First Impressions of The Wind Waker HD - Picto Box/Nintendo Gallery

On September 20th, The Wind Waker HD was released for digital download on the Wii U shop. A special edition Deluxe Bundle was also released that included the Wii U and a special Zelda-themed GamePad, along with a download code for the game and a digital copy of Hyrule Historia. Because I lacked a Wii U system, I decided to purchase this lovely bundle.

And I have been playing Wind Waker NONSTOP since then.

...Well, I suppose that's not COMPLETELY accurate... I WOULD have been playing The Wind Waker nonstop if my life wasn't so busy, especially these days. But on Saturday I played it from three in the afternoon to one in the morning without stopping, sooo...

Yeah. I love the game a lot more than I thought I would. In my original post on it, I obviously was't THAT impressed. But now that I'm playing it... wow. I never realized how much I missed The Wind Waker. There's so much more exploration to it than any other game. It's the kind of thing that seems timeless -- as in, it's almost impossible to remember everything in that game, because there's so MUCH. True, a lot of the puzzles may not lead to anything important, but I still think it's probably one of the harder games to 100%.

As of now, I've played about 18 hours of the game total, and I'm supposed to be searching for the Sages and getting the Iron Boot and Power Bracelets. That's just over halfway through the game, I suppose. And considering I've been playing for so long, it seems rather odd that I'm not farther, doesn't it?

Well, I've been EXPLORING. I've only got three more islands to complete my Sea Chart. And I've gotten the Swift Sail and several Heart Pieces and oh-so-many figurines.

Oh, yes. Figurines.

The Nintendo Gallery has been made SO much easier in this version. Almost RIDICULOUSLY easier. I started with the assumption that it'd be mostly the same (I was vastly unprepared for most of the changes in WW because I wasn't reading up on it that closely, so I was pleasantly surprised by a lot). In the original, you had to take a picture of a character or enemy that you wanted to be made into a figurine and then bring it to Carlov at the Nintendo Gallery near Forest Haven to get it made. However, there were some conditions. First of all, you had to get a GOOD image of the character. And sometimes it was difficult to tell if it was a good one or not. This was especially hard for things that you weren't quite sure were a character or enemy. Like... the Beamos in the Tower of the Gods. Apparently they're not actually enemies, even if they are in other games. If I'd ever bothered getting their picture in the original, and Carlov told me he couldn't sculpt it, I'd have no way of knowing (except the internet) whether it was becaue it couldn't be made into a figurine or because I'd gotten a bad camera angle. And on top of that, you could only give him one pictograph to sculpt per day. So if you wanted to sculpt all three, which was the maximum your Picto Box could hold, you'd have to use Song of Passing several times to get him to finish his current figurine and give him a new one. Oh! And don't forget about Legendary Pictographs, which depicted the characters that you usually did not have the opporunity to get yourself in the game and therefore had to pay several hundred Rupees for. And if that wasn't bad enough... some pictographs were permanently missable. Forgot to take a picture of Gohdan? Too bad! You're not ever seeing him again! (Except in Second Quest... but whatever.)

Top it all off with the fact that these had to be taken in color -- meaning that you couldn't even start collecting pictures prior to making it to Forest Haven and getting the Forest Firefly, sailing allll the way back to Windfall to get the Deluxe Picto Box, and then sailing allllll the way back to unlock the Nintendo Gallery in the first place... well, it was definitely a challenge.

I never completed the Nintendo Gallery in the original. I THINK I got pretty far, but, eh... my GC file's corrupted now, so who knows?

However... The Wind Waker HD fantastically improved on every single dilemma mentioned above.

From the very moment you get the Picto Box, you'll immediately notice what's probably the most useful improvement: you can now save 12 photos instead of 3. That alone is fantastic. Now in addition to the important figurine images, you can take really stupid images, like whatever the heck I did here.

Oh, but that's not ALL. Even though you can take those lovely 12 photos to get figurines made of them, what about the "one figurine per day" limit? Doesn't that sound frustrating, too? Well, I thought so as well, but fortunately you can actually give him up to twelve pictures to make figurines of in one day! I spent the first two dozen figurines or so actually just giving him one and then playing the Song of Passing to go to the next day, because I was so used to that method. Plus, another lovely addition is the fact that upon turning on the system, the Wind Waker song repeats only once, and then after that you just have to play the directions and the song's affects immediately occur... if that made sense. So it wasn't even AS bad. But being able to put in more than one figurine is absolutely incredible, haha.

How about not knowing whether an image would make a good figurine or not? Wind Waker HD comes to the rescue with a little symbol that appears in the corner of all Carlov-approved pictographs, so you'll know right after taking it if it's good or not. Believe me, it's saved me lots of incorrect pictures where I would have to travel alll the way back to take them in again in the original. And how about the Deluxe Picto Box thing? ...No, you DO still need it, and they DO still have to be in color. HOWEVER, the Forest Firefly is no longer required. Now, all you need to do is become Lenzo's assistant at his pictograph shop on Windfall Island by taking three pictures. I didn't know this, but I felt like becoming his assistant anyway. I still am not entirely sure what you got in the original -- I can't remember -- so I was only doing it in hopes of finding out what it was. But instead, much to my delight, I got the Deluxe Picto Box! Therefore, you can start snapping pictures as early as Windfall Island and Dragon Roost! And of course I did. I took pictures of as many people as I could, haha, in preparation for obtaining their figurines the moment I reached Forest Haven.

Lastly... what about Legendary Pictographs? And those permanently missable ones? How on earth could they fix that?

One word: Miiverse.

I'll probably have to write another post separtely on Miiverse at a later date, because I love it so much, but for now, I'll just talk about how it ties into the Nintendo Gallery. Using the Tingle Bottle (which I'm a bit less bitter about now, even though I was annoyed it replaced the Tingle Tuner initially), one can attach a pictograph to a bottled message and send it out. Then another player might receive it and can save that pictograph to their own Picto Box.

Do you understand what this means? Player A can snap a pictograph of, let's say, Cyclos, since he's easily missable. Then Player B, who, for the sake of ease, we'll call "TotallyNotSierra", can pick up a Tingle Bottle with this image in it. And, much to TotallyNotSierra's amazement, she can finally get the figurine that she unintentionally missed! Now, if only Player A would hurry the heck up and send that stupid bottle to TotallyNotSierra because she TotallyDoesn'tNeed it...

...Gosh. I was so mad I missed it. I've been picking up EVERY Tingle Bottle, and though I've SEEN images of Cylcos on Miiverse, I never GET any of them... -.-

But! You get the idea of how it can help, right? So far I've been terribly meticulous in not missing any figurines (EXCEPT CYLCOS. I REALIZED LITERALLY THE MOMENT I SHOT HIM WITH AN ARROW THAT I MADE A MISTAKE. -.-), but oh my goodness, I love it. Even before I'd unlocked the ability to get Legendary Pictographs, I had Ganondorf and Jabun, because someone was kind enough to send them to me. You can only get the images that you randomly find in a Tingle Bottle, though, so you just have to be lucky. You can't pick and choose off of Miiverse, sadly. I've made sure to send out most of the Legendary Pictographs I've both paid for myself (which are only two) and received in Tingle Bottles, just to keep the cycle going and let some other lucky person get those figurines. And I've also sent out images of Gohdan, the Helmaroc King, and Phantom Ganon, which I've seen many people ask for.

...and just in case you guys somehow missed this...

YOU CAN TAKE SELFIES. SELFIES, guys! Look, look, look! Tetra and I were traveling in Hyrule Castle together so I took this picture in front of the Hero of Time statue! :D

 

Yeah. Another improvement? I can pull my images off of Miiverse. So you guys can actually get SCREENSHOTS from now on. ;)

 

So, with these beautiful improvements, I've gotten pretty far in my Nintendo Gallery collection. The Windfall and Outset rooms and fully completed. So, can anyone guess what my first figurine was? It HAD to be special, of course. I made sure of that.

 

Really. I'm going to give you a moment to think. You could guess it if you really tried. Okay? One... two... threeee...

 

It was Medli. Of course.

 

Even if I forever regret my choice in blog title, Medli will still hold a special place in my heart...

 

Alright, everyone! Have a nice day! See you... probably in a month, haha.

E3 2013 Wishes Fulfilled and Unfulfilled

I promised you a post later in the day... and here it is. A bit later than you were probably expecting, but it's here.

So, yeah. We had Nintendo Direct today. For some reason, the website I was using crashed, so I ended up using their Australian website to watch it, but it still worked. I spent most of the time chatting in the Shoutbox of Zelda Dungeon throughout the presentation, but then some other guy who lived in Japan started spoiling everything because his live feed was somehow ahead of ours and I had to leave until after. XD

It was better than last year; I can tell you that already. No matter what, it was better than last year. Why? BECAUSE WE HAD SOMETHING BESIDES MARIO, THAT'S WHY.

The presentation started talking about the upcoming Pokémon games with a huge shock: there's a new type of Pokémon. Fairy type. I heard some speculation about that, but I was surprised to see it actually come true. Then they talked about Super Mario World 3D and Mario Kart 8, and I think a bit of a new Donkey Kong Country...

...But this is a Zelda blog, right? So we don't care about that stuff. What I was really looking for came soon enough, though.

A new The Wind Waker HD Trailer. A new Super Smash Bros. Trailer. And then... finally, after the presentation was over, a trailer -- and the official title -- for A Link to the Past 2, AKA Zelda 3DS.

Let's start with The Wind Waker HD, shall we?



That trailer doesn't show it, but they talked about some new features that they're adding as well, one of them being a faster traveling system if you hold A on the boat. Seems convenient, and I'm very glad it's being added for the people who complain about how slow sailing is. Even though the slow speed never REALLY bothered me before, I'll probably use this fast travel thing.

Then they showed... the Tingle Bottle.

Alright, so, when I first saw it, I kind of missed something, and only noticed its features. It can be used in game to send a message to Miiverse with a photo from the Pictobox attached. You toss it into the ocean and it disappears. I actually thought that was pretty cool to begin with. You know? Not a bad idea. Not like it's overwhelmingly awesome, but it's interesting...

And then I realized it was replacing the Tingle Tuner.

NO, NINTENDO. I WANTED THAT TINGLE TUNER IN WWHD VERY BADLY. VERY, VERRRRY BADLY.

You can't even 100% the game without it! Ugggh!

Well, that kind of annoyed me. But... *sigh* whatever...

Next up was Super Smash Bros. 4.

And my goodness, we were certainly in for a surprise.




FREAKING VILLAGER.

THE FREAKING VILLAGER

FROM ANIMAL CROSSING

IS IN MY SMASH BROS. GAME

I just... like...

Wow.

Hahahaha, oh, but that's not the best part. I mean, there are returning characters as well, and there's Megaman, but the above trailer still fails to show THIS:



THE WII FIT TRAINER.

I'm not joking, though: I'm going to play as her. If I don't feel like playing as my usual Zelda characters for once, I'm playing as her. Srsly.

And what about Link himself? He... well, I'm not a huge fan of his look, in all honesty. Just look at this:

I don't even know what's happening to Link in this picture... but I don't like it. Something seems just... wrong. About his face, or... I don't know! But he looks awful in that picture. He's some sort of combination of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, and it's strange...

But, then, sometimes he looks cool:

 

That looks good to me! But the above one... eh...

Well, anyway, it doesn't matter, hahaha. I'm excited regardless. I'll probably buy both the 3DS and Wii U versions regardless. XD

Lastly... Zelda 3DS.

Or should I say... A LINK BETWEEN WORLDS! *gasp*

Yep. The new Zelda game is going to be known as The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Here's the trailer:



That makes its acronym ALBW, which I've been repeating over and over today because it's such an awesome acronym that I can't stand it. XD

Anyway... I'm actually far more excited than I was last time I talked about this! I think it looks interesting! My hope was that I'd get some cutscenes, or at least some artwork... and as you can see, I didn't get any cutscenes... however...

LOOOOOOOOOOK

LOOK AT HOW BEAUTIFUL THAT IS

OH MY GOODNESS

IT'S SO AMAZING

I... I was sooo happy to see that image. It's an INCREDIBLE piece of artwork. I can deal with that. It's not what I wanted, but in some ways, it's better. It also confirms the return of the Master Sword and Hylian Shield... and that bracelet that Link has... maybe it's important?

I loved it so much that I made a new avatar for Zelda Dungeon using it. HoT stands for Heroine of Time, my username, in case you didn't know. ^^

So, yes. We didn't get any Zelda Wii U, sadly, but it's not like that was ABSOLUTELY expected. In fact, I kind of wasn't expecting it, but I was hoping we'd get lucky with a piece of artwork or something simple, you know?

Ah, well, E3, I think, was pretty darn amazing. I'm excited for these upcoming games and I can't WAIT to get a Wii U system... I hope you guys enjoyed E3, and let's hope there's more coming!

Have a wonderful day, everyone!

The Wind Waker Wii U – Medli Returns in Glorious HD!

This was announced a few days ago, but I didn't get the chance to post it until now, which shows just how far from grace this poor blog has fallen. But that's okay. At least now I've calmed down (a bit) over the initial unveiling and I won't go all fangirl freakout mode on this post here.

So what is this magical reveal that has the whole Zelda fandom talking?

The Wind Waker HD.

Yeah. That's real.

They are actually, REALLY going to remake The Wind Waker.

I... I pretty much freaked out when I heard this. My poor Facebook page ended up being my outlet instead of this blog for once, though. To put things in perspective... I don't think a single person on my friends list has even touched The Wind Waker, as far as I know. Well, maybe that one kid from elementary school that used to talk about video games with me... And, okay, I did force my friend to fight WW Ganon at my birthday party...

Anyway, no one knew what I was talking about, and I RARELY go on Facebook, but here I was, caps lock and all, typing up nonsense. I even went off and started complaining about "stuid OoT fanboys". Yes. In my excitement, I wrote "stuid".

As a result, I think you'll appreciate me waiting in the end, because this would be a full on nonsensical rant otherwise.

Not that I won't rant. Oh, no. I'm still reeling over this whole thing.

Let me begin by saying how I discovered this. As you know, I edit the ZD Wiki a lot. So I returned home from school, and, as my routine demands, the first thing I did was check my e-mail and the Recent Changes of the ZD Wiki. I realized people were editing the Wind Waker page and "adding HD release" was their reason for editing. I was like, "Okay, what is this noob talking about? HD TWW? That doesn't make sense. What's this?" And then I saw uploaded photos of "The Wind Waker Wii U", and suddenly realizing that something incredibly important had happened while I was at school, I immediately went to the front page of ZD with all the news posts...

And there it was.

...I could hardly believe my eyes. It... it didn't even look like a real Zelda game. It looked like some kind of fantastic fan project. Not because it looked bad, but because it seemed so impossible. I was completely and utterly shocked.

And the one thing I kept thinking was: WHY?

Majora's Mask 3D has been recognized as a desire, the possibility of an ALttP remake generated a considerable amount of attention – BUT NO. THEY CHOSE THE WIND WAKER.

I think it has something to do with the fact that it's the only Zelda game that hasn't been on another console aside from the Oracles and Skyward Sword. But seriously. I...

Okay, opinion time.

I was kind of upset.

...Okay, maybe upset isn't the right word. More like... affronted? But a bit nicer than affronted. Like... I felt...

Ugh. I just don't like the graphics, okay?

It's not that I don't want this remake. Not. At. All. I am soooo excited for this, you have no idea. But... That's kind of why my fangirl freakout manifested itself in a nonsensical Facebook post:

I had NO idea what to think.

I am TORN between LOVING this announcement and HATING it. The Wind Waker was my first Zelda game right? It's the reason this blog has its dumb namesake of a character from The Wind Waker that makes it sound nothing like a Zelda blog (I'm sorry, Medli, I love you! Really! I do! I've just moved on!). So, naturally, the prospect of it coming back really made me happy. My file was corrupted a while back, and since then I have not completed Wind Waker again. This will be the perfect incentive to play it another time. And, oh my gosh, A ZELDA GAME ON THE WII U. WHO COULD POSSIBLY HATE THAT.

...But... Those stupid graphics!

I don't like people who judge a game based on its graphics. Most people of the video gaming world don't, actually, particularly Nintendo fans. And I don't necessarily have a problem with this art style. I like it, actually. No, I take that back. I LOVE it. It's so beautiful. I would love a new Zelda game like that.

The problem lies in the fact that it's The Wind Waker we're talking about here, and not some new game. I loved The Wind Waker's GC graphics. They, out of all of the Zelda games, are the only ones that still look really amazing by today's standards.

So why would you take them and CHANGE them? They looked BEAUTIFUL as is! Don't fix what isn't broken!

The problem is that there are, what, fifteen, sixteen Zelda games? Any one of those could have been remade aside from Wind Waker, and they would have been AWESOME. Twilight Princess really, in my opinion, looks quite bad compared to The Wind Waker and Skyward Sword. If we had a remake of that with graphics like that tech demo – oh, my gosh. Just... I can't even comprehend the awesomeness. And what happened to A Link to the Past? I'm pretty sure MM is coming to 3DS eventually, so I'll disregard that, but what about ALttP? I personally was very excited for that, because I can't wait to see how 2D translates to 3D. But we got THIS instead!

...See my problem?

I sound like a whiny fan. Sorry. Like I said, I'm completely unsure what to think of this announcement. But those are just my thoughts on the matter.

I really hope they add in some new features for us, though. I also can't wait to try the Tingle Tuner. I've never been able to use that.

Anyway, Iwata also spoke briefly about the brand NEW Zelda game coming to Wii U eventually. I'll (hopefully) address that in a later post. I can't wait to hear about that.

Oh, and lastly: Hyrule Historia came out today! My copy's set to arrive on February 1st. I hate having to wait a few days, but whatever. I'm looking forward to that.

Well, have a good evening, everyone. I'll return in a later post to further discuss the details of Wii U Direct and the new Zelda Wii U, and perhaps more TWW thoughts.

Goodnight!

Duty before Love (Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Medli x Link fan fiction)

*gasps*

That's right... a post on Medli's Messages... that's ACTUALLY ABOUT MEDLI!

The title explains most of it, but I'll go into detail. This is a story I've been writing for while for fanfiction.net. There's this program that Insane, certifiably is hosting called Across the Fandom. She is trying to get oneshots for every pairing existing in the Zelda-verse from a variety of different authors. You were able to sign up on this one thread (I'll try to find a link later) and claim a pairing, and then they'd give you another one at random. For no reason whatsoever, I decided to sign up for Medli x Link, and then they gave me the random pairing Din x Link. I have no idea what I'll do for Din and Link, but for now, I've finished the Medli one. Yaaay!

I... don't really know what inspired this. I just started writing about Medli, lol. But you, dear readers, please tell me what you think - I rarely ask for comments here on Medli' Messages (at least, RECENTLY I haven't asked for comments) but I'm doing so now. I love feedback on my writing. You can tell me what I'm doing wrong, what you like, what you don't like - in fact, you can even tell me you HATE the thing and I'll be so happy that you left your thoughts. It doesn't matter.

My main worries about this story: Is it romantic enough? Too romantic? Was it too dramatic, or just right? Was it sad, or so stupid it made you laugh? Are Medli's and Link's personalities right, or did I totally screw up (main concerned about Link in this area)? Those are the kind of questions I'd like you to answer, if nothing else. ;)

If you steal this, I will hunt you down and... um... destroy you! Or something. Seriously, don't steal.

Please enjoy! (Though I REALLY hate the beginning. Those are always the worst.)

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Duty before Love by TwilightWakerofTime (A.K.A. Sierra WinterBreeze, A.K.A. Windlilly)

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How had it come to this?

Her heart pounding, she leaned against the door, wincing as she heard another crash. Oh, great Spirits of Water and Sky… please let him be all right…

Sighing, Medli turned around again, slumping against the cold, locked door of the Earth Temple. Of her temple. Even if she lacked their memories, ever since Laruto awakened her she could sense the presence of her ancestors, the deceased Sages that once empowered the Master Sword. She was left to take their place, to guard the temple and aid the Hero.

It wasn’t the aiding the Hero part that she found hard – she’d just gone through an entire temple with him, flying to places too high to reach and breaking barriers with her harp’s song when necessary. No, it was the guarding part that worried her.

Would she be… stuck here?

Would she not be allowed to go with him? With Link?

The ground shook again as something heavy hit the wall hard. She took in a sharp breath, then exhaled slowly, silently chiding herself for being so jumpy. He’ll be fine. He’s the Chosen Hero. He’ll be fine.

Another thud. He doesn’t sound fine…

Stop it! She shook her head. This was crazy! She was sitting here, moping and fretting while Link risked his life. It was unfair. Why couldn’t she have gone instead? At the least he could have let her in the room with him! But, no; apparently as the Sage of Earth, she was too precious to risk getting harmed. And… with the pleading look he gave her when he asked Medli to stay behind… she just couldn’t say no. But surely there had to be some way she could have helped. Didn’t she possess some kind of special powers as a Sage? Something… anything could have helped him…

Desperate to distract herself, Medli thought about Dragon Roost Island. Unfortunately, it only brought up painful memories. She still didn’t know if she’d be able to go back there. She might never see Quill or Komali again.

For some reason, she began to think of the first time she met Link. He was the youngest human she’d ever met. Everyone else that came to Dragon Roost from the outside were sailors, older men usually from Windfall, and she wasn’t old enough to leave the island on her own yet (which reminded her - she'd be in so much trouble when she got home). So she’d never seen a boy his age out alone on the sea. Hoping for some kind of assistance from this boy, she asked for his help to get into Dragon Roost Cavern. Then she’d been captured. She’d really thought that was the end… but then he’d saved her!

And now he was fighting for the Great Sea – for her life and everyone else’s. And she was stuck out here.

She closed her eyes. She had to stop being so negative.

But something felt… different…

Her eyes shot opened as she realized what it was. The sounds of battle from inside the boss room – they’d stopped!

She pressed her hands against the door, pushing with all her might, hoping it would open. But it was no use. The door was securely locked. She held her breath. No! That couldn’t mean… Link hadn’t failed… had he?

And suddenly, the door slid open.

With a small cry of surprise at the unexpected lack of support, she stumbled forward –

– right into the arms of someone standing there.

Link blinked down in surprise at the Rito girl. He opened his mouth to say something, but Medli seized him in a tight hug and released a soft sob.

“Oh, gods! You’re here… okay… and you… I was… I couldn’t… you weren’t… you left me here!”

He let out a sound between a sigh of relief and a groan. “Medli… it’s great to see you, but you’re hurting me.”

“Oh!” She quickly pulled away, for the first time noticing the state he was in. There were multiple scratches on his arms and strange blackened marks on his green tunic – singe marks? Were those from fire? Great Valoo, what had happened during that battle? “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t… I didn’t… I’m just glad that you… you’re… I… and I…”

“Medli,” he said gently. “You’re stammering.”

She brought a hand up to cover her mouth, which had made an ‘o’ of shock. “You’re right! I’m sorry! I don’t mean to. I only–”

Link grinned at her. “It’s okay. But we need to restore the power to repel evil to the Master Sword now. We’ll have to play that song one more time.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “Of course.” Her duty as a Sage needed to come before her feelings for Link. She couldn’t let herself be distracted at such an important moment. Even one mistake in the song could… She paused. Well, she didn’t really know what would happen if she made a mistake while playing it. Hmm. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to find out.

The pair walked into the center of the room, where the Triforce emblem was displayed on the stone floor. Medli gazed around herself with mild fascination – the whole place, surrounded by spikes and thorny towers, seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place where she’d seen it before. Of course, throughout their expedition in this temple she’d had thoughts like this; this wasn’t the first time she’d felt like she’d been somewhere in memory that she’d never visited physically.

Link raised the Wind Waker and looked at her expectantly. “Ready?”

Snapped out of her thoughts, she swiftly swung the harp over her head and cradled it in her arms, her calloused fingers poised to play. She checked to make sure it was tuned into the right key before nodding. “Ready.”

Link began to move the conductor’s baton, and Medli played the Earth God’s Lyric with practiced ease, her fingers gliding across the harp strings. Immediately she realized she didn’t need to worry about messing up the song – backed up by the spirits of her ancestors, she felt like she’d played this a million times… like this song was a part of her. She barely noticed the Master Sword beginning to glow from where Link had placed it in the center of the Triforce as she lost herself in the music.

She didn’t notice Laruto until the music stopped. She gazed at the fallen Sage of Earth, who was supposedly was her ancestor. When Medli first saw her, she’d been shocked by her fish-like and wingless appearance, but she was prepared this time. Now she heard the Sage’s voice echoing in her head. “Your half of the power to repel evil has returned to the Master Sword.” Medli sighed with relief. “However,” the Sage continued, making her stiffen, “your task is not complete. You must remain here and play the Earth God’s Lyric to ensure the Master Sword does not fail again. This is your duty to Hyrule and the Goddesses.”

Her eyes widened and her heart shattered almost instantly at the sound of these words. No! This was exactly what she’d been afraid of hearing! She couldn’t stay here forever, protecting the power of an ancient relic, no matter how important it was! How could she sacrifice herself like that – how could the gods be so impassive, so apathetic, so cruel? This wasn’t fair… she wanted to travel… she wanted to–

“Medli?”

She looked up, noticing Link regarding her with concern, the half-empowered Master Sword in his hands. She glanced to the side, realizing that Laruto had already disappeared. Her hands balled into fists at a sudden rise of anger. Even her ancestors didn’t care about her!

“Is something wrong?”

She turned back to Link, and tried to calm herself, pasting a completely fake smile on her face. “What? Oh, no. Nothing is wrong.”

She struggled to hold back tears and sustain the smile as he tilted his head to the side curiously. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

His frown clearly showed that he didn’t believe her, but she couldn’t stand to say anything more. “Okay. Then we should go now.”

Just keep smiling.

“You should. But I can’t come.”

“What?”

She bit her lip to prevent it from trembling – the smile had fallen from her face by now, but she didn’t have the strength to restore it. “I can’t come. I… I need to stay here and fulfill my duty as a Sage. I have to keep playing so that the power to repel evil doesn’t wear out.”

“You… That’s silly,” Link said, laughing nervously, a confused expression on his face. “The gods can’t expect you to do that. You’ve done enough.”

“It’s my duty,” she quoted Laruto quietly. “To Hyrule and the Goddesses.”

For a moment, Link just stood there, frozen in utter shock. Finally, he growled, “That’s not your duty. All you needed to do was restore the power to the Master Sword – and you’ve done that!” He held up the ancient weapon as proof. “Now all it needs is the Wind Sage’s power, and it will be the Blade of Evil’s Bane again. You’re done!”

“Laruto told me,” she whispered, a few tears trickling down her cheek. “Laruto said that I had to stay here. Otherwise, its power will fade over time.”

“No!” Link shouted, grabbing her hand. “I won’t let you do that to yourself. What about the Rito? Doesn’t Valoo need an attendant?”

“I can be replaced,” she argued halfheartedly. In all honesty, these were the things running through her mind, too. Since Komali’s grandmother had died, no one had been left to teach her, so she’d needed to struggle through reading ancient texts in the old language and further her training on her own. It was difficult, and she only managed to get through it because she held some previous knowledge – for someone new, learning how to be Valoo’s attendant would be next to impossible.

“This isn’t fair! You’re throwing your life away just for this stupid quest!”

“Link…”

“You can’t do this. There must be some other way.”

“Link?”

“We can just leave, right now,” he continued, turning around to pace, deep in thought. “Maybe there’s somewhere we can hide, where you won’t have to–”

“Link!”

He looked up at her, startled out of his rant by Medli’s uncharacteristic yell. He was shocked to find tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She couldn’t hold them in any longer.

“Please, just stop,” she sobbed, her voice echoing off the walls of the Earth Temple. “You’re making it worse.”

Letting out a big breath of air, Link visibly deflated, his gaze softening. “I’m sorry. I just–”

“I have no choice,” she sighed, sounding hollow. “It’s not just me, or you, or the lives of the Rito at stake. It’s everyone. Every person in the Great Sea.” Her voice dropped so low that Link could barely hear it. “Duty must come before love…”

For the first time during his quest, the Chosen Hero had no idea what to say or do.

“You should go now,” Medli mumbled, gesturing toward the glowing portal that had appeared.

After holding her gaze in silence for a long while, Link nodded mutely. But instead of moving towards the portal, he approached Medli one last time.

“I’ll come back,” he promised, staring into her eyes firmly.

Medli allowed herself a sad smile. “I know.”

“Besides, the gods can’t keep you here after Ganon is dead, can they?” Link said, a kind of desperate hope in his eyes.

“I hope not.” Could the gods be cruel enough to keep her here forever? At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised…

He stepped back, away from Medli and into the glow of the enchanted wind that would take him outside the temple. She watched, helpless, as the wind began to envelope Link.

Then he was gone.

She dropped her gaze to the floor and sighed, trying to release the despair she felt welling up inside of her. Reaching over her shoulder, she grabbed the harp. To push back the tears forming again, she played a sad, dissonant chord on the string, and then started the Earth God’s Lyric.

She had a feeling she’d been doing this a lot from now on.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

...I don't like it. *sigh* But I never like anything I write, so... I'll just wait for your opinions.

Why do all the females in my Zelda stories sound so dang helpless?

WHY THE *censored* DOES MY DANG WII HATE MEEEEEE?!?

This is officially. The. Worst. Curse. Ever.

I freaking hate my Wii.

...Nooo... well, I KIND OF do. There have been other instances it let me down (the whole falling-over-and-resetting event with Majora's Mask comes to mind). But more than the Wii, it's the memory card. And I guess it wouldn't even be our Wii... it would be our GAME CUBE.

Remember the Evil Memory Card curse? It returned... hungry for revenge...

It already took away Young Link on Melee. It took NightRings and JewelCat from Pokemon Collosseum. It took my epic Animal Crossing town. It took a cutscene file from Wind Waker. Heck, for good measure, it even took stupid Billy Hatcher files away.

THEN the WII was being stupid. It stole my Twilight Princess file just as I reached the final boss. It made me redo the MM Zora cutscene a thousand times.

But THIS... this is...

FIVE YEARS OF WORK. GONE.

My first ever Zelda game file - Wind Waker - was CORRUPTED! And you know what? Since my cutscene file was deleted, I have no other files that have beat the game and started over!

...Except one...

BUT I'M TOO FREAKING MAD ABOUT THIS TO CARE. Besides, TECHNICALLY it's my sister's. I mean, it's HER first one. She didn't mind if I deleted it, though.

But... but.. but... I'm so angry I don't even know what to scream about anymore. Or type in capital letters. Whatever.

Hey, you know what's funny? I feared something like this would happen. Quote from my previous post about corrupted Wind Waker file:

...Fortunately, it wasn't my very first file, my BEST file... the one I've had for five years. Oh my gosh, if I lost that... I don't know WHAT I would do. Probably burst into tears or start screaming and running around wildly. Something like that. XD

...And now it's happened. Hmm. No screaming. No running. There was almost-crying, and screaming at my sister in anger, but nothing more.

I think I'm getting used to replaying through accidentally-deleted Zelda stuff.

On the other hand, I still haven't deleted this one. I'm hoping, by some miracle, it will come back like Melee sometimes does. ...Oh, and I wonder what our other games are like? I was wondering if any others got further corrupted? I was worried about FSA doing that - I've only beat the game once, so it would be BAD to lose that file - but it was fine. Still...

*sigh*

...Ummmmmm... yeah. Huh. All my recent post titles are all in caps or partially all in caps.

I have nothing more to say. Aside from updates. Like MC and my epiclatastical Zelda-boss-marathon-type-thingy. Uh-huh. Btw, anyone has an ideas for my Zelda fan-fic, please give me something. I need inspiration. Last night I got VERY good inspiration (it has to do with Skyward Sword XD) but... still.

MC Update - OOH! OOH! IT'S THAT GOD DUDE FROM WIND WAKER!

I beat Mount Crenel! Yayz! :D

...Speaking of which, I STILL can't figure out what the heck that dungeon there was called. Something-mines, probably, just because there were mine carts all over the place. And those provided me no end of crazy pleasure. Hehe, I love riding in mine carts...

Hmm. Where to begin.

Let's see - the BIG BAD BOSS is always a good place to start (thought I'd forgotten about that catchphrase-type thingy of mine, hadn't you? :P)!

You know, I was kinda looking forward to the boss turning all cute in the end. ...Um, I know that just sounded really stupid right there. But, I mean, THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MANGA! But the manga is CONFUSING ME!!! When I heard I was headed to the Fortress of Winds, I became so confused - the manga had Link getting the WATER Element first. That's probably why I was stuck for so long - I was trying sooooo hard to get into Lake Hylia that I totally ignored the other element symbol.

Oh, hey, speaking of which... why is the Earth Element purple? Can someone tell me what happened to the earth being GREEN? And why is the WIND the green one? -.-

...Back on topic...

Okay, I don't even know the Minish Cap bosses' names. Except for Giant ChuChu or whatever, but that's pretty obvious. :P Reason? I haven't bothered to look them up, that's why. Duh. In fact, the only reason I know Wind Waker boss names would be because I actually have the ambition to go off and search for it myself!

I mean, I know so much about Zelda that I can recognize references to other games' bosses when I see them.

Such as what I believe just might be a reference to Gohdan...

You don't know who Gohdan is? Oh, come ON! Okay, okay... he's that masked dude with two floating hands and floating head in the Tower of Gods of Wind Waker, not evil, but not good, obviously not because he attacks you and nearly killed me multiple times, mostly because I kept running out of arrows despite that fact that he replenished them, and then there's the glowing stuff around the outer edges of the room that HURT when you fall onto them, and, oh, then he doesn't explode at the end, lol, like other bosses, and he's the only one that doesn't appear in Ganon's Tower at the end...

...and...

..um...

He's the Tower of Gods dude in WW. There. I said it.

Okay... you know what? I've totally strayed from my original point here. First of all, I was talking about the boss of MOUNT CRENEL... not the Fortress of Winds. And the boss I think was a reference to WW is the Fortress of Winds boss.

The boss from Mount Crenel... was some sort of snake-rock thingy that spewed fire at me... Um... and I used the Cane of Pacci to defeat it.

Yeah.

But I still like the Gohdan boss. It included shrinking to a Minish and going inside things to break stuff. :D

Hmm... now I REALLY want to know what these bosses names are...

*an hour later, after looking it up on Zelda Wiki, somehow getting into the entry of Blizzeta from Twilight Princess, listening to Fyrus's theme and comparing it to Blizzeta's, then watching random Skyward Sword stuff for some reason on YouTube...*

Okay! I got it! The Gohdan style boss is named Mazaal. Interesting... XD

OH!! GUESS WHAT?!? I already knew the name of that second boss. I just forgot. ...Honestly! I knew it was Gleerok! I remember hearing that name somewhere! O_o

According to the listing, next is Big Octorok (how WONDERFUL) then the Gyorg Pair that I've seen and heard so much about. Then onto Vaati. Yay!

'Kay, that's it for tonight. Enjoy your weekend, everyone. :)

Good, bad, and useless news.

Which do ya want first: Good, bad, or pointless/useless/no-one-cares-about news?

I'll start with the... bad.

The bad news is: THERE IS NO BAD NEWS! *gasp* I wrote a post about bad news, and there isn't any! Oh, what will I do? The struggle to find something to type is killing me!

Well, bad news COULD be that I STILL won't have much time for blog posting. I haven't even been on Central lately. Or Wizard101. Or, I'm ashamed to admit, Zelda games. I've... been reading fan fiction. Yeah. Or playing Min- um, nvm. We'll get to that in the GOOD NEWS section. :D Oh, and there's still no official release date for Skyward Sword. Trust me. I'd know.

Useless news:

HUNTER THUNDERSHIELD NAMES ALL HIS ZELDA FILES DOUGH FOR SOME REASON. And then I played through Twilight Princess ('cuz all my friends fail at the Forest Temple - seriously, that was, like, the fifteenth time I've had a friend ask me to beat the temple for them! I now know it like the back of my hand - that sadly lacks a Triforce, just because you all wanted to know XD), and the light spirit called him "Heroic Dough." O_o

Good news... and luckily, in video games, there's a LOT of it right now:

I HAD MY BIRTHDAY! :D It was the sixteenth of September. Sorry, can't tell you how old I am. Who knows what freaks are reading this... *thinks of Navi and shudders* XD

Okay, okay. But you're wondering why the heck this is in a Zelda blog.

Well... my ACTUAL birthday wasn't that great. Sure, I got ice cream cake. But I did work all day. But... I got a Zelda t-shirt! It says, "Don't make me go Zelda on you!" :D

But then, my birthday PARTY was epiclatastical. All my bestest friends were there: Sydney, um... Noob? Is that what I call him now? He doesn't have a wizard. And a girl from school who neither has any Zelda games nor plays Wizard101 came. And another friend of mine who I can call either Wolf or Tnaz was there. He's the newest member of our Zelda/Pokemon/Wizard101 fan club. Members: Me, Rowan, Sydney, Hunter, Deku/Noob/WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL HIM, and now Tnaz. His Wizard101 character is Wolf DeathBringer. So, anyway, he is my bestest friend/enemy. Frenemy? Is that what it's called? O.o

Okay. So. I, um, kinda took up most of our four hours playing Wind Waker. O_o But, look, in all the FIVE YEARS I've had it, I've NEVER gotten to play it on the large TV in our living room! I was able to that day, and it was so epiclatastical! I wish now that I'd had a chance to try out TP on it, too. Ah, well.

Anyway, I tried playing Wind Waker. I was going to the final boss. Sydney and I switched off a lot. I mean, we wanted to see the ending with all the super epic cutscenes. However... my cutscene file got CORRUPTED, remember? >.<>.<

So, it's like, RIGHT THERE... and I can't play it. And he KNEW I couldn't play it.

Oh, my gosh, did I mention how much I hate him?

Sydney's so awesome - she let me borrow her DS Lite for a few weeks! SO I GOT TO PLAY IT! Two elements down... and no clue how to get the Water element. Sydney's no help either, dangit. O_o

Okay, and my OTHER good news.

I PREORDERED SKYWARD SWORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Yep. Just today. Me is excited. ;)

Oh, and LAST good news:

I GOT DRAGON QUEST! Nine, I think? Idk. It's Sentinels of the Starry Skies. ...'Kay, I know this is a Zelda blog, but whatever. I named my character Zelda. Does that count? XD I fully intend to make a character called Link when I get the chance. And then maybe one called Sierra. I just didn't make my main character Link 'cuz as much as I love playing as him in LoZ, I really would prefer a girl character. O_o

...Okay, I've been typing away for a half hour. This post is LONG. If you read all of this, YOU'RE THE MOST DEDICATED AND AWESOMEFULISTICALAZING READER EVER. Congratulations. Please comment, awesomefulisticalazing reader. :D

And goodnight!

The EVIL Memory Card Curse!

And THAT is its official name, now. Considering the amount of damage and confusion it's causing in the video game aspects of my life, it deserves its own blog posts, instead of constant teensy-tiny mentions in previous posts.

Oh, before I go off onto a big rant, sorry about the lack of updates. *sigh* There's so much I want to say... like mentioning "Heroic Dough" (that line STILL makes me laugh! :D), my recent attempts in Phantom Hourglass, good fanfics (including my own), and so on. But... my days are too long now to keep up with much of ANYTHING anymore. Darn school/homework/swim team...

Now for the curse.

Let's list the games that have been corrupted:

Wind Waker (may that epiclatastcial cutscene file R.I.P!)

Pokemon Colloseum (I miss NightRings SOOOOO MUCH! *SOB*)

Super Smash Bros. Melee (Man, I think this game hates me or something. It just won't let me keep Young Link.)

Sonic Heroes (umm... long story)

Animal Crossing (Well, at least the people I hated are gone. Like Bubbles? We sent him death threats. XD)

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (Do you know how WEIRD that game is? But it's kinda fun. However, recently, my sis compared it to Ocarina of Time... and its kinda scary how alike they are in some ways. Freeing chicken elders from eggs is like awakening sages. Yeah, we compare EVERYTHING to Zelda. xD)


Yeah. How sad. All those games... lost...

BUTTTTTTTT...................................................

I have GREAT news. Kinda. Well, for SOME games its great news. For Pokemon Colloseum, Wind Waker, and Animal Corssing, it's not so much... but for Melee, it's AWESOMEFUL!

My sister decided to play Billy Hatcher for some strange reason. :P Anyway, she played through a few levels, but when she tried to save... the game said that the file was CORRUPTED! O: So she saved it to a different file. She then turned off the game and tried to play the first file again. Still corrupted. Then she took the memory card OUT... and put it back in... and guess what? SUDDENLY IT WASN'T CORRUPTED! *gasp*

Even before this, it happened with Melee. Since I was so disappointed at the loss of our file, I told my sister that I would get back Young Link if it was the last thing I did! XD So I went on to get him back... and found there was no need. No "file corrupted" message of any sort came up. The intro started as usual, the menu screen came up, and I pressed start. The game was running completely normally. Stunned, I went into Classic Mode, as I had been about to do before (you play 10 Classic or Adventure mode ten times, with Link and Zelda as two of the characters to get Young Link), and found that all our characters were still there - INCLUDING YOUNG LINK! :D

So...

yeah...

It's good.

Sometimes the corrupted message will still show up, oddly enough, but I just take it out and put it back in (and sometimes restart the game) and the characters will be there good as new! Yayes! XD

It doesn't work for Wind Waker though... or Pokemon (*SOB*), or whatever else was affected. But I think that Young Link is good enough for me right now. Even though I would DIE to get NightRings back (maybe. Or maybe I'm bluffing.)

Anyway, I gtg now. Later tonight I will post again, if I have time. Likely I won't.

Oh, today's a holiday too, right? Happy whatever-holiday-it-is! XD

WW - Corrupted Save Data? ...NOOOOO!!!

Why? WHHHHYYYY?!

This is sounding oddly like my Twilight Princess post when I deleted my file. And there's a reason for that.

Somehow, in some completely inconceivable way, my Wind Waker data got "corrupted". Out of ALL of the Zelda games I own, it just HAD to be my favorite that gets messed up.

...Fortunately, it wasn't my very first file, my BEST file... the one I've had for five years. Oh my gosh, if I lost that... I don't know WHAT I would do. Probably burst into tears or start screaming and running around wildly. Something like that. XD

But it was SO close to being my first file. It was even on the same memory card.

I found it when Noob was over. I had let him start a file over one on that memory card (lolz, it was my sister's, but she didn't really care). As I usually do, I took over it and completed Forsaken Fortress and Dragon Roost Cavern. Now he wanted to continue on, and try to get the second pearl at Forest Haven.

If you don't have WW, you should know that per memory card you can have three files. On this particular memory card was file one, my original file with SOOO many memories; file two, Noob's file; and file three, a file that had beat the game, but had not saved after Ganon... meaning all the cutscenes, AND Link's green clothes. Epicness. When I feel like doing the final boss, it was this file I went to. It's also the file I wanted to try to complete the Nintendo Gallery and already HAD done the quest for the Eskimo guy (forgot his name O.o) on Windfall to get the Magic Armor.

It was file three that was "corrupted."

At first I thought it was Noob's, which would be no biggie - but that file was on the FINAL BOSS!

That takes a while. A few weeks, for me, less if I'm dedicated.

My only choice when selecting the file is to erase it.

The big question: how? I haven't played that file in a while! I read in the FSA manual that this can happen if you take out the card while saving. If I haven't played, how can THAT happen?

In Hyrule, Epona flies, Link falls through pillars and hits invisible walls, powerful deities get stuck in hotels and postmen spontaneously disappear!

Is it weird that whenever I get bored of replaying my Zelda games sixty times over, I glitch them up? Or does everyone do that?

Okay, in the time, I shall write an intricate post on my experiences with the Map Glitch. ...Okay, on second thought, I'll write about the postman glitch first. It's shorter.

Taryn and Paige were at our house. Paige, specifically. Taryn was... doing the thing she always does. Which I never tell you purposefully. :P

I heard about a glitch where the postman on Twilight Princess runs off a cliff. I couldn't figure out how to do it though. I kept failing. O.o So eventually, I just gave up. I started running off into Hyrule Field. The postman called to me, like always. He ran toward me... AND THEN DISAPPEARED.

I screamed, I think. XD I am SUCH a wimp. But was totally not expecting that. Paige, who I had made read the Four Swords Adventures manga (she kept asking me which Links had which personality in FSA, and it was annoying me O.o), looked up. "What happened?" she asked, just as the screen turned black. O.o

Everything was running in an odd slow motion. The text box slooooowly appeared on the screen, the A button sloooowly inched up the side, and then letters slooowly appeared on screen - two at a time. Paige and I read them, adding the sounds as they appeared (Gre..eti..ng...s... Mr... Li...nk... XD). Taryn came in later, and after the postman handed me my letter and I got control of Link again, we did the entire thing over. :D

Now, another glitch. Hmm. ..OOH! I tried getting into Hyrule field... and failed epically.

This is on Wind Waker. Outside of Ganon's tower, there are these pillars you hookshot onto. If you get the right angle, you can get on top of the pillar and fly over into the field with the Deku Leaf. A while back, my sister and I tried to do this for hours... and I COULDN'T DO IT.

Now, Taryn was here. I was going to show her the Ganondorf fight, originally, but I decided that I might as well try this glitch out.

And guess what? ON MY VERY FIRST TRY, I GET ON TOP OF THE PILLAR!

I gasped, and then walked forward, anticipating an awesome flight into Hyrule Field -

AND I FELL THROUGH THE PILLAR.

That's where that part of the title came from. XD

On my FIRST. TRY. I MADE IT. After doing it for HOURS.

Later, I did it again... but then, I found a stupid INVISIBLE WALL in front of the field and flew into it with the Deku Leaf! How the heck was I supposed to get into the field IF THERE'S A WALL?!

Okay, now the other one! It's when Fierce Deity gets stuck in the Stock Pot Inn on Majora's Mask. XD Poor Linky. But we found lots of glitches in there... until I accidentally got the room key... so Anju didn't kick me out and I had to restart... O.o

Next glitch? Uh, the only one I mentioned in the title is the Map Glitch. ...I guess I'll go on with that...

Oh, hey, look at the time! I guess I can't describe how Epona flies in TP! XD Okay, I'll explain later. It's funny though. But it's a looooong story. :D

Guess I need to do some updating!

I can't beleive it! I haven't posted on this blog in FIVE DAYS! O:

Oddly, I don't have much to say. Oh, but I did buy something Zelda related online. :) It was from United Kingdom. It was a Twilight Princess DSi skin. It looks EPIC. :D

Oh! OH! I just remembered something interesting I did! On Four Swords Adventures, I saved the last maiden! Whatever color she was. I can't even remember. Wow. I think it was purple, though.

Oh, man. You won't believe it: the White and Red maidens are related to Navi! O: They sound EXACTLY LIKE HER! The White maiden says "HEY" EXACTLY like Navi when I find the Dark Mirror is missing... and the Red maiden does the same thing, except when we find the Trident missing. Srsly. They could have taken it RIGHT out of Ocarina of Time. Why couldn't they have taken the COOL parts out of OoT? Like... the Zoras that AREN'T EVIL?!?

That reminds me. On LegendofZelda.com, I joined the Zora group. Did I mention that yet? Well, anyway. Yeah. It's fun. :D

Let's see... what else?

I FOUND THE HYLIAN! On TP, I mean. The Language... that I learned! Did I say that already? Honestly, I feel like I'm repeating myself half the time. Anyway, if I didn't say that, I was reading random stuff off my map. Our dang TV is so small, it was hard to read some of it. And there's this one word in Ordon I can't figure out. I thought it would be Ordona, since all the other Light Spirits names are there, but it's more like something that began with an L and O...

Okay. I started a new WIND WAKER FILE! YAAAY! It was for my friend, though. For Noob. He fails though. He threw a pig off a cliff. AND THEN HE LET ARYLL GET STOLEN. GEEZ, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU! XD

Another thing: I entered a Brawl tournament on W101Central... and WON! Take that Timeless! :P Well, I failed as Pikachu though, and it WAS a close match with the Sudden Death...

Nothing else to say. I'm heading to Frozen Hyrule to save Zelda on FSA. But I've played nothing else, besides a little of ST and some OoT, with... Swordless... Link... OOH! I JUST REMEMBERED! I started a post about that... and never finished! I should have been editing it right now! O.o

Well. You'll just have to wait until tomorrow I guess. :P

FSA Update - Let's play the Get-Thrown-in-Jail game!

It's a fun game, actually. You should try it.

As an summary (since again I don't have much time), I basically beat a level of FSA I've been stuck on forever. Then I tried to infiltrate Hyrule Castle, but I got caught. It reminded me of Wind Waker Forsaken Fortress, so I made a new file and called it "Stupid". O.o

This is what happened. I have been stuck on the Swamp level on the In the Fields area! I get all the way to the graveyard part of it, and then I couldn't figure out what to do. Finally, I got it by breaking a pot entirely by accident and finding a switch and getting the bow, and then I get stuck AGAIN.

This time, I found a house where Dampe is. There was a Power Bracelet in the Treasure Chest there. It says, "You got the Power Braclet! Now you feel like you can pick up anything!"

I remember there were graves in the Dark World I couldn't lift... so I headed there. but I STILL couldn't lift them. Yeah. Lift up ANYTHING. Sure. (Stupid in-game descriptions LIES!)

Darn, time's up already? I didn't even get to the Infiltration of Hyrule Castle part! O.o Well, I PROMISE I'll edit this one... or make another posts. Geez, I have to start these things earlier.

EDIT: See, told ya I would edit it! I made my post first, BEFORE running out of time! :D

So. I can't lift up graveyards... but according to the walkthrough I was forced to look up... I can lift freaking TREES. No gravestones - FULL. GROWN. TREES.

Well, I did it anyway. And then, guess what I found behind the tree? My first ever searchlights! Paige was there, and she wondered what happened when I got found in their light. So I walked into them for her. And instantly, a full army of Ghini appeared and started rushing at me! Almost screaming irl, I started rapidly pressing "B" to ward them off. Finally, they were gone, and the searchlights were still following, providing me with the much-needed light! :)

I found a lantern, and after a few more puzzles and an epic battle with Jallhalla (he's the boss of Medli's temple on Wind Waker!!!! :D) I FINALLY completed the level I had been stuck on for so long.

Now it was on to the last dungeon in the area. Amazingly, it was titled "Infiltration of Hyrule Castle!" Woot! Sounds like my kind of level! xD

I got up a couple screens (and also listened for a while to the music that was unmistakenablely LttP's Dark World theme, which didn't help my nervousness of sneaking into Zelda's own home... kinda), and guess what I found there? SEARCHLIGHTS! My best buddies! :)

This is where the game started. O.o

Paige urged me to get caught by the searchlights, asking me what would happen if I did. I told her I guessed a bunch of guards would come running at me. After what happened LAST time she told me to go into a light, I refused, tring to avoid being caught (luckily, I only had to worry about Green - Vio, being last in line, got into the light a lot of times, but the guards are stupid enough not to notice him, I guess. -.-).

Unfortunately, being inept at this (hey, when was the last time you remember trying to avoid searchlights? I don't know if it's just me, but it doesn't happen often irl O.o), I couldn't keep out of harm's way for long. Eventually, I strayed close enough for the lights to notice me anyway. Oddly, no enemy's came out. A blaring alarm sounding literally EXACTLY like the one when you get caught on Wind Waker echoed around... and I couldn't move! It was then that I remembered what that alarm meant on WW - you were about to be thrown in jail!

And that's exactly what happened.

I had some trouble trying to get out (WW is SO much easier - all you have to do is crawl out of a hole! Not that it helped us much when we played the game the first time... our brightness setting was too low, so... um... I wrote an entry about this once before...), but once I did, I found a passageway (ah, there's the hole XD) back out into where I had entered.

I said to Paige, "Okay, I am NOT going in those searchlights again. No matter what you say, I will not be caught-"

And JUST as I'm saying that, the first searchlight (the one I actually AVOIDED the first time!) saw me. And I was thrown in jail... AGAIN!

It was easier to escape the second time because I had my boomerang, but I just got caught again. After that, I just did it for fun. XD

Well, now, with all these Wind Waker-like searchlights/jails, it made me want to do Forsaken Fortress! So I turned off FSA (I didn't even bother to save, lol, not when I'd done NOTHING. See, this is why I always got my file erased on MM. XD), and got out Wind Waker!

I found a file I didn't need. Actually, it was on Medli's temple. Medli was in my boat when I turned it on. O.o

So I deleted it, and made a new file over it! When it asked what my name was, I said... "stupid." XD

Idk what I was thinking - not to make fun of LoZ, that's for sure. But I wanted to see what Grandma would say, rofl.

And, like I'd expected, I run off to see Grandma - and she says, "Stupid... I've been waiting for you. Stupid, I want you to have these." XDD

Then she tells me to go find Aryll, and I say, "Geez, my sister has a normal name like "Aryll!" And I get, "Stupid?" COME ON!" :P

Yep. Well, I never DID get to the Forsaken Fortress... Paige and Taryn had to go before I could, and without them there to enjoy it with me, I was really bored. XD So I deleted that file, and decided to get on W101 Central.

And that's pretty much it. That's all I did last night. O.o

WW Update - Quest for the Triforce of Courage!

I promised yesterday that I would write about what happened while I attempted to get the Triforce pieces and charts before seeing that annoying cutscene (see last entry). I should start from the beginning, right? Well... there's no way I'll be able to go in order with this, because honestly, not much of it was very sequential... and if it was, I can't remember it very well. So what DID happen first? Um... well...

Remember this post? Rofl, if you do, you've been paying attention to this blog longer than I have! xD I didn't care about the blog when I wrote this one entry... and no one read it anyway. I mean, hellooo! It was written May 2009! And most of the information is outdated in that post. I FINALLY found that bottle. xD Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this back up NOW is because it mentions the first time I got the Hero's Charm! Yeah... I recently found out it was Hero's CHARM, not mask... whatever, it looks more like a mask anyway. But on this file, it just became my SECOND file with the Hero's Charm! :D So I put it on... and then thought it was just SO ugly, I took it off, deciding I would only use it if there were enemies nearby. Besides... I had NEVER actually used it before. EVER. Not even on my other file... well, that one's obvious, because I beat the game already on there.

We'll get back to that later. After that I got more interested in TP, OoT, MM, ST, PH, LttP... wait, I just named all my other games... O.o So, as a result, I didn't play Wind Waker for a loong time. Like... an entire three months! O:

When I finally DID get back on (about a week ago, lol), I found an uncompleted Sea Chart, only two Triforce Charts found and NO pieces obtained, and an extreme need of rupees to get Tingle to decipher my charts for me. Ugh.

I checked my IN-credible chart (why is the 'in' capitalized? I never got that...) to see where some Triforce Charts were. To my surprise, quite a few of them were on the islands I hadn't yet charted. I set off toward the Southwest corner of the sea, where the most areas were missing, with lots of bait for the fishmen. I filled up that part of the chart, and collected two more charts. Nothing REALLY interesting happened... until I arrived at Diamond Steepe Island (at least I THINK that was what it was called xD). My Tingle Chart said nothing about a Triforce Chart on it, so I was about to ignore it... until the fishmen there mentioned something about the Ghost Ship. He said there was something on the island that would make it not "disappear" when you get close. I knew what that was.

I hookshotted on to some trees to get up to the top of the island and fell into the dark and mysterious hole there. Inside I found a dungeon that I recognized very, VERY well. Mostly I just recalled how much TROUBLE this had given me the first time I tried it! You have to jump into little warping pots that bring you to a new location. There's three (sometimes two) other pots in each room. Only one goes to the next area... the other two lead back to the entrance. As you can imagine, it was NOT fun having to do trial and error all the time... all the while, avoiding Floormasters... the cousins of my least favorite Zelda enemy, Wallmasters. At long last I reached the top floor, killed the Floormaster (hmm, arrows work surprisingly well on them) and GOT THE GHOST SHIP CHART! YAAAAY!

Well... I'll have to edit this... again... figures. I didn't even get to the Savage Labyrinth and how mad I was about the Hero's Charm thing...

Gods: You're the Hero of Winds! Me: *yawn*

You know what my favorite cutscene used to be in Wind Waker? ...Okay, I take that back. My favorite is the cutscene where Medli is awakened as Sage. And my second favorite is the one where you put the last pearl on the Triangle Islands. And my third favorite is when Tetra finds out she's Zelda. And of course I love the perfect ending cutscenes.

So... fifth favorite? I guess.

Anyway, it's the cutscene where you FINALLY get all those dang Triforce pieces (the worst part of the best game). I don't know WHAT they were thinking when they put that part in... maybe some reference to the first game, where you need the 8 pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom?

Once you get all the Triforce of Courage pieces, it automatically opens your collection screen and shows the Triforce pieces glowing and then combining. So I warped to the Tower of the Gods to see the awesome cutscene that I love (I mean, USED TO) so much. It goes something like... the King of Red Lions (your personal talking boat/Navi impersonator) instructs Link to take out the Triforce and show the Gods so that they can go back into Hyrule. The portal thingy opens in the middle of the ocean, but Link looks down and the Triforce has disappeared, and the design is now on his hand. The King of Red Lions claims that this is proof that he's the hero, and declares that he will now be known as the Hero of Winds. Sweetness, right? It's like... almost as awesome as Hero of Time. Or Hero of Twilight. Or Hero of Hyrule. Yeah.

The gods (or someone, never been quite clear on who, but I always assumed it was the gods) say, "Link! Hero of Winds!" and then we go down into the portal thing. We go into Hyrule, head into the castle (the broken Link statue always makes me think twice about if I actually want to do this or not xD), go into the basement place, see Zelda disappear, fight two Darknuts... and so on. Oh. The Darknuts reminded me of something... xD I'll say that later.

So where were we? Oh, right.

Why do I hate this cutscene now?

Because this is probably the BILLIONTH time I've seen it!!!

It's starting to get ANNOYING! I've memorized everything they say (almost). I've seen it a zillion times... because a while back, I was trying to FILM this cutscene on my cell phone (like I do with all my favorites) all the way to the ending where you finish Ganon's Tower (or, if I had time, Ganondorf himself). The problem was, every time, SOMETHING WENT WRONG! I'm not even going to bother explaining what happened. But... now I resent watching this cutscene. The worst part is that I forgot to save after I beat the Darknuts. XDDD Told you I'm terrible at that...

So why did I make this entire entry based on this?

...Idk...

Next up (tomorrow) I'll explain my adventures as I tried to GET the Triforce charts/pieces in the first place! A lot of funny/interesting things happened... including getting the Hero's Mask AGAIN (that was my second entry EVER on the blog! O:) but forgetting about it... doing the ENTIRE Savage Labyrinth (it has over 100 floors, ugh)... completing my sea chart (finally!)... getting 300 hits on the Orca and becoming a "swordsman" (after a LOT of times doing it, and getting annoyed by Link's yells every time I pressed "B")... and even doing a random seagull glitch because I was bored.

So stay tuned! xD

EDIT: OOH! OOH! I JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING! I got all Heart Containers on Phantom Houglass! Yay... DS Zelda games are just too easy...

I'm aiming for all Sand of Hours next... and then completing the Temple of the Ocean King with ALL that time!

OoT Update... but...

Tonight I can't play Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, A Link to the Past, Twilight Princess, and PROBABLY not even Wind Waker. Why? Because I got grounded from the Wii. :( Isn't it strange that by taking away just ONE of my gaming systems, you eliminate at least four Zelda games? Geez. Wind Waker will probably not be available either, because my sister will be playing Brawl (it's kinda how I got grounded... I wouldn't let her play Brawl... O.o) and she always uses the Game Cube controller (because of Melee, but I've grown used to the Wii/Nunchuck, so I use that instead). That leaves three others for me to use... but... the TV that our Game Cube is connected to is MUCH bigger than the one for our Wii - and it has better sound quality, picture quality... in fact, the only things I don't like is I can't film stuff on my cell phone on it because it's too high up (it's in some kind of TV case-shelf thing) and that the brightness settings are kind of messed up (it's IMPOSSIBLE to play Twilight Princess with all the dark surroundings... and I was even having trouble seeing when it was night on WW!). So... remember how I said it was high up? That means that I can't use the wired controllers with it. We have four controllers: two wired, two wireless. So I need the wireless ones. Problem? Well, over time, one of our wireless ones has started messing up occasionally - it will randomly start thinking you're pressing left. It happened a LOT when we were playing with Paige and Taryn yesterday to my sister using the controller. Marth kept randomly going to the side. xD It gave White Link (me!) the points though, so I'm happy. :P

...Ummm... yeah...

So, all I can do is Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks (and POSSIBLY WW).

Nooow... should I start the update?

Well, on OoT, I was trying to complete the Spirit Temple (again :D). I had JUST gotten the Silver Gauntlets as a kid. Oh, it was funny when the owl saw me. I started screaming at him, mostly to amuse Taryn who was in the room with us, and because I just hate him and have ever since I first saw him on the game (I'm serious. I even declared I hated him when I first met him). The least favorite thing he says is anything about "courage and determination". He would NOT stop emphasizing that in Majora's Mask in Snowpeak... and I had to watch it TWICE because of my failures in saving. I wanted to punch the TV our that time. And I wanted to tear up Sydney's story when Falmea in her story said to her, "You have great courage and determination, Sydney." XD

Anyway, THIS time, he said, "You've really matured into an adult, Link!" And I'm thinking, Um, you're saying this to a little kid... and, btw, I'm wearing the Bunny Hood... very mature... xD

Oh, yeah. I worked on the Mask Shop sidequest. I was planning on finishing it up for the Mask of Truth, but I couldn't figure out where the Bunny Hood goes. And I STILL don't know. I've forgotten. For some reason, I think I recall giving it to some guy in Hyrule Field, but that doesn't make sense. There's no one out there...

Besides, I'm still a bit reluctant to help out the Happy Mask Salesman after what happened in Termina...

LttP Update... update? Oh, and WW Ghost Ship.

I updated my update below. Um, that sounds weird. Anyway, uh... I didn't do any Zelda stuff last night AT ALL. I only got ten minutes of trying to Brawl over Wi-Fi, but I kept getting disconnected. But earlier this week I did play Wind Waker for just a little, and I got four Triforce charts and the Ghost Ship Chart. Ugh, our stupid game disk is SO old, and our GameCube is too (yeah, I played it on the GC instead of Wii 'cuz I felt like it) so it kept bringing up that message saying: "The game disk could not be read. Please refer to the Nintendo Game Cube manual for instructions." All you have to do it open the thing up and close it again, but it was annoying. And Beedle is a curse - it happened EVERY time I left or went inside his shop. Same as the place you get the Ghost Ship Chart - every time I went into a new pot, I had to open and close the Game Cube. O.o

I also got into the Ghost Ship, but my game turned off so it didn't save that. -.- Btw, on the wall above the treasure chest where the Triforce chart is, there's this creepy green picture. From far away it looks like an old man, but the closer you get to it, it looks like a younger man. If you stand far away and slowly zoom in on it with the telescope, you can see the transformation. o.O

You know what was funny? I have my entire sea chart completed except for THREE ISLANDS in the north-eastern corner. Guess what? Out of all those islands, the ghost ship just HAD to appear at one of those three during a full moon. So I talked to the fish before going into the ghost ship there to get one more island mapped out, and the fish tells me, "Don't come here when the moon is full, unless you like extreme terror! That's when IT appears!" And... the Ghost Ship was right behind him... what an idiot. O.o

A short update...

I have exactly... one minute to write this entire post. O.o

Well, let's see, I played Wind Waker last night, beat that impossible Wind Temple. Surprisingly, I found A Link to the Past manga at the store, even though it wasn't February when I found it. Um, I still haven't bought the GAME a Link to the Past, sadly. And, uh, I've been playing TP a LOT, and I did a Karkario Village Graveyard glitch...

Um, gtg! Bye! xD

Apparently I can't draw straight lines OR count...

THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS!

I am doing totally awesome on my Zelda game. I'm so excited - I'm almost to the final boss!

Then I suddenly come across a puzzle. I think, "No problem! I've completed all the other ones before this!" However, even though the answer seems obvious, it isn't. I try the way I think it should be solved, but it doesn't work. Then I go to more abstract ways, using my items in the most creative ways I can imagine. I even attempt crazy ideas, missions that usually end in my... end. Finally, in complete frustration and desperation, I look up a walkthrough - and discover that I had been doing everything right in the first place. I'd just made one, tiny, miniscule mistake that had thrown everything off, making me go insane trying to decode the impossible riddles of the Zelda world.

So... why the HECK does this happen to ME? Do any other Zelda fans run into this?

I mean, really. I can think of two really recent times this happened, and even old ones.

Like in Wind Waker, the first Zelda game I ever played. At that time, I didn't even know what "walkthrough" was, so I couldn't even try it. When I got stuck on the Forsaken Fortress, I was pretty much stuck there for good. I didn't know ANYTHING about Zelda puzzles, so I didn't know what to do. Turns out the answer was obvious - go into that ONE room that I had always been to afraid to go into!

Also, what about on Spirit Tracks just a little while ago? I had been totally stumped with those riddles, which, actually, I didn't even need. I had been doing it right - find all the statues, then draw lines where their gazes are. Easy, right? Wrong. I drew their gazes all wrong, apparently. I couldn't draw straight lines in the right direction, so I never saw where they met.

Then there's another recent one - Majora's Mask. I said there were five in the tank, but I had six... well, I guess not. I hadn't gotten six. I DID get five. Plus, I discovered a way that I can get back to the eel place, retreiving the final Zora Egg. It taught me the song "New Wave Bossa Nova". I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it got into the Great Bay Temple, so I'm good! The only difference with this one is I figured it out myself, eventually. I DIDN'T look at a walkthrough (congrats to me! :D).

So... lesson to everyone: LEARN TO DRAW LINES AND COUNT RIGHT! Oh, and don't be scared to go into rooms to turn off the one searchlight you had always missed. That one is REALLY important. It got me stuck for an entire year...

Why I even started playing Zelda games in the first place!

Um, you're probably wondering why I like Zelda games so much. Obviously I'm completely CRAZY about them, so uh, how did this start?

It all began about two years ago (or probably even longer, I can't remember anymore - I mean, how old is the GameCube? Yeah, it's around that time...) when my sister and I recieved Super Smash Bros. Melee (note: NOT THE WII VERSION, SSB Brawl!) and we picked our favorite characters. Of course I instantly loved Pikachu - who can't with that cute little party hat of his and that awesome up smash attack? Besides, Pokemon was about the only video game series I knew about at the time. Anyway, my sister's decision was harder - I refused to let her be my little Pika Pal, so she was forced to choose someone else - and she choose Zelda.

So, we had NO clue who the heck Zelda was. She was some kind of princess, obviously, from the pretty crown. Um, at first we never even realized that she was linked to Link (lol, linked to Link! Um, sorry, just Zelda humor :P). But then when we got into events and stuff, there were Zelda events where Zelda and Link were on a team and you had to be Gannon and defeat them (good thing we didn't know about the series - I would have felt guilty! In the games I practically AM Link! I don't want to kill myself! Or Zelda!). So, my sister, who REALLY liked Zelda, begged to buy a Zelda game. In particular, we wanted Twilight Princess. Now, we were, like, six at the time or something - now, think about the creepy cutscenes in TP. I am SO glad we did not get that one first. In fact, the reason we didn't get it was probably because it was rated T. So, instead we recieved Wind Waker... which we were TOTALLY confused about.

We wondered where Zelda can be, and who is this little green freak in green? And that weird girl who calls you big brother...

So I'll be honest - we didn't really like Zelda games. XD

What we did instead was go all the way through the game to the Forsaken Fortress, hoping we'd find Zelda soon. (LOL, imagine what would have happened if we'd bought something like Majora's Mask where Zelda isn't even in it! O:) Okay, unfortunately, our TV was on a super low brightness setting - so we could BARELY see anything in the desolate and dark Forsaken Fortress. When we got thrown in jail (which happened A LOT) we couldn't figure out how to get out, no matter how much Zelda hinted, "There's gotta be some hole you can crawl out of...)

Finally we got near the top - and then found a search light that we couldn't get rid of! Apparently, there is a search light by the jail that we had always missed, so it would always catch us when we were coming up. Ugh!

Soooo.... we gave up on Zelda games for an entire year. A WHOLE YEAR. Without Zelda! Right now the idea appalls me...

Then we stumbled across a walkthrough of it on the internet, and saw the amazing search light we'd missed! We hurried back on the game and turned off the searchlight. Best part was, over the year we hadn't played out TV had been fixed, so we found a way out of the jail! And so, we completed the Forsaken Fortress and FINALLY found out why it was called Wind Waker - and Legend of Zelda.

After that, we made about twenty different files on all of our memory cards. My best file, the first one I completed, I still have, and I still play it every once and a while. In fact, I played it just last week! I wanted to defeat Gannon, so yeah... XD It's also the only file we have Hero's Mask on, and Magic Armor. Funny part is, we DON'T have all items - we're missing a bottle! I am not sure which one I'm missing, so... sigh... only three bottles... Oh, and the most hilarious part of all - it was the file we discovered that faries heal you, even when you die... We were being such IDIOTS. We had no idea that if you died, the fairies would automatically heal you! We didn't know that until this summer! I've had this game for, what, four, three years? And we didn't know until recently... O. o

Okay, that's it for now! I don't want to write anymore about it...

Hero's Mask (Maybe!)

The funniest thing happened the other day...

I was playing on my best file of Wind Waker, one of the few we have beat the final boss more than 2 times. It was the first ever file - no, not just the only file in Wind Waker but in EVERY Zelda game - that we beat. All we do on that file now is fool around and search for the missing bottle that I can't seem to find anywhere.

However, just the other day something totally weird happened. My sister was talking about this item that you can get apparently by giving the teacher in Windfall 40 Joy Pendants that will allow you to see enemies health. Never before had I heard on it, so none of our files had it. So of course I went for our best file, which would most likely have the most Joy Pendants. And, would you beleive it: I had exactly 40!

I turned them in, and the teacher handed me this weirdo ugly item that I beleive was called the Hero's Mask. My sister and I were so excited, so right away we equipted it... but we were disappointed to find that unlike other items such as the bracelets that let you pick up heavy objects, you actually had to WEAR it.

Well, we didn't care. This item was too awesome to worry about style! So we went out and had some fun using the Song of Passing and sneaking in to the Eskimo guy's shop thousands of times, pretending he COULDN'T see who we were because of the mask. Then I somehow figured out how to sidle against his shop table without talking to the poor girl. With that done, I also discovered that you can duck while sidleing... I never knew that! We made up some crazy dance then.

Finally, I wanted to try out my new Hero's Mask. So, for some stupid reason, I thought for sure it would work on Gannondorf. So I treked all the way to the Tower of the Gods and traveled through Hyrule Castle and Gannon's Tower to get to Puppet Gannon's room. I jumped into the teleporting pot and ended up right outside. With my mask still on, I Hookshoted up and began battling.

Of course it didn't work. But in that time I found out a super easy way to beat Gannon. All you have to do is L Target him, then keep hopping from side to side and backwards! Zelda does all the work then, shooting light arrows at him. All you have to do is wack him while he is stunned. After Zelda's knocked out, you can still use my technique. You will parry, because you press A to jump and to parry. Eventually Zelda will wake. Talk to her, then L Target Gannon again and simply use your shield. After only one hit, press A to parry and he will be defeated.

Hah... my Hero's Mask is very helpful! Discovering this new way made me fight the boss over and over and over... but I got tired of the cutscenes after about 20 times.