My adventures as Link continues in this multi-part series of my endeavors to play and possibly beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I usually end up tweeting my struggles as I play through the game, but if that isn't your thing then here's the recap:
Since last week I left Hyrule Castle behind and after a ridiculous stealth section was pointed in the direction of the ominous Death Mountain. And then I turned the game off. I ended up playing the game here and there throughout the week with not much progress. Some times I would just get board and so I handed the blue N64 controller to one of my kids. My son particularly enjoyed making Link yell while swinging his sword everywhere and shooting the slingshot at the sky.
I did manage to find that friendly forest girl who taught me a song on the Ocarina... very cool that you have to listen for cues to find your way through the Lost Woods. And then I ventured out to the race track and got a horse song which I imagine will come in handy much later in the game. Keep in mind that I'm just playing the game. No cheats, FAQs, or strategy guides.
I'm trying to play in a way that a little kid would approach the game if it was his very first Zelda game. For many gamers out there, this was their first taste of Zelda.
(I can't fault them for that, but to me, the 3D experience is both incredible and frustrating at times)
I looked up some background information about the game and my suspicions were confirmed with interesting details about the development of the game. The huge development team lead by none other than Shigero Miyamoto ran into technological restraints, and had to adapt from these problems to make a game that ended up being... something else. I'm going to dig around the internet and see if I can find some accurate information from around 1997-8 about the development cycle of this game. This is sometimes difficult to do unless you still have some old magazines laying around somewhere.
All of the old magazines of the era are defunct now... and I'm guessing they didn't keep an archive of this information but I'll check nevertheless. The internet has to have this stuff somewhere.
I did find out that the cartridge I'm playing from is version 1.1 of the game. Nintendo made several printings of Ocarina and each time they patched some bugs or changed the game in small ways. My version still includes Ganon's red blood and the Islamic singing found in the Fire Temple... so that's cool I guess... assuming I'll ever get that far.
I followed some directions given to me and headed to Death Mountain, where I entered the Chicken Dungeon. Scattered throughout this town are seven lost chickens... and finding them not only tested my patience with the entire game, but made me hate the controller I was using even more. I went to check out the graveyard at night and found a cool hole in the ground.
It seems like everything in this game is a door designed to impede progress until you figure out what key to use. In this case, when in doubt, play all your ocarina songs and something great is bound to happen. Interestingly enough, that was the ticket to getting into the neat graveyard section and another song added to the list.
By this time I finally figured out that the birthday card looking item in my inventory was actually a key to get through the door to Death Mountain proper. There I met the Gorons and after stumbling around their home for another half hour, figured out pick up bombs and open Dodongo's Cavern. Bombs were the key... again so many keys in Zelda games.
Dodongo's Cavern seemed kinda long to me. Everything was great, but here and there I would come up against a frustrating time with the camera view or the controls because of the 3D environment. There's a place where I need to throw a bomb at the right time to blow up a wall, and I struggled with it for over ten minutes. Crazy. But by the time I reached the end of the dungeon my controller died. I couldn't move Link where I wanted, he moved on his own, and I suspect that my scotch tape fix on the joystick had failed. I had almost reached the end... and had to stop. Bummer.
I ordered a replacement that is based off the better designed GameCube thumbstick, and from what I've read, fixes all the problems from the crappy original N64 joystick. We'll see what happens when it arrives. It's kinda sad that I didn't get farther, but that's how things are right now.
Buy Something: Redesigned N64 Thumbstick
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