Slowly making progress in Zelda 2 on the GBA

Zelda 2 GBA Box

So, I’ve had Zelda 2 on the GBA for ages… and I’ve had a cart of the game for the NES for an embarrassing longer period of time 😉 I didn’t have a NES back in the 80s, so playing Zelda 2 for the first time in 2011 is interesting. I tried getting into it before but didn’t have much luck (I was playing it on the DS in a plane and was lazy, so I couldn’t work out where to start :P). However, Wifey and I were recently doing some traveling that involved some more airtime, so I thought I’d give it another go.

I’m not that far into the game, but I’m impressed that I’ve been making some slow progress 🙂 There are certainly some interesting hooks in the localisation (I am error!), but once I set my mind on getting somewhere, it’s been coming together.

What strikes me as interesting is how much of a departure it is to the original, and also how much it reminds me of Lord of the Sword on the Sega Master System. Well, Lord of the Sword was clearly Sega’s take on Zelda 2, but that’s the one I played when I was a kid, so that often hits my brain first. The mixture of side-on and top-down perspectives is an interesting mix, and I’m not minding the platformy bits. Because I’m a bit rubbish I tend to get knocked down and die a little too often, but it’s not completely mean-spirited… more often I feel like the fault is mine rather than the game’s.

So… I should take some time to actually finish the sucker. I hate leaving game’s part-finished.

Classic Australian Sega Master System TV ad

See that video above? That ad used to play on TV and at the local video rental store back in the early 90s. The Sega Master System, I was was convinced back in 1992, was the greatest thing ever. Well actually, the Mega Drive probably earned that category, but the SMS? Amazing. I was lucky enough to get a Sega Master System 2 for my birthday in 1992, and the sucker was golden. So many great memories.

I just can’t believe someone uploaded that ad to YouTube. I had completely forgotten it, so it was freaky that it felt like I watched it only the other day. Sega has a notorious history of poor advertising in Australia, but it looks like they had at least some success with the Master System if I can still remember it these days 🙂

Although there is that old Nintendo slogan “We are Nintendo, we cannot be beaten” – no idea if that was purely an Australian thing or if it was used across the pond:

Thanks to Frank at Aussie Arcade for getting the ball rolling on this trip down memory lane and Retro Gaming Australia for posting them up on YouTube 🙂 Check out his channel for more Australian TV ads!

Famicom get!

I was lucky enough to have a friend of mine currently living in Japan fire across some Nintendo Famicom stuff for me. Not having had a Famicom in the past (I have a PAL NES though), this was a good opportunity to pickup something interesting for the collection. It also means the door is opened for Japanese imports 🙂

So to celebrate, here are some shots:

🙂

Gaming sessions – 24 January 2009

First Mega CD post 😀

I know people hate FMV games, but I love the anime LD conversions we saw in PAL territory during the Mega CD era, especially Time Gal. Possibly because I was 12 at the time and thought the girl was pretty hot or something. And I was just starting to get into anime and manga, or as best as you could around 1994/1995 😛 Going back and playing it now makes me thank QTEs in Shenmue, I got a lot further than I had previously 🙂

Next up is Castle of Illusion for the Sega Master System. For those not in the know, the SMS was pretty huge in PAL territories, and we got stacks of great conversions of other Mega Drive games. I didn’t get very far in this playthrough of it, but it was great to jump back in time and give it a whirl. Those Disney platformers were fantastic.

Must have been on an SMS trip that day – there’s the cheated-up Wonderboy III, the first couple of zones of Sonic The Hedgehog, then I swapped sides and fired up the NES for a bit. Played a bit of Super Mario Bros., then some Kung Fu (finished the first run of five floors!!), and then called it a night.