Three Days to Deliver, Three Days to Die (Day 2): Majora's Mask part 4

    After an episode in gaining the trust of the children of the town, Link goes to the children's clubhouse and uses the kindly astronomer's telescope to look for the Skull Kid.  The only thing I felt was worth mentioning about that scene was that these children are kinda bigots against Link since he's a tree person (you may call it bigotree if you like).  You see the Skull Kid on top of the clock tower, and then he turns to look at Link.  He turns Link's attention to the sky, and that's when you witness for the first time arguably the most dreadful thing in gaming history.  Fans of this game, if you feel so inclined, you may now go crazy.  Like Bieber Fever crazy, not psychological warfare crazy or prison break crazy and especially not tribal ritual crazy.

Goodnight Moon

    Folks, here's the moon:  unblinking orangish red eyes, nose like an arrow, bared teeth, and leaning closer and closer toward Clock Town.  The only thing I can think to compare this moon to is Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings.  Throughout the quest of the Fellowship, the fiery blackness can be seen burning with deep ominous echoes on the horizon. It is the consistent reminder that it is the end goal of the quest. On the first day, the moon wasn't immediately shown to you, but on the second day it is far more difficult to miss.  I believe that all of the fear that comes with this dark heavenly body abides in the subtlety.   It falls in complete silence, inching closer and closer with the patience of a shadow, waiting for the moment it will sweep death across the world.  Once you see it the first time, you can never forget it is there.  It doesn't matter where Link goes in this land, the moon is always in the sky, always crawling closer, always inescapable.   As time rushes by until the deadline of your quest, the moon gets closer to the town.  Gamers watch knowing the consequences of  what happens the clock strikes zero, while the rest of the town anticipates a festival of frivolity and entertainment.  They all continue to pretend that nothing bad is happening, weddings are planned, the mail is delivered, dancers dance, jugglers juggle, and the city guards keep to their posts.  The guards will not even let Link leave the town stating it is for his own safety to not be out in the surrounding wilderness.  The moon serves as the symbol of the inevitability of death; it is the memento mori of the masterpiece.  While everyone will turn a blind eye to the grim future, it still doesn't change the future.


   As Link gazes up through the telescope at the moon, a sudden sparkle shows in its eye.  Tearing down through the rain clouds is a blue glistening gem.  The astronomer identifies it as being the most rare and beautiful gem in existence, the moon's tear.  Link is given stone as the astronomer already owns the only other one.  The astronomer mentions that at midnight on the third day, the stairs to the top of the clock tower will open and Link will be able to confront the Skull Kid.

   A crew of workers are building a bridge to the clock tower for the festival, but it looks to be behind schedule.  In the same area is a deku person, a territorial merchant holding on to the kind of flower that Link had hopped around on in the strange cave.  He refuses to move from the flower, because he is looking for a souvenir to take to his wife from the festival.  Link offers the Moon Tear to the man, and as a sign of gratitude, the deku man gives Link the deed to the flower (tree people take stuff a little too seriously sometimes).

   I feel that this tear is too often overlooked.  The fact that the menacing moon could conjure the beautiful tear is the one ray of hope amid the despair, the one drop of mercy in the basin of wrath, the olive branch in the flood.  At the same time, the fact that the moon is so close its tears fall to the world below could also be the sign that only despair may follow and that any chance of salvation is now lost.  I prefer the former interpretation over the latter given that there was another moon tear in the astronomer's observatory.  It would seem to show that in the past the world had been threatened, but it endured and survived.  On this basis, the escape from the jaws of the deathly moon is presented as a possibility.  However, escape from destruction is still not guaranteed.

  What happens next will be left to the next 24 hours.  Until then, good night.  

Three Days to Deliver, Three Days to Die (Day 1): Majora's Mask Part 3

      Link and Tatl walk through the door to find themselves at the foot of a large clock tower in the middle of a town.  Following the adventures in Ocarina of Time, one will notice that a great number of the people walking around this town look perfectly identical to the people seen in Hyrule.  It should be said that the land of Termina, where this game is set, is something of a parallel universe to Hyrule.  The people here are all doppelgangers if you will of their Hyrule counterparts and generally go about their lives in a similar manner.  Seeing the bustle of Clock Town is in many ways similar to that seen in the market surrounding Hyrule castle.  Everything seems normal except for two things.  All the veterans of this game are waving their arms around at this point, but we're gonna wait for the big one until later.

        The first apparent oddity is this. If you look around the town, in sharp contrast to the Hyrule presented in just about the entire series, there is not a single Triforce.  The Triforce is both the royal and religious symbol of Hyrule that symbolizes the three goddesses that created the world: Din, Nayru, and Farore.  After creating Hyrule, they imbued a fraction of their limitless powers into a golden artifact that consists of three triangles, one on the top and two on the bottom.  This symbol is revered by the people of Hyrule as it exemplifies the three virtues of the Hylians:  Power, Wisdom, and Courage.  The lack of this symbol may also say something about how unimportant or ignored the related virtues are among the people of Termina.  Remember I said fear will play an important role in this story, and fear would be the opposite of courage, the quality which Link represents traditionally in the games.  

It's also kinda like a fractal, so it's very easy
to draw on geometry notebooks.

 









    Tatl suggests that Link visit the Great Fairy of North Clock Town.  Even a fairy as unruly as Tatl respects the Great Fairy and believes her to have far greater powers than the Skull Kid.  When Link arrives at the Fountain where the Great Fairy resides, you find the Fairy has been broken into hundreds of these pitiful floating pink things.  The host of pink things claim that its shattering was the work of the Skull Kid and if the one missing piece is returned to the fountain, the Great Fairy will be restored.  It's in this moment that it becomes clear that this land is in great danger of ruin and that no power within it can save it from the evil of the mask.  

    You find the fairy fragment in the laundry pool during the daylight hours (which is a sort of cruel joke given that fairies generally live in pristine fountains). Upon restoring Clock Town's Great Fairy, Link is given the power of magic.  Link of course had magic in the previous game but seems to have relinquished this power at the end of his previous adventure.  While this isn't explicitly stated, it can be interpreted that Link has the distinct power that neither Ganon in the previous game nor Skull Kid in this game has which is the power to let power go.  The drawback is that in his deku form, magic can only be utilized in spitting bubbles.  Again it shows that the creatures of Termina are horribly outmatched.

Day 2 will be explored in the next post.

The Fallen and the Freaky Mask Guy: Majora's Mask part 2

  So as it was, the skull kid floats off leisurely with one of the fairies while the other fairy quite literally kicks the warped tree person (called a Deku for all future reference) Link while he is down.  Being distracted as such, Tatl, the she fairy, fails to notice until it is too late that the mask wearing skull kid has absconded with her brother Tael (obvious name pun is obvious). She immediately blames Link but in the name of self preservation forms an alliance with him.

  After hopping from flower to flower in this new deku form in a manner comparable to something from Alice in Wonderland, Link stumbles upon a tree with a vacant face like the one he now bears.  It states that he can feel the sorrow of the tree.  Like its face will start crying at any second.  The skull kid had also taunted Link about his crying after claiming to have gotten rid of his horse.   It becomes pretty apparent that this is a sign of things to come.  This dead deku was the last poor victim to wind up down here, and now Link is just a chapter behind this poor fellow.

The face only a father could love.

Did I mention the grass runs away if you threaten it in any manner? Yeah, tall grass just throws itself against the wall until it shreds to pieces. Just thought you should know that.  I'll get into fear and death later, because in this E for everyone rated masterpiece, it's not getting old anytime soon.

"I'll save you rupees; I'll save you strife.
I'll take your time; I'll take your life."

After escaping tree hell by way of the door behind the dead deku boy (so close and yet so far), you find yourself in a sort of waterworks with gears turning along cogs and a set of stairs leading up to a door.  Walking up to the door, you hear a voice say with a soft chuckle "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"

Tatl, who assaulted a guy with a sword and was hanging out with a masked creature with evil powers, hides behind you as you witness the most fabulously creepy gent you will ever see in a video game (that is in having all three qualities of being fabulous, creepy, and a gent).  On his back are several masks, few of which look like they actually want to be there.  While most of them look quite appalled, he never ceases to smile.  As all good business deals start, he admits to stalking you.  He's probably watching you through the window while you read this right now.  He goes on to mention that he sells and collects masks and that one from his collection has been stolen. Guess which one.   He then offers to help you return to human form so long as you reacquire the ocarina of time and his lost mask.  He then adds that he will wait in that spot, but only for three days, after which he must leave on a "business errand".

So that's your quest.  No princesses to rescue.  No wizards to battle. No dungeon crawling.  Just stop an unruly thief and get back his loot.  It's not like it's the end of the world, right? (Spoiler:  You'll be begging for a princess to rescue by the end.)

Next begins day 1

To a Happier New Year

    Hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, sentient computers of the future, and inquisitive time jumping, computer wielding trilobites of the past.  It's the end of the year 2012.  If you think about it, we've actually made it pretty far along.  At the beginning of the past century we were figuring out how to fly planes and then a little less than seventy years later we landed on the moon.  This past year we landed a pretty impressive rover on Mars.  You must admit the human spirit is quite determined.  About ten days ago we joked about the world ending, and today we are heralding a new year.  Modern scholar Charles Van Doren once said in his book The History of Knowledge (and I paraphrase since I don't have the book in front of me) that following a perceived doomsday is usually a flourishing of science, wealth, and culture.  After the year 1000 there was a rise from the darker days of the Middle Ages to the era of grand cathedrals and strong national spirit.  After the year 2000, we've seen computers go from bricks on tables to little things in pockets that are also phones. (And yet we still call them phones, even though that's hardly the function that's used. Crazy, am I right?)

   However, I can't help but notice an all around negativity wherever I go.  I hop on facebook and see a number of melancholy posts.  I hop on youtube, and I am greeted by one of my favorite people being quite sad.  This past year was rough in many regards and in many degrees.  That is the truth of it.  Sure the Olympic games were quite impressive, but it's been some time since that happened.  

   In an effort to brighten the mood for the coming year, I decided to show a few of my favorite things.

1. Another Winter by Anamanaguchi

This song by the chiptune (electronic music manufactured by the sound card of retro game consoles) artist Anamanaguchi premiered in the video game based on the movie and hit graphic novel series Scott Pilgrim vs The World (the movie is excellent too, just nobody saw it).  The song sets up a hope for things to come as Scott, the hero, travels across Toronto in the first level with bandmates Stephen Stills and Kim Pine as they fight hipster thugs on their way to a battle of the bands.  The concept is so fantastic I can't help but smile.  This music captures the mood perfectly.  

2. Mega Man X Street Fighter

Capcom was perhaps one of the foremost names in both the home and arcade video game markets during the 80s and early 90s.  For the NES there was Mega Man, a jump n' shooting robot who battled against the evil scientist Dr. Wiley. In the arcades there was Street Fighter, a 2d fighting game where Ryu, Chun Li, and a number of other iconic martial artists battled for justice against the terrorist M. Bison and the enigmatic Akuma.  This past year was the 25th anniversary of both franchises, but since mainstream markets have changed, Mega Man went without a new game and Street Fighter fell short in the poorly selling Street Fighter X Tekken.  

Fans responded with this project and Capcom's blessing.  

Simply put, this challenging but addicting game is free to download on the Capcom website.  

3. Silmarillion

The Hobbit recently came out in theatres, and I was overall pleased with it.  I would read The Hobbit to pass the time for part two, except I already did that some time ago since it's actually shorter than any individual part of the Lord of the Rings.  I took to reading Tolkien's posthumous title, The Silmarillion.  The word I would describe this is legendary.  It is told in a different regard than a hero's quest like The Hobbit and LotR and is told, as I described, as a legend or myth.  It covers the creation story of Middle Earth and how everything in the main story fits into the the overall backstory.  Now we can finally know who Morgoth is and why he has a Balrog.  Get an audiobook, or put it on your ebook thing or actually get paper bound in a cover or something.  It's good.

4. Chrono Trigger

I love a tale of timey wimey as much as the next nerd, but there's something special about Chrono Trigger for the SNES that few other time travel stories have.  Few other RPGs for that matter.  This game, made by Square Enix (the people who keep cranking out the Final Fantasy series like there's no tomorrow) has many qualities unparalleled by any other game.  It's a shame they really only made one, but here are some things in this game that make it an excellent experience. 

 - Medieval people with time machines

 - A ginger samurai protagonist (I was sold at this point, and that's only 3 seconds into the game)

 - epic gameplay

 - a multitude of possible endings

 - a frog with a broadsword

5. Sherlock Holmes

I'm a pretty die hard Sherlockian.  It's no secret really.  However, I am also a fan of pretty much anything to do with Baker Street's famous detective.  Whether it's with ol Cumberbumbles, RDJ, classic Rathbone, Doyle's original series and post Reichenbach reboot, or the many other forms of media that bear the name of Sherlock, I can enjoy these stories.  Many fans turn there noses up to Sherlock in one form or another while praising a singular form to be canon.  I've heard arguments that the BBC series can't be the true Sherlock because Sherlock Holmes was something confined to Victorian England.  Others would say the recent movies are a poor representation built upon explosions and cross dressing and no actual detective work.  And then others still hold to my belief that most if not all are great.  

I've tried to get into a great many detective stories over the years, but though many are good, none quite have the same charm as Sherlock Holmes.  Poe had a similar detective, but I always felt cheated at the end of those stories.  I believe the term is that the story was railroaded as one would say in a game of Dungeons and Dragons.  Dame Christie has great mysteries, but her detectives just aren't as impressive as Holmes.  So what is it that makes Holmes stand out, and why do I like him in so many radically different interpretations?  I suppose it would simply be the inexplicable spirit of the entity.  It's like looking into a night sky and admiring certain constellations only to finally lean back and realize all the stars are splendid but that each piece could do the whole lot justice.  I guess I say all this to conclude that we all have something remarkable that due to some click of the psyche and what not we can accept that which others may not.  If we find that thing, then maybe we can move along with more spring in step knowing that there's something absolutely remarkable that we get, something that makes our outlook unique.  

Having finished this list, I have been throwing around ideas for New Year's Resolution.  I think I've got something, but there's no need to get ahead of ourselves.  It's not the New Year yet, and there's a time better for declaration of such things than the time at hand.  Being home with the family to celebrate the New Year is great enough, and I appreciate all of you who read this blog.  So as I type with my cat Mittens, my two Jackal statues Ozzie and Rammy, and my bonsai tree named Yoshi, I wish you all an excellent 2013.  

Adieu for the night.

X Men Origins Wolverine 2: Less Miserable, Revolution and Review

   It is a certain matter that troubles me that the prequel to this movie was less than stellar when it first came out.  You didn't come for that so I'll sum up my thoughts in three words:  That's not Deadpool.

  So in this movie (abbr. XMOW2LM), it certainly takes a different approach that pays off considerably.  It doesn't even ride on the coattails of First Class.  Everything from setting to delivery is all new and quite remarkable.  Not to mention, it paid a good homage in a crossover to the movie Master and Commander, in which Russell Crowe's character has fallen under Stockholm Syndrome and become a Frenchman.  So before anything is said, everybody starts singing.  Everybody.  They get up in each other's face and start singing, they sing while performing manual labor, sing while getting shot at, sing over each other, and collectively sing songs while being separated by considerable distance in some cases.  Overarching music sets the tone to each scene that progresses with the plot, quite like when you move from town to town in Pokemon.  If I could compare it to something, it's like in sitcoms where somebody hits their head and then suddenly everybody around them can't stop singing until the lead character succumbs or goes mad.  Given that Wolverine was shot in the head at the end of the last movie, this is no surprise.

   It's all quite charming.  There's a love story, some fighting, social ills, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter (sans Burton), redemption, life and death, and an ending that will have you saying "good night Irene". That bit is in quotes because you'll be saying it.  You really wouldn't expect something like this to be in the head of a guy who experienced the horrors of the Civil, World, and Vietnam Wars.

   Not entirely sure where this fits into the continuity of the Marvel Multiverse.  However, from some comics I've read which feature Tony Stark as a Spanish baron in the seventeenth century and a fight between Red Skull and the Joker as the latter defends the American way, I am willing to accept this story.  I'd accept it for the songs alone.  I'm still humming half of them.

   It was of some interest that I don't believe I saw a single French actor in a movie set in France.  I'd say this solidifies my view that the British and Australian actors continue to do their part in representing the entirety of  Western civilization.  At least it's not like how Doctor Who suggests that all of time and space looks like Wales.

In summary, I give this movie ten angry mobs out of ten.  Just like the ones that will be forming outside of my dorm room for writing this.

Really, go up to the window in front of the big building. Say "I want x amount of tickets" but don't actually say x because they'll look at you weird.  Find a seat and watch it.

And it's Les Miserables.  ok. that's all she wrote.  We're done here.

The End and the Beginning: Majora's Mask part 1

It would seem odd to continue this series since the world didn't end and now Christmas is right around the corner followed by a new year. However, I'm going to keep writing this for a number of reasons.  It's the most productive thing I could be doing, and Quetzlcoatl might pull a fast one and end the world on the 12th of January or something. (Disclaimer:  Quetzlcoatl is Aztec, not Mayan, my deepest apologies to anyone who didn't understand that joke.)

For the sake of this series, I got out my copy of Majora's Mask.  Now, as some people know, my first console was a Gamecube.  As such, my copy of Majora's Mask was part of the LoZ collector's edition that was released for the Gamecube a while ago for some reason or another.  It had four games, the original two for the NES and the two for the N64.  I said all that to say I played OoT and Majora's Mask at the same time.  Since I already described the gist of OoT in the previous post, I'll start with Majora's Mask here.


   The story opens saying that it takes place a few months after the end of the previous game.  Link, the protagonist, has set out through the woods on his horse searching for an unnamed friend.  The hints dropped point to this friend being Navi, the companion fairy from the previous game.  So everything so far is set up like old times, in the woods, on a horse, looking for the famous crier of such infamously annoying phrases as "HEY!" "LISTEN!" and "WATCH OUT!" Then every convention of everything goes out the window.  Two fairies jump out and assault Link.  Yep, two little balls of light with wings drop our hero who in the previous game had defeated an all powerful evil emperor wizard pig ginger man.  Goodbye traditional story telling. Text me when you get to purgatory.

   Walking up to the unconscious Link and horse is a fellow dressed like a scarecrow wearing a mask.  Actually, the mask looks quite similar to the one on the cover, and in the title screen, but for the sake of pacing we're going to play dumb and assume it's just a guy dressed like a scarecrow wearing a mask.  The masked man looks out from under the mask around to ensure there's no witnesses and then also reveals he's in cahoots with the fairies.  To veterans of the series, this character is recognized as a skull kid.  To those who have not played these games before, a skull kid is kinda self explanatory.  Basically, it's a child who dies in the forest and comes back as a macabre scarecrow looking thing.  Morbid? a little. How far are we into the game? Roughly a minute. Best part is, all of these things could still happen in the previous game, we haven't gotten to the really dark weird stuff yet.

   Link regains consciousness to find the skull kid has looted him of the Ocarina of Time, the magic flute of the previous game.  Link tries to catch the skull kid, but it runs off with his horse deeper into the woods.  Link chases him to a cave where he falls deep into an abyss.  Greeted by several weird symbols, Link lands in a strange cavern.  The skull kid's crafty behavior fits with all other encounters in the previous game up until this point.  He summons two spotlights down on him out of nowhere, taunts Link a bit, and then what happens next is as if Guillermo del Toro and David Lynch had a baby (Lynch being the mother in this relationship).  The mask's eyes glow as it shakes around on the skull kid's face.  A vision is shown of Link being swarmed by a mob of tree people to finally be chased by a giant tree creature, and Link snaps out of it to find he has been turned into one such tree person with no sword or shield.  So now everything old is new again and everything new is beak-on-a-giraffe bizarre. Have fun!

To be continued in part 2...

A Terrible Fate: Majora's Mask Intro

    Remember that other time when the world was supposed to end?  Not the rapture one a couple years ago.  I'm thinking about the big one, ol' Y2K.  There was the fear of computers breaking down, and people actually spent the last year of the previous millennium preparing for it.  Rewriting computer code, digging shelters, stockpiling twinkies which were still being made, not caring, and most importantly joking about it.  I was in first grade around that time, so it really didn't make much of a difference to me.  In the year 2000, a game came out that centered around the end of the world, and it was rated E for everyone.

   Before I get to that, let's jump back to 1998.  The Nintendo 64 has been out two years and it had been rocking the gaming market for some time.  The only true competitor was the Playstation which came out in '94, and at the time it didn't have the sort of brand recognition as Nintendo, which had released two excellent consoles and many great titles before the Nintendo 64.  In '98, Nintendo released the long anticipated title of one of their most beloved franchises, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (LoZ: OoT for the sake of brevity).  

  This game summarized the spirit of the industry.  It took the classic hero's quest, one that had been experienced countless times in the 2 dimensional classics of the SNES and NES, reinvented it, and brought it to life in a timeless 3d world.  It was a save the princess where the princess was also a ninja who would help you through your journey,  It was a coming of age where we would see the hero literally grow from childhood to adulthood,  It was the focal point which the entire series would revolve around, and on top of all of this it was a virtually flawless game.  

Then two years later, the classic hero's tale was followed up by this 

Enter Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.  My favorite game of all time.  

To be continued in part 1.