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.
-
Some Zelda fans have created a translation for The Legend of Zelda into
the language of Greek. Who cares, you might ask? The greeks! They can
now enjoy the greatness known as Zelda 1 in their own native tongue.
Or can they? On the same day I read of this, I also read:
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According
to Slashdot, "The law encompasses all appliances that play
games, as ludicrous this sounds, it spans from cells ph ones and
computers to gameboys and consoles." The reason for this? To
prevent gambling. The Greek government said
that "it would be very difficult to fully inspect" electronic
games to see if they might have been modified into an illegal gambling
device. April Fools! Ha Ha! Oh, wait, this
isn't April. The enactment of
law 3037/2002 actually
happened. C|Net
News.Com reports
"The law applies equally to visitors from abroad" and
someone at the Greek Embassy in London stated
"If you know these things are banned, you should not bring them in"!
The fine ranges from €5,000 to €75,000 (with a Euro being almost
exactly the same in worth as a United States Dollar, the fine is "about
$4,980 to $74,650" as quoted by C|Net News.Com).
Also, businesses may lose their business license.
- . Two
Internet cafe owners and one employee were arrested after customers were
found playing CounterStrike and (dum dum da dum) chess. They brought the
cases to court, and the law was found to be unconstitutional. You can
read about details from SEB and
BBC.
- . When I
got my DVD of
"Super Mario Brothers Super Show - Mario's Greatest Movie Moments"
which contains some Zelda cartoons, I noticed that the supplier when going
through Amazon.Com was
CD Connection.Com. So I decided
to try their web address directly and ended up buying the item straight from
them for cheaper. However, when I was later trying to find the product
from CD Connection.Com, I couldn't. I asked, and they said that the item
does not appear to be in their catalog anymore. So, I wouldn't be surprised
if ordering this item through Amazon.Com (as pointed to previously by this
site) will result in an unfulfilled order. If anybody wants to let us know
of any other locations selling this, feel free to let us know.
- going down for a
while. The list has received very very few legitimate E-Mails lately, but
has been
becoming overrun via spam. The address is still going to remain valid, but
I'm not going to automatically forward all this junk mail to all the staff
members. I can certainly forward messages to the rest of the staff using our
internal, non-public list, so don't be afraid to
write in. I'm just letting
you know the mail doesn't go straight to all of the staff members anymore
after this update, because I think it'd be honest for me not to mention
this. And the reason for all this is an uncontrolled deluge of junk
mail. I'll recreate the list at a later time, possibly placing mail filters
onto the list or making the letters submission process a web form. If I
need to keep forwarding lots of mail to the staff, it may be an incentive for
me to work on getting this done sooner, so feel free to
give Conrad more work to do.
- information
on the Gameboy Color games in the Classified Information section of the
latest magazine, Volume 160 (September 2002) which has Super Mario
Sunshite on the front cover. Pages 72 and 73 are devoted to tips for
"playing a password-linked Oracle of Seasons game", and involve
doing something in Oracle of Seasons and then switching over to Oracle of
Ages where you can get something. Most tips also involve being able to then
go back to Seasons again to get something else. Also, Nintendo power says
that next month they'll "take a look at the pssword-linked Oracle of
Ages adventure". Of course, all this will be knowledge found in the
depths of this site someday, but for those who don't want to wait, NP has
published the information.
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).
- Don't you love it when
the news this site reports gets conflicted by other news in the same update?
Well, in the case of Nintendo's quotes during E3, that was due to
studious reading of all the available information. In today's more recent
case of reporting on Greek law, it's just that the information wasn't
reported on by this site for a while and the story
developed. Reporting news has never been my strongest suit for a Zelda site,
so maybe I should just focus on what I do well at. Under this same line of
thinking, it may be some time before the E3 footage gets placed
more properly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
 |
| Link rope-swinging over... something. Something that
looks really really awful. This is from trailer Nintendo released.
|
and affect the game play. The article was a bit confusing reading so I'll
just let the people with IGN Insider access check it out for themselves.
Again, I don't know how public this information is,
nor the name of Link's sister which IGN Insider has revealed to its
subscribers. Until this information has been made more public, I don't
wish to be guilty of leaking materials that aren't public at the expense
of a legitimate company.
What I do know is that this year's E3 has had
some extremely significant details released about the Zelda series.
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.
-
(or "Netscape v7.0b") is
now available for download. (I don't know how old this news is, but I
just noticed it recently.) I spent some time working on a better
version of this website, and made more progress in one day with NS7.0b
than several days of effort with Netscape 6 months ago. I once said that
I expected this site to work fully with Netscape 6, although I now think
I may change my mind on that. I do expect to be supporting Netscape 7, though.
to the Zelda world
are in the works at E3!
Opinions on Multiplayer
"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."
"Steven says: Co-op multiplayer is superior. I want it."
(Emphasis NOT added)
|
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[URL] |
—David and Steven from Planet GameCube
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|
Straight
from the horse's mouth (and we're talking about Nintendo here, not
Epona):
"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 game appears to feature two seperate distinct modes. One is a pretty
direct port of The Legend of Zelda (3): A Link To The Past, and screenshots
show what look like the exact same graphics as the SNES game.
No word yet on whether anybody will ever see an incarnation
of Chris Houlihan in this game.
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."
|
Unlike what you would suspect, Nintendo's statement "players compete
as well as cooperate" may not refer to different game modes, but
rather what simultaneously happens. IGNCube
says "Players must work together to advance in the dungeons, but the
goal is to score the most rupees in the group. Players will have to stuff
like throw other characters across chasms to trigger switches that'll drop
the bridge to let everyone else across, or group together and push massive
rocks out of the way." This goes in line with
Planet GameCube's statement:
"To progress through the dungeons, one or two links may need
to step on buttons to open doors, or to get the "team" to other parts
of the dungeon." Item trading has also been reported.
IGN compares
the general game play to Gauntlet and Diablo.
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."
-
Screenshot from Nintendo #3
4 Links pushing on one block.
- Screenshot from Nintendo #4
Link standing outside The Sanctuary from Zelda 3.
- Screenshot from Nintendo #5
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.)
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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.
|
If
the focus is on racing for the individual rupies, though, and not puzzle
solving, the multiplayer aspect may seem more like Mario Party than
Zelda. Bosses at the end of levels are likely to go down quickly and take
few casualities with them, if they even exist, if they are repeatedly
slashed by four Links all having 10 heart containers a piece (which is what
the screenshots show). Some
thought must
be given in level design to fairness. If you look at screenshot #3 where
four links push on a block, the blue link on the top looks like he'd have
a clear advantage in a race compared to the pink Link. At some point the
four Links from that picture are likely to bump into something, such as
a puzzle requiring teamwork, that will
slow down anyone who is ahead.
|
is
Yup, even the GameCube can have polygon errors. The rope is
indeed going through Link's left foot. However, who can notice when
the video is going at full speed?
|
the bad
guy that starts off the game's quest.
Nintendo
Power Online's Page on The Legend of Zelda for the GameCube says:
"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.
Several videos have been released now. I haven't managed to even download all
of the publicly released videos, and certainly am not ready yet to give much
of a report on them. However, one noteworthy one is the trailer
released
by Nintendo.
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.
|
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,
Nintendo of America may decide to rewrite history, disconnecting the new
storyline with the traditional ones built up over the last more-than-a-decade.
Perhaps they think the old NES games and their storylines are just getting
in the way as they try to make new games and generate modern-day profits
(although their statement regarding NES compatibility provided by the e-Reader,
detailed below, contradicts that).
Or, maybe this is just a marketting slogan to get us hyped, and the storyline
actually will be tied into the two already-existing storylines created by
previous games. Or maybe the
storyline will only be tied into some of the previous storylines and
contradicting others, making a
huge mess out of the whole storyline issue. We'll just have to wait and see.
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.
More Ontime Releases
from the gaming industry
"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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|
[URL] |
&emdash;Nintendo of America's Peter MacDougall
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IGNCube
noticed that the Zelda video they saw ended with the words "Coming
Soon", rather than something like "Holiday 2002" like
Metroid Prime's video. When confronted, Nintendo of America's Peter
MacDougall stated ""It will be launched later this year in Japan. And, we're targeting for America in February."
So, apparently the words "This year" in Nintendo's trailer refer
only to the Japanese market. Whyever they do such a thing at the
located-in-America E3 instead of the located-in-Japan SpaceWorld
is beyond explanation, unless Ninendo is advertising to all those Americans
who import Japanese products. Yeah, NOA is pushing imports. That must
be what's going on. :)
E3 brings forth, great news!
Here is the 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!
- in Japan as well
as in America. The 21 2/3% decrease from 24,000 ($200)
yen down to 18,800 yen ($157) isn't quite as good as the USA's reduction of
25% from $199 to $149 that was announced two days ago and should have
taken affect yesterday.
News compliments
of IGNCube.
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.
. 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.
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on
XBox Prices Hurting MS?
|
"It appears that Microsoft is in a dangerous price war that it is
losing. But what would happen if one of their competitors suddenly combined
two of its major computer chips in to one chip, tripling the output of their
manufacturing plant? That competitor's costs would fall dramatically, and
they could drop the price of their console much faster and much lower than
Microsoft could.
"Sony has done exactly this with the Playstation 2. Two of their largest chips will now fit on to one chip.
[...] Even if Microsoft could combine the nVidia graphics chip with the Intel CPU, do you think nVidia and Intel would go for this? These chips are owned by different (competing) companies, and the chips are manufactured in different places."
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Tuesday, May 21, 2002. This price drop, announced
today one day before it happens, is what the
Nintendo
Press Release mentioning the Zelda news above was really about.
Yes, 5 days ago this site said the
price wouldn't be dropping until after E3 is over on May 24 at the
earliest, but that's because
CNN
reported that
George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing for Nintendo of America,
said that Nintendo was going to go with a
"plan to go forward with the $199 price.". Specially,
he said "We don't plan to announce a price cut," and
"We're going to see how our product is received at E3 and then assess
the market." It appears that
Nintendo has changed its mind, and we can't really help it if our predictions
of the future are off when the official sources mislead us. We're not
really complaining: We don't mind Nintendo making
these types of plan changes.
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.
Thanks to staff member Tril for noticing this mentioned on
/..
And E3 begins...
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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.
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
Virus Alert!
"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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games are quite likely to
not be becoming online anytime soon (see some of his quotes on this
topic at this
CNN/Money
link. The quotes suggest that his games won't be centered on online
play, but that doesn't mean that his titles won't ever be having any sort
of online support (such as level add-on packages or the like). Therefore, we
don't mind passing along important announcements about
Nintendo systems that may (or, as demonstrated by N64DD news, may not) affect
Zelda (or Zelda-related) games released in the future.
Sources:
Yahoo! News
IGN
Pointed out by staff member Atma
: 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:
- Disc 1
- "Zelda Director's Cut" (an enhanced
version of Ocarina of Time, possibly with some
enhancements made possibly by the Gamecube's
disc space, far more abundant than cartridge
memory which limited many N64 games including OOT)
- The unreleased dungeons from "Ura Zelda",
the expanded version of Ocarina of Time made for the
64DD addon for the N64 which was reportedly
developed and finished but never released.
- Additional unreleased dungeons which can be
played separately from the rest of the game.
- Option added for the "Classic Zelda Overworld
Theme" or for the standard N64 music.
- Option for Gamecube enhanced graphics or
original graphics.
- Artwork (likely meaning a gallery)
- Disc 2
- A "Making of" movie/video. (This likely
is a movie about the makings of Zelda, not a teaser
showing how a Zelda movie is being made. We have no
reliable word of an official Zelda movie being
released.)
- Disc 3
- Music CD of Classic Zelda music.
- A special "Limited Edition" also includes:
- Cloth map of Hyrule
- Pocket Watch (possibly a replica of Master of
Hyrule's)
| "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
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- Art book
- One of three character figures (reportedly
either Link, Ganon, or Zelda)
Now, before the supporting arguements: here's a rundown on why not to
believe any of this. (Following will be a run-down on why you may wish
to believe in this.)
- When
Games
Radar News reported on this, they made no haste mentioning that the
source of the information came from a magazine called Dengeki. This
news was then translated by the Dutch site gamers.nl. The information
would be far more likely if it came straight from Nintendo of Japan or
Nintendo of America. If Nintendo of Japan released this information, we
likely would have major news organizations providing accurate translations.
This could easily be a mistranslation of somebody's wishful thinking.
-
The pocketwatch and figurines mentioned are both items that have
been widely released to the general public (despite Target stores calling
a certain set of these figures a "Target exclusive"). What
would be included here could be a release of similar re-designed items,
a re-release of the already-created items, or Nintendo trying to unload
excess stock (or a combination of the last two). However, Zelda fans who
wanted a Pocketwatch had a chance to do so when Ocarina of Time was released
the first time around. Couldn't Nintendo come up with a more original idea
on what sort of memorabilia to include in the Gamecube re-release? These
items listed are items that the general
rumor-making public have heard about and so they know that pocketwatches
and figurines are a realistic type of memorabilia to make and even release
"early" screenshots of. Nintendo doesn't have much history of
releasing collectables with their games because the games sell very well
anyway.
-
Super Mario All Stars was an enhanced re-release of earlier games. In the
re-release, Super Mario's brick bashing was modified so that his head would
rise above the bottom of a busted brick, allowing his horizontal speed to
be greatly decreased if there was a second brick adjacent to the one being
destroyed. Such changes to the way the game operated have existed at least
as far back as the updates to the running system found in the NES
re-release of Mario Bros. (which differed fromt he arcade) to the level design
changes in the recently released Mario Bros. clone
included in Super Mario Advance 2 which differs from the NES version, the
arcade release, and the Mario Bros.-like games in Super Mario All
Stars. None of these changes were optional.
The very notion that Nintendo would create updated GameCube graphics and
then bother to also include lesser quality N64
graphics just to give people a choice to play with inferior visuals seems
extremely unlikely.
Now, reasons why this story does seem more feasible:
- Ganon's Tower reports
in their May 2002
News Section that "the UK official Nintendo magazine had an
article stating that unconfirmed reports say that a new non-cel shaded
Zelda game is in the works for Gamecube." The article in
question, as scanned on that site, says "The package is said to be
a compilation, and some sources claim that it's an updated version of
Ocarina of Time" and mentions other details that matches
this report. Why would the official UK Nintendo magazine print this if
there was no truth behind it? Either the official UK Nintendo magazine
isn't quite as solid of a source for information as the USA's Nintendo
Power (maybe, I don't know), or this is a strong suggestion that there is
at least some truth to this.
-
Nintendo's recent GBA titles that mirror Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super
Mario World indicate that Nintendo is willing to be re-releasing
classic enhanced versions of its games at this tim
The system is handheld and plugs straight into the
television (similar to the
"
