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The official announcement of a new Zelda game for the Nintendo 3DS — the 16th in the main series — had the gaming world abuzz yesterday. A Link to the Past 2, as Japan is calling it, is the first new addition to Nintendo’s long-running action-adventure franchise since Skyward Sword for the Wii in 2011. What’s more — as the title suggests — it will take place in the style and setting of A Link to the Past, the 1992 installment for Super Nintendo that remains among the most popular chapters in the saga.

Yet longtime fans of Zelda games — of which I am one — have expressed concern that Nintendo’s leveraging of our collective nostalgia will prevent it from addressing the concerns that have led the franchise to flounder in recent years. Here are five ways Nintendo can help Zelda rediscover what made it such an iconic, crucial gaming experience in the first place.

The whole map needs to be accessible from the start.

When The Legend of Zelda dropped for the NES in 1987, it was a gaming experience nonpareil. (Nintendo godfather Shigeru Miyamoto, who sat down with Extra Mustard last month, famously described it as the “killer app” for the then-nascent Famicom Disc System.) The 128-screen overworld, underpinned by nine hidden dungeons of increasing complexity, was an open world suggesting infinite possibilities. No longer, thanks to the artificial barriers around areas in the newer games that can’t be visited — or even seen on the map — until Link completes a certain mission or task. Simply put, the later Zelda titles keep you on the rails. (Sometimes literally, as with the Lanyaru Desert mine cart in Skyward Sword.) While it may be helpful to the uninitiated and novice gamers, it’s comes at the cost of the non-linear gameplay that made Zelda such a unique phenomenon to begin with.

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Fewer puzzles and more action, please.

The initial Zelda titles seamlessly combined elements of action, adventure, role-playing and puzzle games. Yet later installments — the dungeons in particular — have become far too dependent on mind games at the sacrifice of hack-and-slash action. Worse still, many of these puzzles have become rote, the secrets less secretive: like how every wall that must be bombed to opened a hidden chamber is clearly denoted by an identifiable crack. Even the much-hyped 1:1 motion-controlled swordplay in the enjoyable Skyward Sword was, essentially, a series of action-based puzzles. What made the original Zelda such a thrill was the unwavering action of the later stages — the rooms upon rooms of Darknuts and Wizzrobes that pushed even an expert gamer’s hand-eye skills to the limit.

When it comes to items, less is more.

This is hardly a suspension-of-disbelief issue — how does Link carry all that stuff? — but more of a gameplay concern. Link accumulates so much hardware in the later Zelda games yet hardly is afforded the occasion to use it. Too often an item is a one-off, a de facto key to make it through an obstacle just once or twice. The game’s designers would be wise to offer fewer items but invite more creating ways of using them. Or not using them. Many items in the earlier installments were not mandatory, lending to the overall flexibility of the game: to wit, it’s possible to reach Ganon in the original Zelda without ever picking up a sword.

Streamline the plot.

With notable exceptions — A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask — story has been more of burden than boon in the Zelda games. The first two titles for the NES were unencumbered by plot. In fact, the entire set-up for The Legend of Zelda fit on a single screen that ran during the opening titles.

That’s it! The rest was filled in by the player’s imagination. Perhaps enticed by the increased power of advanced platforms — or inspired to match or surpass the epic scope of Ocarina — Nintendo’s later Zelda games have become overwrought by story, which is often familiar and feels like filler. What’s more, story points by nature adhere to a sequencing that is (or at least should be) antithetical to the idea of what a Zelda game should be.

Stop holding the player’s hand.

At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, every Zelda game that’s been released in the past 20 years has been too easy. The original Zelda and Adventure of Link made demands of the player that, it seems, Nintendo’s designers today wouldn’t dream of asking. It’s almost as if the new games are worried about frustrating and losing the player, eschewing the very challenge that’s kept longtime fans glued to the series for more than 25 years. The everpresent stream of hints? The interminable tutorials? Enough with the handholding: It’s time for Zelda to bury its fear of letting its players fail.

With yesterday’s announcement of a new Zelda game, Extra Mustard has ranked all 15 games in the main series — yes, Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages count as one title — from No. 15 to No. 1. Disagree? Let us know below.

Remember when you beat either or games you can transfer LINK to the next game? I remember having my parents by both games for me. I started playing  SEASONS after beating it I transferred LINK to the Ages. Bare in mind I had to use my GAMEBOY POCKET and GAMEBOY COLOR to transfer them with the game link cable. Good thing I still have those handhelds in good condition. I am definitely looking forward to playing it all over again! Like I said bringing back memories!

Heres some trivia. CAPCOM also had some development in it as well!

Lore? What?

To be honest, I couldn’t tell you whether the lore in the game’s world is good or bad. I don’t think many people can, in fact. And that’s because about thirty minutes after you start a character, the game puts you into Quest Spam mode, just like in MMORPGs. Like Skyrim, Amalur has the critical flaw of being a single-player MMO. While Skyrim just barely was redeemed from this failing by other features, Amalur was not. Amalur’s quests are all identical to those in MMOs: Kill, Fetch, Escort, Collect. That’s all.

People can Quest Spam for MMOs. MMOs offer reasons to Quest Spam. Aside from leveling up, most of the content is at the end of the game, and to get to the end of the game, you’ve got to Quest Spam. That’s why MMO quests aren’t anything special; they don’t have to be. No one ever knows why they are doing a quest in World of Warcraft or Aion. Why does that NPC need 6 Wolf hides? You have no idea. You only knows he needs them and you’ll get XP for taking them to him. Why does that NPC want you to kill 10 giants? Again, you don’t know. You only knows he wants you to and you’ll get XP and some loot for doing it. Amalur has these same flaws.

It presents you with boring, repetitive quests and then provides you with lore apparently written by today’s most popular Fantasy writer. Huh? The game puts you in a click-to-skip-all-dialogue-and-text mindset, then presents you with a shitload of lore from an excellent character author? You know it’s going to be crap when the game contradicts itself like that.

Anyway, the reason I wrote this wasn’t to complain about Amalur. It was because I wanted to see what other people were saying about the game once I decided not to play it again, and I found this:

I played the Xbox 360 version, and unless the PC version is significantly better, this is just a very good game, nothing more, nothing less.

The game constantly froze.

The game becomes tedious and a little boring later on (especially if you do the side quests).

The dungeons are repetitive.

When you collect 10 of the same item, the game treats the 11th one as a brand new item, which takes up extra space in your inventory, when it should not. (This happens mainly with potions)

In combat, the character’s block abilty is sometimes a little unresponsive.

Too many enemies can easily kill you out with long ranged attacks that sometimes also act a homing missiles.

To top everything off, the Dead Kel DLC has glitched my 115 hour save, forcing me to start the game over.

Mm. Okay. Let’s get this straight.

The game constantly freezes, the game is tedious and boring after playing a while, the dungeons are repetitive, the game has a fucktarded inventory system (like many RPGs do–I swear, why do developers have such a hard time with inventory management?!), combat is sometimes unresponsive at moments when it needs to be absolutely responsive (if your block is unresponsive, then you get hit–that’s the worst possible time for the combat to be unresponsive), too many enemies have homing missile attacks, and on top of all those complaints, you lost 115 hours of gameplay because of a DLC pack.

And that is the mess that you call “very good”? Jesus tap-dancing Christ, I don’t think what you said about the game qualifies it to be decent, much less “very good”. I’m a little… concerned… that you could spend 115 hours playing any game, but to think that you not only did, but you did and lost your guy because of a fucked download… I would never have touched the game again.

How forgiving can you possibly be? When you buy a bloody game, you are PAYING the developers to SHOW YOU A GOOD TIME. If you pay them to do so, and their attempt turns out to be this shoddy mess that you’ve described, how can you possibly turn around and say it’s a “very good” game? It sounds like it should still be in Beta! 

I’m not so forgiving when I pay for entertainment products. If I buy a DVD from Wal-Mart, I expect to be able to get all the way through the movie without the DVD fucking up and stopping itself halfway through the movie. If I buy a DVD, I don’t expect the disc to just fuck up in the middle of the climax, right before the resolution, and force me to start the whole goddamned movie over again. And if that happened, I’d be pissed off.

But that’s not really a fair analogy, because it wasn’t the disc that fucked up his gameplay experience; it was the game on the disc. It’s impossible to compare DVDs to games in this regard. But if I somehow invested 115 hours into a game (fucking shit, there are only 3 things in the entire universe that can hold my attention that long) and I lost all that time, I’d be so fucking pissed off I wouldn’t be able to think. That’s 115 hours of your life GONE, man. GONE. I wouldn’t call it lost if you could still play that guy, even though 115 hours of gaming produces no tangible benefit, because I understand that it’s the journey, not the destination that matters. But having to start over a long-ass journey after 115 hours of already having made that journey completely negates your previous efforts. 

That’s unforgivable, man. If you only had that one point to make, I’d avoid buying Amalur for that reason alone. But there are many reasons to hate Amalur. I’m not going to get into them here.

But it’s absolutely remarkable that you can say all that about a game, and then still call it “very good”. “I went to a comedy show last week and sat in the first row. The comedian spits when he talks, and I got spit on constantly throughout the show, and he repeated the same few jokes over and over most of time, and those few jokes weren’t that funny in the first place, and then when we were almost done, he started his entire routine over from the beginning. But, still, he’s a ‘very good’ comedian.” We would look at whoever said that and call him stupid or insane. 

We make decisions about whether something is “good” or “bad” or “very good” or “very bad” based on our experiences with that thing, and it sounds like your experiences with Amalur would place it in the “very bad” category. Obviously there are parts of it that you enjoyed, since you put in 115 hours–twice, conceivable–but the fact that it had some unidentified good aspects (his comment is posted in full above; he said nothing positive about the game) does not negate these horrendous aspects. After reading a few more passages from different people, I’ve not found anyone attempting to identify those “good aspects” that allow the game to fall into the “very good” category. They like it because they like it, and thus they call it “very good,” even though by their own words, I think it qualifies for “very bad.”

You’re Allowed…

You’re allowed to enjoy something that sucks. You’re allowed to enjoy games that are very bad. I have no problem with that. But you should fucking KNOW that the game is very bad! You shouldn’t allow your liking of the game to have an effect on your judgement of the game’s quality. I like the 90s television show “Hercules,” but I know that the show sucks, man. I loved Dragon Age 2. I loved it. Loved. It. Dragon Age 2 is one of my absolute favorite games (mostly because of the voiced PC), but I know that Dragon Age 2 sucks the big one in almost every way. But I still love it.

And I’m not about to tell anyone that Dragon Age 2 is a “very good” game. It’s not. It isn’t even close. DA2 has some very good aspects to it, but it has far more very bad aspects. In DA2′s favor: the voice-acted PC, the dialogue and personal stories, the powerful main story, and its immersion. It is the role-playing video game. If you want a role-playing experience, DA2 is the game to play. But pretty much everything else about DA2 sucks, and I know that–but I’m not going to let that stop me from enjoying the role-playing anyway. And I know all this.

It may be denial. Maybe you like the game so much that you deny how serious and critical the flaws you outlined really are. But 115 hours lost? I can’t think of a more critical flaw. I remember the old battery cartridges from my childhood and how they could cause you to lose your save game on, say, The Legend of Zelda. This was a huge flaw, and everyone hated it–and that’s why games soon stopped using battery-style save features. Because they were flawed–seriously flawed. I understand that you like the game, but your liking it doesn’t qualify it as “very good”. It only qualifies it as a “game you liked.”

Maybe it’s devotion. It’s certainly hard to say, “I love this game so much, but… this is a bad game.” It’s hard to look at something we like or love and acknowledge it is critically flawed–sometimes it’s hard to acknowledge that it’s flawed at all. And then when we do acknowledge the flaws, we down-play them, we say, “Oh, that’s no big deal,” and we convince ourselves that it’s true: that the flaws are not big deals. But we’re just deluding ourselves when we do this. Tedious gameplay, unresponsive shields, and losing 115 hours of gameplay… These are big deals. I mean: if the gameplay itself is tedious and boring, what redeeming feature could the game possibly have? Saying that the gameplay becomes tedious and boring is synonymous with saying the game becomes tedious and boring; how can a tedious and boring game also qualify as “very good”? It can’t. 

Another player of the game reviewed it and scored it at 9 / 10, and titled his review: “Refreshing Notwithstanding Flaws”. A nine out of ten? Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a 9 / 10 just barely short of PERFECTION? I’m pretty sure it is. And your title of your review acknowledges the flaws–which means they are either abundant or very severe or both? And within this review, we find:

As the main plot progresses, the Fateless One’s enigmatic past is slowly and cleverly unveiled through a nicely paced journey. The same can’t be said for the faction questlines however, which are held back by overhyped finales and terrible twists.

The biggest problems lie with the dialogue. Almost everyone has an opinion on everything nearby and the world in general. There is way too much to talk about and this may become a huge annoyance for completionists. With so many Fae looking so much alike and NPCs in general having the same exact finger pointing animation among other deja vu inducing movements that are nearly always unsuitable to the speech at hand, and substandard facial experssions feel like The Fateless One is striving for the survival of some of the most bored denizens in an RPG. And let’s not forget that many people, even important ones, can’t even make out your female character’s gender. At least they move around quite a bit and perform motleyed actions.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Amalur is the music. There is absolutely nothing unique or memorable and there is a clear lack of enough music in general. While running towards your objective your ears won’t be treated to anything adventurous and the battle themes get tiresome.

Voice acting is average at best when it comes to non-major NPCs. The majority of the Fae sound bored and it seems the actors simply became tired. This is amplified by the issue with audio levelling. More than once you will find voices becoming little more than a whisper. Tweaking in the options menu doesn’t help a lot. Thankfully the sound effects are decent.

And despite all of these “flaws,” he scored the game 9 / 10. “Just short of perfection”. Bland and uninspired music. I can’t think of anything worse than bland and uninspired music, but my personality revolves around music. Audio leveling problems that can’t be fixed with tweaking. Bad voice acting (“The majority of the Fae sound bored and it seems the actors simply became tired.”). The game can’t tell whether your character is male or female. Overhyped finales and terrible twists. Yes, all of these sound like hallmarks of a game that is just short of perfection. 

People are either far too forgiving or they’re in denial. I think it’s a little bit of both.

Average?

Most of the reviews I look at are User Reviews. I don’t trust the reviews of game magazines, because I suspect that many of them are paid for–at least indirectly. After all, 99% of the ads in gaming magazines are video game ads, and you don’t give money to people who blast your product. I talked about this in my blog about Skyrim.

But even users have gotten into the habit of calling 7 and 8 “average”. 9 and 10 have become the home of “good”. Anything less than a 7 is bad. This is not the way it should be. A score of 10 should note absolute perfection. The best it could possibly have been. Like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy VI, or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. 10 means there was no room for improvement. A score of 9 should be “very, very good–just short of perfection.” Not just “good”. A score of 5 should be average. 

Here are some remarks from someone who scored Skyrim with a perfect 10, saying in his title that Skyrim is “one of the few games of this generation that will still be talked about 15 years from now” (No. No, it won’t. It will be forgotten by the end of 2014, if it somehow makes it that long.):

The one negative to the perk system is that once you choose a perk, or many perks, you cannot reassign them. This is a huge problem as you get into the later levels; because your character is set into the certain “build” you chose throughout the game.

 

I suppose there is no point in reminding this person that this negative thing (being stuck with perks you chose at Level 1–if you’ve never played the game, that could be really bad. But, to be honest, I never had a problem with not being able to respec in Skyrim. It just seemed… natural to me that I couldn’t.) means the game is not perfect? Anyway.

 The first few battles are tough and exhilarating, but eventually you’ll have a surplus of dragon souls and killing them will become easy and tedious.

 

That’s a pretty damning statement. But wait:

Dragon bones also remain where the dragon is killed for the rest of the time you play Skyrim, which can clutter up the environment.

That’s not entirely true. Dragon bones don’t always remain where the dragon is killed. Skyrim is FULL of bugs and glitches. And one of those glitches occurs when dead dragons fall out of the sky and on top of your (literally) as you’re leaving Whiterun, to land right in front of Whiterun’s door, regardless of where the dragon was killed. Skyrim is filled with bugs and glitches and that in itself prevents the game from earning a 10. Anyway.

Skryim is not only one of the best games this generation; it is also one of the best games ever made. Ten or fifteen years from now, few games from this generation will still be played and talked about. Think back to the SNES or another older console. How many games from that console are still talked about and have an active community? Not very many. The same will happen after this generation is finally over, which is a shame considering how much social media and the internet have contributed to communication and gaming.

 

This is clearly a review which was written shortly after the user purchased the game. Worse, though, the user is making statements about things he knows nothing about; this is clearly a teenager (at most). “Think back to the SNES or another older console”? I’ll do exactly that–I’ll think back to the SNES and the NES. “How many games from that console are still talked about and have an active community?”

Really, dude? The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy 1, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Super Mario Bros. 3, Castlevania, Mega Man 2, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Breath of Fire III, Battletoads, Metroid, Metroid II, Dragon Warrior, and many, many others. There are more websites and forums dedicated to The Legend of Zelda right now–26 years after the game was released–than there are right now dedicate to Skyrim, which isn’t even 2 years old. I’ll turn the tables on you as much as I can: how many games from the PS2 or Xbox are still talked about and have an active community? Damn, I can’t think of one. Maybe Final Fantasy X?

Dude, Skyrim won’t be remembered 15 years from now. And there are a few reasons for that. The first is that Skyrim doesn’t have that “special something” that has caused The Legend of Zelda et al. to have the longevity which they have. This guy wrote his review in August 2012; I’d love to be able to contact him and see how Skyrim’s predicted longevity is holding up, just in his own mind. I’d wager he’s pretty much forgotten about it.

The reason that The Legend of Zelda is remembered so well isn’t just that “special something” it has. Well, maybe it is. But Zelda broke ground; Zelda made huge strides in gaming. You’re showing a remarkable misunderstanding of what actually happened back then, and that’s why I say you’re clearly a teenager. You obviously weren’t a child in the NES days. And, to be fair, I didn’t experience the Atari age. Born in 1986, The Legend of Zelda had already “done its thing” when I was old enough to play games (I started at the age of 3 or 4, though). 

I want you to right now go download an Atari 2600 emulator and an NES emulator. Then download Adventure 2600 and play it. Or E.T. the Extraterrestrial. Or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Any of those 3 will make good baselines for comparison. And after you have beaten one of those games multiple times (like you would have done back in 1983, since there weren’t any other options), I want you to suddenly jump from that to the NES and to The Legend of Zelda. Do you see now? Do you see what Zelda did? Do you see why The Legend of Zelda has survived 26 years?

That’s Adventure 2600. That is The Legend of Zelda’s predecessor.

And that’s The Legend of Zelda. Do you see now? Do you see why these older games have survived? Because they were so far beyond the bar that had been set that it blew everyone’s minds. We went in a single jump from the square-shaped hero of Adventure 2600 to the epic game that is The Legend of Zelda. In a single jump. It was nothing short of incredible. 

And there hasn’t been a leap made like that since. The gap between the The Legend of Zelda and A Link to the Past? There’s one there, but it’s a technological quality gap; that’s all.

See? There is a difference, but it’s a technological difference only. And then–holy shit, here comes Ocarina of Time, to make another huge leap.

A flawless transition into three dimensions. The only game that came close to being as flawlessly executed was Super Mario 64. The jump from 2-D to 3-D was extremely difficult, and a lot of franchises didn’t survive. Of those that did, Ocarina of Time was by far the best and most successful. Once released, it topped every single gaming chart in the United States. Once Ocarina of Time showed everyone how it was done, other companies learned and followed suit–Rare, Squaresoft, THQ, and others.

And you’re wanting to say that Skyrim’s advancement is sufficient to earn it 15 years of fame? You’re deluded. Skyrim is an upgraded version of Oblivion in the same way that Ocarina of Time was an upgraded version of A Link To the Past. But let’s compare how much advancement was actually made. Here’s Oblivion, Skyrim’s direct predecessor:

And here’s Skyrim:

See what I’m saying? The difference between Oblivion and Skyrim is negligible. There’s almost no difference. The graphics are better, sharper, and smoother (lol at nonsense), the world is bigger, but… that’s it. And that’s not much of an advancement. Skyrim is to Oblivion as A Link to the Past is to The Legend of Zelda. You’re trying to say that: Skyrim is to Oblivion as The Legend of Zelda is to Adventure 2600. And that’s simply not true. It’s in no way true; Skyrim doesn’t improve nearly enough to qualify. Or you’re trying to say: Skyrim is to Oblivion as Ocarina of Time is to A Link to the Past. And that’s not true either. Again, Skyrim doesn’t improve nearly enough to qualify.

The very last announcement for today’s Nintendo Direct came from the Regginator himself. He called back to how he views A Link To The Past as his favorite game of all time (it’s my second favorite Zelda game, behind Wind Waker). With that in mind, he showed off a new game that’ll take place in the same Hyrule as depicted in A Link To The Past, this time with 3D graphics. Gameplay and movement is the same as it was in A Link To The Past (and Phantom Hourglass/Spirit Tracks minus the stylus control). Sporting his classic Brown/Green tunic from the original game, Link will traverse the land of Hyrule in oldschool fashion. However height will now play a bigger role than before. On top of this, Link can become a 2D picture on the wall and turn corners that he wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Think Sideways NY, but with a lot more Zelda.

Currently Nintendo of America hasn’t chosen a name for this sequel, but Nintendo of Japan is currently calling it Triforce of the Gods 2 (referencing ALttP’s Japanese name). Will it be called A Link To The Past 2, fall prey to the punny A Link 2 The Past, or will we get an entirely new subtitle? The game will be made available for the 3DS around the holiday season of this year.

In other Zelda news, GBC titles Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons will also be made available on 3DS Virtual Console on May 30 of this year. The original titles were vast, requiring two games to fully tell the story. Oracle of Ages dealt with time travel and followed the story of Naryu, while Oracle of Seasons had a season-changing mechanic and followed Din. You could choose which game to play first, with the second one being a sequel to the first via password.  I’ve only ever played Oracle of Ages, but would love to try that game again and finally play the Seasons game as well.

[via Nintendo Direct. Oracle Games at 29:48 mark. ALttP at 35:10]

Earlier today, during its Nintendo Direct online presentation, Nintendo revealed a brand-new game in The Legend of Zelda series. The game will be set in the world of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and it is not a remake of the SNES title. Furthermore, Nintendo has confirmed that the upcoming game is being developed by series producer Eiji Aonuma and his team at Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD). The untitled game will be released exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS.

Don’t you just love Nintendo? This company sure like to make my dreams come true. Welcome the newest Dr.Gamer article as today me and NGamerGuy sit down to discuss what is now more important to gamers than e3… Nintendo Direct!

It all started with an announcement of a Nintendo Direct coming and gamers started craving as usual, speculations and rumors walked next to us this past week until we reached this day. Speaking of past, the end of the Direct saw Nintendo of America’s president Reggie revealing a The Legend of Zelda game with Link to the Past‘s world 3DS game making its way to our homes this holiday. A 3D trailer is now available to download and I would go download it if I were you.

Now that the end is spoiled me and my wonderful friend sitting next to me and “correcting” my grammar decided not to cut this little interview into different pieces and since this was more of a 3DS focused Nintendo Direct, I thought I would pour my focus onto the 3DS titles, but due to my home console crave for talking, here goes:

1. The major Wii U update is coming next week and it improves the system performance a lot.
2. New Super Luigi U DLC is so massive it re-designs all 82 levels in a way it fits Luigi. 1st of all Luigi Jumps higher and his dash after running lasts longer which makes it quite a pickle for most of us I guess.
3. Each VC Wii U game will have its own community, and Earthbound is coming.
4. Nintendo fooled us last year when they showed us a flying Pikmin on the box-art and in the trailer at e3, but no one was even able to see that. (Bravo Nintendo)
5. Game & Wario is looking so fun and I’m not going to say a word because you really need to see it if you didn’t. June 23rd.

Now that all this is over lets go to this pretty little handheld I call the 3DS. PS: Please forgive me 3DS XL owners on this word.

I want to talk about all the games, but the article will go too long so I’ll mention the best… Heck I’m going for it!

More Mario & Luigi Dream Team information was revealed, the story sees Princess Peach mysteriously kidnaped and it’s up to Mario & Luigi to save her. While advancing through the real world you’ll have to make Luigi sleep on a special pillow so that Mario can go into his dreams and well, advancing through it ( You need to see the trailer).

Now we have Mario Golf World Tour, I for one never got myself to like Mario’s sports games much, well some more than others, but with a community like MK7 and powerful WiFi I think I would get it. Also a Mario Party game is revealed and it’s coming this winter, no major changes, but the maps are as fun as ever. Also a new Yoshi’s Island game promises us some exciting new platforming experience.

The last Nintendo Direct revealed a new game called Mario & Donkey Kong Minis on the Move but this time there is something new, the game will have over 180 new stages, not mention the ability of creating stages and uploading them for other gamers to enjoy on May 9th exclusively to the eshop.

Now let me move to a bigger.NotAlwaysBetter also revealed at last e3, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D which is coming to my house on May 24th. Today the Direct revealed that the game will have two different gameplay modes, New Mode which has 3 new items (Portable DK Barrel – Green Balloon – Crash Guard) that make the game easier for some who found it tough to be beaten, and the Original Mode which is as hard as the Wii one and doesn’t have these items. Anyway both the modes have a new world that has 8 new levels for older players to enjoy with it.

Animal Crossing New Leaf is coming on June 9th and wait, I think I forgot something?! Oh that is right, Nintendo announced that both The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Seasons and The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Ages are making their way to the 3DS’s virtual console on May 30th.

Now please let me take you to the 3rd party side, yes I have much more to talk about, but first just a reminder I want to remind of you of (Is that a tongue twister, no? Nevermind.) Lego City Undercover The Chase Begins which is coming on April 21st tells us how Chase Maccain got to be a cop which makes it a prequel, if you liked playing Lego City  Undercover on the Wii U, you’re going to love playing The  Chase Begins on the 3DS.

Level-5 blessed us with 3 eshop games they’re going to publish, but developed by popular developers. 1st of all The Starship Damrey which makes you play the game without a tutorial or anything actually, you need to depend on your gaming skills to actually understand it as it is.

Then we have Bugs vs Tanks developed by non other than the father of Mega Man Keiji Inafune and his company Comcept. The game is an action shooter where you are shrunk and need to kill swarms of bugs. It’s easier to understand Keiji’s games when you see them.

Last but not least Attack of the Friday Monsters A Tokyo Tale, your character is a young boy who lives in a city where 1970′s cartoons come to life every Friday.

Now we have 3 more games to go, one you see above, Bravely Default Flying Fairy coming in 2014 is an RPG game to the ages where strategy is really important because you can skip attacking in order to have a chance of dealing more damage in the next turn. The game will have special AR cards for it, not to mention some serious online fun, and multiple endings.

Next is Professor Layton and the Azran Legacies which will boost more than 500 new puzzles, and of course some downloadable puzzles, an amazing story, and well… What else can you ask for?

Finally, I had to save this for last, Atlas decided to bring Shin Megami Tensei 4 to the west on July 16th, and don’t make me type anymore as the article now contains 1063(And more in front of these words too) words which is the longest article me or NGamerGuy ever wrote.

Thanks for reading, if you happened to read the entire article then you’re not just a Nintendo, NintyChronicle, Dr.Gamer fan, you are one heck of a reader! Until next time…

GAME ON!

Enjoy those 30+ minutes of pure Nintendo awesomeness, from today’s official Nintendo Direct!

For those who are in a rush, or too lazy to press play, it is safe to say that Nintendo has plenty of good games coming this year.

First of all a brand new The Legend Of Zelda title for the 3DS, set in the same world of A Link To The Past and featuring a wall-walking.

And what about the american and european digital release of Earthbound? The was released on the Japanese Wii U virtual console on March 20, 2013 and till today there was no word on an international virtual console release. 

Obviously there was a lot more…but, c’mon, watch the damn video!

Earlier in the Direct, Satoru Shibata announced that the Game Boy Colour duo Zelda Oracle of Ages and Zelda: Oracle of Seasons are being given an eShop release. These two are unique in the Zelda series as they were released simultaneously, and, whilst the two have different gameplay, stories and even completely separate lands in which the games take place, a password given at the end of each game can be used in the other to unlock a linked ending, drawing comparisons to Pokemon’s traditional dual launches (in both examples, players have to link up with the other version to get the most out of the game).

They started off by showing more gameplay footage of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. As expected, it looks excellent. Definitely a day one purchase for me. The weird thing here is that it’s coming out on July 12th in Europe and August 11th in North America. Massive difference there! As a European, I don’t complain. Remember, Americans – we still don’t have Fire Emblem yet! We’re getting it this Friday, which is two months after you guys. Anyway, then they moved on to Mario Golf: World Tour. Honestly, I’m not really excited for this game at all. It’s probably because I’ve never been into golf games. That might change in the future, but for now, this game doesn’t do anything for me.

Afterwards, they announced a brand new game… Mario Party 3DS! Mario Party is one of my favorite multiplayer franchises ever, but sadly it has gone downhill since the Nintendo 64 days. The GameCube ones weren’t too bad, but the Wii ones were terrible. Mario Party DS was pretty good in my opinion, but nothing major at all. Currently, I’m having a hard time categorizing this new one, but it’s definitely something I’ll consider. The mini-games looked fairly fun. We’ll see about this one… Then they showed us New Super Luigi U – the New Super Mario Bros. U DLC. It’s basically a new game in the 2D Mario series, since every single level has been redesigned for Luigi. They also highlighted Luigi’s unique abilities – such as jumping higher than Mario. Nothing of this was new to us, but it was still pretty cool to see.

Next was Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D. This one wasn’t really a big deal either since we knew everything beforehand. It’s basically a port of the Wii version with a new easy mode for casuals. They did say the game will have a few more levels, though, which is quite nice. I don’t think I’ll get it though, since I already bought it once. I might sell it if it turns out to be a massive improvement. This one is a “maybe” too. And then… Time for another new game! Yoshi’s Island 3! The art style is different this time. It seems that some people don’t really like it, and I can definitely see why. However, on the other hand I do like how it doesn’t look exactly like the previous games. Unless it gets some really crappy reviews, I’ll probably get it. It looks fun.

Not long after that, they started talking about the Wii U a bit. Firstly, the spring update. I have an opinion I really need to stress here. This update is commonly known as the update that will improve the loading times, but you know what? That isn’t even the best feature! I can finally turn on the machine and go straight to the Wii Menu by holding the B button! Such a fantastic idea! I’m playing a lot of Wii games nowadays (especially Pikmin 2), so it’s a perfect feature for me. It might not seem like a big deal, but it really is. Good stuff.

Next up was Pikmin 3. When Iwata mentioned the name, I just KNEW they would give us a release date. It was the perfect opportunity… Well, it turned out they didn’t – at first. Later during the press release, a launch date of August 4th was mentioned. I’m thinking this is for North America only though, but it should give everyone an idea of when they can play the game. It’s later than I initially expected – especially since they called it a spring game. Now, what will happen with The Wonderful 101? Is that one pushed back as well? We don’t know for sure.

Anyway, the footage presented a new type of Pikmin – the Winged Pikmin! As you’ve probably already guessed, they can fly. They look pretty neat. I’m looking forward to this game, but I personally have no problem waiting for August since I just recently started playing this series. I do think it’s a terrible move though, since the Wii U is in massive trouble. Hopefully they have a thing or two up their sleeve for E3. Oh, and by the way, the Pikmin 3 box art was shown. I’m a sucker for box art, so here it is.

And then… THEN… It was time for a megaton. EarthBound, a cult classic game from the SNES days, will FINALLY be released on the Virtual Console! This is massive news – especially for Europe. This is the first time ever the game will available in that region, which is awesome. Hopefully we’re a step closer to the EarthBound Collection I’ve been dreaming about for years. I’ve never played any game in the series, but I’ve always really wanted to. I hope people buy this release to show Nintendo how much we want them to support EarthBound in the west. I never, never thought this would happen. So glad to see this!

Iwata said bye and Bill Trinen showed up. He mostly talked about all the boring stuff. Game & Wario looks pretty alright though. It’s not a day one thing, but I’ll probably get my hands on it eventually. Bravely Default, Animal Crossing, Shin Megami Tensei, yada, yada, yada… We knew about this stuff already! But as soon as Reggie showed up… Man, what an announcement he made. A brand new Zelda game based on A Link to the Past will join the 3DS’ massive 2013 lineup! The game looks really great. The best way I can describe it is, “New The Legend of Zelda”. It takes the top-down view of the old school games and blends it with fresh 3D graphics. I’m happy they went this route instead of making another game like Phantom Hourglass/Spirit Tracks.

That game was the icing on the cake. Overall, it was a great Nintendo Direct. One of the best ones ever. I was hoping for some Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney news, but oh well… We got so much other stuff. I’m already looking forward to the next one – and of course E3 too!

During today’s Nintendo Direct online presentation, Nintendo revealed a brand-new The Legend of Zelda game for the Nintendo 3DS. The upcoming game currently has no official title, but it will take place “in the world from A Link to the Past,” and it will arrive this holiday season, exclusively for Nintendo’s latest handheld console.

Video

No, I don’t mean the kind of Racket Boy to the left but the kind of Racket Boy to the right.

Beware that these list don’t account for the gameplay aspect of the games, as we know that Virtua Racer, for example, despite being one of the very few fully 3D games on a home console system at its time, was a poor port from the arcade game and played very badly (not to mention it was horrifically expensive due to new chips and whatnot in the custom made housing of the cartridge) and experienced major framerate cutdowns making your eyes bleed.

Here’s a Link to the article:

Go on, click Link to get to the link to the article!

First image from: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/chromaco/chromaco1209/chromaco120900055/15441894-tennis-boy-cartoon-player-with-racket-and-ball-vector-illustration.jpg

Second image from: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-KoPfpfDvszw/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAABY/kYEqTG-w6B8/s250-c-k/photo.jpg

Third image from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0e/Link_LOZ_with_items.png/200px-Link_LOZ_with_items.png

Until recently, I’d thought of gamers as mostly docile creatures, a subculture mainly comprised of smart people who only wanted to have fun in fantasy worlds. I was unashamed to consider myself among them. Hell, why not? I’ve been playing videogames since I was barely five, when I spent hours on the old toaster NES in my parents’ bedroom.

But shit hit the fan one harrowing night when I browsed the comments section of a woman’s YouTube video, reading thousands of ‘fellow’ gamers respond with the tact of warring chimps. Rape and murder threats, sexist slurs, screams of righteous indignation flying from all directions…to be completely honest, I started questioning whether the past 24 years of my life had been spent in vain. It’s not too often that assholes ruin things I love, but that night it came damned near close to happening.

The woman in question was Anita Sarkeesian of the Feminist Frequency website. The video was her announcing a Kickstarter project for an online series called “Tropes vs. Women in Videogames,” where her goal would be to examine how our entire history of videogaming has treated women.

But these gamers—again, the people I thought I’d identified with—well, they weren’t happy to put it bluntly. And in my almost 29 years on this planet, I’ve never seen such an clusterfuck orgy of bloodlust and childish behavior situated  in one location. Over the next few months, Ms. Sarkeesian would braze a shitstorm of bullying, attempts at having her Kickstarter project yanked, and criticizing from those wonderful bros who have assembled to call themselves ‘Men’s Rights Activists.’

Because when women have been oppressed and treated as property since the dawn of time, it’s only fair for dudes to bellow “REVOLUTION!”  when ladies are finally granted some leeway. Je-sus. 

Thanks to these nerds and their rape threat shelling, any point Ms. Sarkeesian might have about inherent sexism within the culture has been proven for her. The vicious attacks also netted Ms. Sarkeesian a tremendous showing of support, and the end result was that her Kickstarter campaign was given a donation of $ 158,922. She walked away from the onslaught unfazed and unafraid.

You know what? As a straight male, I plead no contest to the charge of finding women sexually attractive. And as a male, I fully admit that the last 40-odd years of video games have been completely gross about women. It doesn’t take a cultural anthropologist with letters after their name to figure that out, and it wouldn’t take me long at all to come up with examples of my own.

Take Silent Hill 3 for instance, a game where you guide a charismatic teenage girl through hours of a body horror show. A fun ride for sure—though the reward for completing a multiple playthrough challenge is a skimpy “magical anime girl” costume for 17-year-old Heather. Here, have some more: Lara Croft’s bouncing titties and that ‘Nude Raider’ patch from the late 90s; Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball; Duke Nukem 3D’s tassel wearin’ strippers; Duke Nukem Forever’s alien breeding victims; Ashley’s ‘special’ costume in Resident Evil 4; fucking THIS. This shit is out there, guys, it’s not hidden, and behind nearly every female lead in a videogame there’s always at least one developer who’s pulling his pud in a dark corner.

But I didn’t start this to do a lengthy rant about awful people. The first installment of “Tropes vs. Women in Videogames” has been out for a while, and I’d like to share my thoughts on it.

Class. That’s the best-one word summary for the first installment of Anita Sarkeesian’s series. Ms. Sarkeesian never makes any jabs at her online haters, subtle or otherwise. Nor does she condemn and express hatred for the medium; by contrast, she makes the point early on that the purpose of this series is to think critically about what she recognizes as an important cultural outlet, and that it is possible to love something yet still be aware of its flaws. She actually likes videogames, bros. She’s not out to ruin anyone’s fun or break anybody’s toys. And her discourse is completely formal and objective. She simply states facts, and her opinions, unlike most of mine, are joke and scorn-free.

The first installment of “Tropes vs. Women in Videogames” focuses on the Damsel in Distress motif, a trope that’s been around for the last several thousand years of storytelling but has been embraced by videogames. While watching the video I came to realize that in the realm of videogames, the Damsel in Distress has mainly been perpetuated by this man:

In my opinion, I think Shigeru Miyamoto is more interested in making games fun rather than establishing transcendent storytelling. I’m not saying he’s a bad guy. But Ms. Sarkeesian reveals that just about every Miyamoto-involved project has involved a kidnapped or helpless maiden in some shape or form. From Mario’s early days as Jumpman all the way up to his adventures on modern consoles, it’s always been about either poor Daisy or poor Princess Toadstool/Peach being kidnapped by a giant ape or dog mutant-thing. The only time we’ve been allowed to play Princess Peach in the core franchise, Ms. Sarkeesian notes, was by accident, when the American version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was converted from Doki Doki Panic. 

My friends and I loved the American Super Mario Bros. 2, by the way. And regardless of whether my friends were male or female, they always picked the princess because the princess could float. The princess was a cheat mode.

“Hmm. Not helpless looking enough. Needs more boobs.”

Ms. Sarkeesian opens her video with a prime example of Miyamoto and the Damsel in Distress. Dinosaur Planet doesn’t sound like the type of game I probably would have enjoyed, as I usually get bored pretty quickly with anything involving furry animal protagonists. But the heart of Dinosaur Planet seems like it was in the right place. It was going to feature a female protagonist, Krystal,  who would have spent her game kicking ass all over the place without the need for a bouncing cleavage skin. The game was developed by RARE as their final project before Microsoft borged them into their Devil’s Machine. Then Shigeru Miyamoto came along and decided to make Dinosaur Planet into Star Fox Adventures, the third installment in his Star Fox franchise. Under Miyamoto, Krystal was stripped down to her underwear, trapped inside a crystal (hee hee) and made an object not only for Fox McCloud to rescue, but ogle and go “woooow” over while love-makin’ jazz played in the background. Even worse, since Krystal was now a prize instead of a protagonist  they went ahead and gave Fox what was originally intended to be her signature weapon. 

“Your combat and leadership skills mean nothing now, princess! Your gender role dictates that you stand HERE and SHUT DOWN like a good girl!”

After a lengthy discussion of Mario, Ms. Sarkeesian moves onto The Legend of Zelda which in a way is even worse when it comes to its kidnapped princess routine. On the rare occasions where Zelda is allowed to be the heroine instead of kidnapped or in a coma or whatever, she’s immediately relegated to the role of passive pedestal android once it’s revealed she’s the Zelda of the installment. In Windwaker this happens to the badass pirate girl Tetra, where after Link is told Tetra is Zelda, Tetra is ordered to stay in the castle (standing in the exact same spot) because it’s “too dangerous” for her to go outside. And. of course, her obligatory kidnapping follows that. Ms. Sarkeesian shows us something interesting here: the idea that having the title ‘Zelda’ somehow means being the hero’s shiny grail to collect at the end.

“Not convinced! More boobs!”

After the success of the early Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda games, Ms. Sarkeesian tells us that the Damsel in Distress trope was embraced on a mass scale, from Marian of Double Dragon being punched in the stomach and dragged away to Dirk the Daring setting out to rescue one of the most godawful representations of a female I’ve ever witnessed in Dragon’s Lair. Furthermore, when men get captured it’s a simple matter of solving a prison escape puzzle or punching a hole in the wall; when women are captured their only hope is to pray that luck will find them through the male hero. 

“No. This one…cannot be killed be fire. Fire will only make it angry.”

That’s the majority of the 23-minute video, and while this installment only covers examples of the trope from older console generations, it’s an eye-opening piece of work. Ms. Sarkeesian concludes by previewing the next installments, which will cover the Damsel in Distress in the modern console era before moving onto female protagonists.

Before I watched this I was only slightly aware of how problematic these issues were. And while I love videogames and am likely to continue loving them until crippling arthritis prevents my liver-spotted hands from gripping a controller, I’m man enough to recognize that videogames need to grow the fuck up. The “M” on the package corners only means ‘mature’ in one aspect; it’s high time we moved from these drunken frat party outings and shaped games into something more meaningful. I applaud Anita Sarkeesian for standing up to bullies and giving the rational amongst us an educational and well-constructed video. I’ll definitely be tuning in for the ensuing installments.