Category: OffTopic

Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, OffTopic, Retro Gaming

Zelda Fan-Fiction: I Don’t Know Much About Zelda

Occasionally I’m roped into a conversation where I’m forced to admit that I really don’t know much about Zelda. By far my biggest experience was playing the original NES outing on the 3DS some years ago (which I picked up for free as part of their ambassador program), but only making it past two or three dungeons before abandoning it. Following one such admission, I began to think about how to best express this lack of knowledge and decided that writing Zelda Fan-Fiction with this severely limited background would really hammer the point home. This was a terrible idea… but I did it anyway. So for your reading pleasure here it is; a short Fan Fiction introduction to Zelda based on my limited knowledge of the series. You have been warned… enjoy?:   

Link materialised. He winced; the hot desert sun nearly blinded him, his eyes barely ready for the onset of day compared to the … the… non-existence that was before.

“Do I even have a backstory,” he pondered, carefully inspecting his clothes, “I guess I’ve got clothes… and they’re green…” he murmured, to nobody in particular, but genuinely pleased that he had discovered something about who he was.

The ‘green’ thought rattled around his brain for a while and he was just working his way up to drawing the conclusion that he presumed he must either be an elf, or Robin Hood when something else happened. A Ganon appeared: Continue reading “Zelda Fan-Fiction: I Don’t Know Much About Zelda”

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Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, OffTopic

The Unexplained Setting

Whilst I was wrtiting my recent examination of “Stories Untold“, one aspect electrified me with a sudden shock of nostalgia that I wasn’t expecting. The player is presented with an apparently mundane setting, however the setting’s unsettling nature is present from the outset due to the unknown elements: Why are we being asked to do these tasks? where are we? Like a dream, the player finds themselves in the middle of events without knowing how things go to this point being, expected to ‘go along with it’.

This sudden nostalgia pang stems from my childhood. Growing up I always had an interest in riddles, or I guess ‘logic puzzles’ to give a more accurate description; a brief overview of story or circumstance was given requiring a logical explanation or solution. One of these always vividly stands out in my mind:

You are in a room with three switches; the room has no windows and only one door. Outside the door is a winding corridor at the end of which is a second room inside of which is a single light bulb hanging hanging from the ceiling by a wire. You know that one of the switches activates the light in the second room however, there is no way to see the light in the second room from the first, and as soon as you leave the first room the door closes and locks stopping returning once you have left it. How do you determine which of the switches controls the light? Continue reading “The Unexplained Setting”

Hundstrasse6 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, OffTopic

Not Just a Hat Rack: Deconstructing My 8-Bit ‘Masterpiece’

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Any of my regular followers who are so committed to the cause that they’ve also ventured to follow me on Twitter may have noticed sporadic postings in shaky phonecam footage of a curious little device known as an Arduboy. This credit-card sized GameBoy inspired curio is powered by that staple of the maker community, the Arduino, neatly packaged together with a sharp 1-bit 128×64 OLED display, 4 directional buttons, and 2 action buttons. It was a guilty impulse purchase sometime around October last year, and I wandered into it without holding out much hope that I’d get around to making anything worth releasing. I was initially drawn in by the promise of constraints, which is a strange pull, but I’ve often been amazed at how programmers for early systems were able to squeeze so much out of some very limited hardware (This article about the original Zelda is a great example). The Arduboy is a neat re-imagining of these early restrictions: A screen where each pixel can only be either on or off; The bare essentials of controls; and strict limitations on processing power, memory, and storage. The game making community has risen to this challenge with a wide range of neat offerings showing off just what can be done within about fixed envelope; the excellent Team-ARG and Jonathan Holmes (check out ‘Circuit Dude’) are just a couple of examples from the dedicated programmers who have adopted this little system. Continue reading “Not Just a Hat Rack: Deconstructing My 8-Bit ‘Masterpiece’”

Hundstrasse10 Comments
Meaningless Ramble, OffTopic

‘Sunshine Blogger’ & ‘Liebster’ Awards

I’m going to level with you all… I’ve started this post several times now and each time it has descended into a spiral of misery regarding the current insular politics that seem to be taking hold on the world stage. I’m struggling, because the very thing I’m trying to write about is small and insignificant by comparison, but it some ways is the kind of thing that we need to hold on to in such times… so stick with me and we’ll get through this…

I am delighted to have been nominated for two community awards in the last week and have once again been reminded how much I enjoy being a part of the blogging community. Those who know me in real life likely understand how much this blog is a place for me to mash together the thoughts, opinions, & musings I have on gaming … and no doubt how it serves as a way for my to unleash my gaming thoughts without fear of boring my audience.

Continue reading “‘Sunshine Blogger’ & ‘Liebster’ Awards”

Hundstrasse11 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, OffTopic

Liebster Award Nomination!

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Ladies and Gentlemen of the academy; In the absence of a physical award, but still wanting to convey how chuffed this has made me, I’m currently holding my coffee cup like a shiny Oscar, smiling and waving to the crowd. The ‘Liebster Award’ is a formally informal way for a blogger to highlight other blogs they enjoy, reveal a little more about themselves, and pass the torch onwards in a quirky, classy way… Think ‘chain letter’, but if that were a welcome impact on your doormat. Continue reading “Liebster Award Nomination!”

Hundstrasse9 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, OffTopic

So, I learnt Morse Code…

I stumbled down a link-hole last week to discover Alex Johansson’s browser-based game “MORSE“; an interesting experiment in user input and detaching the player from the action all wrapped up in a battleship-esque pixilated game. Essentially you enter target co-ordinates in Morse code in order to destroy enemy units… Full Disclosure: I didn’t play the game for very long…

Continue reading “So, I learnt Morse Code…”

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