What a load of BS Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets!

Because romhacks are made by expert players. Putting sandworms on conveyor belts or eyeball laser states in a dark room covered with ice and spikes is just "a little harder" from their point of view.

This, I know. I've played some of those Romhacks.

I guess the question I should've asked is why can't these expert romhackers disconnect themselves from their personal experience with a game and pay more attention to how mere mortals play it? Or just get a more diverse group of testers and listen to them when they say 'this shit be ridiculous'.

ROMhackers embody the biggest problem in any form of design, what business researcher Clayton Christensen calls "the curse of knowledge". Basically, they figure that if they know how to handle it, that's good enough, and any end user who can't handle it is "not worthy" (or any number of other foolish excuses issued to justify poor design).

To find a good ROMhacker is no simple task. Many are hacking already good games to make them "better" according to their personal standards. Strangely, you almost never see anyone hack a bad game and make it good; it's pretty much exclusively the other way around.

And that's a tragedy, because there are some games that have good ideas that are poorly done, or could just be tweaked to be good. I guess it would be a bigger ordeal to fix a poor mechanic than it would be to just repeat established enemies in new patterns or with new sprites.

Hey brickroad! Make a SM ROMHack!

Oh god, that intermission video....Dart, heres a Yoshi doll. Show us where Parallel World's touched you.

Guys, I know it can be fun to stand around discussing a trainwreck, but this LP isn't over yet. Thanks to a surprise special guest, we're able to continue on to Chapter Three sooner than expected!

Watch Chapter Three, Part One, featuring surprise special guest Kefka Floyd !! In this segment, we enter Level 5: The Other Swamp Palace, discuss the finer points of editing and game design, and baffle at the choice of boss monsters for the level.

You know, with all the pain evident in that Parallel Worlds video, you have to admit it finally gives the invisibility cape and invincibility staff a real reason for a workout.

Not that that makes me want to *play* it, mind you, but it's.... something.

Jesus, you know what I'm really glad has seemed to fallen out of favor in the series, that you see way too much of in hacks? Dark Rooms. That is half the reason I wouldn't want to play that game. The other half is everything else.

Oh, and I want links to the songs from that video. I have one of them, but I want the rest. Jazz remixes are my favorite.

Aside from the dark rooms, I thought the game looked really badass.

Mind you, I will (most likely) never play it, ever. Just saying it looked badass.

Man, I would be a lot more jazzed to play these games if they didn't lock out most of the maps for most of the time. The mostly open world is kind of the point of Zelda for me.

If I just jump straight to the last chapter, can I go play the game normally, or will it be impossible because of the timer?

What happens if you go to the castle? Or is that locked out, too?

Impossible because of the timer; each chapter has just enough time for you to get everything made available, but not nearly enough to get everything at once. Plus, there are guards that prevent you from entering past dungeons in each chapter, all of which tell you that you simply don't have the time to waste around them.

That said, it's probably for the best that they lock down the overworld to where your objectives are. The time limit pretty much forces you to only focus on specific parts of the map anyway, so blocking off the rest of it helps you avoid wasting time on sections that you simply don't have the tools for yet.

(If it makes you feel better, you can New Game+ it later on and break it wide open, if you like. Just rename your completed srm file and go crazy from chapter 1 and onwards.)

It's time for Chapter Three: Episode Two in which we take on Level 6: The Desert Palace Strikes Back, complain about bad fangames, and compare notes on atmosphere, perspective and other weird junk related to the way things seem to work in this game.

Have yourself a Chapter Three Conclusion, in which we go sweep the world for items we don't really need at this point, save a creepy old man, and talk about world geography.

I'm enjoying the LP because of your overall Zelda commentary, but this game seems to have the opposite problem of most ROM hacks. It just seems kind of boring. Having two people talk, and not always about the actual game, was the right call.

Yeah McClain hit it right on the money. The nature of the game leads it to be dull compared to the the source material (I started up a LTTP play because of this thread, yippee!) but the commentary really makes up for it. I feel like I'm down in my parent's basement drinking root beer with my high school buddies again when I watch it.

I'm planning something extra-special for the fourth and final chapter of this game.

In the mean time, Have this special intermission video with returning guest Kefka Floyd, where we demo Zelda Classic and just talk about whatever arbitrary foolishness is on our minds. Because commentary of this kind is the BEST kind.

I used to play Graal Online in 2000-2002 ALL the time.
I made my home on Dino City, but would venture over to the main server to play around from time to time.
I had a lot of fun playing around in that world, but it was so frustrating when quests and items were broken (which was VERY often).
I even downloaded the editor and made a few levels myself

It was always a wonder to me why they didn't get shut down for using Zelda's tile sets and assets. Guess that's why they switched to the new graphical style.

Man, I used to play an ton of Zelda Classic, but the quests were sooooooo uneven. Most of them were just abstract and confusing as hell, or just balls hard. I think the best ones were done as a single, hard as hell dungeon that you had to move through.

I remember the TT Quest project! I was sad to see it go. I wonder if a ZC thread would do better now as a full-on Let's Play than as a regular thread? I wouldn't mind playing along on some Talking Time Approved (re: not shitty) quests.

On the subject of good Zelda Classic worlds, I highly recommend most of the quests done by DarkFlameWolf, especially Isle of the Winds.

It's the Chapter you've been waiting for... It's time for FOUR GUESTS ADVENTURES with the voice of PapillonReel, Brickroad, KefkaFloyd and me! Join us as we infiltrate the Not Ice Palace with Zelda in tow and talk over each other with reckless abandon!

Chapter Four, Part Two! The adventure continues as we bump into Turtle Rock on the way to Death Mountain, remark on Zelda's nigh invulnerability, and retrieve the Master Sword, which no longer sleeps again. FOREVER.

I haven't watched the video yet, so I'm curious what the master sword is like since you've been waving around a blue (and then red) sword for several updates. Hell, you could rent the equivalent to the original master sword.

I laughed. I was laughing. Please post more I am excited to see you waste 24 minutes.

Just for you, I'm gonna post a Friday special.

You just... you need to watch this for yourself, everybody.

SPIIIIIIIIIIKES

I am officially echoing sentiments regarding Dart Zaidyer's voice being soothing. Zaidyer, can I call you whenever I can't get to sleep so you can read the phonebook to me?

The end is nigh for this Let's Play, everybody. It's been quite a ride through what was ultimately a dull, lifeless retread of A Link to the Past, filled with 100% more boredom and 40% more spikes than I ever want to see again in a single cave. (And guys stuck in rooms with no doors.)

The Final Battle...
And the Master Sword sleeps again... FOREVER! (...Again!)

I hope you've appreciated this look into a lost chapter of Zelda history you've probably never heard of, and which you're probably glad I played so you would never have to. But what's next for our intrepid hero Skippy? Only time will tell...

Well that was fun.

That was wonderful. Thank you for this trip through a bland, bland game.