Legend of Zelda Theme rendition

For those readers who like Legend of Zelda:

Legend of Zelda Theme

As a digression, while I frequently say that I don't really play the newer Zelda games much, I do consider myself a fan of the series, and like them as a whole; it's just that I only play every third or fourth when the gameplay or story aligns with my tastes. The series as a whole is one of my foundational roots in the realm of RPG type games!

Here's my foundational roots: Started with Ultima III and Temple of Apshai, on the Atari 130XE (or other Atari home computers), inspired by my older cousin Sean who was playing the original Apshai on a TRS-80 and one of the Ultima games (not sure which system, it was a different visit and definitely a different system. Probably Ultima 1 or 2 from what I recall seeing. Spent hours typing in the Roguelike game ARogue from Antic magazine, never did get it to work right (Man, I made so many typos!). Zelda was one of the three games the Walkups got with their NES, and the first RPG-like I played on any console. So the opening music in the link above really gets me, and the Zelda series as a whole has many shining examples of good games.

Nightmares

I thought it'd be impossible to experience something as scary as Flower's terrifying rain/lightning level; naturally that means my dreams last night managed to top it. Last night's dreams were about Von Neumann machines taking over civilization and I was the only one who realized what was happening. These particular machines started out small and masqueraded as friendly pets who loved to eat anything, growing bigger and bigger. They looked like small red gift boxes, with teeth. I'm still not sure if they were actually malign - it all seemed to happen offscreen, or perhaps because I was so paranoid about them.

Anyways... I haven't mentioned Flower before, but I should - only picked it up recently, it was one of the original games for the PS3 arcade. The gameplay basically can be described as you playing through the dreams of a flower, where you control a petal and how the wind blows it around. It's absolutely gorgeous and very serene. The only exception is one level near the end, which is absolutely necessary to the story they tell but is also very very scary - you might find it hard to believe how scared one can get for a tiny flower petal [or group of them], but man. Much scarier than hordes of zombies, for sure.

Geometry Wars

Arggghhhhh! I finally managed to break out of my high score slump and best my previous high score, only to find out that my profile was logged in on the drums, not the controller I was using. Naturally I couldn't switch it so that it would save the score. *sigh* Time to go try and get something on the same order of score again. (Score was 927,785, M^2 and Mason were watching.) Back to practicing.

DVD Sale!

Today was the annual DVD sale at the local computer game shop, which also carries a ton of used stuff, including movies. Every movie was on sale for 15% off, and some had a bigger discount, the ones like Zombie Movie Horror Night 17 and whatnot. Maybe others too. This is a pretty good deal as they already have nice prices on used stuff (basically if you look on amazon/etc for a used copy, the price listed there is what you'll find at the store). The three movies I was looking for were Letters from Iwo Jima (which I have not seen), Hellboy (the movie, which I have seen, and for which a sequel is in the works), and Ten Items or Less, which is a great independent movie that was only in theaters for a very short time, and has since been released on DVD and is very hard to find.

Unsurprisingly, I ended up with the first one of those three, and they did not have a copy of Hellboy on hand, and had not ever had a copy of Ten Items or Less in stock. I did look at some other movies while there, but none seemed especially interesting. Though one was almost worth it for the packaging: Bubba Ho-tep limited edition, the packaging was... a real elvis shirt! Or something like that. It was a truly gaudy white shirt-like thing inside a transparent DVD box. I can only assume that the DVD would be placed inside the shirt.

There was a great find in the used console/handheld games section: Final Fantasy 1 and 2, for the PSP! I've only played these a little (the original versions), but it seemed like a great deal to pick up both, and with new CGI and revamped graphics.

I've also observed some amusing things with respect to Xbox 360 used games. They don't actually have a lot in stock, as I suspect that Gamestop and the like get a lot more of the used games, since they can exchange for credit to buy new ones. Because there's usually only ten to twenty titles in stock, this means that I can see which ones are there time and again, and which ones disappear pretty quickly. So far, the winner in the not reselling category is FIFA world cup soccer. They've had two copies on the shelf for a few months now. Also up there are things like Call of Duty 2, which apparently is a great game, but there's already a sequel out (which I never seen for sale used) and thus gets less attention.