Hyrule Historia

While debating on how to tackle smaller NES and Game Boy games on my self-imposed chronologically-correct way my mind works, Nintendo released their Hyrule Historia art book/encyclopedia over in Japan and I can't stress this enough:

This thing has gotta make it out of Japan.

It's not the first time Japan's withheld such Word of God goodness. I've almost gotten over the fact that we'll prolly never get all the Kingdom Hearts Ultimanias, fantastic strategy guides that go super in-depth on the beauty of the Kingdom Hearts universe with interviews, artwork and what-have-you. But it doesn't mean I can't hope.

Mainly posting this week about the fact Nintendo's revealed the official timeline for their The Legend of Zelda series. Whether or not you believe this is a public fragment of Nintendo's alleged and highly-classified document that houses how the games relate to each other doesn't matter to me, since I've lurked around enough comments sections and forums to know this is exactly the kind of thing that can break a fanbase in half (or three!). As far as I'm concerned, this is the official timeline until proven otherwise. And seeing as how this was edited by Eiji Aonuma himself and published by Nintendo, this is all but fact in my eyes.

An illustrated guide to the timeline, with an interesting development:

Most enticing part about this reveal is the existence of a so-called Failure Timeline.

Ocarina of Time was known to have created two timelines back when The Wind Waker was released, resulting in the Adult and Child timelines. This led to us fans to try and compile the then-ten titles released. (No, the CD-i games are not canon and I have no intention of playing them.)

As of last week, I had settled on my version of the timeline after thinking over the series and replaying most of the titles this year, which was as follows:

Metroid: Zero Mission

Man, I completely forgot about actually retro-reviewing every game I care about! Well, no more! Off to continue spouting my opinion in a sea where no one really cares what I think and how I rate things!

There's something about myself I've realized that bothers some people I know - I give most remakes the benefit of a doubt, especially when it comes to video games. For films, it depends if I've ever seen the original or on trusted word of mouth. Modern movie magic can help out a film I otherwise wouldn't've given the time of day to. When it comes to video games, I'm on board a good 95% of the time. Unlike films, a game must be actively played to advance anywhere and can definitely benefit from the advancement of technology and the lessons learned from other iterations of a series and inspiration from other titles to make the experience smoother and enjoyable, as Metroid has.

While I have multiple access to the original Metroid for NES, I prefer and will henceforth be referring to the remake Metroid: Zero Mission for GBA that released back in '04. I find it a much more accessible game than the original, to be honest. It controls a lot better than it did back in '87 (diagnal aiming is a godsend) and is more accessible for it, with more clearly defined goals. Whether or not that's an improvement depends on what you think makes a Metroid game. The extreme feeling of isolation is diluded somewhat with a map and clearly-marked goals, but the original's hidden passages and secrets are nigh-impossible to decipher to the modern gamer if they're not completely obsessed with 80's gaming mentality or have an extremely good memory.