The M-shaped N64 controller was a major departure for Nintendo, and critical for controlling the 3D games the console ushered in. More than a quarter-century after its release, the Nintendo 64 is remembered fondly for carrying on its creators’ legacy in many ways: classic games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Mario 64, blowing into your video game cartridge to make it work, and a controller seemingly designed for alien hands. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time introduced a whole new sense of scale and a new tool to navigate it in the N64 controller. Link and Zelda, across decades of time, are Nintendo’s most reliable tools for teaching us how to play - even if the results are sometimes infuriating.
Each Zelda game foists new control and input methods on players, making the series Nintendo’s most open-ended and reliable laboratory for what the company believes could be the future of video games. But behind that formula, there’s a genuinely adventurous spirit. Nintendo’s success is built on a cast of beloved characters endlessly milked for new installments and spinoffs. Nintendo has always been committed to its handhelds and consoles equally, and ideas frequently cross-pollinate between hardware releases and generations. Years later, I appreciate Phantom Hourglass as one of several games that used every part of the Nintendo DS buffalo - even the weird ones. I hadn't thought physically putting my DS to sleep was even an option. When I figured out the puzzle by accidentally closing my DS in frustration, I was mostly mad. So what do you do? The solution is to close your DS, physically pressing the top screen with the crest onto the sea charts on the bottom display. All you have access to is the usual sea charts and maps you can pull up on the lower screen of your DS. There’s no way to interact with the tablet. Six floors down is his latest lead: a strange tablet with markings and the simple directions to “press the sacred crest against the sea chart to transfer it.” Link is looking for the ghost ship that’s holding Zelda’s physical body, and trying to find the pieces of a sea chart that will get him there.
In the Phantom Hourglass, the first Zelda game designed for Nintendo’s dual-screen DS handheld, Link (the perennial hero) and Zelda (the princess/brains of the operation/giant suit of armor - long story) are forced to navigate deeper and deeper into a stealth-based dungeon called the Temple of the Ocean King. One of The Legend of Zelda’s best puzzles makes you put your console to sleep to solve it.
0 kommentar(er)
