Hello from Hylia!

Last Update: October 21, 2001.

If you came here for information about viruses, please read the information from this location (soon to be moved).

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.
The Helpful Yet Lackadasical Information Archive
(If you don't like this name, vote now! :) )

Disclaimer   HYLIA.Com is an up-and-coming major website about The Legend of Zelda, run by "Conrad VanderWoude", World's Best Zelda 1 Player, former webmaster of ZHQ (which was once officially called Zelda Headquarters). HYLIA.Com is not owned by or affiliated with Nintendo. Certain terms used by the site may be copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks or similar belonging to Nintendo, Nintendo of America, or similar. The term "Hylia" comes from a video game which is Copyright by Nintendo, and is used in good faith without explicit prior permission. More information about Copyrights which may be used on this page will be added to this web site in the near future. More information about Nintendo's Copyrights may be obtained by contacting Nintendo of America at nintendo@nintendo.com.

HYLIA.Com has polls! What should the new name of the "Letters" section be? The Outbox     E-Manuscripts E-Papyrus E-Runes E-Gab WOE: Waste of E-Mail Hylian Hearsay Enfacements/E-Tablets Hylian Hieroglyphics (Hieroglyphical) Handwritings Triforce Talk Letters Answers Replies Mailbag Rhetoric Other If you select Other (or even if you don't) please E-Mail Us any other ideas you have. Disclaimer: Results of poll do not necessarily constitute section's new name as they are not the sole criteria, but you can vote for fun anyways View result without voting

Table Of Contents: What's New Pre-Launch Site FAQ Other Sites

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). Tuesdays are generally a good day for me to be able to get updates done. For more details on the update schedule, see the FAQ.

What's new

• "The Outbox" Edition #1 has been posted. Grab it now, the premier issue is sure to be an E-Collector's-Item!
• The votes are in: Be sure to vote in the new poll. You can still see the results of the old poll which is now set to read-only so no more votes can be counted. Over half of the votes were for something other than the winning entry. Congratulations to all of you who voted for what you wanted, even if you didn't think it would be the winning selection. Shame on the 9.19% percent of you (whether you were messing up the numbers or whether you actually wanted that to be this site's name, shame on thee either way.)
• Gamecube In The Mail! Unfortunately, it was flat when it arrived. Not so bad considering that it was just a cardboard case, but what was inside the case is the cool part. A mini-disc. It had some material on Super Smash Bros., including 1 movie which should be available here soon, and also a screenshot which looks to prove the speculation that people control multiple Ice Climbers. There are 5 characters including 2 Ice-climbers, and Kirby is damaging one of them. Oh boy.
• Error Pages have been made so if somebody tries to download a movie from this site during the newly restricted download times they'll be able to see a message explaining what went wrong. After dabbling a bit with PHP for the first time in my life I have made a couple 403 pages and a 404. Movies should be able to return in the near future.
• "Nasty, costly, and long" were the words used by somebody on national television as he was describing what a military campaign (as opposed to a single military strike) would be. If you're interested in video of the World Trade Center towers getting destroyed there is an archive on CNN's website. It appears to support multiple media formats. I also found a video from another site. The image shown came from MSNBC. Another image is from DeadAt32.Com. I also found some video from ABCNews which requires RealPlayer.
  
  The United States of America waited for almost a month before launching military strikes against the Taliban. That shows that we entered Afghanistan territory because we deemed such action necessary, and not just to quickly retailiate in order to vent our immediate surge of anger.
  
  I do have opinions which are Christian in nature regarding why life may be worth living, but for the rest of this article I will I will restrain myself from going into any further detail about those religious-based views at this time. Without alluding to religious ideals that often spawn arguements with no apparent end in our lifetimes, I can say the following:
  
  There is evil and unhappiness in this world. I cannot foresee the future. This whole war business could get to be extremely ugly, far worse than one pair of buildings eliminated along with the lives of several thousand people. During wartime, people may see or experience great atrocities and ask: Why is life worth living?
  
  Video games. No joke. Not for everyone, of course, but that is one answer that I can give. The answer applies to me. You see, video games produce fun. Video games make people happy. And happiness is good. That which makes people happy is worth living for, even if it means living through some unpleasant things. Our soldiers do not go to foreign lands to possibly give their lives just so we can spend the rest of our lives mourning their loss. If we are going to feel miserable anyways, there's little reason not to invite the enemy army onto our home soil so that they can give us more destruction. No, our soldiers make such huge sacrifices because they want us to be able to experience peace, so that we can be happy. Sure, it is good to remember the sacrifices our people make, but let us not make this war be the only thing in our entire lives. These people we send out to foreign lands want to know that America still exists, and that life is good in America, and that if they are successful in their missions and live through them that they can return to a land where people can be happy, where they can be happy. They want to be able to come home to a land of peace and to not have the war they fought in be on their minds while they are enjoying a life of peace. They want to return to a land where they can live and be happy. If they can't manage to do that, they at least want the people left in their country to enjoy the happiness they were hoping for.
  
  If the war gets bad, remember times of peace. Remember the good times. Only then can you see something worth living for. Only by envisioning something better than a life with war can a person really see something worth dying for.
  
  War is ugly. We should not pretend otherwise. We should not be glad a war exists when we are winning just because it makes us feel like winners. It would be better to not have war, for it to stop right now, than to inflict unhappiness on the enemy side. Don't be excited because of how great a war is going. If a war is going, it's not going great.
  
  I'd rather keep this war off of the main page. I do read news of the war on the Internet, and I find it important. However, I don't know if I could do a good job being a real news source about the war, I don't want to get involved in some war-related controversy with the online Zelda community, and I'd rather not have bin Ladendorf's handywork be affecting this part of my life. There's a time to think of war, but there's also a time to be able to think about something else, and I'd rather not let the war intrude into my life so much that I can't ever have any enjoyment.
  
  I brought this up on September 11 because I thought it was a big deal. I honestly didn't know at the time who bin Laden was nor that an organization as big as the al Qaeda was behind the attack. On September 11, I wasn't expecting such a response so much greater than the Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh. I thought these attacks were a big enough issue that people around the nation should be remembering the September 11 nightly news story, and so I felt it was worthy to put on the page of my site. I didn't know that a month later there would be a war that developed out of that day's attacks. I brought this up today because I believe on September 11 I said something about looking for online videos, and some people might have been expecting them in this update. I want to bring this topic up and get it over with so it gets off these pages.
  
  I'm not saying that the war isn't worthy enough to be mentioned on my pages. What I am saying is that the ability to experience joy is more worthy. This site is supposed to be about video games. Video games are supposed to be about fun, and I think fun is worthy. And I think that thinking about fun can get to be a bit incompatible with thinking about a real-life war or real life tragedies where people die.
  
  I'm not making any promises that through the entire course of the rest of this war that it will never ever be mentioned again. I do think, though, that people can find news about the war from other sources. Better sources, even. Even better sources that are web sites. Other web sites can do that. What they can't do, though, is to entertain people about Zelda.
  
  In a war between good and evil, between peace in one's heart versus terror, between news of the Middle East and a time to relax from the pressures of the world, I choose to focus on Zelda. I choose to entertain, so that people know what fun is. I choose to hope my visitors can experience happiness. I choose to do what I can do so that the older people can see youngsters happy, and so they can have faith that there is yet good in this world. I choose to do what I can to help young people experience first hand the pleasures of life so that later in life these people can value happiness by relating to good times in their own life. I choose to focus on joy, so that if a person needs to ask if there is still good left in this world that is worth struggling for, that the answer will be yes.
  
  Yes, video games are worthy. And this site is about video games.

• Nothin' much new... just updated the article below to be a bit clearer. Removed request for video footage about yesterday's events as I've found a decent one now. Turns out that the media isn't very organized figuring out just what footage is available: I've seen on TV a video of the first plane crashing into one of a pair of non-damaged towers yet another station later said no such video is known to exist. I also saw a number of stations show a rather poor view of the second plane hit for a long time after the first showing of a better, now-more-popular view.

What's new

• 911 on 9-11: On the eleventh day of the ninth month, the date which Americans write out as "9-11", New York City's 911 department had reason to receive numerous calls. In polls, 9 out of 10 Americans view the skyscraper-leveling attacks as an act of war, and on television I saw, in nations which consider the U.S.A. an enemy, people celebrating a victory against the enemy.
  
  In the minds of the professionals of national security, we have been "at war with terror" for years. Most fiction I've seen suggest that if, or perhaps the appropriate word is "when", an attack on the United States would occur then chemical weaponry would be far more devestating in terms of lives lost. A couple of airplanes taking out a couple of skyscrapers made for some adreniline-creating video and got the nation talking. However, if the crashes were done for their spectacular value, to get attention, it makes little sense for the official representatives of the most likely suspect to totally deny any involvement in the attacks (rather than making demands or any other such things).
  
  In World War II, millions died. Many Americans see the explosions and are eager to use our powerful military to return a bloody nose to who did this to us, and would be for the idea of using military force to attack another nation if it helped us get revenge. However, this is not a battle about the United States versus some other nation. We clearly have plenty of military strength to hurt any of our enemies a great deal. This is a battle of good versus evil. The politicians of this country I live in have called this an attack against Freedom.

  "We are at war with Terror."

  "The President of the United States", a character from the movie "The Rock" from 1996

  History will not honor our nation for revenge-fueled bloodshed. In the midst of this tragedy, we'd best respond to evil not with lesser evil but with evil's most devestating enemy: Good. Tonight I attended a special church service in response to these actions, and I there prayed. When I see video of a Palestinean burning an American flag where other citizens are cheering and giving away and enjoying party food in the streets of their country celebrating a victory against their enemies, The United States of America, I have no desire to hurt these people. I view them as people with incorrect beliefs, but just because they are so confused about what America is doesn't mean I wish those people to suffer as they would wish me to. My biggest hope for these people would be that some of them could experience divine intervention and see the evils of such malicious ways.
  
  Whether or not you have any religious beliefs so that you can honor President George W. Bush's request that our people pray, it should be clear that the fire fighters who perished in New York City died doing good, and any unnecessary counter-attacks seeking revenge comitted by the USA is at best justified if that. Let us honor those who have put for efforts to ease suffering, rather than happily dream of ways to cause more suffering just so we can feel happy that we were able to create some ourselves. When fighting the evils which attacked us, if we wish to appear to be the honorable side of good, then let us be good and honorable, rather than only being justified.
  
  I'm not trying to condemn President Bush's statements of pursuing those who were directly involved in this attack. To completely ignore such an attack would be an open invitation for future similar acts. We must, though, limit our response to justice against those who hurt us, and must be careful not to hurt foreign innocents just because some of our civilians were attacked, and during the entire time of our response it must be to seek out nothing more than justice and other actions designed to help ensure our future safety.
  
  Some Americans are in a fit of rage and because of that rage they would be willing to be an aggressor. I think the American conscience has some humanitarian qualities about it and if we do go overboard I think we will self-judge ourselves later on to have erred. However, morals are often set aside when people are angry. We do have a right to be angry, but we don't have a right to ignore morals. We must be careful to keep our tempers in check and make sure that anyone whom we give a bloody nose is being given that bloody nose because it's necessary, and not just because we wanna give someone a bloody nose back. In practice the bloody nose may be given for either reason and real motivations can probably be manipulated and arguements given why one set of reasoning is being used when really it's the other. As individuals, though, we can keep in check our own desires. Until the rage passes, be careful about accidentally being a bit too malicious.
  
  Even if you aren't President of the United States of America, Commander-in-Chief of a world superpower's military force... even if you're young and haven't attended high school yet, any human being who reads this is a person with ideas, judgements, and moral capabilities to think about what is right and wrong. Use this tragedy to improve yourself: Think about what you've done, said, or even thought which is rather attackative to another human being instead of helpful and beneficial to that person. Be good. Even at your age you can think about what kinds of alignment you want to have.

• I will not delute this message by mentioning, at this time, non-critical updates on what's been happening with this site. I'm guessing you didn't just go straight from a news site like ABCNEWS.COM or CNN.COM to this site. You were probably looking for a way to entertain yourself, which means you have a bit of time.

• SpaceWorld 2001: I got some E-Mail today from Nintendo reviewing Spaceworld that occured "August 24-26". Today's August 26th. Augh!

  Miyamoto actually promised that Zelda would be out by Christams 2002 and made sure to make himself clear on that matter[.]

  --IGNCube

  Check out the article I found on the matter which contains the "First Legend of Zelda [For Gamecube] Footage", and search the rest of IGN and other news sites.

• Site Update: Right now I'm visiting family, on a vacation half of the sea-to-shining-sea country away from home. I won't be back home for several days yet, so won't even be able to download the movies and check them out for myself for a few days. I've discussed the situation of putting movies on HYLIA.Com with system administrators and it's been decided that out of respect to bandwidth considerations faced by other customers, we will be able to be hosting movies again in the near future but only with a special download script which will limit the movies to being downloaded during certain hours of the day-- non-business hours if I remember correctly. You can expect that information to appear soon.

• Minor Update: Added a link to the top of the page to anti-virus info on this page. SirCam and it's variants is clearly being a plague. I've been sent well over 50 copies of the virus in the last month in multiple languages, some clearly from people who have visited this page. On my vacation I tried to empty the recycle bin of a family member's computer and found this virus was running on (and therefore prompted me with an error that it could not be deleted from the recycle bin of) the computer I was trying to fix. I removed the virus on a family member's computer by following manual removal instructions from McAfee, although I didn't see anywhere in that document where it mentioned SirCam's 4th method of infecting (which is supposedly done only one in every 33 times) as described on F-Secure's page on SirCam.

July 23, 2001 (Minor Site News Update)

by Conrad VanderWoude:

• Update on Virus Alert info posted below: Although every copy of the file, called W32/SirCam@MM, used the text I showed, it apparently can use alternate similar phrases like:
  I send you this file in order to have your advice
  The rest of the message other than the middle line, I think, are constant. You can read about it yourself at McAffee's Page on the virus. Also, the W95.Hybris.gen/Snowhite/SexyFun.Net virus has a page about it here and at http://www.sexyfun.net/ (the site that the E-Mails false appear to come from). Both of these viruses are not English-only; that is, there are versions of these viruses in other languages.

• Virus Alert: I don't intend to make this site a commonly-used anti-virus site. The site is supposed to be about Zelda games, not figuring out how to keep your computer working. However, in the last 4 days I've received 3 copies of a certain E-Mail which I believe is an "E-Mail virus", which would make this the heaviest-distributed virus I've personally encountered to date. One of the 3 different people that has E-Mailed it, each to a different address of mine, was the webmaster of a large Zelda site. The E-Mail may come from someone you know, and I'm guessing the subject is simply some random subject used by the person who (probably accidentally) sent you the virus. The contents of the message are as follows:

  Hi! How are you? I send you this file in order to have your advice. See you later. Thanks

  If you have Windows show all its extentions, the file will be double-extentioned, so if the subject of the E-Mail you receive is "Finding a key", the file attached might be called "Finding a key.doc.pif". Since most people have the final extention hidden by Windows, you may think it's a Word Document file ending with the .DOC extention.

  I have no idea what this virus does. I've been unable to look at it because it seems like every copy I have is corrupted and unsavable (and unrunnable) by my E-Mail program, but since it appears to be spreading I guess it can be opened with some popular program out there. My quick attempt to find out information about it on the search engines failed, and if today wasn't my first day of work I would have spent more time on this but I don't have the time. So if you see an E-Mail that says what's quoted above, don't open or run any attached "documents" or files. If you've found that you're infected, realize that these programs commonly E-Mail people in your address book and/or anyone who has sent you E-Mail recently and/or anyone whom you've recently sent E-Mail to, and they do it automatically without your knowledge. These things can be nasty. If you receive it, definitely E-Mail a reply back to the sender and tell them what you got from them. When I find more information about this file, like who it tends to E-Mail so you know who you may have infected so you know who you should inform if you've been infected, I'll post that info on this page.

  While I'm on the subject let me say that Snowhite is making another round. If you receive E-Mail about "Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs" (yes, I realize the misspelling of her name), that's also a virus which is quite nasty: If you're connected to the Internet it can automatically download new updated versions of the virus so it has unlimited damage potential. Avoid that common one.

  And now, I'll post yesterday's update since I failed to get it up on the site.

• Pre-Launch Site Status: SSB-Melee Page: The Pre-Super Smash Bros. Melee, Quicktime movies have been temporarily removed from this site. Though the issue is currently being discussed, it is currently the opinion of the system administrators that the bandwidth from these movies is too much. Part of the dicussions suggest that we may make the movies available to download at only certain times (namely, not during 7am and 6pm on weekdays), but they are temporarily inaccessible from this site. Just download them from their original source which is linked to on my page for all of the better, larger movies. It has long been my intention to eventually use a different webhost and I expect the IGN movies will return by the time that happens if not before. I will announce when they returned, but in the meantime avoid clicking the "downloadable from this site" links. I will remove the bad links when I work on the page more, splitting it up into multiple pages and more fully creating screenshots from multiple movies.
• Pre-Launch Site Status: SSB-Melee Page: Just a note that screenshots are up, and do work. If you find that many of the screenshots, particularily those towards the bottom of the page, appear to be bad links, it's most likely because of your dial-up bandwidth. There are a number of pictures, and by the time you finish downloading the first pictures, your browser has decided time has run out for the later pictures and given up on the file transfer. In Microsoft Internet Explorer you can right-click on one of the bad images and select "Show Picture", or you can go to another page (perhaps by using the back button) and then use the back/forward buttons as appropriate to return to the page and the web browser should be able to load all the earlier images instantly and will re-attempt downloading the later pictures. When I split up the pages into multiple parts, this will be less of an issue (hopefully about non-existant).

• Conrad is NOT dead! (Excuse me for the belated parody of dekutree.com. Woulda been better if I did it two weeks ago. I <make believe mode>promise</make believe mode> not to do any more parodies of dekutree.com or Ganon's Tower (who recently posted news of their third anniversary) for the rest of this update. (Don't believe everything in this paragraph.)
• Post-E³ Partial-Roundup: I simply could not finish the post-E³ round-up for this update. I might have been able to do so if I didn't download multiple extra movies, and if I didn't lose some work during the process. However, you can see what partial work I've accomplished from the "Pre-Super Smash Bros. Melee Page". I believe there's only one screenshot on that page which I didn't manually extract (copy, past, save, convert, and rename) from the downloaded-from-internet movies. A lot of them I did twice after having stupidly deleted some as I mentioned in an earlier update. Some of the movies mentioned on that page but not linked to may be downloadable straight from the directory where the movies are stored. The page may also be a bit big to download with the large number of graphics and table data on a single page, which may cause problems on some browsers (even though it shouldn't). I'll be trying to clean all that up as soon as possible.
  
  The biggest Zelda-based news other than Super Smash Bros. Melee to come out of E³ is that Nintendo appears to have plans for Zelda during Spaceworld of this year. I'll try to get the exact quote, as well as finish all the important E³ stuff that we haven't covered, posted in the next few updates.
• Scrolls: News: We have some long-awaited news on a theatre movie... uh, kinda. Perhaps this isn't exactly the news you've all been waiting for, but it will have to suffice for now. Read Chibi-Zel's Movie Review for all the details.
• Site Status: Over the past month, development on this site has been virtually at a standstill. This is entirely my (Conrad's) fault. Yes, I do have some staff members, but they know that there are requirements about the format that pages are made, and that if their work doesn't meet the requirements then it won't be able to be posted until it's modified to fit the rules. The real problem is, though, that they don't know what the rules are yet because I haven't finished the site format.
  
  This site won't be updated for at least another week either, because by the time you read this, I will already have left for Disneyland. I didn't have time to post the update before I left on my trip, so I put it on a CD and gave it to one of our newer staff members so he could post this.
  
  The staff member being spoken of is Tril. He has helped with ZHQ behind the scenes almost as long as I have, by running the computer system which the ZHQ mailing lists worked on. He still does that today, and the computer now also hosts not only the HYLIA.Com mailing lists but also, at least for right now, the HYLIA.Com site. Because of all this he was considered a friend of the staff for some time but he officially became considered a part of the HYLIA.Com staff when he volunteered to help work on the site by making it more accessible to more browsers. (Of course, first he needs to have a site to make accessible, and so he's totally waiting on me to start his work.) He's not even a huge Zelda nut, but he's a friend with the World's Best Zelda 1 Player and is willing to help us out every now and then, so be sure to be extra appreciative whenever you see his name come up :)
  
  It looks very much like I will become an assistant manager of a pizza place when I return from my trip, and will be making more moolah than when I was the manager of a video arcade. There's also a decent possibility that I will be accepted to a paid computer job. This is actually good news for the site because once that's in place, I may be able to get myself into a routine including work on this site without feeling guilty that I'm not spending my time trying to find a paid job since I should be earning some money until I get back to school.
  
  Just yesterday I obtained both of the new Gameboy Color games. I now own all the legally-produced Zelda games out there except for the Super Gameboy-enhanced version of Link's Awakening (which I've been completely unable to find in my area). Hopefully my plane trip to California will be severely delayed...
  
  At least for the rest of this week...
• Please click our advertising banners every time you visit the site.

• Yes, this site is alive, and yes, I've been working on it. I delved into schoolwork only to not finish as early as expected because the work took longer to work until expected. Here's some of the latest site-related news:
• Pre-launch: I've spent quite a bit of time analyzing videos and so forth. My compilation of E3 information was rather hindered when I saw I had BMP's (a way of storing graphics) and PNG's (another way of storing graphics) of the same stuff and so reacted. I started to DEL *.BMP, then decided to be safe and DIR *.PNG to *make sure* they're still there, and I ended up mixing the commands in such a way that I DEL(eted) all the PNG's, including the majority of them which did not have a *.BMP backup of them. This in a school-run Windows NT machine where I did not have Administrator-level permissions, and so I wasn't successful in undeleting them.
  
  This was rather disturbing. I had a backup on the internet of many of those graphics, and can re-create the other graphics fairly quickly (since, fortunately, I decided to publicly record where in each movie each graphic came from), though it may be a couple of weeks before I finish doing that (because I've found that working on these movies takes some time, and I do feel school is a higher priority.)
• Post-launch: I've decided that this site is too silent for my likings, so when I haven't been working on the Pre-launch site on the high-bandwidth computers at school, I've been working on background sound support. When that worked satisfactory in NS4 and IE, I also worked on adding foreground support. I've had no luck with NS6, which could be due to a lack of my understanding but could also very likely be due to limited support for full <OBJECT> support by this relatively new browser, or my anguish could be solely the fault of the plugins I've used which don't yet support the new browser. I'm not very sure.
  
  From a JavaScript perspective, there's great differences between the <BGSOUND> and <EMBED> tags. <BGSOUND> is much easier to deal with and offers an easy way to change the background music or to stop it. <EMBED> is a non-proprietary solution which, when the right plugins are being used, offers more power and greater flexibility. I had been using <BGSOUND> (the easy route) for the IE-side of things, but am going to be recoding some stuff, and ideally will probably support both to support the best flexibility that your browser can handle. Eventually I'm sure <OBJECT>s will be supported.
  
  To re-iterate in case you haven't read the FAQ, you needn't worry about hearing that I've been working on background music: it will be easy to turn the music OFF and to save that preference in a cookie.
• I've noticed a surprising number of people reaching this site with WebTV, 29% more people than those who appear to be using Opera. (Of Opera users, all Opera users I've detected were using Opera version 5.x, the latest version. It's possible that users of earlier versions are looking like they're Netscape or something.) This, despite the fact that I've said that Opera will probably be supported by the site but WebTV wouldn't.
  
  Well, good news for WebTV users. I, without trying, found a program published by the WebTV guys that can make my computer act like a WebTV and display my site like a WebTV. (This is an unquestionably fully-legal emulator released by the Copyright holders.) I also found some necessary information on how to make the post-launch version of this site WebTV-compatible, and though I haven't investigated this information thoroughly I believe that I can make the entire site easily accessible to you (almost or even just as easy as for people using the latest versions of Internet Explorer or Netscape (4 or 6)), and so assuming that I can, I will make this site viewable to you people. In doing so, I think I'll also be making the site easier to see by users of Internet Explorer 3.x (which make up less than 0.0013 of all Internet Explorer users). I don't know if this will be implemented pre-launch or post, but I should get around to it soon after launch if not before. Launching earlier for users of Internet Explorer is the higher priority right now but maybe I'll feel like a diversion some day sooner than launch and and work on it, similar to why I began work on sound support.
  
  The Site FAQ will have the apprpriate question updated in the next real update.
• Conclusion: So, as you can see, the site's not been abandoned even though the site has now gone through it's longest period of not being publicly updated ever since I started trying to keep it up to date (since ZHQ announced its presense on the Internet). Despite that fact, we're receiving more visitors than when the site first began regularily updating and already it looks like June is on track to beat out May... (especially since it has 5 weekends instead of 4, plus Summer Vacation for students). It could easily be yet another week or two before I get the E³ info ready for posting.
  
  When school is out, I'm going to need to find a job for the summer. Once I do, I'll have a much better idea just how available I'll be to work on the site.
• Miscellaneous: One of the site's staff, a well-known ZHQ staff member, has reported today that he beat Majora's Mask. I know at least two others have not. That's at least three, and there's more Zelda games released too. If you bought the game when it was first released and feel pathetic for having not beat the thing by now, take comfort that you're not alone.
• This page is getting fairly long. I'll probably be moving the older site history to another page sometime in the next few updates.

• I've obtained an 11MB version of the file posted yesterday. It's just over 1 minute 45 seconds, and does not have an IGN logo or URL covering up any of the screen. The one posted yesterday, only 6MB but also only 56 seconds, has been renamed.
  
  If you have the old version, be sure to delete it before trying to download the new ersion. Do not resume! They are different movies (one without the logo), and if you resume, QuickTime will only play the first Additionally, to relieve stress from both visitors to this site and also IGN's servers, I've posted the following movies on this site:
  • 4 minute video from e3.nintendo.com, shows some Super Smash Bros. footage including some action by Sheik. I plan to post screenshots later. It also shows some of the fight between Link and Ganondorf shown at the last Spaceworld (so, yes, that's old footage). Looks like Mario has a Spin Attack, using his cape, like he did in Super Mario World (for the 16-bit Super NES system).
  • From http://cube.ign.com/news/34742.html come multiple videos. The titles in quotes are how IGN describes them, so you can try avoiding re-download of the same ones.
    • "Direct Feed". 10 second video, I saw Link twice and he did use the hookshot. Screenshot of that coming soon.
    • "Duking it out on the F-Zero track". 19 seconds. Tape only shows part of the screen, so if it looks like the screen is doing a poor job focusing on all of the characters at once, that could be why. (Notice the timer, likely centered at the top of the screen, moves around in this video and often isn't even shown.) Link does fairly well in a 4 player fight. His spin attack is seen. 2 screenshots from this coming later.
    • "Dodge those cars or die". 12 seconds, tape only shows part of the screen same as the previous one. Our poor, no, unfortunate rather, hero gets egged, rich, and then beaten. He doesn't do notably worse than the others, though. Hmm, what are the coins for?
• More news as soon as I have more time to post it.

• Site News: Please don't download the movie from us unless you're quite desperate. IGN's page says it's 6000K and I ended up downloading just about that much, but the movie does seem a bit cut-off. I tried re-downloading it today at school, and it appeared to be 11.1MB downloading. I only got about 2MB of it before the download appeared to be successful, and QuickTime did play the partial movie just fine up to the point where it was cut off. I'm not sure why the download didn't get reported as a failure: Maybe IGN's servers reported the transfer was done.
  
  I'm attempting to re-download the file now, although I've got multiple hours left for this on-campus-lab high-speed-connection download. I'll upload the entire large file in the same place as the old one as soon as I get it. Check just below this news item, which is where I'll add the news that I've updated the file, when I did.
  
  I'll be updating later today (or, more accurately, before 7:30am tomorrow... I'm not sure exactly when), adding what movies I find with new Zelda-related footage so you can download them from this site.
• E³ News: GameCube's launch dates are November 5th in the US and September 14 in Japan. I think the Japanese release date has been known for some time, but not the US date. A little off-topic, Microsoft's XBox is scheduled for releasae on November 8. Thanks to Kris Smith. IGNCube reports all this and also says that price information and how many systems will be available should be discussed at "the upcoming Japanese financial briefing". (This probably ought to have been in yesterday's news.)
• I've completed the update that I said I'd insert here below the news item just above this one. For further details, look further up. See what's new for May 17, 2001 Update #3.

• The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E³)'s web site lists dates for the Exposition to be May 17 to May 19. However, it lists Conferences to go from May 16 to May 18, so even though some sites might still claim it's Pre-E³, E³-style news is starting to crop up today.
• E³ News: Super Smash Bros. Melee announced. This game not only features Link (unsurprisingly), but also Sheik. Many other characters including all the ones from the N64 game are there, including the Ice Climbers. (Why? They've only been in one game I know of and though the arcade version of it was cool, the home version for the NES was disappointing the day I got it. I can't imagine them being considered some of Nintendo's greatest stars. Does this mean a new Ice Climber is planned to come out?) IGN has been it's usual good self to us showing us a video, which can be downloaded from cube.ign.com. This 6MB video, which appears to be from the Intro sequence, is about 1 minute long, shows characters from the Zelda games 3 different times for about 15 seconds of the minute-long video.

  IGN is slooow.

  --Papakapp, May 16, 2001 (One day before E3 when info began to be spread)

  IGN, the creator of these videos, generally gets information posted before we do and serves many more people than we do serving more interests than just this web site's focus, may get a bit bogged down during E³. Therefore, I've made it possible to download it directly from us. (These files are in a temporary location and will be moved someday.)

• E³ News: E³.Nintendo.Com has some screenshots of the above game in action, and some more stuff I haven't fully checked out. They will probably post some stuff which'll be able to be found at that site before any other. You can check the site out at http://e3.nintendo.com/. Thanks to DekuTree.Com/Zlda.Com for sharing those resources which is how I found out about the site. Also, if you've noticed DekuTree.Com being down a bit lately, check them about again because the main page is dedicated to E³ stuff and they look geared up to be a good E³ source.
• E³ News: New GameCube-compatible DVD-compatible system announced. Made by Matsushita (Panasonic) with Nintendo's approval, this system was speculated on but only confirmed now. Scheduled for release in Japan, and no announcements made about elsewhere. Looks to me like it's a bit taller, but still fairly cube-shaped. It also looks like it loads GameCube Disks and DVD's through a tray-loading mechanism (like a computer CD-ROM drive), while Nintendo's looks like disks are inserted at the top (like a Playstation). You can see a picture of it at cube.ign.com.
• E³ News: Zelda for the GameCube will come in a DVD case. (Actually, I'm just assuming that since IGNcube reports that games for the system will come in those cases. Nothing about Zelda specifically was mentioned.)
• Help Request: See, just because I didn't say when I'd be able to update didn't mean that I wouldn't. If you'd like to help point out Zelda news, E-Mail me at HyliaComE3News2001@toogam.dhs.org. A lot of news related to video games will be reported over the next week. I'll try to check out IGNCube and some of the Zelda sites listed at my table of links at the bottom of the page, but I know sometimes other sites (like Gamespot or GIA) report news or even release videos, so if you notice anything anywhere then send the URL's on in.
• Site Status: Thought I'd let you know about the site status. I'd like to keep this thing up to date on E³ News while it happens. Other than that, my own development on the site is on hold and likely will be for a short while so I can focus on school. I've been given enough information that I can race ahead in one of my classes, my JavaScript class, and should be able to finish that class up completely, except for the final exam. Therefore my time to dedicate to the web and web-based programming will be focused on the school assignments for a little while until that stuff is done. Then the rest of the school session I'll have one less class to be taking up my time.

• Site FAQ updated:
  • Question #13: What's Going On With ZHQ now has a detailed answer.
  • Questions 11 through 13 re-added (as well as the old answers for Questions #11 and #12). When I updated Question #5 last time, I updated an old version of the FAQ and accidentally removed questions #11 through #13.
• Main Page Also fixed the main page. Somehow I chopped off some of the tags at the beginning of the page, including <HTML>, <HEAD>, </HEAD>, <BODY>, and the reference to CSS data. Chibi-Zel's quote looks right again.
• E³ News:
  • Looks like E³ is this week and certainly some will be wondering how HYLIA.Com will or will not participate. HYLIA.Com will be watching E³ from the Internet and will be capturing at least as many details as is needed so that we can have a record of any developments that were shown at E³. The site will have a page (which has been minimally started) for expositions like E³ (notably also including SpaceWorld) so that we can be a record of what Zelda-related developments were made at the conventions. For this year, during the pre-launch period, I'm not sure what the time-frame will be to organize and post such information: The more information that comes, the longer it may likely take. However, I certainly intend to document enough to someday be an excellent source on Pre-Release information of the GameCube Zelda, much like what ZHQ has been for Pre-Release Ocarina of Time both before and after its release. Since there is so little information about a GameCube Zelda to date, HYLIA.Com should be able to fully document all the pre-release news. So, there shouldn't be much question on if HYLIA.Com will cover whatever Zelda-releated developments surface at E³. Sure we will. However, how quickly remains to be seen.
    
    According to a recent review of all GameCube Zelda material by IGN, "Unfortunately, all we have to go on right now is a brief demo." It would appear that if you've seen the video from Spaceworld 2000, you've seen everything out to date. I intend to include that in Hylia.Com's section on the GameCube Zelda Pre-Release Info, and apparently that's all that's been released to date that I'll need to include. If you want to be all caught up, just read the recent article just mentioned, and download the movie. (The screenshots come straight from the movie.)
    
    If you see some notable news, I hereby risk being bombarded with loads of E-Mail pointing to the same resources by saying that you can E-Mail me at HyliaComE3News2001@toogam.dhs.org.
  • Playable Zelda on the GameCube? Rumor is already spreading that GameCube Zelda will be playable at E³. I first saw this at Ganon's Tower. However, don't take it as fact, just yet. HYLIA.Com staff member Kris Smith (of ZHQ fame) said he viewed the source of the source of the article I read and didn't remember any such thing, so I decided to spend some time digging through the facts. Ganon's Tower clearly credits nintendojo. Their recent article "Luigi's Mansion, WaveRace, and More..." says (with some added text formatting inserted by me), "At E3, all of the aforementioned games, including Zelda, according to Time, will be playable at the expo.[...] Click here for the original Time.com article." Yet if you look at the original Time article, the only thing it says about Zelda is when it says "Luigi's Mansion is one of several new works from Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong and an inductee of the game designers' Hall of Fame." Shame on nintendojo. The fact that the creator of Luigi's Mansion also created the Zelda series is quite a different statement than "Zelda Playable at E3!".
    
    IGN reports that USA Today lists 36 Gamecube games. IGN makes a point to say that USA Today offers "[n]o specifics, however, were mentioned as to how many of the three-dozen GC offerings would in fact be playable." Sounds like IGN doesn't have any other information to-date, and I generally consider the people at IGN to be rather up to date.
    
    So, who's to blame? Ganon's Tower pretty much took their facts from nintendojo without screwing them up any further, and Time Magazine didn't say anything inaccurate or even misleading so there is little to no fault of those two sites. Looks to me like nintendojo is at fault for making up some "facts". Shame on them.
    
    We don't know at the moment if there will be a playable Zelda, but I can make some guesses. On one hand, it seems unlikely that a playable version of Game Cube Zelda would be ready so soon after it's original announcement. Zelda games tend to take quite a while to make, and pushbacks on the release date of a Zelda game unfortunately aren't terribly uncommon. Zelda is also listed under IGN's GameCube Release Dates as "TBA" when other Gamecube games are listed as "TBA 2001". On the other hand, Nintendo has been notably quiet about a lot of Gamecube development, and the system is supposedly due to launch very soon. Although it's highly unlikely that there will be levels to explore and a myriad of items to use, a demo of the swordplay may not be entirely out of the question. Even if we don't see anything playable, a video just about Zelda is quite likely.
  • GameCube's Logo shown. IGN shows it, and points out the C inside the G. I'm surprised at the similarities between the basic design of this logo and the Dreamcast's logo (a spiral).

• New Zelda games arriving very shortly. I've seen a couple of different dates mentioned. A quick look at ebworld.com (now renamed to ebgames.com I see) lists the games (look for Zelda Oracle) to ship on May 14. That's less than two weeks away. Some discussion on KVS came up a while ago about which game to get (first, if you can only afford one right now. Of course the best long term solution is to get them both, as well as every other Zelda game out there :)
• Corrected my habits of dates. Anybody else notice that all the dates in this section listing when this site was last updated, were wrong?
• Another Auction Watch of something worth seeing: Zelda 1 again, this time selling for even more than last time. Quite an interesting price it went for, considering money and this game. When I look at this, and think of the many copies I've seen selling for new at KayBee Toys for $9.99 a while ago, I gotta question my decision I've been scouring eBay. Of course, those were later boxes saying "The Classic", probably including grey cartridges, but still...
  
  I've stated since the very first public statements of this site that "[a] totally new merchandise section is expected". I've been spending a bit of time recording some of the things going on at eBay, starting now (not later) since what may be selling now might not be sold again a few months from now. This should take less time in the future after I've got a lot of the more common items cataloged.
• Another staff member revealed. A demonstration of this person's work is posted. I think chances are good that most visitors of this site can recognize this person's work (the new image is accessable via this link, careful not to look to see the name/location of the file when you click on it) even before visiting the Page saying who made it.
• Site FAQ updated. No, I didn't include the expected update to the FAQ that I hinted at last time I wrote on this page. I updated Question #5. Netscape 6 will be supported. A couple of months ago I would have suggested it wasn't going to be. A couple of weeks ago I said it might. Now I say something yet different: I expect that yes, it will. Also, I expect that Opera, Konquerer, Gecko-based browsers including Mozilla, and other browsers, specifically all W3C-standards-compliant browsers, will likely be supported at launch as they will require very minimal extra work (most likely none whatsoever). People using the Dreamcast Web Browser will still likely need to wait a bit longer. Further details about non-JavaScript clients has also been added.
• A note about the frequency of the updates of this site: I've stated that I would try to update the site about once a week. It's been 10 days since the site's been updated. I'ven't been ignoring the site, but rather I've been spending quite a bit of time on the post-launch site. Actually, I believe that updating the site faithfully once a week may be quite difficult if I need to keep up both pre- and post-launch versions of the site, and post-launch is definitely more important. (So far, this pre-launch site isn't much to brag about.) Don't get discouraged if the pre-launch doesn't have large and frequent updates. Even if the updates become a bit less frequent, do be sure to check back once in a while. Not only will site site have status reports, but I also expect it'll be my primary means of recruiting staff that will be seen post-launch as well. Also, this will be the first place that announces when launch occurs, once that's figured out.

April 25, 2000

by Conrad VanderWoude:

• Auction Watch: How much would you pay for your very own copy of The Legend of Zelda? That's a cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System (8-bit NES) that I'm talking about.

  What if the copy was reported to be brand new, in its original box which has never been opened before? I suppose that means this would qualify as being "mint condition".

  Would you pay this much for it?

• Staff Artwork: Yes, HYLIA.Com is made up of more recognized ZHQ Staff Members than Conrad. Have your first look at Chibi-Zel's work on the Staff-Created Artwork page. Some time ago, Conrad was without a way to get any good art on this site and before Conrad started to look for solutions, one popped up out of his own already-existant staff members. Chibi-Zel saved the day. Three cheers for Chibi-Zel! Where would this site be without her? I'm tellin' ya, I can only hope that as time goes on I becoming pleasantly exposed to more people like her.
• Voting: Cursed be the evil Chibi-Zel. May she experience the worst kind of punishment known to mankind or otherwise. Look at what this vile, wretched creature of sin hath uttered from her filthy lips:

  I just inadvertantly voted my one and only time for the fourth time.

  --ChibiZel, Staff E-Mail dated April 18, 2001

  A second time, perhaps, but one does not inadvertantly vote a fourth time! She found a way to make that button that says "Vote (my one and only time)!" count her vote multiple times. I have little doubt that the recent rapid increase in "Homicidal Yokelish Lunatic's Insane Asylum"'s percentage was no accident. As it turns out, the voting script is set up to block re-votes over a period of a bit more than a day. If you wait more than a certain amount of time, it's possible to vote again. Comfoundit, the vote has been skewed by the results of cheating. By my own staff even. Why do I keep this person around? I do say, the world certainly needs less people like Chibi-Zel.

  In the future I expect to adjust that time to be more like 8 days. Also, I expect that new topics to vote on will appear once a week. This vote is hereby nullified! (Of course, there was already a disclaimer saying that the results wouldn't necessarily dictate the site's new name.) Actually, I'm thankful she pointed this out.

• FAQ:
  • Three new questions and two new real answers added: HTML Links, and a message board on HYLIA.Com.
  • Formatting fixed for what used to be the last four questions.

    Regarding the third new question, I spent quite some time writing up the answer that I intend to make public. (This is the fourth time I wrote up such a responce to the question... Hopefully I'll finally be content with this draft.) I really should look it over again before putting it up here. Probably next update will include it. In the meantime, you are able to see what the new question is.

• Links: A new site, Ganon's Tower, has been added. (Please see FAQ Answer #11 before contacting me about getting your own site added.)
• News: Some people of Kakariko Village Square have created the Kakariko Village University. It's quite new, so I'm going to give it some time to see if it's a success before I add it to the Links section of this site. It's certainly a neat concept... Basically KVS regulars (and non-regulars appear to be welcome to) meet online and teach each other about real, not-just-Zelda-related subjects from 3-D rendering to languages. I look forward to seeing how well it does.

April 22, 2000

by Conrad VanderWoude:

• Just a quick note: I've been too busy today to spend the necessary time organizing the next real update. Right now I'm looking at less than 5 hours of sleep tonight so no, I'm not going to try to throw one together last-minute right-now. Furthermore, I have plans over the next couple of days and it's unlikely I'll be able to update then either. I'll probably be able to get something going on Tuesday, though, so check back on Tuesday or Wednesday.

April 14, 2000

by Conrad VanderWoude:

• Well, I've taken a look at the main version of my site again. I fixed a priority issue with overlapping menus, so progress has now officially been made for the first time in 3 months. I also remember what to be doing next, so things are looking good.
• On this version of the site, I updated the FAQ. Wanna know our plans for updating the site?
• Zlda.Com is removed from the list of links, as it appears to be down and from what I've been told, it appears that Zlda.Com isn't going to be back up and updating by Charlie or his gang anytime soon. (Let's hope that's not accurate...)
• Ah, I put Zlda.Com back on the links page. Found 'em! :) Their spot on the Links table has been updated.
• The graphics on the voting now show up. The "error graphic" actually looked satisfactory as a repeatable-percentage bar piece, in MS IE and so I didn't notice right away that it wasn't working. (I really should install Netscape again.)
• Small fixes. Voting is now self-consistant between menu options and results. Spelling error in Zelda Power's section on the table of links is fixed.
• That's it. I don't want to do a whole lot of work on the pre-launch version of this site, and so you probably won't see very large updates until it's launched. Namely, my goal in updating the pre-launch site is to let visitors know that I haven't forgotten about them: I am working to give them something better. That, and to keep them in a regular habit of checking this address, for when post-launch time does come. I'll keep in touch.

Someone wrote to me, "I can't wait to see Hylia[.Com] launch! Can you give me any details about what the site will be about?" Ignoring the date I tossed into the upper-right corner of this page, please read the second sentence of the page, which is identical on this version of the page as it was on the last version posted. I tried to make it very very clear so that if anyone comes to this page for the first time that one of the very first things they'll be able to know is what the page is about.

I've put up a FAQ of what I figure people are asking in their minds, although the Letters List hasn't had much response so far. I only put up about 5 things, both since it's easier to get this update going and because it'll give me something else to update later on this week. I will have more questions and answers up soon.

And, of course, there's the poll, table of contents, and disclaimer above. Basically, the page turned from being 8 paragraphs (which, excluding one paragraph with about 5 sentences, had an average of 1 ²/₃ sentences each) plus a signature, into this mini site. Hmm... This mini-site is bigger than all the on-site pages you can see when you visit http://www.zhq.com. I didn't expect that to happen so quickly :)

I added a "Favorites Icon" to the site, which will reduce the number of "hidden" 404 errors that visitors were generating (but probably not noticing) when they bookmarked the site. If you made this site a Favorite before, in MS IE 5.5, 6.0 Preview, (or maybe even 5.0), try removing the site from your Favorites List and re-adding us. You'll find a non-generic icon is associated with us.

If you have any questions for me, you may contact me the newly created mailto:letters@hylia.com. And, yes, there are multiple people who will read your comments. Or, if you're shy, you can just E-Mail me at HyliaComJustAnnounced@toogam.dhs.org.

Other Sites

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.
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.
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.
Zlda.Com/DekuTree.Com	The successor to the very excellent and oft-updated site TGL (The Golden Land), Zlda.Com has been a decent sized site with editorials and commentary, some of which is actually about Zelda, passing over its main page. The webmaster and staff of the site aren't getting along well with their affiliate network, VGF.Com, who owns the Zlda.Com domain. I have finally located their new location: DekuTree.Com. I don't know what is going to happen to the old DekuTree.Com web site (which I believe did exist, publicly viewable, at one point).
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.
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 updates have been of the editorial/small fanfic nature.
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.

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.