Tag: Link

Worst Zelda Game Gets New Life As Fan-Made Game Boy Demake

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Back in the 1990s, Philips tried to break into the video game market with its doomed-to-fail, multimedia set-top box standard called CD-i. Many brands and models of CD-i players were released but all of them were flops and mostly forgotten in 2023. However, Philips did acquire the rights to develop three Zelda games for its unpopular machines. They were terrible. Now, a fan has taken what’s perhaps the worst of those games, a top-down RPG starring Zelda herself, and unofficially ported it to the Game Boy.

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You might be wondering how Philips was able to create Zelda games, and on a non-Nintendo platform. The answer to that involves Sony, weirdly enough. In 1989, Sony and Nintendo signed a deal to create a CD-based add-on for the SNES. However, Nintendo would later back out of the deal and instead work with Philips. Sony was bitter, and decided to develop its own game console, a little device you might have heard of called the PlayStation. Meanwhile, Nintendo saw the poor reaction to the Genesis’ Sega CD add-on and backed out of its planned SNES CD hardware entirely. It’s believed that, as some recompense for dissolving the deal, Nintendo ended up licensing some IP to Philips, allowing the company to make its own Zelda games. They weren’t great, and one of the three, Zelda’s Adventure, is seen by many fans as the worst of the bunch, and is often cited as the worst Zelda game ever released.

Still, even if it’s a bad game with terrible controls and awful live-action FMV cinematics, it’s still a Zelda game, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it has its fans. One of them has spent a few years developing a full port of the CD-i flop for Nintendo’s Game Boy. And now it’s out, and it’s really cool!

John Lay

The story behind the new Game Boy Zelda

Zelda’s Adventure for Game Boy was developed by John Lay, who describes himself as a programmer and graphic designer. According to Lay—a big fan of the 2D Zelda games—out of the three CD-i Zelda games games, Zelda’s Adventure “looked interesting.” And after stumbling across an early version of modern development tool GB Studio, Lay decided to start working on a demake during covid-19 lockdown as the idea of a portable version of the unbeloved game seemed like something he’d want to play. So he started work on a proof of concept that was just the first dungeon and the initial part of the overworld, which he estimates to comprise about 20 percent of the overall game.

“After I finished I took a short break and during that time GB Studio released an update I was eager to try,” Lay told Kotaku. “So I…continued the game where I left off and developed approximately another 40 percent of the overworld and dungeons.”

However, he ran into some GB Studio limitations, so he had to modify the engine with custom-created code to make the full demake feasible.

“I then used this modified engine to develop a third prototype with the remaining 40 percent of the overworld and the final dungeons,” he said. “During this time GB Studio released a third update with a bunch of improvements, so I sat down and planned out how to combine all three prototypes into a single game.”

Lay says from start to end this whole process took about 14 months, since starting work on the game in April 2020.

According to the Itch page for Zelda’s Adventure, it was developed to aesthetically resemble 1992’s Link’s Awakening, but also includes some features from the Game Boy Color duo Oracle of Ages and Seasons. Lay calls his creation a complete port of the full game, and the music was composed by Beatscribe.

How to play Zelda’s Adventure for Game Boy

If you want to play this neat port on a Game Boy emulator, you can download the ROM from Lay’s Itch page. However, you can also play it in your browser without having to download a thing, or just watch a full playthrough of the fan game on Lay’s YouTube channel.

John Lay

Honestly, Lay’s new fan game is probably the best way to experience Zelda’s Adventure, that odd and barely remembered piece of Nintendo ephemera. I mean, unless the upcoming Tears of the Kingdom decides to include some deep-cut references to it, in which case we all might have to go back and reassess the CD-i disaster. Though I very much doubt that’s going to happen.

As for Lay, he doesn’t have plans to demake the other two Zelda CD-i games, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, on Nintendo’s portable or any other console. But he did enjoy working on the project, and wanted to shout out to both his composer Beatscribe and the “incredible developers” behind GB Studio.

“Thanks to everyone who supported the project,” Lay said. “I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback so far, it really makes it worthwhile. I hope you enjoy the game!”

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Zack Zwiezen

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May 1, 2023
Everything We’ve Seen Link Fuse And Craft In Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

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The wait is nearly over. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom finally hits the Switch on May 14, 2023. Three epic trailers plus a look at some gameplay have only made us even more excited to finally dive into the next chapter in Nintendo’s adventure series. This time around, Link has a number of sweet new abilities. One of them is a clever take on crafting, which the game calls “Fuse.”

Read More: Here’s Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Final Epic Gameplay Trailer Before Release

Link’s new “Fuse” and “Ultrahand” abilities, as teased in trailers and fully explained in a gameplay deep dive on March 28, is actually a pretty sweet crafting system. Instead of just following preset recipes for crafting, players will be able to combine all manner of unique objects they find around Hyrule to forge makeshift weaponry, Mad Max-worthy vehicles, and who knows what else? Footage so far has shown the ability to create custom designs with simulated physics like buoyancy and air propulsion. Other examples show off weapon upgrades that trigger status effects like freezing.

With such a versatile system, the sky’s the limit for what you might be able to craft come May 12. To give you some idea of just how handy Link can get, we’ve cataloged everything we’ve seen our hero Fuse thus far. You’ll see he’s actually very handy.

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Claire Jackson

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April 14, 2023
Who Are The Mysterious Zonai Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Fans Can’t Stop Talking About?

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is almost here, and from the looks of it, the enigmatic faction called the Zonai may play a big role in the sequel after mostly existing in the background of Breath of the Wild. If you’re feeling like you’re walking in on something or like you missed a big plot beat in the last game, don’t worry. Despite a lot of theory crafting over the years, even the biggest Zelda fans don’t have a lot of concrete details as to who or what the Zonai were. But let’s break down what we do know and why fans think the Zonai are being primed as a key player in Tears of the Kingdom.

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What do we already know about the Zonai?

In Breath of the Wild, the Zonai are described as a tribe that no longer exists within Hyrule, but their nature is seemingly up for debate within the game’s world. They’re described both as a savage tribe of barbarians, as well as powerful magic users who worship animals, specifically Farosh, a water dragon that can be found in places like the Gerudo Highlands. Traces of their existence are visible in places like the Zonai Ruins in the southern area of the map, with long-abandoned architecture hinting at their reverence for Hyrule’s wildlife. In the lore and art book The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Creating a Champion, it’s revealed the animals prominently featured in what’s left of the Zonai’s home reference the three pieces of the Triforce: a dragon for Courage, an owl for Wisdom, and a boar for Power. Beyond the animals, the Zonai also have their own crest resembling a spiral, which is seen on architecture associated with the tribe.

Beyond that, Link can acquire a Barbarian armor set in Breath of the Wild believed to be worn by members of the Zonai long ago after navigating specific labyrinths implied to have been built by the tribe. While it all fits together, much of what we know about the tribe is speculation fostered by the game’s ambient storytelling. It’s a very minimalistic, FromSoftware-style approach to world-building and largely rewards those who want to explore the game’s big world. However, it might be paying off for all of us in Tears of the Kingdom.

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Why do fans think Tears of the Kingdom will involve the Zonai?

Theories that the Zonai would be a major player in Tears of the Kingdom have been prevalent since the game’s reveal in 2019 because of the focus on the spiral motif central to Zonai architecture. However, the connection is much more concrete now thanks to the most recent gameplay showcase. During this stream, Nintendo revealed the Zonai are tied to the events of Tears of the Kingdom through a piece of loot. In the 10-minute gameplay trailer, Link defeats an enemy in the floating sky islands, and it drops an item called a Zonai Charge. The video doesn’t linger on the item, but it clearly has the same green energy seen to power the machine-like enemies Link is fighting, the (broken) seal around Ganondorf seen in the original trailer, and Link’s corrupted, glowing arm.

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Will we meet the Zonai in Tears of the Kingdom?

Given how quiet Nintendo has been regarding Tears of the Kingdom’s story, it’s hard to say whether or not Link will actually come across a member of the Zonai tribe. Given the group seems to have been entirely gone from Hyrule in Breath of the Wild, with the only information we have on them coming from theories and their remaining architecture, it seems most logical that the Zonai have been wiped out or have gone into hiding. But even so, their technology and magic are still present and causing trouble for our hero in Tears of the Kingdom. All that being said, it’s not entirely out of the question that some may have survived and have been waiting for the events of this game to reveal themselves. The series is also no stranger to time travel, with it being a key pillar to games like Ocarina of Time and Oracle of Ages. So there’s a chance Link could come face-to-face with the Zonai during their prime, but that’s not confirmed.

Wait, how does Twilight Princess play into all this?

Like most of the possibilities discussed here, the connection between The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Tears of the Kingdom is still speculation, but fans believe they’ve found connections between the Zonai and the Twili, who were introduced in Twilight Princess. Breath of the Wild incorporates several tribes and species from the series’ lifetime from the Sheikah to the Zora. The Twili, however, are notably absent, but given the similarities to architecture and magic seen in Tears of the Kingdom and that of the Twili, fans speculate that the Zonai could be the original race that was turned into monsters by Zant in Twilight Princess. There are even some breakdowns of iconography and sigils throughout Breath of the Wild that do closely resemble imagery in Twilight Princess. It’s all theory crafting at this point, and Breath of the Wild itself doesn’t do much on its own to directly make this possible tie-in apparent. So don’t feel like you completely missed out on a potential connection. This is all fan interpretation, for now.

Whatever the Zonai are, it does seem like they will be at least part of Tears of the Kingdom’s larger setup. Whether we actually meet one remains to be seen, but we’ll find out when the game comes to Switch on May 12.

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Kenneth Shepard

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April 7, 2023
Big Breath Of The Wild YouTuber Hit By Nintendo After Multiplayer Mod

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YouTuber and speedrunner Eric “PointCrow” Morino released a brand new multiplayer mod for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on April 4. It basically transforms the hit 2017 Switch game into a modern open-world version of the beloved co-op Zelda spin-off Four Swords Adventures. A couple of days later, Morino says Nintendo hit him with copyright infringement claims that led some of his biggest YouTube videos to be demonetized.

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“Incredibly disappointed that Nintendo of America has decided to block my videos on Breath of the Wild,” he tweeted on April 6. “It’s the love for the community and the innovation that we bring to it that has kept it alive & brought new people to love the Zelda series. I hope you reverse your decision soon.” Morino also shared a screencap of several of his YouTube videos, including ones featuring gameplay footage from the multiplayer mod, showing they’d been flagged for copyright issues.

Nintendo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Publishers maintain they have full ownership and control over any footage produced from their games, but they rarely seek to penalize YouTubers and other content creators for sharing it online and potentially profiting off of it. In fact most companies go out of their way to promote the sharing of footage and screenshots from their games to help spread awareness, increase sales, and cultivate a community of passionate fans.

When it comes to social media content around fan projects and mods, however, Nintendo is one company that’s often aggressively pushed back. Late last year, the Switch manufacturer went after a YouTube documentary about an abandoned pitch for a Zelda tactics spin-off, seeking to get it removed from Google’s platform. The creators eventually managed to appeal the decision and get it reversed.

In response to Morino’s post, several other big content creators chimed in. “Not good for them considering they’re releasing a new game soon and many content creators will popularize it even more and may choose not to create videos around it,” wrote Kittyplays. “Nintendo detected fans having fun and they can’t have that,” wrote LostPause. “This is sad given how much love and effort you given them and botw.”

Breath of the Wild is the fourth best-selling game on Switch, and has remained relevant years after its release in part due to the discoveries, tricks, and new stunts pulled off by people like Morino. Outside of the recent multiplayer mod, he’s drawn millions of additional eyeballs to the game with weird runs like Link growing bigger every time the A button is pressed, or trying to beat the game while both the hardest randomizer mode and the very difficult, map-changing Relics of the Past mod are active.

Morino didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment but tweeted that he’s currently appealing the decision with YouTube. “As of now, [the videos are still visible for you to watch—however, they are not monetized,” he wrote. “Hopefully Nintendo releases these claims, as I significantly transform their work and my videos are under fair use.”

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Ethan Gach

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April 7, 2023
Zelda Producer Plays Tears Of The Kingdom For 10 Mins, And The New Stuff Looks Wild

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Zelda fans have been starving for anything they can get, any crumb they can catch, and it seems like Nintendo is finally taking pity, rewarding them with a 10-minute gameplay trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

During the gameplay snippet, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma says through a translator that Tears has changed the world “in many ways,” including pieces of Hyrule that float high in the sky, or “sky islands.”

Tears of the Kingdom new abilities means less climbing

Link can reach these sky islands through his new “recall” powers, which alters an object’s movement, or “ascend,” which allows Link to pass through ceilings in a path of twisting turquoise light. The recall power lets Link take a giant boulder that fell from a floating island back up to said island like a cool rock elevator. And ascend means you no longer have to always scale the sides of mountains, keeping an eye on Link’s stamina meter while you do it.

Another new power “fuse,” lets Link combine two objects, like a branch with a boulder, and use it as a unique weapon—a hammer, in this case. “Ultrahand” is what Link will use to construct those vehicles we’ve seen in previous trailers.

Tears of the Kingdom weapon fusing

Fuse seems to be one of the game’s most versatile new powers, letting Link attach almost anything to anything to improve and alter its qualities. At one point, for example, Link attaches two fans to a raft to turn it into a sort of rustic speedboat. You can also attach objects to your arrows to increase their utility, including a hunk of meat. The term “meat arrow” is currently all over our Twitter timeline, as Zelda fans rushed to wonder what they can do with such an arrow in Tears of the Kingdom.

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Other surprising reveals include breaking weapons (in the trailer, it’s a branch that breaks, for realism) and a fresh enemy, the Construct, which looks like a stony robot.

The Zonai in Tears of the Kingdom

The lengthy gameplay trailer also appeared to accidentally confirm the presence of the Zonai, a prehistoric tribe in the Zelda universe whose ruins dot Hyrule. During the gameplay, we see Link collect something called a Zonai charge from a fallen Construct. It’s unclear what they do just yet, but it certainly has fans excited to see how much Tears of the Kingdom will explore their lore.

This is what I would call a big meal. Before today, we had a very narrow idea of what the highly anticipated Breath of the Wild sequel would contain. Existing trailers revealed that the game—Nintendo’s first $70 game (pro tip: it will be cheaper if you use a Nintendo Switch Game Voucher to purchase it)—looks even more fantastic than BoTW.

“Hopefully it runs okay on the aging Switch hardware,” Kotaku senior reporter Ethan Gach wrote at the time of the reveal.

Good graphics are a nice thing to have, and a nice thing to see demonstrated before you in a Nintendo trailer, but it isn’t something you can run with. Past trailers have provided a general sense of what the hell is going on: Zelda isn’t sure that Link will be able to handle the latest threat, but he also gets to fly through the sky on a hulking hoverboard and what appears to be a hot air balloon, so who’s really winning?

But it wasn’t enough for fans to sink their teeth in. They’ve been subbing facts for wild dreams, theorizing that Tears will feature the first speaking Ganon, some sort of lost soul mechanic. They also surmised that the game would have homing arrows, which today’s trailer confirmed…you just need to fuse your arrows with squishy yellow Keese Eyeballs to make it happen.

Today’s trailer, which continues to show Link and his verdant world at its best and adds even more gameplay mechanics to the ones previous trailers revealed, is hopefully only the start to Nintendo preparing to open up the flood gates of cold, hard Zelda information. It doesn’t have much time, anyway—the game releases for Switch on May 12.

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Ashley Bardhan

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March 28, 2023
Looks Like Mario Kart 8 Is Getting Five New Characters

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Screenshot: @pad_warrior

Mario Kart 8, a game that was first released ten years ago on the Wii U, is still not done. The 2017 Switch version of the game is currently in the midst of a run of downloadable content that is bringing not only new courses to the game, but new drivers as well.

We welcomed Birdo (alongside a Yoshi’s Island course) in the latest update, released today, but this fresh screenshot taken after its installation shows that there is still room for five more:

Five more! Five mystery characters in a popular first-party Nintendo game! You know what that means, everyone. It means it’s time for speculation.

While the series previously liked to keep things in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario Kart 8’s updates have slowly introduced characters from other Nintendo franchises, ranging from Zelda to Splatoon. Meaning these five characters could, in true Smash Bros. fashion, be coming from anywhere.

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Maybe it’ll be someone new, but expected. Samus is an obvious choice here, especially as a car based on her ship would be such an obvious combo (and a Metroid-themed course would also kick ass).

Maybe it’ll be a different take on an existing character. There are multiple Marios here…is there room for a second Link? A Wind Waker Link, perhaps? If it’s good enough for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it’s good enough for Mario Kart 8.

It could, however, be someone else. Nintendo has a long, long history, after all. It’s a little weird that characters from F-Zero, a Nintendo series about racing cars, aren’t featured here in Mario Kart 8, a Nintendo game about racing cars. Captain Falcon would slot right in, especially since there’s already an F-Zero course (and vehicle!) in the game.

Maybe it’s time for some Pikmin? Punch-Out? Is Arms too obscure a reference in 2023? Maybe the space is being left for the movie versions of some famous Mario characters?

Maybe you should take over now. Nintendo-related speculation is hard work.

UPDATE: This might help narrow it down. Nintendo says in a press release accompanying today’s DLC that “Two upcoming waves of DLC are still to come, featuring more returning courses and characters from across the Mario Kart series”.

“Returning characters” certainly kills off some of the wilder suggestions above! And leaves us with possibilities like Petey Piranha and…Wiggler?

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Luke Plunkett

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March 8, 2023
Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Art Book Leaks Months Ahead Of Release

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Image: Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom isn’t due out until May 12, which means fans heavily invested in the lore and secrets of the game have three months of avoiding (what they will probably think are) spoilers ahead of them.

The collector’s edition of the game comes with a 204-page artbook, and over the weekend that book leaked online, with every damn page of it winding up posted on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit. It’s the Japanese version, meaning it’s difficult to make out exactly what some of this stuff is, though that’s not a huge problem since it’s a fairly basic artbook, mostly just images with some captions underneath.

I’m obviously not going to be posting any of the images here, but I have thumbed through the pages and have good news and bad news for fans of the series. Which is good and which is bad will depend on how sensitive you are to spoilers.

First up, because this is a preorder bonus and not a full-blown, standalone artbook, it’s missing context. There are hundreds of images here but they’re not laid out in any kind of order or sequence, and without paragraphs from the developers and artists explaining in depth what everything means and why it’s there, there’s little here that you wouldn’t have expected to see in a trailer.

There are lots of images of Link wearing costumes, some familiar returning faces, some outfit designs for allies and friends, sketches of (again, familiar) bad guys and lots of illustrations of environments that, without the context I just mentioned, are basically just “here’s a cave, now here’s a room with a stone floor”.

“This book was designed to come home with you the day you bought the game”

I’m being vague not to protect anyone, but just because…this is all very standard stuff. Without the context of this art being properly explained—or from any of us actually playing the game—it’s just a book full of cool Zelda pics.

Which, of course, is all it’s meant to be. While it’s tempting to pore over this book three months out from release, hoping for cryptic spoilers and keys to Tears of the Kingdom’s lore, this book was designed to come home with you the day you bought the game. People would be free to flick through it on the bus on the way home, or in the back seat of a car, or on the couch when they’re only 23 minutes into the game. There was never going to be anything huge here, because that would be extremely stupid!

For example there’s not a single image of Ganon. There’s an illustration of Zelda, but no mention on whether she’s playable or not. We have glimpses of the monstrous transformation Link appears to be going through, but nothing more than what we’ve already seen in trailers. There’s no plot summary.

The only things that could even remotely be considered spoilers are a couple of costumes that reference older games in the series, and the return of a particularly shitty type of enemy, but those are just…facts about the game, not narrative beats.

So if you’re sensitive to spoilers and you somehow end up somewhere on the internet where this book’s leaks cannot be avoided, relax. This is a preorder bonus, not a Spoiler Tome.

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Luke Plunkett

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February 19, 2023
Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Is Nintendo’s First $70 Game

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Illustration: Nintendo

While The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is one of the most hotly-anticipated video game sequels of all time, that’s not the only reason it’s notable this week. It is also, sadly, the first Nintendo game to hit the $70 threshold.

While physical copies of the game have previously been available for preorder at places like GameStop for $60, Nintendo’s press release for the game following tonight’s Direct confirms that the cheapest version will be selling for $70. Preorders for the game at that $60 pricepoint suddenly stopped being accepted by retailers on Tuesday night.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: An epic adventure across the land and skies of Hyrule awaits. In this sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you’ll decide your own path through the sprawling landscapes of Hyrule and the mysterious islands floating in the vast skies above. Can you harness the power of Link’s new abilities to fight back against the malevolent forces that threaten the kingdom? In addition to the standard version, which will be available at a suggested retail price of $69.99, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Collector’s Edition will release on launch day at a suggested retail price of $129.99, and includes a physical version of the game, an artbook with concept art, a Steelbook case, an Iconart steel poster and a set of four pin badges.

That would make it the first ever Nintendo game to hit that $70 threshold, at least as a recommended retail price, which is a bummer for us as consumers (since wages aren’t increasing in line with the inflated cost of…everything) but also expected from a business (because all their costs have gone up). This is why it’s called an inflation crisis, baby!

$70 games are becoming the norm for PS5 and Xbox

At least Nintendo can say they were one of the last to do it, after a number of major publishers—like Activision, Ubisoft and Warner Bros.—decided that 2022 was the year they could start charging $70 for games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare II and…Gotham Knights. Starfield, along with other first-party Microsoft games, will start costing $70 as well. Even indie games are starting to raise their prices right now.

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Back in November, Nintendo responded to Sony’s decision to increase the price of the PS5 by saying “it won’t take such actions at this moment, but will continue monitoring situation and carefully consider (whether we need to take the option).”

While that Switch hardware increase hasn’t materialised—yet—maybe recouping an extra $10 per copy of a game expected to sell millions will help Nintendo’s bottom line, especially since the company just saw its share prices tumble after analysts predicted the aging Switch is “rushing to end of its lifecycle at a faster-than-expected pace,” and that without news of replacement hardware on the horizon things might just get worse.

Meanwhile, competitors like Microsoft are making it sound like console price increases might not be totally out of the question sometime in the future.

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Luke Plunkett

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February 8, 2023