing. If the site goes too terribly long without posting any news, feel free to ask. It's harder to put things off when there is active demand bugging me.
And yes, my long term plan is still to make a major site out of this, and at this address of WWW.Hylia.Com. If that ever changes and this site is still functional, you can expect me to inform you of such major news on the site's main news page.
May 24, 2002 A.D. (Update #2) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Yamauchi Retires: IGN reports that Nintendo's President, Hiroshi Yamauchi, "will officially step down this Friday". (Which Friday? Today is Friday.) Yamauchi has announced he was planning to retire on several occasions in recent times, although he never gave any sort of date.
This is the man who has headed Nintendo for over 50 years, and so was in charge when the company started making it's own home video game systems.
His replacement is Satoru Iwata from HAL. For more a tiny bit more
information see
IGNCube's article.
Thanks to staff member Kris Smith for this news and some of the content from
today's previous update.
Date updated: In my previous update made a few minutes ago I forgot not only to mention the Yamauchi newspiece, but also the dates you see in the upper-right corner. Both issues have been fixed.
May 24, 2002 A.D. (Update #1) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Site status: I'm still swamped with E3 stuff, with over 180MB of Zelda videos that I haven't even looked at yet. I also won't have a chance to look at it until I get back from visiting family over the weekend. Since much of this material comes from the paid-for sections of IGN Insider, you won't likely see it on the site anytime soon, although I would like to create a summary of what's available so people can see if they might want to get access to the videos for themselves. This will take time.
GameCube Zelda: Multiplayer support has been documented by the IGN Insider team. This involves the GameCube/GBA hookup. No cartridge is needed for the GBA unit to do this, just a GBA and the GC/GBA hookup. Apparently a map can be displayed on the GBA screen and a player using the GBA can control a Fairy named Tingle who is drawn as a square icon on the GBA screen. The GBA player can also interact with Link
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Link rope-swinging over... something. Something that looks really really awful. This is from trailer Nintendo released. |
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I don't have much history posting such false stories. I took a couple of risks over the past week, posting information a bit earlier than we could have if we waited to confirmt he story. (The other story I took a little gamble on was the Multiplayer Zelda GBA.) One of those stories was real and legit, and the other, apparently not.
May 22, 2002 A.D. (Update #3) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Zelda GBA Movies has been added below the GameCube games footage on the the E3 Media Page which is now broken into parts by game. The Multiplayer video added to the newly created GBA section was quite informative. First of all, the reason why one of the Stalfos was red in one of the original pictures is that it was just recently hit and so was flashing due to recent damage. Secondly, the thunderbolt icon which I speculated was a hookshot appears now to be a magnetic pull caused by a special glove, and this magnetic force can pull a Link over a pit. Third, it would appear that the picture showing four Links with the pink one in back dashing could have been a scenerio where the back Link is dashing and pushing all of the other Links. This is demonstrated in the video. Fourth, a non-moving Link can be pushed out of the way. a Link can sword another Link. It appears like there's no real damage done when this happens, but the attacked Link is unable to move for a short time while he is thrown back. Fifth, the Links are not all confined to the borders of the screen and so they can seperate out a little bit. The screen tends to follow one of the players. Sixth, it appears that the platform stood on in one of the original pictures has 4 buttons on it which when stood on will change the direction of the platform's movement. It is possible for the platform to dump everyone standing on it. What we don't know yet is whether this demonstrated event was caused because not all players were on the platform when it started moving, or because someone fell into the pit under the platform. Seventh, it is possible to jump, at least sometimes, because we witness a Red Link doing so twice in a rupee-collecting room. We don't know exactly how much jumping is permitted throughout the game, and with so few jumps witnessed we must speculate that it isn't always available because there would be little reason to need to pick up one of the Links and toss him over a narrow pit if Links can just jump right over the pit. |
May 22, 2002 A.D. (Update #2) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
E3 Video Reviews of all the videos released yesterday are now available from the E3 Media Page. Find out which ones are worth getting, which ones aren't, and what to look for in all the IGN videos we got that you won't find in the Trailer. So far all that is there is the media related to videos about the upcoming Zelda game for the Gamecube. As of right now, we still have all of the pictures from the Multiplayer-capable GameBoy Advanced game on this main page, just below this update. |
May 22, 2002 A.D. (Update #1) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
"David says: Having multiple links doesn't exactly fit the storyline of the game, but who really cares?" [...] "If there's one thing that has been sorely missing from games since the dawn of the 3D era it's co-op modes." [...] "Even the dullest game could be entertaining like this, and it made the best games phenomenol. Hopefully with all the powerful new 3D systems we'll start seeing co-op modes more often in the near future. If not, there's always the GBA."
(Emphasis NOT added) | ||
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"Based on A Link to the Past on the Super NES, The Legend of Zelda GBA spruces up the 1992 fan-favorite by introducing the first ever multiplayer mode for a Zelda game. Two to four players compete as well as cooperate."
Note that the Official Page for this game calls the game "The Legend of Zelda GBA (tentative title)".
The other game on the cartridge supports multiplayer and according to IGN it has been given a name of it's own: The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords. This version of the game contains graphics that show Link drawn with new graphics more similar to the new GameCube graphics, and Link is said to swing his sword not as horizontal pokes or circular swings but instead he "in diagonal arcs, in an almost cutlass-like fashion." |
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IGN Reports, "All that's needed is up to four systems, as well as a copy of the cartridge. No word if the game supports the GBA's single cartridge multi-boot function. Nintendo hopes to get this out on shelves this December."
The last Link playing Follow The Leader is doomed to be hit by a trap. Two others look like they could very likely be getting hit too. |
4 Links pushing on one block. Link standing outside The Sanctuary from Zelda 3. 4 Links surrounded by 5 white and 1 red stalfos. (Note quite as difficult looking odds as the 5 to 1 ratio found in what is the most common first underworld battle from Zelda 1. Then again, Stalfos in Zelda 5 were more challenging then Zelda 1.) |
4 Links on a platform, with 4 pink floating balls. 4 Links, two of which are over a pit. It looks like one of them may be using a lightning-bolt-shaped device, possibly something that acts like a hookshot for the other Links. |
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Although I haven't personally had a chance to try the multiplayer aspect int he Gameboy Color remake of Super Mario Bros., I believe it was similar to the 1 Player mode where you raced against a ghost, which means it was likely a rather small feature consisting of few levels. We don't know how many extra multiplayer levels will be in this game, but hopefully the fact that this section is being given it's own name can be successfully interpreted as an indication that there will be quite a few. Just as the Gameboy Color remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening included a new dungeon which was heavily color-centric, the levels from The Four Swords are highly likely to have heavy multiplayer design elements incorperated. Even if one of the multiplayer levels is basically a rehash of a single player level, there will likely be new blocks to get in player's ways or something else to make the multiplayer aspect an unignorable aspect of the game play as you make your way through the level.
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GameCube Zelda News: An Owl is
"Emotions hit a fever pitch when Link witnesses his sister being snatched up by a giant bird." Yes, Link's sister. If this is news to you, scroll down to the news report from two days ago and read that first.
The word "Release" shown in the screenshot from just before Link slices his sword right through a wall of rickety boards is just one of the words that show over the Action button, much like Ocarina Of Time's. This word shows up over the B-Button when Link is swinging. The word "Return" appears over the button when Link's boomerang is flying about. Other words that have appeared over that button are "Attack", "Put Away", "Drop", "Jump", and "Lift". The R button also appears to be an action button at times, with words appearing over its icon in the upper-right corner, but at other times it looked like that's an item in the R-button icon. The word "Crouch" has been spotted over that button frequently in the Nintendo Trailer. When Link is swinging, the word "Stop" appears over the R button icon. Sometimes the text appears to be cut off, and at one point we do believe it says "Sto", although this is quite likely a result of the video file's low resolution rather than a current in-game problem as IGN has reported that the game "seemed very far along and already demonstrated polish." But, then again, the Christmas season would be a fairly profitable to make a release if it's at all possible and Nintendo did say that they wouldn't be cutting the GameCube's prices before E3. |
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The worm-like creatures appear to be a welcome return of an enemy not seen since the days of the first NES Zelda game, the Lanmola. Or they might be the modern-day upgrade of Moldorms, another creature not properly represented since Zelda 1 (and really under-represented in that game too).
Many of Link's movements can be recognized from Ocarina of Time. His jumping at an enemy and slashing his sword, slashing his sword while falling/leaping, rolling sideways, and leaning into a treasure chest are clearly the same as some Ocarina of Time movements. So are the camera movements when Link fulfills the requirements to open up a door. Although Link could swing around rapidly multiple times in the Super Smash Bros. series, his ability to swing his sword around at least 10 times in a row, later sited to be at least 17 times in a row, is new. (No, we haven't seen how many years it takes to charge up for an attack like that.) And his rope swing is a new move, although it's hard to say that you couldn't have seen that one coming when the hookshot in Zelda 3 (A Link To The Past) and moreso Zelda 5 (Ocarina of Time) looked much like the bionic arm of Bionic Commando and other video game implementations of that idea including Baleog the Fierce's arm in Lost Vikings 2: Norse by Norsewest and also, of course, Nintendo's own Super Metroid.
The rope Link swings on in Nintendo's Trailer is some sort of "grappling hook" which, unlike the hookshot, was shown by IGN's video department to wrap itself around a high beam, rather than hooking onto it. It's unknown whether this rope retracts hookshot-style, but in the spirit of video game illogic we believe that Link probably doesn't lose the item when he is shown throwing the rope away. Surely you won't miss what must be the most famous video yet released of Link swinging on his rope, but you can also see this in action 42 seconds into Nintendo's Trailer.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but the great movie-advertisement-sounding voice's words could be an indication of Nintendo's plans for the storyline. The big statement that raises the question is,
The music in the trailer is similar to (and possibly is the same as) the pre-release music heard from the Ocarina of Time media released by Nintendo. That music didn't make it into Ocarina of Time's final release, which had chopped out a number of things that were shown in pre-release footage, much of which can likely be blamed on Ocarina of Time's limitations imposed by the cartridge format it was raised on. Don't be surprised one way or the other regarding whether the music from Nintendo's GameCube Zelda Trailer shows up in the final game.
"We're still hopeful we'll have it for the holiday season, but we're being conservative at this point in time. Miyamoto would kick me if I said otherwise." | ||
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NINTENDO-SPONSORED LEGITIMATE NES EMULATION!
E3 brings forth, uh, oh no... uh... possible great news!
Here is the possible great news:
"Players can download full classic NES games to the Game Boy Advance for hand-held fun on the go, and swipe trading cards through the e-Reader, which attaches to the Game Boy Advance"! (The trading cards being mentioned may be related to a game called Animal Crossing, which is what the article is mostly talking about in the section that mentions downloading NES games.)
When the last piece of Nintendo-sponsored emulation, the Super Gameboy, was released, the item provided enhacements to the games being emulated, the major one being Colorization, and some games (including a re-release of Zelda for the Super Gameboy) could feature four times as many simultaneous colors (16 colors versus the original Gameboy's 4 shades of monochrome) and borders. It is quite likely that this e-Reader will allow for some sort of copying of saved games, although that hasn't been announced. No other details are available at this time. Anyway, some people will oogle over the GameCube Zelda to no end, but since that was announced back in SpaceWorld, this device could be considered the most significant Zelda story of E3 to many oldschool gamers. (All three of the updates in this update are pretty significant, so it's really debatable.)
Note that the word "download" as used by Nintendo likely refers to copying over some sort of cable and connector included in the e-Reader box, and not downloading from the Internet.
Now, unfortunately, we need to take back this news article just as soon as we mention it. On the same minute that Nintendo released their press release containing a statement about being able to "download full classic NES games to the Game Boy Advance", they released another article about the e-Reader. This article features the e-Reader and so talks more about it. It mentions that the library of games will include "Game & Watch.-e cards, which hold an entire game printed on a single card". Being able to buy commercially-made ports of old LCD games is a far cry from being able to download NES cartridges. Worse yet, this article says, "Each card can hold up to two code strips. A long bar holds 2.2 kilobytes of information and a short bar holds 1.4 kilobytes. The memory configuration in the e-Reader is 64 Mb mask ROM and 1 Mb flash memory." The 3.6 kilobytes is nowhere near enough to store even the early NES game Zelda 1, which we estimate to be 128KB. If the "1 Mb" of RAM refers to 1 meagbyte, this would be just enough to store an uncompressed version of Dragon Warrior 4, leaving no room whatsoever for any sort of NES emulation code. However, since the "1 Mb" has a lowercase b, the more proper way to read that is to assume 1 Megabit, which is just enough memory to store an uncompressed copy of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (with no room left over for any emulation code), and would not be large enough to store, say, Super Mario Bros. 3. It seems the idea that "[p]layers can download full classic NES games to the Game Boy Advance for hand-held fun on the go", a statement made in the middle of discussing the e-Reader, is technically impossible for all but the most simple of NES games (and quite possibly those too).
We can forgive Nintendo for changing its mind about dropping the GameCube price days after saying they planned to not do that. However, making multiple conflicting statements during the same minute is... pretty bad. Once again, we're sorry for the confusion surrounding this story as we make a statement and then immediately retract it, but once again, we pass the blame onto Nintendo. Hey! Nintendo! Get your act together!
Site news: The graphics from E3 have been moved from yesterday. Since the references to those graphics were changed, including the references from previous days' updates, this shouldn't cause any problems.
This main page is now filled with pictures from E3. Some time soon After E3 is over, I expect to reduce the size of the Main Page news again so that people don't re-load all these graphics every time they check for any updates on this site.
May 20, 2002 A.D. (Update #2) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
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Zelda:LttP Multiplayer GBA Remake appears
to be in the works. The only source for this information that I've seen yet
are the screenshots you see here from
RAVE-3.com's Pre-Press Conference
update. However, since the news seems likely at this point, we're reporting
it. Hopefully we'll be hearing more about this in the next few days, such
as whether the appearance that all of the Links being shown are doing the
same thing is a way to allow 4Player Quests to be played with less than
4 Players, or if the Multiplayer aspect just really isn't implemented very
far at this point.
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May 20, 2002 A.D. (Update #1) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
CameCube Zelda: Link
rescues his sister. According to
Nintendo's
Press Release, the upcoming Zelda game is one of "four headliners arrive in brand new
adventures, exclusively on NINTENDO GAMECUBE:". The one headliner that
Planet GameCube
decided to emphasize in their re-iteration of the press release was:
"The elfin hero Link sports a brand-new look that perfectly reflects
his emotions throughout The Legend of Zelda, as he embarks on an epic
quest across land and sea to rescue his sister."
This is all the information we have at this time. We don't know anything
about Link's sister, such as whether she is a Kokiri from the Ocarina of Time
storyline or if the Link from the new GameCube Zelda game is supposed to be
thought of as an entirely different Link than the hero of Ocarina of Time and
Majora's mask. So
far, every time a new Nintendo console system featured a new game revolving
around Hyrule, official Nintendo publications have said that the Link featured
in the new game is a different Link than those from the previous games.
However, that was when there were as much as 5 years between the various Zelda
games, and some contrary statements by people at Nintendo of America that
wish Zelda 1's Link and Zelda 3's Link are the same Link suggest that the
seperate Link's theory, even if not succuessfully debunked by certain
individuals at NOA, is being less popular by certain individuals at NOA.
(Since many fans found the whole concept confusing, it may be best if future
titles try to limit the number of Links floating around.) What we do know
is that whatever section of this site covers such storyline issues looks
like it's going to be kept busy.
And for a little rumor-making of our own (NOTE: I AM COMPLETELY MAKING THIS UP), no mention has been made yet of Princess Zelda's involvement in the game. If the task is to rescue a damsel in distress which is not her, perhaps this could mean that Zelda has a chance to be a playable heroine. THIS COMPLETELY UNCONFIRMED (as of this writing) IDEA could simply be entirely untrue, but if it was true, Zelda might be someone you need to play to beat the game, or she might be an optional way to play through part or all of the entire game Resident-Evil-2-style, or perhaps we'd see the first incarnation of a simultaneous 2-Player Zelda game, which could be done in a split screen format or in a Tails-Always-Follows-Sonic-At-Least-Somewhat type of a format. (Hmm, I can remember the last time I mentioned Sonic on the main page of a Zelda site.) If this is true, the likeliness that Zelda can be Sheik may have a lot to do with whether or not the storyline Nintendo pushes wishes to suggest that we are using the same Link.
Link's adventure over the sea could take numerous forms. He could battle on
a pirate ship, or a giant turtle, or he might just jump on a raft and
automatically sail to the other side of the ocean like he did in
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. Again, we don't have any concrete details
beyond the reading of the one sentence in Nintendo's Press Release. What
we do suspect, though, is that the new GameCube Zelda game should be able
to store a much larger world than those of the Nintendo 64, likely to result
in a larger game that is able to be created much more quickly than
Ocarina of Time was.
News found when investigating a report by staff member Tril about an article
on Slashdot.
GameCube Price to Drop to $149 on
Although
rival systems are much closer in price than they used to be, this move
certainly doesn't help the competition. The Monday Morning CEO
article, titled XBox Economics, from website Red Mercury, claims that
Microsoft loses money on each XBox,
which was a planned short term situation, however the
XBox's competition has been and continues to be driving the XBox's price down
faster than predicted and so the long term situation isn't paying off like
Microsoft had been counting on. Even if this article (which should most
properly be thought of as propaganda) is true, Microsoft won't be filing for
bankruptcy anytime soon. However, it raises an interesting question as to
how, Microsoft will choose to proceed over the next few years and why they
will choose to do what they do. |
May 16, 2002 A.D. (Minor Update) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Yesterday's update had some errors that were fixed by changing yesterday's update. First, the links to CNN/Money were incorrectly credited to be Yahoo! News articles in the text describing the links. Second, a CSS Error caused the last Quotebox to have an extra small font in the credit area. Third, a spelling error was corrected. Finally, I decided on second thought that three quote boxes were not too many for one day's update, so I added some Miyamoto quotes. There are more of those on the linked-to page.
May 15, 2002 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
GC Online Announcement finally gives us a price: $34.95 for the hardware, either dial-up modems or Broadband Adapters (surely Ethernet-based which would support most Cable and DSL configurations). Monthly charges or a lack thereof can be determined by software programmers, and it looks like Nintendo doesn't plan to charge for it's games but will allow 3rd parties to if they desire. This won't be released until Fall, and CNN/Money specifically said that more details are NOT expected at the upcoming E3. No, this online gaming news isn't directly Zelda-related. In fact, Miyamoto
"Online gaming, like using violence in games, is just one method of introducing gaming to the public [...] And there are other methods that can be used."
"You can see that communication between players increases enjoyment of the game" [...] "Online is not the only type of communication, but that's the one everyone has focused on - and I think that's sad." | ||
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Sources:
Yahoo! News
IGN
Pointed out by staff member Atma
Rumors: Ocarina of Time for Gamecube: Some large websites have been posting about the rumored Ocarina of Time re-release for the Gamecube. This is a very exciting rumor, which is the most compelling type of rumor to spread. Confirmation has NOT been able to be achieved, but the news seems fairly feasible and is important enough that we need to mention it.
First of all, we'll mention what exactly is being reported, and then we'll dive into the likelihood that all this is true. Don't get your hopes uncontrollably up while reading the first part.
Reportedly, Nintendo will create a Gamecube game which will basically be an enhancement of Ocarina of Time. It will be a multi-disc set, meant to be a collectors item, which will contain the following:
"ART BOOK!! YEAH FINALLY AN ART BOOK!! no more buying cheatguides for me cuz there's FINALLY AN ART BOOOOOOOOOOOOOK!!!" |
—Chibi-Zel, in staff E-Mail |
E3: The Electronic Entertainment Expo of 2002 starts on May 22 (with a conference day on May 21 when some information may be released). Historically, I, Conrad, have been grossly unprepared for E3, usually not expecting it. And historically, E3 is often when a bunch of Zelda news comes out (only to be left without much to report on in the weeks or months afterwards). And historically, despite how unprepared I may be for E3, I spend some time making a report on it anyways.
Yes, HYLIA.Com is likely to report on E3. No, it's not likely to be ready for general launch by then, but that doesn't mean we can't report on E3. We may be able to keep up with the news, or we may be overwhelmed by it and simply fall notably behind over those few days. Check out other news sites such as IGN's sites, which are usually a great source of news and downloadable videos. We'll try to find the best quality videos released by various news sites, sort through any conflicting information as multiple news reports are generated within a few days (and possibly within 1 day) to try to figure out which news seems to be the latest and most reliable, and create a summary report of any Zelda-related information here on this site.
GameCube price to stay put
at $199 (see
CNN/Money)
despite the heavy price drops being offered by competitors Sony (reducing the
price by 1/3) and Microsoft (reported by
GameSpyDaily).
Thanks for the info goes to our staff member Tril.
Virus Alert: Yes, once
"The latest fast-spreading versions of the Klez worm have so far infected more than 7 percent of PCs worldwide, surpassing totals chalked up by previous threats such as SirCam and Nimda," | ||
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I don't write these virus alerts when I hear about a wide-scale threat. I write these E-Mails when I find that this site's visitors are being affected. If you don't want virus warnings on the main page of this site which is supposed to be about Zelda games, then do your part. Figure out if you're infected, clean your system if you are, and learn the basic techniques of preventing E-Mail viruses from infecting you so that you don't get into any such trouble in the future (even those of you who have managed to avoid troubles so far by sheer good luck).
February 8, 2002 A.D. (Minor Update) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Cartoon Re-Release on VHS: Here is some more information about the VHS tapes by Trimark due to re-release some Zelda info. A search on the Home Video sectin of Lions Gate Films (where http://www.TrimarkPictures.Com goes) shows that the running time of each tape is 60 minutes. There are three Mario cartoons listed on the Super Mario Brothers: Mario's Action Adventures tape. They are:
In the other video, Super Mario Brothers: Mario's Monster Madness, there is also a running time of 60 minutes consisting of 3 mario episodes and a Zelda episode. The Mario episodes are:
Cartoons to be re-released on DVD: The Super Mario Brothers Super Show - Mario's Greatest Movie Moments is due to be released on February 26, 2002 (the same day as the two VHS titles mentioned above and below) and, like the VHS tapes, can be pre-ordered now from Amazon.Com. According to DVDAngle (thanks to Google's Cache) the title has a running time of 120 minutes and includes Mario's Monster Madness and Mario's Action Adventures. They also say that there are 2 Zelda episodes on this tape: The Missing Link and Kiss and Tell. My guess then is that the Mario Monster Madness DVD does not contain The Moblins are Revolting or Cold Spells. DVDAngle said that Monster Madness and Action Adventures shall be "presented in full frame with DD 2.0 audio". And here's the best news of all: They call it "Super Mario Brothers: Mario's Greatest Movie Moments #1". That would indicate that there may be more releases.
Although DVDAngle says the running time is 120 minutes, the page on the producer's site says the running time is 85 minutes. It says that the DVD contains "4 complete MARIO episodes!", which is less than six. The page doesn't say which episodes those are, though: only that it includes "Super Mario Brothers: Mario's Monster Madness" and "Super Mario Brothers: Mario's Action Adventures". The DVD can't contain all the material from both of those two 60 minute VHS tapes, though, if the DVD is 85 minutes long. Lions Gate Film's page also gives no information about there being or not being any Zelda episodes. With this seeming contradiction it's easier to believe the nicer of the two stories that DVDAngle tells, particularily with the user reviews on Amazon.Com's page mentioning Zelda cartoons. (How'd those Amazon.Com reviewers get ahold of a copy already, anyway?) If DVDAngle is wrong about these details, then I wouldn't put a whole lot of hopes in their calling the DVD "#1" as if it's part of a series to come.
In case you're interested, you can quickly find all three titles (the 1 DVD and the two VHS) by searching for "Mario" on Lions Gate Films's site or "Mario Brothers" on the main page of www.amazon.com. (The quotation marks aren't needed on either site, but your typing is if you want to see a list of such titles since neither site works when I link to the results of their search pages.)
February 7, 2002 A.D. | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Cartoons to be re-released: I was looking over Amazon.Com for Zelda VHS videos. (Don't ask why I was doing this, rather than doing something far more likely to be productive for this site.) There were pages there for the old releases of Sing for the Unicorn, The Ringer, The Missing Link (which is the best video because it not only contains what is probably the best episode, but also contains The Moblins are Revolting and Cold Spells), and some unknown video they call The Legend of Zelda but give no sub-title (and they have no copies in stock). This isn't anything spectacular, but what is wonderfully great news is that I also found pages for The Super Mario Brothers Super Show - Mario's Monster Madness and The Super Mario Brothers Super Show - Mario's Action Adventures.
Here's the really interesting part about the videos: They WILL BE released! Yes, that's right, these are not OOP (out of print) videos that you're lucky to find used on eBay if you can afford a small fortune. And yes, these SMB Super Show videos do contain Zelda cartoons. Mario's Action Adventures contains Kiss and Tell, and Mario's Monster Madness contains The Missing Link. Woo-hoo!
Hmm, looks like some other sites have caught wind of this too. Ganon's Tower says a company called Trimark Pictures is releasing the videos, but they also include the seemingly inaccurate information that Zelda Power claims: that the videos are appearing on DVD. From my look on Amazon.com the movies are released on VHS only, not DVD. According to this eBay auction, the DVD versions of these videos were released some time ago by Kidmark, a company that I haven't managed to learn anything about except that they have released a number of DragonBall Z cartoons and may have gone out of business.
If we get any more details confirmed, expect to be informed.
Hyrule: The Land of Zelda (HTLOZ) is also being moved to the downed sites list. I haven't heard anything from that webmaster, though, and the site's been known to disappear and come back later.
Looks like IZC is back. I'm not surprised. So, yes, they got mentioned on the main page again. Then again, they never informed us about this, a habit which prevented us knowing about the move to Vortex Generation. (And then one of history's many "Ice"s E-Mailed me complaining that I was pretending not to notice the insults of me posted on that main page. Thing is, I didn't. :)
December 17, 2001 A.D. (Minor Update) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
SSBM Released: And as of yesterday, in my possession. A pro-XBox organization requested my comments about a recently released Ocarina-Of-Time-style XBox game, Azurik: Rise of Perathia. I found it to be a fun experience. The best part was, though, I was given compensation for my time, which combined with eBay profited me enough to buy a Game Cube, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and more money left over. Yay.
If you have any requests for particular screenshots or any sort of questions about the game, let out Letters Team know. I've written up useful hints for over 60% of the characters that I have released, for the "Stadium Home-Run Contest", a sub-game where you are given a baseball bat and try to knock a punching bag as far away as you can. For those of you new to the series who might recognize Saria's Song and the Overworld theme but not some other music fromt he Zelda-y stages, I've noticed a couple of themes from the second games in the series, back from the NES. It's good to hear the Great Palace music some more.
SSBM Tip: Obtaining Ganondorf: From the title screen press Start and then select 1-P Mode, Event Match, and beat Ganondorf when he challenges you after you beat the event labeled "Triforce Gathering". You will need to beat several other Event levels to get Triforce Gathering to show up, and you are forced to play Triforce Gathering as Link so you therefore are Link when you challenge the secret character.
Webmaster Away: I will be traveling for the next week or so. My video capture equipment is near the college I attend, which is some distance away so at the least, I won't likely be generating any screenshots until school resumes after Christmas Break.
November 7, 2001 A.D. (Minor Update) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Date Fix: Atma saw that there's 57 days left before the U.S. launch of SSBM and wrote: "Seeing as it';s November 7th, I think that "57" figure is off." Quite right. Months are weird in JavaScript: they don't work like the day of the month nor the year. Don't you wish the number would drop again that quickly again? :)
November 5, 2001 A.D. (Minor Update) | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
The Poll: The results of the latest poll were reset. The Poll software I use only supports 5 options. I tried to add support for 17 options to choose from for the latest poll, but that involved quite a bit of manual work and I messed some of it up. I fixed it, tested the options, and I believe it's working now. Since I believe almost half of the options were affected and I don't know how this may have affected the way people sent in votes once they knew about the problems (including "test votes" verifying the error), I cleared off the current results. So... if you voted on this poll before this update, hurry up and vote again and don't feel one bit guilty about doing so.
Main Page: Changed the date at the top of yesterday's updates so that it says "November 2" instead of "October 21.". Oops.
November 2, 2001 Anno Domini | by Conrad VanderWoude: |
Main Page: I trimmed down the main page of old news. The old main page with all the old news is available here. More changes listed below.
"Just a quick warning: if you haven't played Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time you may want to steer clear of this article. So if you're one of these people you better retreat to your N64 immediately and play this game. It's ridiculous that you haven't yet." | ||
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One would think
that Luigi would take some time away from his mansion to be a playable character,
but even if you add him and Jigglypuff to the mix there is still one more character
unaccounted for.
An image IGN called "Team
Polygon
turned wireframe?" shows Toad from the Mario universe. That leaves
no slots left according to our count of 19 boxes and assuming all the above-mentioned
characters are playable characters. However, it does look like Toad is being
held by a gal with long brown hair whose arm blocks her face so we can't see who
she is very well. If she is simply another costume for a Mushroom or Hyrule
Kingdom Princess, or Samus unsuited and in a dress, and if Toad isn't a playable
character but rather is used like an item, perhaps acting similar to the
non-playable Pokemon from the N64 Super
Smash Bros., that leaves one slot left for who is surely the #1 voted character
to fill that slot, Pit from Kid Icarus.
I noticed a screenshot that IGN called "Team Polygon turned wireframe?" which shows six damage percentages indicating six active characters at once. Apparently Super Smash Bros. Melee allows more characters at once than SSB for the N64, although the game is listed for 1 to 4 players so unless this game has some sort of online play that I haven't heard about then at least two of them would have to be computer-controlled. Five characters were shown in a closeup, most likely meaning one of them was knocked out. There's also a wireframed polygon with a ponytail who definitely looks too tall for a Toad-sized Kid Icarus. There were several other pictures, such as one showing hit points rather than percentages, and some more motion videos which I'll have to add as soon as I get a chance to.
Kakariko Village Square | A message board. Once considered ZHQ's official message board, people active on this board have generally considered it to be fairly independant of ZHQ. | |
Zelda Power | A large web site with lots of Zelda material. Since November, its updates have been more than 2 weeks apart and, as of this last writing, the last update was over 3 weeks ago. | |
Ganon's Tower | This webmaster approached me, and with a cursory glance through his
web site I decided it looks like a fairly decent web site. (See FAQ Answer #11 about
contacting me asking for links.) When I look through the site more, I may
give a more detailed description. I have been in contact with the webmaster and this site should be getting back up shortly. | |
IZC | The one address on this page which did not point to Vortex Generation's home for IZC has now started updating again. With, yup, you guessed it, another new E-Mail address for Ice.The last known location for IZC at Vortex Generation has disappeared (along with the rest of Vortex Gen). The one address that didn't still point to Vortex Generation has now started updating again. After all this time. And the addresses that used to point to Vortex Gen still do or are down. IZC | All of the locations I've known IZC to be hosted at, except one, are pages that redirect you so that you eventually end up at Vortex Generation's IZC. Still tickin' after all this time, Ice's Zelda Central has done a decent job of updating frequently. Most of its most recent updates have been of the editorial/small fanfic nature. |
Downed Sites
The following sites were regularily updated at one time and were among the
best sites out there. Some of them do promise a return to being a regularily-updated
site so we may want to know the old address.
ZHQ | This site wouldn't be around today if it weren't for ZHQ. ZHQ was last updated on April 5, 2001. Read Niels's latest message. Whenever we get word of ZHQ updating again, we'll post about it here. |
Hyrule: The Land of Zelda | An absolutely useless site if you don't have Flash. If you do, though, you can see a leading site filled with lots of information, much of which is real and accurate and pertains to the English versions of the games. They also cover rumors and pre-release information including information based on Japanese versions of games before the English ones come out. Worth looking around if you've got some time. If the site isn't responding for a few days, keep trying because it has been known to do that but then to come back up later. |
DekuTree.Com | The successor to the very excellent and oft-updated site TGL (The Golden Land), this site launched under the name Zlda.Com but currently is named after its current address DekuTree.Com. The webmaster and staff of the site aren't getting along well with their affiliate network, VGF.Com, who owns the Zlda.Com domain, but it will probably be at DekuTree.Com for some time. It has been a decent sized site with editorials and commentary, some of which is actually about Zelda, passing over its main page. They also have a section called Classic Zelda worth checking out if you remember the NES and want to stroll through memory lane. |
It could be that there are some other major Zelda sites that I haven't become aware of. If you think I'm missing some very prominent site, let me know. A larger "Links" section will be created after this site is really up and running good.