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Eff It, I'm Going Through The Whole Zelda Series (And Then Some) Until I Get Bored (Now Reading: a bunch of pre-OoT manga)

Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
Two episodes left, and God willing I am going to watch both of them today. It's time to move on.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA (ANIMATED SERIES) EPISODE 12: THE MISSING LINK

Moblins blow up a fountain in the castle garden and come busting out, Ganon behind them. He now has a rod he plans to use to zap Zelda into his "Evil Jar". I guess she can use the Triforce of Wizdom to create fireballs and magic shields? The latter deflects Ganon's magic blast directly into Link, sending him to the Evil Jar instead. I guess it only had one shot, since he decides to just leave and keep Link as a hostage for the Triforce of Wisdom. Honestly, I'm not clear on why Zelda is even considering the trade? Link sucks ass in this. He appears as like a ghost and talks to Zelda, though. Apparently the blast got Link's body but not his spirit? But only Zelda can see him, Spryte can only hear him. "Don't tell me you only love me for my body!" Zelda twirls Link's sword in a way that really makes it seem like she should be the protagonist of this show before sheathing it, hoping to take both it and his spirit to Link's body. Link forgets he's a ghost and tries to fight some Stalfos. Zelda needs practice with Link's weird laser sword, but figures it out in time to fight them off. Ganon realizes that Zelda can only see Link because she's in love with him (which I guess means Spryte, the girl constantly trying to jump Link's bones, isn't?), and Link overhears, leading to the worst exchange of all time. I hate this show. Link reenters his body to an honestly incredible soundtrack unlike anything else in the show, and oh hey, this is the origin of one of my favorite videos of all time.
In the actual show Link's response is the much more boring "Ha! I'm back!", though. He hustles a bomb in a bizarrely long shot of him threatening a trembling Stalfos, then busts out of the Evil Jar, washing Ganon away in a torrent of Evil Juice, before taking his sword back and saving Zelda. We get an extended, obnoxious ending where Link tries to kiss Zelda again, and then Lou does the Mario. Honestly, this one wasn't bad? About the best you can expect out of this show, honestly.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA (ANIMATED SERIES) EPISODE 13: THE MOBLINS ARE REVOLTING

Holy shit, this is the last episode. It's almost over. I actually watched the Hooked On The Brothers intro this time, it felt like it deserved it. God, I wish I was watching the Mario cartoon instead. This wasn't written by Bob Forward, apparently, and at this point that's a good sign. Some Moblins dressed as ninjas break into Hyrule Castle along with a few Goriyas, and bust in on Link, uh, reading a comic book? They crash into each other and then do some slapstick shenanigans to wipe each other out before Link even does anything. They argue with each other in Ganon's Evil Jar where Link sends enemies instead of killing them, and Ganon gets pissed at them for arguing, causing him to, uh, do Force Lightning on them. Apparently they all had a better plan to get the Triforce but Ganon made them do the other thing, and holy shit, they're planning to overthrow Ganon. Ganon has a new magic rod that encases targets in giant bubbles only the Triforce of Power can pop, so naturally, the Moblin he tests it on uses it on Ganon, before dropping him into a bottomless pit. Holy fucking shit. With that, Ganon's minions take over, but one immediately breaks the imprisoning rod. Hilarious looping animation of Ganon's minions climbing out of the Evil Jar. Honestly, these guys look like they're having a great time. Apparently they're calling themselves the Brotherhood of Underworld Monsters, and holy shit, they're doing a siege on Hyrule Castle. This unironically slaps. Also they keep cutting to Ganon slowly falling down this bottomless pit and it's hilarious. Eventually he uses a balloon spell to start floating up. Meanwhile, the minions keep sabotaging their own siege in a series of genuinely funny slapstick scenes, culminating in a Moblin getting launched into the castle and telling Link and Zelda what they've done. They immediately head to go grab the Triforce of Power. Zelda bombs a dodongo. As they marvel over the Triforce of Power, Ganon appears in his stupid little bubble, and Link starts bouncing him around, and of course, ends up tossing him directly into the Triforce of Power. Ganon shows up at the smouldering wreckage of his minion's siege towers and sends everybody back to the Evil Jar, where he reprimands them and has them clean up his trashed lair with their tongues. The camera lingers on them licking the floor for an uncomfortably long time. Zelda gets rightfully pissed at Link for getting Ganon free, and Link lets out one last "excuse me, princess". Honestly? This one was really fun! Cheesy as hell, but I had a good time watching it. I'm glad this is the note the show ended on. Retrospective post coming soon.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE ANIMATED SERIES (RETROSPECTIVE)

Whoof. Where to begin. Well, obviously I didn't like it much - it's easily the worst Zelda thing I've done for this thread so far, and it's not close. More than anything, it's just fucking boring - they do absolutely nothing interesting with their source material, and everything that happens is the most obvious thing they could have happen. It just feels like it's going through the motions. A motivation for starting this project that I haven't mentioned is that I'm planning a D&D campaign in the Zelda setting, and wanted to explore weird, obscure corners of the franchise for inspiration, but there's none of that here. All of the monsters are just more boring versions of monsters from the first two Zelda games, and the only major new character is Spryte, the most generic "fairy companion" possible. Now, confession here - this kind of cartoon was way before my time. When I was in elementary school action cartoons had more or less been completely supplanted by dubbed anime like Pokemon, Naruto, and Yu-Gi-Oh, and eventually western-produced cartoons started taking cues from anime and became more serialized, stuff like Ben 10 and Avatar and Teen Titans. As I'm writing this I'm watching an episode of He-Man (Into the Abyss, for the curious), and like... look, it's not great, and it's not something I think I'd go out of my way to watch on its own merits, but it's pretty fun for what it is. This is not that. I'm glad to have this behind me, but there's still a couple more incarnations of this universe in the list before I can finally move on forever. Hopefully they're less agonizing.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA (NELSONIC GAME WATCH) (1989)

Hahaha, oh man, this is a cut. This is another LCD game (this time not by Nintendo), this time built into a wristwatch. It hasn't been emulated, and the actual devices go for hundreds of dollars, so I made do by watching this full video playthrough. Basically you just go through a series of top down dungeon rooms with monsters, finding the item in each room (sword, boomerang, or bomb) and using it to defeat the monsters to move on. It seems like a decent enough emulation of Zelda 1 combat for such a limited device, and much like the Game & Watch it does have an actual structure, with dungeon levels that have you fight a boss at the end (always Aquamentus) and obtain a Triforce shard. There's even a map in the corner, though each dungeon is completely linear, with one door out of each room that closes behind you once you leave. It seems pretty solid for a wristwatch minigame, and I could see myself wasting many hours on it if I had it as a kid. I have to imagine controlling the game with those tiny buttons is a pain, though.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA (VALIANT COMICS) (1990)

Hey, this is pretty good! It's a direct followup to the cartoon, featuring a very similar take on Hyrule, but it's much, much better - Link and Zelda are now an on again/off again couple, so Link doesn't come off as a creep for constantly trying to kiss her, and there's much more stuff pulled from the games, especially Zelda 2. There's some really good stories in here, too, like one where Link gets the Triforce of Power and immediately starts being corrupted by a desire to rule Hyrule (pretty prescient of where later games would take it, honestly - Link even starts turning into a pig eventually, much like Yuga almost 30 years later) and one where Link returns to his home and parents only to find that his shadow (from Zelda 2) has been wreaking havoc in his name. Zelda also gets to take on a starring role in many stories, which is definitely a recurring theme in these early adaptations. It actually tries to develop the world, too - there's a kingdom called Calatia west of Hyrule, where Link was born, and the towns from Zelda 2 appear in multiple stories with consistent characters. There's even a complete map of Hyrule as it appeared in Zeldas 1 and 2 in one issue, and one you could probably use to play the games! The art's a bit wonky in places, but that's about the only criticism I have. Also, I suspect this, not the cartoon, is what the CD-i animators had for reference - I can't pin down why, but if you read it (you should!) you might get the same vibe.
 
Kirin

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
I watched the watch (so to speak) and I'm still not sure quite how it works. It seems like the monsters can only be hit when they're in certain positions, where you can bring the right item attack frame to bear on them? But I'm not sure how you figure out where those are other than trail and error. Likewise they can't always hit you, you can run right past/through them on the right frames. I guess it makes sense once you've figured out where all the frames are.
Also I know space on these things is almost nonexistent but you'd think it could do a little more than play a four-note jingle and just freeze when you beat the whole dang game.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
MOLBLIN'S MAGIC SPEAR (1990)

Here's another deep cut - a Golden Book for children, based loosely on the first game. It's a story of Link outsmarting a single Molblin [sic] by tricking him into hitting a dummy with a bomb for a head. This is going to be my shortest review yet, because there's just nothing here - it's a single action scene, written very simply so kids can understand it, with simple but pretty illustrations. It is very funny they misspell Moblin on the cover, though.
 
Beowulf

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Kzinssie said:
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE ANIMATED SERIES (RETROSPECTIVE)

Whoof. Where to begin. Well, obviously I didn't like it much - it's easily the worst Zelda thing I've done for this thread so far, and it's not close. More than anything, it's just fucking boring - they do absolutely nothing interesting with their source material, and everything that happens is the most obvious thing they could have happen. It just feels like it's going through the motions. A motivation for starting this project that I haven't mentioned is that I'm planning a D&D campaign in the Zelda setting, and wanted to explore weird, obscure corners of the franchise for inspiration, but there's none of that here. All of the monsters are just more boring versions of monsters from the first two Zelda games, and the only major new character is Spryte, the most generic "fairy companion" possible. Now, confession here - this kind of cartoon was way before my time. When I was in elementary school action cartoons had more or less been completely supplanted by dubbed anime like Pokemon, Naruto, and Yu-Gi-Oh, and eventually western-produced cartoons started taking cues from anime and became more serialized, stuff like Ben 10 and Avatar and Teen Titans. As I'm writing this I'm watching an episode of He-Man (Into the Abyss, for the curious), and like... look, it's not great, and it's not something I think I'd go out of my way to watch on its own merits, but it's pretty fun for what it is. This is not that. I'm glad to have this behind me, but there's still a couple more incarnations of this universe in the list before I can finally move on forever. Hopefully they're less agonizing.
Click to expand...
I'll be entertained to hear about your Zelda D&D campaign--the Valiant comics (which included expanded maps of Hyrule and surrounding countries, if I remember correctly) will likely be more helpful, for this era. (I wouldn't dare run a Zelda-inspired campaign. I have a Zelda I speedrunner in my gaming group and that's just inviting trouble.)

Cartoons of the 80s had the "half-hour long toy commercial" problem, but the quality really varied from show to show. Thundercats had some genuinely good material. Transformers...is barely watchable, and that's speaking as someone who loves the franchise. The shift to better shows was a slow process, but we got action shows like Conan the Adventurer or Transformers Beast Wars by the mid-90s, and I think those led into the Ben 10 era as much as (well-done, well-translated) anime did.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
Would there be interest in updating this thread on that campaign as it progresses? For the basic primer: I've been deliberately taking a full "fuck the timeline" approach with it, with things like Wind Waker islands appearing in the sea east of Hyrule, and pulling from obscure sources quite a bit - most notably, the basic premise of the campaign is based loosely on Faces of Evil, with giant faces popping up around Hyrule and its surrounding lands and pouring forth monsters from the Dark World.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
CAPTAIN N S2E3: QUEST FOR THE POTION OF POWER (1990)

I'm going to be honest, I don't know if I have it in me to watch all 4 Zelda episodes of this show - not so soon after getting through the Zelda cartoon, at least. I'll give it as long as I can, though. This does at least seem a fair bit better than the Zelda cartoon, though it's clearly working off the same version of Hyrule. Link and Zelda are much closer to their Valiant Comics incarnations, which is a huge improvement. The animation here is also notably better - I suspect this was another situation like Inspector Gadget where it was a western show with Japanese animators, there's clear anime influence here. All the Zelda characters and enemies have gotten slight redesigns, and in particular I love this show's version of Link. The initial meeting between Link and Kevin is hilarious, shot and acted like the opening to a porno. This seems like a loose adaptation of the plot of Zelda 2 (at least the "Ganon's revival" part), much as the original show is a loose adaptation of Zelda 1. Ganon's revival requires the titular Potion of Power, though, rather than Link's blood as in the game. Kevin and his weird robot Game Boy companion are the only typical Captain N characters here, so there's no off-model Simon or Mega Man shenanigans here outside of the cold open. Live thoughts from here: Mother Brain is doing such an offensive caricature of a black woman that I can barely understand what she's saying. Kevin just having a laser gun in this fantasy world is hilarious, especially when he Shoots An Enemy With His Gun and gets a "nice move, kid" from Link. There's an interesting theme here of Link being a real person instead of the video game character Kevin's used to controlling - I've only watched a handful of episodes of this show, is that a recurring theme? The action sequence inside Parapa Palace is jarringly accompanied by what I have to assume was a contemporary piece of pop music, though I don't recognize it. Mazura/Horsehead from Zelda 2 is here, though he's a centaur. Link's resentment is now being aimed at the fact that he's sharing the spotlight with Kevin, which actually makes sense for this version of Link (who I'm noticing is getting more and more likable and interesting with each new thing he appears in). They move on to the Island Palace, where, uh, Gato from Chrono Trigger attacks them? I honestly have no idea what this robot guy is doing here or who he's supposed to be. They fight Rebonack/Iron Knuckle, shockingly on model, and King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard (who have been doing unremarkable slapstick shit this whole time) make off with the Potion of Power while they're distracted. Oh, nevermind what I said earlier - Game Boy is calling in the N Team! But first, we see Mother Brain and co. with a... hilarious depowered Ganon, who is now a cartoony little pig boy. He drinks the potion and returns to (an updated design of) his Zelda cartoon self. Ganon describes his revival as a "coming out party", and I support him. Despite all that buildup, Ganon (and Mother Brain et al, somehow) are defeated by a reflected spell.

Honestly, I'm liking this alright, it's a fun little cheesy cartoon. I'll stick with it for the other Zelda episodes it has.
 
Octopus Prime

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Mother Brain is, in fact, played by Levi Stubbs Jr. of the Four Tops.

You may also recognize him as Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors.
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I'd like to cut back to the Zelda Game & Watch momentarily, since my unit came in the mail today, and I just sit down and beat the thing. I really like it, and am impressed with how complex it is! Not only do the enemies get tougher and faster as you go, but there's some strategy involved as to when to use the Water of Life, because at max health, Link shoots beams from his sword, which makes the regular mooks much, much easier to defeat. As soon as you take damage, you have to get right up in the regular mook's face to kill it. Also, if you manage to find the Tomahawk, your attacks do more damage to the boss, so it behooves you to actually collect the map and try to go to every room on the way to the boss if you can so you have an easier time of it.

zelda1.jpg

zelda2.jpg

zelda3.jpg


Sorry for the brief interuption here, I just wanted to gush a little bit. Don't play this on the GBA Game & Watch collection, by the way - the squished screens are far too hard to see even with a backlit screen like I have and it's no fun. Emulator is probably fine, though, as the unit itself is stupid expensive (I consider myself lucky to have gotten this one for $190, ffs).
 
Octopus Prime

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Honestly kind of surprised this one never got re-released. I played it on the original hardware once and it stuck with me as being one of the best LCD games on the whole
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
STARTROPICS (1990) CHAPTER 1: PRELUDE

Yeah, I gave up on Captain N after the one episode - frankly, I just really wanted to get back to playing a video game. Startropics is always a game that's fascinated me - an American-only game by a Japanese company is always rare to see. I'd gotten a fair bit through this before, but never beaten it. For a game only released in America, this game has some pretty strong Japan-isms in its aesthetic, which makes it extra jarring when you get a fullscreen NPC and they look like something out of a 90s comic book. The first dungeon's design is pretty solid, aside from the fuck you death pit secret room. The grid based movement is definitely going to take some getting used to, though, and I wish jumping moved you forward outside of explicit platforming sections. I don't really get why the points system is here, in an adventure game released in 1990. Also, everybody knows about the dungeon theme by now, but damn if it isn't catchy - I know Mike Jones is never going to get into Smash, but it would be nice to at least get a remix of that.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
STARTROPICS (1990) CHAPTER 2: DOLPHINS

These are some of the cutest dolphin sprites ever put to pixel art, my God. This chapter did remind me of one of the reasons I never finished this game, which is its overreliance on obscure secret passages on the overworld. That said, the game is still plenty charming, and I'm starting to get a feel for the combat more (the boss sucked this chapter, though - an octopus with a super easy pattern that just takes a million hits to go down). Observation: it really sounded like that lighthouse guy was trying to get this high schooler to fuck his wife
 
nosimpleway

nosimpleway

(he/him)
The octopus is a tutorial boss done poorly, in that "if you know how to do the thing already he's easy, but it doesn't actually tell you how to do the thing you need to do" sort of way. The thing in this case is to figure out that when you pause you have a second menu of items used from the pause screen itself in addition to the normal weapons you can equip. One of those items you picked up earlier is a snowman doll that you can use to freeze the octopus in place while you smack him like 20 times, making the fight much faster.

I think it's also where your life medicine is kept, so, y'know, remember that's there.

Kzinssie said:
MOLBLIN'S MAGIC SPEAR (1990)
Click to expand...
It, uh, took a little while before they figured out they wanted to go with "Moblin" for the Anglicized spelling. I'm pretty sure "Morlbrin" is out there somewhere, perhaps printed on the board game or something.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
It's extra fucked up because the Japanese name is "moriburin", "mori" (forest) plus goblin. But the "forest" thing isn't preserved in any of the thousand transliterations in the first decade of Zelda
 
nosimpleway

nosimpleway

(he/him)
Oh that's neat, I didn't know that, so does that mean "bokoblin" is whatever "boko" means plus goblin too?

*looks it up*

boko = depression

............oh.


Yes I see that it's depression in the sense of a hole or divot, not being emotionally numb or gloomy, but still
 
4-So

4-So

Spicy
Kzinssie said:
It's extra fucked up because the Japanese name is "moriburin", "mori" (forest) plus goblin. But the "forest" thing isn't preserved in any of the thousand transliterations in the first decade of Zelda
Click to expand...

Torzelbaum said:
Interesting. I guess that explains why they show up where they do in the first game.
Click to expand...

Oh shit. I appreciate you folks drawing those lines because I never would have connected this.

Good thread is good.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
nosimpleway said:
Oh that's neat, I didn't know that, so does that mean "bokoblin" is whatever "boko" means plus goblin too?

*looks it up*

boko = depression

............oh.


Yes I see that it's depression in the sense of a hole or divot, not being emotionally numb or gloomy, but still
Click to expand...
More likely etymology is "bokoboko" being a sound effect for beating something - keep in mind that in their debut game, Wind Waker, they're generally seen holding big sticks.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
STARTROPICS (1990) CHAPTER 3: STORM AND CALM, PART 1: MAGMA'S MOLTEN TUNNEL

I am, regrettably, starting to remember why I never finished this game. I'm already resorting to savestates, and hopefully this will be the only game where that's the case. A lot of the enemy formations in this dungeon were ridiculously brutal, with the clunky grid-based movement entirely unequipped to deal with them and way too much damage being dealt with each hit. I also really hate the thing it did a couple times where it required nearly perfect timing on disappearing blocks, with instant death as punishment for failure - Zelda 1 just put you at screen spawn with a heart loss for a reason, guys. It's a shame, too, because aside from the somewhat-uncomfortable depictions of island natives the general vibe of this game is really cool. The dialogue has a certain poorly-translated quality that's odd for an America-only game, but does lead to great lines like "I'M JUST HANGING OUT. HE IS THE CHIEF OF MIRACOLA.", and I like the general lighthearted, irreverent approach to the story. Savestates definitely reduce the frustration here, so I'll press on.
 
Kzinssie

Kzinssie

(she/her)
STARTROPICS (1990) CHAPTER 3: STORM AND CALM, PART 2: GHOST TUNNEL/SHECOLA

Ahahaha, what the fuck? I'm pretty sure this is where I gave up on my last attempt, and even with savestates and maps this dungeon is absurd. Esoteric puzzles! Fake exits! Invisible enemies! A part where you have to jump on disappearing blocks in a dark room where you can't see them, with instant death on a failure! (I really hope I was missing something on that last part, but I couldn't figure out any way to light up the room.) Not only do I not know how you're supposed to beat this without a guide, I don't know how you're supposed to beat it without savestates. This being the obligatory ghost level at least makes me hope it's an outlier in this game's dungeon design. As for Shecola: boy, the crossdressing shit has aged poorly. This isn't even the anime thing where the joke is that Mike is an unusually cute girl and there's a potential trans read, it's just gross. Shame. This is definitely a low point of the game so far.
 
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