Tag: the legend of zelda

Back to Bits
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Artists pay tribute to NES games with a collection of GIFs

Videogame GIFs are one of my favorite things on the internet. Retro game nostalgia less so, but that hasn’t stopped me enjoying the NES game-inspired GIFs that are being showcased on Back to Bits. The website launched today and is a curated animation project created by Washington-based artist Jerry Liu. His reason for putting Back to Bits together is simple: he wanted a way to bring likeminded artists together and to celebrate the games of his and their childhood. a range of different art styles and approaches The GIFs that you can see today were created by more than 40 different…
The Hero of Rhyme
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The Legend of Zelda has been turned into a rap-battle RPG

I’ll cut to the chase: someone gave Link a voice. As everyone’s favorite silent protagonist for 30 years and counting(!), you’d think that Link might have some sophisticated musings on his experiences. As it turns out, he’s got something even better: the power of rhymes. The Legend of Zelda: The Hero of Rhyme is a surprisingly accurate browser-based game that replaces all of the combat of the RPG classic with rap battles. Good rap battles. Like any other Zelda game, there’s winding forests, temples, and an inevitable face-off with Ganon. Na’vi is your more eloquent, still annoying fairy god-rapper. However,…
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
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An iconic anime permeates The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Acclaimed animator Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) is a story of learning to live in harmony with nature—without destroying it. It’s whimsical and heartfelt, an unmatched adventure fantasy unlike any other animated film of its time. Nausicaä predated the continued magic that animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli (co-founded by Miyazaki) has produced over the years, including Miyazaki’s consistent environmentalist-focused fantasies and the low-key realism of Isao Takahata works. It stands as one of the single-most influential animated films of all-time. In the first full-trailer and gameplay footage of Nintendo’s highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Breath of…
Twilight Princess
Feature

Twilight Princess and the little imp girl that upset Hyrule

In the Legend of Zelda series, the roles of hero and villain are fairly consistent. Link, using the resolve of courage, overcomes Ganon, whose lust for power represents the ultimate in evil. This is the reliable dichotomy that surges throughout each game. However, the 2006 Wii title (and now re-released in HD for the Wii U) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess complicates this previously steadfast ideological balance. The game introduces Midna, a dark, impish character that raises the question of where a “good” hero who uses “dark” powers would align in Hyrule. We are confronted with the possibility that…
Twilight Princess
Feature

I Took My Outdoor Education Professor On A Canoe Trip In Twilight Princess

When you think of outdoor educators, someone like Z (name changed to protect privacy) probably comes to mind: grey hair in braids, wearing a wool sweater with jeans and mukluks, she uses her university email account with reluctance and sees devices as a harbinger of the end-times. Her pedagogy born out of her environmental activism in the 70s, Z will talk your ear off about “indoor kids” and the “wired generation,” and how the only solution to the oncoming apocalypse is taking technology out of kids’ hands. She’s also curious about The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006). I’d applied…
News

Aer’s beautiful skyworld gets even more inviting in its latest trailer

Last time we saw cubist flying game Aer, its bird girl protagonist Auk was left quivering, alone and scared, in a distant ruin. She had just been threatened by a large monster, one she had met before, only soon afterward finding herself surrounded by ominous blue spirits as an ethereal crescendo swelled up around her. As the game’s newest trailer resumes her journey, however, this unsettling tone is set aside, instead introducing us to the friendlier side of the game’s world. When the trailer opens, we briefly find Auk in what appears to be the same temple as last time, praying to a…
Radio the Future
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The latest broadcast from Radio the Universe’s lonely techno-dystopia is here

After three months of radio silence, over a year of no footage, and a little over three years since its successful Kickstarter at the tail end of 2012, moody pixel-art game Radio The Universe finally has more to show us. Specifically, it’s a new video that shows off one of its boss fights. Since it was last seen, the game seems to have undergone another mild aesthetic overhaul, introducing new player animations and interface elements that better represent the used future setting that earned it attention in the first place. As the clip begins, the player is alone in a dim room, their…
The Desolate Hope
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The many failures of the Five Nights At Freddy’s creator

On January 21, Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s World (FNaF World), the surprisingly light-hearted role-playing followup to the popular horror series, was released on Steam, ahead of its announced February 19th release date. User reception was generally positive, but the drastic shift in style and tone left some fans confused, leading to an 87 percent user review rating. Not satisfied with an aggregated score of “very positive”, Cawthon pulled the game from Steam, promising to update it with new features and release it for free on Game Jolt once it was ready. In a post on Steam, Cawthon explained…
Hyrule subway map
News

Classic videogame worlds reimagined as subway maps

Few moments are more familiar in an old-school dungeon-crawler than the opening of a treasure chest, only to find a dungeon map. But if—for whatever whim of your fancy—you’ve been hoping instead for a subway map to unfold itself from those chests, you’re in luck: graphic designer Matthew Stevenson has created six sprawling “subway” maps, based on his favorite NES games. revel in these maps’ ability to evoke warm nostalgia Each map is unique, encompassing the specific visual appeal of the game they seek to compress. The Legend of Zelda (1986) subway map, for example, is intricate and sprawling—based loosely…