Zelda

Random Fun Stuff

  • Welp, I’m up late tonight, as Woot.com is having a Woot-Off. These are dangerous for both my health and my wallet, but I’m determined to get a Bag of Crap this time. I don’t expect to win a 50″ HDTV or a Wii like some lucky people, but I figure it’ll be fun regardless. That is, if these USB harddrive enclosures ever sell out.
  • I ordered a DVD boxset of the entire Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, and it finally came! Not a bad price, given that Buy.com was having a sale and Google Checkout was taking $20 off on top of that.
  • I’ve been hooked on Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii. Best Zelda game I’ve played since the original. I think I’m about 20 hours into it right now, though I’m perhaps not as far along as I should be. Spent a lot of time just exploring the world, as one should do in a Zelda game.
  • I must buy this toy if/when it comes out. The expressions on the little people are priceless.

Birthday Bash and Mario Bros

This past week was crunch time at work. People working all hours of the day and night, barely seeing their homes. And I had a lot to do, like everyone else. So what did I do? I went home to visit friends and family.

There’s a good reason, though. It was my girlfriend’s birthday, which I wouldn’t have missed for anything. I organized a little surprise party with our friends at a nice sushi restaurant. I decided to spoil her, and bought her a Black Nintendo DS Lite, Brain Age, Sonic Rush, Super Princess Peach (which she loves), and Mario Kart DS.

I did actually manage to get everything I needed done for work, though. The trick is to learn how not to sleep. I’d get up every morning, work, spend time with friends, family, and Jamie.. Go home, work, go to bed around 4, repeat. It was worth it, though.

I didn’t get to visit with my sister Jenna as much as I would have liked, but we still had fun and did our usual donut and AM/PM run. Jamie and Jenna and I did spend some time feeding the ducks, though, which was a lot of fun. It was one of those days you thoroughly enjoy. All the stress of life went away. It was just us and the ducks. Ah, new memories.

While back home, I purchased a DVD box set of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Clearly the best purchase I’ve ever made. My sister, who is now six years old and a Super Smash Bros. nut, saw the DVD box and begged me to let her watch it. We watched a view episodes, with her glued to the TV, and my mom asked her if she liked it. She said, “No, I don’t like it… I LOVE IT!!”

How’s that for an endorsement? And I got to enjoy old cartoons I watched at her age with her. She’ll be coming to visit in a couple of weeks and we’ll be watching some more. Now I need to introduce her to The Legend of Zelda, Captain N: The Game Master (which really needs to be on DVD), and Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. I can pretend to be a kid again through her eyes 🙂

Ducks, videos and turtle hopping

Ducks

As busy as I’ve been lately, I was able to take the opportunity last Saturday to visit my family and my girlfriend. I took my little 5-year old sister Jenna and my girlfriend Jamie to feed ducks, which was a first for Jenna. She was a bit scared at first when the ducks started to approach her, but she quickly got over it. It wasn’t the warmest of days, and after a while Jamie and I decided it was time to leave. We told Jenna it’s time to stop and that it’s getting too cold, but
Jenna is a stubborn girl who enjoys the cold. “Just cuddle together” was her response, and she continued to feed the ducks. Ah well. Once we assured her we would come back another time, she willingly left.

Videos

I was browsing around del.icio.us today and came across an interesting site, YouTube. It’s a tag-based video posting site where people can upload videos and they’ll be played in a Flash wrapper, like Google Video uses. I’ve found a few neat videos so far, but haven’t explored it as much as I’d like. I’ve never heard of it before tonight, though, so I thought I’d post it for others to play with.

Turtle Hopping

So it turns out that there’s a number of developers writing new versions of Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda games. They’re not bad, either. I haven’t played very far into any of them, but they definitely look promising. The main ones I’ve found are Super Mario: Blue Twilight (a 2D side-scroller similar to SMB3 but with some Mario 64 elements, taking place in a halloween land), Super Mario War (kill all the other Marios before they kill you), Super Maryo World (a Mario game written in JavaScript), and Super Mario Pac (a combination of Super Mario World and Super Mario Sunshine).

On top of that, there’s a set of instructions for accessing developer-only areas of Super Mario Bros 3. A room full of Tanooki suits! Awesome.

As for the Legend of Zelda, check out Zelda Classic. It’s Windows-only for now, but they claim there’s a Linux version coming out. It’s the Zelda engine (plus some additional features) with support for custom games. There are many game sets provided by other users, some mediocre, some excellent and detailed. I recommend playing around with it.

And now, for the old-style unmodified retro games. Sure you could download emulators and do things that way, but why bother when there’s 1980-games.com, Every Video Game Online, Game-Oldies, Play Infocom Adventures Online, and C64s.com? Nice ways to quickly kill a few minutes from anywhere.

For the Tetris-type puzzle fans out there, I present to you Stackopolis!

(Can you tell I’m going through a nostalgia phase?)

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