The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask AMV: It's Me

Many thanks to Ecclesiastes for looking over this rant and making sure it doesn't suck!  At least, not any worse than usual.  You're the best, sir!



How long’s it been since an AMV impressed me so much that I felt compelled to make an entire rant all about it and it alone?  Over 3 years?  Sounds about right; quality of such degree doesn’t come around often.  And hey, bonus, this time it’s not about Final Fantasy 8!  So let’s take a look at the treat that its creator, who prefers to go by Eldritchdraaks, has to share with us.


The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask: It’s Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIqnrE-zcOw


Look.  Look with Your Special Eyes: This AMV is a damn treat to see.  The basic graphical quality is high, the visuals having been taken from the 3DS HD version of the game, and although TLoZMM is a dated game technologically, it nonetheless has an iconic aesthetic that puts its polygons to work in a way that piques the player’s interest as much in the present as it did in the past.

The use of visual effects here is excellent, in my opinion.  For the most part, Eldritchdraaks is quite content to let the energy and strength of Majora’s Mask speak for itself, doing little to alter or distract from the strength of its creepy and often striking imagery, and that’s a smart move--it’s usually better as a rule of thumb to be reserved about interfering with the game’s part in an AMV, and that’s especially true when the game’s look plays a huge role in its identity and the identity of the AMV as a whole.  But that doesn’t mean that Eldritchdraaks’s limited himself just to smooth and artfully logical scene selections and transitions: he has, in fact, found a way to increase the power of Majora’s Mask’s screen presence in this video by editing in text boxes, styled after the game’s own, to display the song’s lyrics.  It’s a good idea that has a great payoff for the video, as with the game itself seeming to be the one singing the song’s lyrics, it’s all the more immersive an experience.  The text even changes in color and loses its box at times when the game scene it’s supposedly playing over would normally have had an accordingly different style--now that’s dedication to detail!

Similarly, Eldritchdraaks’s ability to insert the series-signature musical score text boxes at moments when the character on-screen is playing an instrument is a clever and very cool trick, particularly the way that he has the button-press notes appear in perfect sync with the music’s beats--it flawlessly looks like it’s real footage of a gamer managing to play along to the AMV’s song.  In fact, I at first didn’t even realize it wasn’t authentic, until I realized that these score boxes show up even when characters other than Link are playing music.  Very neat!

Eldritchdraaks really threw his all into the visual presentation of this AMV, and it shows, even in ways you don’t necessarily pick up on consciously.  There is, for example, a substantive effect at 2:39 in which the screen keeps reducing in size to the beat of the music.  To me, it simply represented a special effect that emphasized the increasing tension in the music and scene (and it’s very effective in this capacity), but the creator has told me that that’s actually 1 of his favorite moments of editing, because beyond just its great harmony with the music and cutscene, it also references the way, in TLoZMM, the screen shrinks at the end of each day, when the clock tower rings.  I’m not too proud to admit that this allusion went right over my head, but it’s a great example of the level of dedication and subtlety Eldritchdraaks put into this work to not only make it really cool to watch, but a great representation of the source material in even the most subtle ways.  These are the hallmarks of a real artist, and It’s Me is filled with’em.


If Music be the Food of Love, Play On: The song used in this AMV is It’s Me, an original fan creation by TryHardNinja for the 5 Nights at Freddy’s series.  I can’t say that it’s my kind of music at all, any more than 5 Nights at Freddy’s is my kind of game, but I can at least recognize that the song, for what kind of music it is, seems really good.  Far too good for the franchise it was inspired by, really.

Which actually is fitting, because it’s kinda hard for me to imagine that this song could possibly fit better to the game it was actually created for than it does to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.  At least, that’s how I feel after seeing this AMV, which so perfectly matches, from start to finish, this unsettling and spooky song to both the blatant and the out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye sense of disturbing wrongness that TLoZMM revels in.  Additionally, lyrics that (I assume) have literal meaning when applied to 5NaF take on an even more sinister and fitting feeling as Eldritchdraaks pairs them as metaphors and symbols to the visuals of Majora’s Mask, while maintaining at least if not more surface-level relevance, as a song about a creepy and hostile setting, masks, and the cycle of night to day.

Of course, finding the music that matches the game so well is only a quarter of the battle, and the rest is managing to match it all together to create a product that’s both fitting and entertaining.  Eldritchdraaks is up the task.  I love the individual scenes that fit into the lyrics like a glove, such as 0:34, in which the song declares that the subject is in the dark but not all alone, and we see Link falling in the dark, but surrounded by the many masks which will assist him on the journey (thus he’s not alone, albeit in a much more positive sense than the music originally intended).  And I love 1:56, talking of making the listener “one of them” and showing the scene of Link as a wooden creepy-as-hell figure*

I love the way the scenes used for the chorus not only match the lyrics, but follow a theme, with the first one at 0:37 connecting the chorus’s subject of masks with the main 3 transformation masks that Link wears in TLoZMM and their origins, and then the second chorus at 2:07 continuing that theme by now focusing on other characters wearing less-central masks that also transformed them, or at least hid the truth of who they were.  I love the similar thematic way that the second part of the chorus each time is used to highlight the evil infesting Termina, the first time emphasizing the major story bosses, the second time focusing on the background villainy, all perfectly building up to the proclamation of the titular evil “It’s Me.”  Damn elegantly done, too, with each embodiment of the expressed evil being slotted into a single repetition of the lyrics.  And I love that the last part of the chorus, having no lyrics to coordinate with, seamlessly blends together with the song’s overpowering tune, giving us a montage both times of scenes that synchronize with each beat that once again follows a theme (music the first time, settings in sequential order of game completion the second time).  And I love that the end of the song coincides with the Dawn of a New Day.

This is pretty much as good as it gets in terms of joining the right visuals and the right game to a song.  I wasn’t kidding before; I earnestly couldn’t imagine how you could make this song better suit 5 Nights at Freddy’s, that which it was specifically created for, than this AMV makes it fit to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.  This is just masterful music video craftsmanship, plain and simple.


Lucy, You Got Some ‘Splainin’ to Do: The purpose of this AMV is that of most game music videos: to pay tribute to its subject and tell its story.  And it does it darned well.  As noted, the music is a great match to the discomforting atmosphere and imagery of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and the visuals capitalize on that nicely.  Additionally, Eldritchdraaks represents a wide range of both the most narratively important and the more memorable scenes, characters, and props of the game, furthering the effectiveness of the video as a tribute to the style, and mentality of Majora’s Mask.

It’s also cool, though, in that it not only emotionally tells the story of the game, but also does so more literally, too.  The AMV opens with early content from the game that sets the overall plot up, ends with the game’s own finality, and between these moments contains the majority of the signature, vital parts of the game--the scene selection of this AMV manages to represent Majora’s Mask’s most important plot devices and concepts (the masks, the musical component, the moon, the time repetition, etc), its most important characters, its antagonists, and its settings.  But it goes a step further than just laying out all the pieces of the game: in the last part of the second chorus, we get to see a quick sequence that represents the course of the game itself, showing us each major dungeon to overcome in its beginning state and then the results of Link’s actions, in the order they’re visited in the game, finishing with the climactic showdown in Clocktown and the destruction of the moon.  It’s essentially like a tiny snapshot of the game’s own course...and by having previously showed us all the characters and plot devices and whatnot, the AMV has, in a sense, told us the whole story of the game.  It showed us all the actors and props in the play, and then the events in the order they transpire--a stylized little way of telling TLoZMM’s story without doing a conventional play-by-play.  Very neat!

It’s Me is a really great AMV.  It tells the story and sells the feeling and style of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask extremely well, it’s technically excellent, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch, and its every part seems to have been made with care.  You’re lucky if you can find a single decent RPG AMV for every 20 you come across, but quality outweighs quantity to me, and it’s AMVs of quality like this that keep me an avid watcher of this fan art-form.












* I’m not alone in this; this is also Eldritchdraaks’s favorite part of the video.  To quote the man himself, “My absolute favorite part of the video is 1:53-2:22. With the way the lyrics talk about "making you one of us" and showing the creepy link statue as if to imply Majora wished for Link to fall and become yet another of those to leave behind nothing but a mask. And it's followed up with talking about "doing it all again" because HEY! that's the whole point of the game! the constant resets, falling through the void of clocks to land right back where you started at 6am. Time to do it all again.”

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker AMV: The Cinematic Experience

Well here's a rare treat: an AMV artist making a return to this rant blog. Yes, the creator of today's AMV is Roynerer, who also made the last AMV highlighted in this rant column, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The Cinematic Experience. Today's selection has a similar founding idea behind it, but a fairly different mood to its music, visuals, and scene selection keeps it fresh and interesting for us. So, with the customary SPOILER ALERT mentioned, let's take a look-see, shall we?


The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The Cinematic Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b0bsAmYFGI


Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready for my Close-Up: The game's visuals are aesthetically pleasing in their trademark combination of cartoonish style, cel-shading, and eye-catching color. The quality of the video footage is good, nothing bad nor amazing that I noticed.

As with Roynerer's last AMV, the visual artistry is simple, but exemplary. There's a fade or 2 that are nicely placed, connecting the scenes on either side of them fairly well, but the real subtle elegance can be seen at moments such as 4:11 to 4:13, where Link's swirling in the air fades into a picture of clouds circling a towering mountain peak, and 4:49 to 4:52, where a spinning fairy is followed by a spinning bird. The AMV is basically using different parts of its footage--its very colorful and visually appealing footage--to connect scenes in an attention-capturing way here, and it's quite neat.

Most importantly, though, is just the fact that the scene selection here is very good overall. Unlike the last AMV I looked at by Roynerer, this one is less about emotionally telling the game's story in a linear way than it is about giving a grand summary of the game, much like the Final Fantasy 9 Porcelain AMV did that I reviewed a little ways back. At the same time, though, there IS a certain linearity and story-telling method to the AMV, for it starts and ends with the same beginning and conclusion as the game itself--the first few minutes of the AMV show the same legend told at the beginning of the game and also cover the abduction of Aryll, while the last minutes of the video show the final battle with Ganondorf and the departure of Link and Tetra. For these parts, the scene selection is very good, showing what's needed to get the message across in a manner that keeps the attention. I feel that the main body of the AMV is also notable in its scene selection, though. Granted, with less of a linear tale to tell, Roynerer has an easier task, not having to worry about continued comprehension of scenes and their relation to one another...but the images he's chosen to show the scope, magic, and action of the adventure are very effective, yet not overwhelming as they could have been. This is thanks to the fact that in addition to showing plenty of exciting images of dragons breathing fire and magic light shooting across the landscape and such, the video also has several clips that are more simple and ordinary, such as revolving shots of the islands Link visits in the game, or some kids walking along. Also, I should note that even if it's not as cohesive a sequence as that of the previous Zelda AMV, the locations and stuff shown in this video's adventure-summarizing center does actually go in the order that the game does for the most part--you see each new location and the stuff that happens there in the same sequence as you would visit it and do it in the game. So really, this AMV is kind of like a nicely linear sequence of events, but at the same time a generalized overview of the game, and both parts of the combination are done well and don't take away from the other.

Your Music's Bad and You Should Feel Bad!: This AMV actually uses music from 3 separate movies' soundtracks: Armageddon, Dinosaur, and Lady in the Water. I can't say I'm very familiar with any of these movies--I've actually never seen Armageddon or Lady in the Water, and it's been many years since I saw Dinosaur. But as an unfamiliar listener, I'd have to say that these music selections are very nice pieces, effective at invoking emotion in several powerful fashions.

The musical part of this AMV is extremely well-done. This is partially because the music itself is, as I just said, quite good. But the far greater part of what makes this AMV terrific is how well the music is utilized. First of all, the music selection for the arcs of the AMV is great. The beginning, which tells of the legend of Hyrule that the game's story starts with, is played to poignant music filled with mysticism, wonder, and a feeling of epic past events that draws you in--in fact, I was far more entranced by the beginning story in this AMV than I was by it in the original game! After this introduction, the music beautifully transitions into a piece that just as perfectly embodies the idea of a grand tale's beginning as the first events of the game are shown in an abridged fashion, and once the adventure's start has been established, the music once again transitions to a more upbeat tune that perfectly embodies the spirit of a long, involved adventure, perfectly accompanying the part of the AMV that paraphrases the main body of the plot for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Eventually, it changes yet again to a strong, epic score to compliment the climactic final battle with Ganondorf that the AMV details. Finally, the AMV concludes to a more quiet, emotional song that embodies the departure of Link and Tetra from the remnants of Hyrule quite well.

In addition to fitting the general mood of each part of the AMV, the music also nearly perfectly fits the details of the AMV, as well, which is always a feat that requires great skill from an AMV creator. Most people will be able to put their AMV to appropriate music in general, some will be able to generally match the music's notes and changes to the events in the video, but rarely do you find an AMV where the creator has done both--rarer still that it's done as well as this one. There are plenty of examples, such as 3:46, where Link crashes into a wall just as the music's beat percussion thingy sounds, and immediately after at 3:48, where Link's splash into the water below is matched to the next drum beat thing in the music. As the music changes to a calmer, more rolling, yet adventurous tune at 3:56, the scene transitions appropriately into the waves of the ocean as Link sails along them. My favorite examples of this perfect cohesion between visual events and the music's notes and emotions is found at 4:30, where the music soars suddenly as a beam of light races from one island totem to the next, crashing into its target as the cymbals crash in the song--such a tiny part of the whole AMV, yet so masterfully done. But these are just a few examples; trust me when I say that the attention to the details of melding visual and audio in this AMV is constant and manifested countless times in the music video's course. And it can be more than just individual notes matching up, too, smaller passages of video and sound where it's not so much the details as the emotion of both the music and video that are in tune. For example, the way the music's climactic conclusion matches to the finale to the battle against Ganondorf from 6:02 to 6:17 is elegantly epic in this way.

Guy, You Explain: This is one of those AMVs that attempt to summarize the game. Interestingly, it's both like the last AMV by Roynerer, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The Cinematic Experience in that attempts to show the entirety of the game...and yet at the same time, also like most summary AMVs, in that it's more conveying the general idea, the general feel and epic nature of the game, than the entirety of it. What I mean by this is that The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The Cinematic Experience here shows you the beginning of the game, and brings you to the game's concluding events, its final battle and the send-off for Link and Tetra, covering the most important parts of the game, the ones with the most story-telling power. Roynerer brings us in this AMV an adequately detailed depiction of the final chapter in Hyrule's long saga of adventures. But most of the game's events that follow the beginning and lead up to the ending are more or less glossed over in the video's middle, shown in a jumble that doesn't cover all the bits of plot throughout the game that lead to the conclusion. Instead, we get the more typical AMV summary of the game, seeing lots of scenes of people, places, and events that all spell out a theme of colorful, fun adventure, which is what The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was about just as much as all the epic stuff. Both sides to this video's purpose are done very well, and I feel that they're connected very well together, unified as a whole instead of just forced together.

This AMV's not perfect--as good as the beginning of the AMV is, which describes the opening legend of the game, it's pretty long, taking up almost 3 minutes of an 8 minute video--that's a little too long for an AMV just to have you staring at murals, honestly. But on the other hand, I couldn't really say how this could be fixed--the sequence is too integral to the idea of the AMV, and too well-made, to speed it up, or cut it out of the AMV altogether. So it's not a fault I feel should be significantly held against this work.

And other than that flaw, I can't really find anything else wrong with this. It is, from start to finish, epic, elegant, skillfully made, powerful, fun, colorful, and absolutely great to watch--and in having all these qualities, it embodies its game perfectly. Roynerer has told me in correspondence that he takes pride in his work, and the skill, creativity, and enthusiasm evident in this AMV both attests to this, and proves that he has a right to that pride.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess AMV: The Cinematic Experience

Well, it's been a little while since I had an AMV rant for you all. Simple reason for that, too--I ran out of good ones. Yeah, out of the literally dozens and dozens of AMVs I look over every few times a year for every RPG I've played to date, which has to total in the hundreds by now, I only had about half a dozen that I thought were high enough quality to make a rant about. That's probably the worst track record I've seen for fan-related works, an even worse ratio of good to bad offerings than Fanfiction.net's Final Fantasy 8 section.

At any rate, though, whilst recently perusing the AMVs created at Youtube and AMV.org since last I checked, I DID find another noteworthy subject, one made by a certain Roynerer, that's not only very good, but rather distinctive, too. Oh, and long. Like, 8 minutes. Just to let you know in advance. Oh, and this is DEFINITELY one of those AMVs that needs a SPOILERS warning slapped all over it--you're gonna essentially be seeing the plot of the game from start to finish here, so, y'know, fairly warned.


The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The Cinematic Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKFVLxDoURg


Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready for my Close-Up: The visual quality of the videos used is good enough, nothing to complain about nor particularly praise. The videos' nature, of course, is fairly noteworthy, as the visual component to TLoZ: Twilight Princess was both impressive and aesthetically effective.

The artistry of the video, though, is pretty much the main event. Roynerer hasn't thrown any notable visual tricks into the AMV, but they would be out of place, even distracting, from what he DOES use the video component for: telling a concise, yet epic and powerful, version of TLoZ: Twilight Princess's story. This AMV uses key scenes throughout the game to show the watcher the main arcs of game's events, from the beginning of Link's journey and transformation, to meeting Midna, the spirits, Zelda, Zant, and Ganondorf, to the final battle and Midna's emotional goodbye. The AMV is showing the most plot-relevant scenes during his journey, and interspersing these scenes with several quick clips of the various tasks Link engages in during the game's course, from fighting to riding the river.

This by itself is a skillful move for Roynerer's purposes--the plot-essential scenes obviously tell the game's epic story as he intends them to, but the scenes thrown in here and there that show some of the tasks and battles Link goes through on the way to the important plot points effectively conveys the length and spectrum of the journey, showing the viewer that much effort and time is expended to get from one event to the next in a way that just showing us the important parts wouldn't manage. At the same time, though, there are only a few such images, leaving most of the AMV to be filled with the story-telling scenes, which is important when you have a longer one like this (let's face it: attention spans ain't what they used to be). Roynerer also employs some smart scene selection for the major plot parts of the AMV, cutting and pasting the videos of each event to give you a concise summary of each part that tells you as much as you need to know for the story, without adding unnecessary time to the AMV.* It works pretty impressively well, creating a fairly understandable and straightforward take on the story that's shown well enough that I suspect even those not familiar with the game would have little trouble following it, while sacrificing little to none of the story's power and grandeur--if anything, this summarized version better emphasizes the epic nature of Twilight Princess's plot than the game does. Even more impressive when you consider that the AMV tells the story entirely visually--none of the game's dialogue that accompanies the scenes is shown. Roynerer takes artistic, stirring visuals from a really cool story, and edits them together to make the whole product better. This AMV is, simply put, great to watch.

I Gotta Have More Cowbell: The music used in this AMV is comprised of several parts of the soundtrack for the movie The Last Samurai, composed by Hans Zimmer. Zimmer is, apparently, one of Roynerer's musical heroes (and the same goes for my sister--she just loves The Last Samurai's music), and one can certainly see (well, hear, anyway) why--regardless of your musical tastes, it would be hard not to recognize this music as strong, moving, and masterful.

Now, under normal circumstances, the visual part of this AMV would certainly be its highest virtue--as I describe above, it accomplishes a great deal with its video portion, and does so with excellence. But with this AMV, the audio component is actually an equally strong part of what makes it great--and once again, this is a combination of the music itself being great, and the skill of the AMV's creator. The score to The Last Samurai is at many points designed to be epic, and Roynerer takes full advantage of it--in fact, he goes beyond what I'd consider "taking full advantage." That implies (to me, at least) working with a song perfectly within the normal expected, established parameters of that song. I believe, however, that Roynerer's selection of which pieces of music to put where makes great use of it in ways that were not intended. See, one of the really great things about The Last Samurai's music is that it's meant to be the mood-creating theme to a movie about Japan at (I think) the end of its feudal age; it takes its cues from traditional Japanese sound, and creates and emphasizes the movie's Japanese setting at least as much as any visual aspect of The Last Samurai.

Basically, what I am saying here is that this soundtrack really sounds Japanese.

Yet, when I watch this AMV and see the scenes that the music plays to...it becomes transformed to me, somehow. Put to the well-chosen and entrancing Twilight Princess scenes, the music seems to meld with the game's video, and suddenly the epic and emotional music doesn't sound like it was taken from another source--it becomes such a connected part of the AMV that it sounds like it was somehow made for THIS. Seriously, when I watch this AMV, everything clicks so perfectly that the music doesn't seem like it was taken from something else and put into this--it's like it was MADE for this game's visuals. It's hard to describe how it happens, especially since I don't know much about cinematography and music to begin with, but the pace at which the visuals tell their story matches the music's tone and pace perfectly throughout the AMV, and that, along with the individual scene segments fitting extremely well with the moments of the song that accompany them, makes the song clips seem less a separate entity's music and more like they were designed around this AMV. That's an illusion that requires a lot of skill to create and maintain.

Also, as I mentioned, the individual scenes shown to the music are often flawlessly matched to its tone, coordinated as well as any AMV I've reviewed so far. My favorite example of this is at 1:22, when Link turns around and sees Zant. The music characterizes the visual wonderfully, taking a sudden, surprising dip into a deeper set of notes that work with the sudden appearance of the bizarre and formidable mask of Zant to startle the viewer and emphasize the unsettling nature of the villain in a slightly unnerving, almost regal way. And I'd like to note that it's also an excellent example of the AMV taking the music and changing how the listener reacts to it...this moment in the music is, in The Last Samurai, used for a moment of strong emotion in a way that you would expect. It's used perfectly, but conventionally, in its original use. Yet in this application, where the same moment of the song is used to convey unsettling, shocking imagery and timing to properly create a feel for Zant, it works equally well--it's a completely different way of using the same moment of music, yet it feels equally natural.

Overall, the scene's a really cool coordination of audio and visual and my favorite individual moment in this AMV, although it's very far from the only one--I'm not going into detail on the others simply because they go throughout the AMV, many, many scenes and moments mirroring and meshing with the music's mood of pitches, tones, and crescendos, singular scenes that sync with the sound so well and so successively that they simply become whole segments of superb coordination.**

Guy, You Explain: Like a few others I've reviewed, the point of this AMV is to provide a summary for the game, to give you an idea of its epic power and grandeur. Unlike the ones I've done here before, though (not to mention practically all other AMVs I've seen), this is no attempt to communicate the general feel and emotion of the game--this AMV actually attempts to show you the game's plot from start to finish, using the scenes of important events in the plot to give you a basic, but effective, story to watch. It's done so well that a person who hasn't played the game before would, I imagine, have very little difficulty following the AMV's story (and thus, the game's) from start to finish from this musical movie and pretty much understand most of the game's important ideas and plot points. Roynerer has told me,

"The idea just kinda sparked one night as I was trying to look for a new way to be creative and productive within the music area...which then resulted in the idea of making a short movie-like sequence made up of footage from a game, carefully structured around specifically chosen orchestral music. Orchestral music helps tell the story and grip the viewer a lot better, you see.

"...after the first section of the video was finished, I found it rather enticing, I said to myself that this has to be big, different, nothing like other AMVs on YouTube; I wanted it to be gripping, meaningful and in tune with the music I'd chosen."

Creative, movie-like, gripping, meaningful, and in tune? Mission Accomplished on each. This is a fresh and engaging idea for AMVs that I hope to see more of. The combination of a great set of visuals with a cool story set to an epic and emotional score makes it very movie-like. From start to finish, the AMV grasps the watcher's attention masterfully, impressing us with its power and feeling, gripping us like few AMVs can. Meaningful? I think there are scenes from TLoZ Twilight Princess that this AMV conveys more impressively than the game itself does, and if you can find any meaning within the game (and it's definitely there), you can find it almost perfectly preserved within this AMV--indeed, the meaning may even be better off in this form, because it's all presented together, rather than over the course of 50 hours. And in tune? I already mentioned earlier that this is so "in tune" that it basically BECOMES the tune.

TLoZTP: The Cinematic Experience is really just a splendid work. The care and skill in it is practically palpable, and I can't recommend enough that anyone and everyone check it out.

















* To be critically fair, this may have been done as much out of necessity as of artistic considerations--the original version of this, according to my correspondence with Roynerer, was 12 minutes long, which won't fly on Youtube with its short-sighted demand that all videos on it be in the 10 minute range or less. Regardless of what could have been, though, the version we have now is good AND efficient, so I still feel it fair to count this as one of its virtues.

** Why yes, I DO like alliteration, now that you mention it.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Money Limit

Odd of me to rant twice in a row about a game I haven't played in over 2 years, but ideas come to me as they come to me.

So, in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo decided to add a new aspect to the series--an actual limit to how much money you can accumulate based on the size of your wallet. Now granted, RPG gamers are used to dealing with numerical limits to various parts of their characters--the infamous 999 or 9999 damage limits in most games, the standard 255 stat limit for the Final Fantasy series, etc. We expect a certain limit on the amount of money we can gain by looting corpses in a game. It's just part of the programming, and usually it's high enough that you're unlikely to ever normally reach it anyway--and you certainly would never NEED to most of the time.

Well, TLoZOoT changes all that. You're limited in the beginning of the game to being able to carry a measly 99 rupees, which is barely enough to buy anything of interest, and you can increase that amount to 200 and later 500 by getting bigger wallets. Well, on this matter, I'm going to have to call Bullshit. Once you actually work the money-limit into the plot, you get absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Are we expected to believe that if Link has 99 rupees and his wallet can't carry any more, that he's going to just look at a red one (worth 20) and say "Gee, I sure do wish I could take that, but my wallet just can't hold it, so I guess I'm out of luck?" Look, if I see a glittering gem on the street worth $20 that no one's claiming, I'm gonna find SOME way to carry it, regardless of whether my pocket's full. You trying to tell me that Link couldn't just throw a few of those absolutely useless Deku Nuts away to make a little space in his inventory for a few extra bucks? That he couldn't just empty one of his bottles of the fairy or bug or juice or milk or whatever the hell he's keeping in it to eat later and put in a few cool 50-Rupees? Hell, for all I care he can stick them down his damn tights; from the looks of him, it's more than likely he's got little else to fill that space. I don't care HOW they wanna work it, but Nintendo needs to stop fucking me over every time I find a golden 200-Rupee prize and can't do a damn thing with it because my tiny useless little wallet refuses to carry it.

EDIT FROM THE FAR FUTURE: I am totally not the only person who thinks this is bullshit.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Characters

I'm actually running kinda low on RPGs whose entire casts were largely dull and stupid for me to ridicule here. Sure, there are a few boring and lackluster casts out there, but really, what can I even TRY to say about the characters of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest or Lufia 1? And some games have had casts so forgettable that...well, I've pretty much just forgotten them altogether, and I certainly don't want to have to go and subject myself to the pain of Seiken Densetsu 3 or Dragon Quest 5 again just to remember them. I'm not THAT dedicated. After today, I'm really only going to have Chrono Cross left, which is both a daunting task in that there are so many characters to cover, and yet also the easiest since I can sum 90% of them up with one word: Empty.

So anyway, yeah, let's take a look at this game's cast. I'll be counting the Sages as party members, since, well, if I don't then it's just 4 characters, only 2 of which are even human, I'm looking at.



Link: Well, right off the bat we've got Link, the least manly-looking RPG protagonist of all time. Seriously, people who complain that FF10's Tidus looks like Meg Ryan and so on should be thankful that he at least wears clothing that SORT OF identifies him as a man. Link, on the other hand, true to form after about 10 years since he originally hit the screen, still stubbornly insists on wearing his little forest-elf outfit, which consists of pantyhose, little booties, and a skirt. Not that it's the clothes alone that negate his masculinity, of course--he himself has the face and hair of a woman, and his flat-chested woman's body doesn't help. Honestly, he looks more like a man in his 10-year-old form in this game than he does as an adult.

You may notice I'm not commenting on his character here. Well, this is largely because Link HAS no character. You may recall my last rant mentioned him as being one of the poster children for silent protagonists. Well, what this means is that we pretty much know absolutely nothing about him, as usual. From the knowledge gathered in the game, we can safely assume that pain hurts him, surprising things surprise him, he enjoys taking money from dead monsters, and he has monumental patience when dealing with fucking annoying fairies.


Zelda/Sheik: Apparently jealous after all these games that Link continues to be a prettier woman than she is, Zelda decided to get into the whole gender-confusion thing in this one by using her magic to change herself into a man for 7 years. A man whose idea of helping Link to accomplish his hero work is to talk about touchy-feel-good emotions and teach him how to play 7 consecutive notes that are somehow classified as a song.

Despite all this, she's still clearly the best Zelda incarnation as of this game, given that she's at least out doing SOMETHING instead of just standing around, kidnapped or waiting to be.


Saria: Saria is a little forest elf girl who, like Link, cosplays Peter Pan. Her cosplay is more dedicated than Link's, though, as she really does take Pete's policy of "I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys-R-Us kid" seriously.


Darunia: Darunia is a big Goron, which as close as I can figure is sorta like a race of rock trolls with the combined mental abilities of a tapeworm. When Link goes and kills a big dinosaur thing that causes the Gorons trouble, Darunia is so overwhelmed by the idea of a person who doesn't sit on his ass in a hole eating rocks all day and actually gets shit DONE that he decides to name his son after him.


Impa: Impa is basically the Anti-Link. While she does very prominently have breasts, every other aspect of her screams "Man!" There's not much to her, really, she just stands around, waiting for Zelda to give her orders.


Ruto: "Wow, you went crawling around in the intestines of a huge fish just so you could hork my royal family heirloom! You are turning my freakish fish-body on SO much. Let's get married!"

You know, aside from the fish-body thing, I could actually see Rinoa saying that to Squall at some point under like circumstances.


Rauru: "Hi, I'm Rauru, Sage of Light. So, you've aged 7 years, Hyrule's a desolate wasteland ruled by evil now, most everyone you ever knew is probably dead, and you have a whole new quest. What's that? You need some time to come to grips with your entire world having collapsed? Well, do it some place else. Get the hell out!"


Nabooru: Nabooru's intense warrior's training and powerful Earth Sage's magic give her the amazing ability to be immediately captured in a quicksand trap by the Twinrova sorceress sisters, the Bebop and Rocksteady of witchcraft.


Epona: Epona the horse is actually the most powerful being in the world, in that she is invulnerable to any and all attack. She's not particularly brilliant, as her judgment on who she deems safe or a threat relies entirely on whether they can hum 6 notes the right way.


Ganondorf/Ganon: Despite having more screen time and dialogue in this game than ever before, Ganon continues to be a dull, unimaginative villain with no motivation for being an asshole beyond just plain being an asshole.


Navi: If you have played and beaten this game, you are REQUIRED to hate this annoying attention-whore bug thing, and all the annoying fairies who will follow in her footsteps. Every goddamn minute, you will hear her shriek, "HEY! LISTEN!" in her squeaky little fairy voice. The designers try to pass this off as her trying to help you by pointing out things of interest, but no, oh ho ho no, I know better. She is pointing out things of interest to HER, not ME. I myself am not going to get excited over her interest in the same rock I passed 2 minutes ago that she already screamed about. She has a memory like Leonard from Momento, only Leonard has the goddamn sense to leave himself notes. That's what I wish I could do in this game, is obtain an item, Stack of Post-It Notes, and just put one on every single damn pebble and blade of grass that Navi starts wailing like a police siren about. Notes that say, "ALREADY EXAMINED THIS, TINKERBITCH" and "I FUCKING KNOW, YOU ADHD-ADDLED TWIT" that she could read every time she sees this amazing patch of dirt for the 7th time and wants to share its existence with me by making a scene.

What I wouldn't give in that game for a can of fucking Raid.