Posts tagged “Zelda”

Link of the Month:
SomaFM
My favorite internet radio website, I’m particularly fond of the “Lush” and “Indie Pop Rocks!” stations. SomaFM is different in that each station actually has a programming director-slash-DJ who personally picks all the songs and when they play; it isn’t just some database of songs put on shuffle. And because the focus is on the indie and the unusual, you’re not going to hear very many of the songs that you’ll hear on real FM radio. I started listening to them because of their excellent Christmas station, and I’ve stayed on for the long haul now. Since it’s user-supported there are no commercial breaks (other than the occasional station ID break). It’s a great way to discover new and exciting musics.

DVD & Game of the Month:
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Nintendo has their Zelda formula down. Do you like the other Zelda games? Then you will probably like this one. The addition of the Wii Motion Plus makes it so that the fights require more skill than just button mashing; Link’s sword now mimics the Wiimote in your hand. It has a different feel than many of the other games, with a different set of friendly races you encounter and an overworld that consists of (sadly under-utilized) flying mechanics. Several standard Zelda tropes are given interesting spins. Listen, it’s a Zelda game, okay? Play it; you’ll like it.

TV Show of the Month:
Krazy Times With a “K” — The Complete Series
Okay, so the show is actually called NewsRadio, not Krazy Times With a “K” — but one time (back when the show was on the air) Dave Foley was interviewed by Conan O’Brien and they refused to call it anything but Krazy Times With a “K.” Anyhoo, NewsRadio is one of my very favorite 90s sitcoms, with characters who just get legitimately crazier and crazier as the seasons go on until by the end it’s more like a sneak peek inside an hilarious insane asylum than it is a traditional sitcom. I laugh a lot, at Bill’s increasingly nightmarish childhood (“Good times… good times…”) and Dave’s ever-increasing number of bizarre and unpopular skills he used to practice (like tap dancing, knife throwing, and playing Stargate: Defender), and of course Matthew’s masterful physical comedy. Good times… good times…

I was going to post footage from the Dumbfoundead/Open Mike Eagle/Nocando/Threeni show that I went to last night, but the sound from the footage I recorded was all blown out and it sounded basically like bursts of static. Other people recorded it, but they haven’t posted it online yet, so I can’t post it here for all y’all.

To tide yourselves over, please indulge in Super Mario Crossover, a version of Super Mario Bros. where you can play as Mario, Link, Simon Belmont, Bill (from Contra), Samus Aran, and Mega Man. Yes, it is actually as awesome as it sounds. Just click the image:

(via Newgrounds)

Link of the Month:
theSixtyOne.com
EDIT: This site just went through a major re-design that took out all of the functionality that I liked about it and replaced it with, well, nothing but shit. Please do not visit or support them.

DVD & ALBUM of the Month:
They Might Be Giants: Here Comes Science
Not only is this TMBG album full of fun, catchy tunes, but since they’re all science themed, you get some great songs about how you shouldn’t believe anything unless it’s been verified through experimentation. And not only is it a great album, but They went ahead and got animators to make animated music videos for each and every single song on the album, and they put them all together as a DVD!

Game of the Month:
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Another brilliant Zelda game in the Wind Waker chronology. This one takes place after Phantom Hourglass, and has some wonderful innovation, like the central theme of the game: trains. You use a train to get from place to place, and you have to switch from track to track to avoid explosive enemy trains, and you have to haul cargo around without damaging or dropping it, and you have to carry passengers without making them think you’re a completely unsafe train engineer. Also, there are a series of dungeons where you can actually team up with Zelda and control both characters to solve the puzzles. It’s good.

I didn’t get very much sleep last night—only about five hours. So this afternoon after doing some work and delivering it, I decided to relax by playing some Animal Crossing: City Folk.

I very quickly fell asleep. And, since it was what was on my mind when I fell asleep, I had a dream about Animal Crossing. For some reason, though, it was kind of a hybrid between animal crossing and The Legend of Zelda.

For instance: The game had a cartoony, “Minish Cap” style of art instead of the regular Animal Crossing style. Also, in the real Animal Crossing, you will periodically see big bugs clinging to the trunks of trees. In my dream there was a Peahat clinging to the side of a tree. It got startled when I got to near it and started (slowly) fluttering away towards the east side of town, where there’s a big cliff. When it reached the cliff it floated up to the top of it. Luckily, in my dream a mushroom-like dog lived at the top of the cliff and caught the Peahat, dropping it back down into town so I could catch it in my bug net.

My favorite part of the dream, though, was that there were Octoroks running around all over town. They were absolutely harmless, and you could catch them in your bug net if you wanted. They always traveled in groups. There would be a large one in the front and then four or five smaller ones would follow it around in a straight line. Then my dream people got absolutely stumped. What do you call a group of Octoroks?

Y’know how you call a group of geese a “gaggle” of geese, a group of fish a “school” of fish, a group of crows a “murder” of crows, a group of buzzards a “wake” of buzzards, etc.? Well, my dream people wracked their collective brains to try to come up with what to call a group of Octoroks.

What they came up with was a “shelf of note” of Octoroks. “Note” as in the sense of importance or consequence (as in, “Nothing of note happened”). So there were all these shelves of note of Octoroks running around my Animal Crossing town.

I thought that was so absolutely bizarre a choice that I had to wake up and write it down. At first, though, I only dreamed that I woke up and wrote it down. I had to catch myself and say, “Hey, you didn’t actually do that. You’re still asleep.” Then I woke up for real and, like Abraham Lincoln, wrote “Shelves of note of Octoroks” on the back of an envelope.