61 Frames Per Second

Browse by Tags

• Your April Mission, If You Choose to Accept It

  I am going to use a few phrases right now that I find unsavory. It’s best to take the band-aid approach in these situations, get it all that pain out of the way in one quick, nasty motion. *Breath*. Gamer community. Blogosphere. Trend. *GASP* Ow. That sucked. Anyway, the point. April hasn’t been short of news or goings on in the gaming world – the DSi came out last Sunday, there a new Jak and Daxter coming, lots of savory news to satisfy the fanatic soul – but there’s a strong air of discontent across the gaming community blogosphere this week. Read More... Posted Apr 09 2009, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, jak and daxter, zelda II, chronicles of Riddick, nintendo dsi, starbreeze, escape from butcher bay, dark Athena

• For Love of the Game: The Legend of Zelda – The Shadowgazer

  We could run a daily For Love of the Game feature on Zelda remakes alone. Zelda 1 with 16-bit graphics, Zelda 1 made out of Lego, two-dimensional Ocarina of Time, side-scrolling Ocarina of Time, Link’s Awakening running on Minish Cap’s engine, Twilight Princess dating sims, and on and on and on. People love Zelda, they always want more Zelda. But, and it’s a truth that’s taken a serious toll on the series, people tend to want Zelda exactly the way they’ve had it before, only slightly different. Fans aren’t the only ones who keep remaking Zelda; Eiji Aonuma’s been doing a bang-up job of it for almost a decade. More interesting than homebrewers adding a special blend of basement hops to the same old quest-lager are those adventuresome folks making all new Zeldas. The re-appropriation of yesterday’s art can yield both inspired results, as with Zelda: Outlands, and well-meaning but forgettable outings like Parallel Worlds. It’s especially rare to see a homebrew Zelda filled with original sprites and scenarios. King Mob’s The Legend of Zelda: The Shadowgazer, from the looks of this trailer, is especially becoming. Read More... Posted Oct 28 2008, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, for love of the game, game boy, the legend of zelda, zelda II, the legend of zelda parallel worlds, homebrew, link to the past, zelda outlands, link’s awakening

• Video Games and Discipline: You're Doing It Wrong

  Just so we're clear: I'm not referring to using gold-plated copies of Zelda II for kinky spanking activities. (Everybody gets up and leaves, muttering disappointedly) I was usually a pretty good kid. With my big blue eyes and dark pigtails, nobody suspected any trouble out of me. When I did feel the inevitable jab of rebellion, I at least had the good sense to keep my activities on the down-low. Of course, that was a different age before the pull of YouTube and Facebook photo albums. But even I fell off the schoolwork wagon often enough. Part of my problem is that I just didn't like school, except when I was learning something I was genuinely interested in...and how often does that happen? I prefer spacing out to studying, and of course, video game obsession knocked me off course from time to time. I had my systems and games taken away now and again. My mother might have sold them entirely if she wasn't so determined to pass the first level of Castlevania III...however many times she had to try. The other day, I was reading an article by one of them fancy college-edjyoucated "child psychologists" who had some advice for correcting "bratty kids." None of the disciplinary actions I would employ showed up on the list (nobody uses holes full of hungry rats for anything anymore), but the psychologist recommended against taking away an unruly kid's system and games. Why? Because "if a child is away from video games for long enough, he'll forget he ever liked them." Can I be the first to call bullshit on that one? Read More... Posted Sep 05 2008, 08:09 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: zelda II, castlevania iii, nadia oxford, discipline, children, punishment, child psychology

• Chiptune Friday: The Adventure of Link

  The Legend of Zelda series is responsible for many of the most memorable musical scores in the history of gaming, but there is one in the series that has been woefully ignored over the years. I refer, of course, to the black sheep of the Zelda family tree, 1987's Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom. Maybe it's because The Adventure of Link is the only console Zelda game without a score by Koji Kondo, but Akito Nakatsuka's brilliant reimagining has been all but forgotten – save for the palace theme, resurrected for the Temple stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Here, listen to Zelda II's overworld theme, the opening bars of which are the only link to Kondo's original Zelda score: Read More... Posted Sep 05 2008, 12:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: derrick sanskrit, nes, chiptune friday, zelda II

• The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History, Part 2

  Super Mario 64 If you'd asked a young me to imagine a three-dimensional Mario Bros. game, I'd have pictured a screenshot from Super Paper Mario — essentially, the point-A-to-point-B linearity of classic side-scrolling Mario, shot from a different camera angle. Instead, Shigeru Miyamoto's first 3D adventure completely rewrote the rules of platforming, replacing the "get to the end" format with a variety of challenges set in one, open physical space. To a generation weaned on linearity, this was pretty overwhelming at first — I remember being plunked down in Bob-Omb Battlefield and wandering around like a chump for an embarrassingly long time. 64 was so different from its precursors that you arguably wouldn't call it a sequel, but bear in mind that no one knew at the time what the next generation of games would look like. Early 32-bit games like Bug and Clockwork Knight dressed 2D gaming in 3D clothes. As usual, that nut Miyamoto had something different in mind. — PS Read More... Posted Jun 05 2008, 08:31 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, the legend of zelda, top ten, list, gradius, donkey kong, castlevania 2, the ten most adventurous sequels in gaming history, shigeru miyamoto, the adventure of link, clockwork knight, super paper mario, super mario 64, zelda II, contra, bug, simon's quest