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GeekNights 20100713 - The Legend of Zelda
Tonight on GeekNights, we crab-people it up with a show on the hit new game: The Legend of Zelda. In the news, the FCC's reign of terror may be at an end, and there is a special edition of Civ V for only double the price.
- Scott's Thing - I Did Survive
- Rym's Thing - Basil Pocklington
Comments
Expanded Show Notes!
Geeknights 20100713 - The Legend of Zelda
Expanded Show Notes - Show Run Time: 55:06
Time | Notes
---------+----------------------------------------------------------
00:00:00 | Intro
00:00:26 | Opening Chit-Chat
| - Back from ConnectiCon
| - More on ConnectiCon on a Thursday show
| - Scott's adventures in doing laundry
| - Rym's Impromptu Looking For Game Panel at ConnectiCon
00:07:12 | News
| - PAX Prime tickets may be sold out soon - get them NOW...
| - ...And do your hotel reservations ASAFP
| - Discussion on how to plan to attend a con (tl;dr - decide early!)
| - Discussion on planning your badge purchase
| - How bad do you want to attend that con?
00:11:45 | Massachusetts and the FCC indecency rule
| - The regulation was unconstitutionally vague and causes chilling effects
| - Let's see what South Park comes up with now
00:15:08 | Civ V deluxe box - $100
| - Sucks to be you if you already pre-ordered
| - Discussion of the contents of the box of goodness
| - Rym wants a wall-size poster of Washington from Civ
00:17:33 | Things of the Day
| - Rym goes old-school when he needs a throwaway ToTD (BBSpot, Slashdot, et cetera)
| - Link following on Wikipedia and The Melancholy of Peter Puck
| - The story of the Stanley Cup
| - Rym - Basil Pocklington
| - Epic Videos on YouTube
| - Holocaust Survivor filmed at the site of former concentration camps
| - Scott - I Did Survive
00:27:55 | Meta Moment
| - Book Club - The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
| - PAX Prime 2010 - Labor Day Weekend
| - List of known PAX panels that have been approved
| - Other PAX programming TBA
| - PAX East 2011 planning has started
| - NYCC/NYAF/Burning Wheel 10-10-10
| - NerdNYC game nights
00:30:08 | Main Topic
| - Needed a topic on a game they have played - Zelda 1!
| - Discussion of the genres the different Zelda games fell into
| - Discussion of the pack-ins for the original game
| - Modern Zelda games give you a lot more clues than the original game
| - Zelda level name and boss trivia
| - The instruction book really was a part of the game
| - Exploration was a huge part of the game and the game didn't tell you about a lot of the hidden things
| - Discussion of tactics in the game
| "- Pay me for the door" was a crock (use Reset to get around it!)
| - ProTip: Read the instruction book, but don't spoil the game with GameFAQs
| - How to find the good bush
| - Statute of limitations for spoilers on this game has expired
| - Blue Wizzrobes suck hard
| - A lot of the items were optional in Zelda 1
| - Scott doesn't like Zelda 2, Rym digs it
| - Zelda 2 - Hammer Time!
| - Playing someone else's cartridge was sub-optimal - they already found stuff!
| - Anyone who hasn't played this classic should play it
| - The instruction book artwork was the win
00:54:08 | Outro
EDIT: So did Majora's Mask, apparently. Pretty sure ALttP didn't. But who knows, I could be wrong.
I remember pretty much every bush you can burn and every rock you can bomb. That's the benefit of doing something early in childhood. If I played Zelda for the first time now, I doubt I would achieve that level of memorization.
Along the theme of what you guys ended the show with: how many people have actually beaten Mario 1, how many people have played Zelda 1, etc., have you considered doing a retro gaming forum thing similar to the book club? Racketboy.com does something along those lines on their forum and they call it "Together Retro". Basically, someone picks a game that is widely available either as a cheap title in its original format, or in ROM form, and everyone takes a month or so to try and play it as much as they can, and then a discussion ensues on the forums. I only follow that site via RSS and the game choices never seemed compelling enough to make me join their forums, but I'd probalby participate if similar thing started up here.
RPG is a corrupted and useless genre term in videogames, much like "MMORPG." People say RPG when they mean a Final Fantasy or a Dragon Age. People say MMO when they mean WoW or the equivalent. What most people call MMOs are anything but massive, and would better be called "MPMRPGs (Massively Parallel Multiplayer Role Playing Games). Zelda 1 would probably be better off being categorized as an "Adventure" game, rather than a role playing game, but even that term has lost much of its meaning.
Don't worry about genres. Worry about mechanics. Arguing over whether Zelda 1 is an RPG is silly. Zelda is a single player, action-based, adventure game which includes such elements as exploration, puzzle solving, item-based progression, and manual dexterity tests. It is semi-linear, has a single narrative of failure, a single narrative of success, and a limited savegame mechanic. It's 2D and sprite-based.
Also, what Rym said.
Thoughts on the episode:
Re: Laundry - if the screen on the machine wasn't working, why the heck would you put your money in?
Re: Book Club - at first glance, I would have pronounced the name "la-MORE-ah" instead of "LAM-uh-ruh", but maybe that's just me
Oddly enough, I noticed the copy of Zelda 1 & 2 that my parents bought me and my brother in a box of stuff over at his house the other day. Dude had nicked the NES, Super NES and all the games from their place a while back and hadn't bothered to tell me, the bastard. Granted, I've got all of those games I could ever want, emulated, but it's the concept, y'know? Anyway, having beat both Z 1&2 as well as ALttP previously I have no real desire to go back and play them again, but I will say that they were three of the best Zelda games ever. People can go on and on about the 3-d versions, but they'll never hold the same esteem in my eyes as the original games.
Now, on to this: Exactly what would you call "massively multiplayer" in regards to an RPG? 100 players per server instance? 1000? 10,000? A million? And while the distinction you mention is worth noting (as you've mentioned it several times on the show before), I would posit that the chances of there ever being a true "MMORPG" game (by your definition) in our game-playing lifetimes is so close to zero you'd just as well say that it isn't going to happen (barring some sort of technological revolution). You're never going to get rid of the parallel aspect of the beast, because it's not feasible. For a truly "massively multiplayer online role-playing game" to be possible you'd need a large amount of computing resources on the server-side (so everyone playing could be in the same world at the same time), an engine that could handle said massive amount of players at the same time (in addition to controlling the rest of the world and its interactions), and a 24/7/365 staff of in-world GMs that were in full communication as to where the story progression was supposed to go so they weren't stepping on each others' toes all the time while creating new, non-repetitive quests for the player base ("Ok, so we just gave the 'rescue the princess from the bandits' quest to that other group that just came through here. She's not going to get kidnapped by that bandit group again, so we need to figure out what quest the next group through is going to get..."). You'd essentially have to simulate an entire world and have multiple "gods" presiding over it in total sync with each other. Either that or you'd have to have one hell of an AI engine in the game to be able to procedurally generate stuff like that on the fly. You're not going to see anything like that happen anytime soon, mainly because the initial outlay and ongoing costs would be staggering and the chances of profitability would be so low in the near-term that no corporation or investment group in their right minds would fund it.
That's a lot of money to commit on spec, since badges go on sale well before a single detail has been released. Now, to go buy 3 single-day passes...
PAX East is going to be much larger than PAX Prime as time goes on just for the fact that it has more space and travel is easier for more people.
You can make your hotel and airline reservations much later. Hotel reservations can be canceled very close to the last minute at no cost. Airline reservations often cost something if you cancel.
Either way, if you can't afford the risk involved in registering for the convention so far in advance, then you probably can't afford to go at all. I suggest instead you save that money and build up a pile so that you can register without any worries.