Outraged youths lash out at Bully

Thanks to the wonderful people on GameFAQs I happened across this little gem.

Taylor Malzahn, a 16-year-old junior ... was so alarmed by the description she read in ... [a] video game magazine that she rallied her classmates against "Bully." "I was actually just shocked that my brother thought the game was cool," Taylor said.

This reminds me of a story from my home town. A child came home and told their parents all about how Pin the Tail on the Donkey was a game encouraging animal abuse. No, seriously, that's how the story went. Can people not determine reality from fantasy any more? Are their logic cortexes permanently damaged by all the Coke they're toking? But the stupidity continues...:

being called 'stupid' is not fun and should not be rewarded with points," ... "It can also teach them violent ways, and they'll use them in real life."

Actually I think the idea of getting score bonuses for WWF-esque taunts is great! And anyone who thinks that they can try something they saw in a Rockstar game—where I should point out that you can fall from 100 stories, take two shotgun blasts to the chest, and still manage to get up and sprint a good 20 meters before showing any signs of fatigue—then you are really too stupid to live.

"If we can get one mom or dad to not buy the game, we've been successful," teacher Dave Simpson said.

Yes, my good man, but that's missing the point. This game is ours, for us, for mature, adult(ish) gamers, NOT for Little Johnny! If shops would just stop selling M-rated games to minors there would be no problem.

Well, there is the potential that the game (being seemingly bloodless) may slip through as a T, but I'm hoping that its incredible quantity of ass-whooping coupled with R*'s media reputation will give this an M. The fewer stupid children who can easily access this game the better.

I guess I've been so busy following GTA: Liberty City Stories that Bully disappeared off my radar for a bit, and so I had no idea about the latest reports. When Jack talked about Bully's features on a recent Gameshout.com interview he mentioned new things such as giving swirlies and attacking people with cricket bats and slingshots, and I exclaimed "COOOOOL!"

Let's see if an ass-whooping improves your manners!

And why do I say it's cool? First of all, it's "where no game has gone before". But above that it's not fudging real. Yes bullying is terrible, but so is crime and violence, two things videogames also "glorify" quite successfully. I can merrily play GTAIII and rampage around a lookalike New York while emptying an AK into twelve cops and a heli without a second thought—but when there's a real-world police shooting on the news I'm horrified. There is no correlation, people! Rockstar has this amazing power to take something terrible from the real world and make turn it into a setting for lighthearted fun, and I both enjoy and admire that. And anyone who can play that game and think the material within is entirely real has officially failed at life.

I feel sorry for these poor brainwashed children though. I bet they've been convinced of the evils of meat and leather and potentially child-crafted imported goods too.

Today's tap water toast is most emphatically to Rockstar for working on a game where I can have the (to me) entirely alien experience of living as a bullied schoolchild. I can't wait to hand out some swirlies, and I'll be thinking of these losers while I'm doing it. —Garrett

EDIT: oh, and check out both my past rants and my growing del.icio.us collection of Jack-tastic news updates, just in case you haven't been following this madness. Well, he sure makes good water-cooler conversation... —Garrett

Zelda III proto cart surfaces

Wow, just... wow. This is, allegedly, a beta cart of Zelda III... for the NES. From the looks of things and taking into account what Okibi said this is probably the A Link to the Past 2-esque early conceptualising of Link's Awakening before it went Game Boy and developed its own flavour. I've always thought that from the early Nintendo Power preview scan I acquired, but seeing that dream game (hehe) in the flesh is quite another matter.



Don't you just WANT one? I know I do... if it's legit...

The owner bought it for $20 at a flea market. Not an impossible story, that's probably similar to how Star Fox 2 found its way to us.

Anyway, while I've decided to withhold judgement, until I have a dump at least, good old TSA has not. You've been wrong before buddy. Remember when you said Twilight Princess was a fake name? Yeah, I remember too.

One forum thread mentions it as possibly being a Hong Kong-produced ROM hack. Considering how surprisingly high-quality illicit ports of Mortal Kombat III and the like have been I would really be interested in a dump of this even if it isn't made by Nintendo.

Anyway, you can read more at his MSN Spaces blog. And be sure to beg him to dump and distribute it, he seems to want the community to tell him what to do with it.

Assuming this isn't a hoax, today's aquatic salute would most definitely go to both the enviously lucky Vavoom and the unknown developers who made this game, authentic or bootlegged as it may be... mmmm, chlorinated! —Garrett

UPDATE: apparently someone's offered an impressive sum for this cart. Whoever it is—I'm not totally sure who and I wouldn't say if I did—they're obviously convinced it's the real deal. Their identity doesn't really matter to me anyway, I just hope they own a copier!

These next few weeks are going to be some of the most exciting in Zelda history. Hopefully, pretty soon it will be time to kick ass or drink tap water. And I'm all outta water. —Garrett

New erotic MMO "Spend The Night" targeted at women

I'm gonna try to keep this post as tasteful and clean as possible, so some of my substitutes may sound a little silly.

Anyway, yes, that's right, at long last there is an MMO for all you hot-blooded youths out there; this game is all about finding that perfect someone, going off to a hotel room, and enjoying some sweet sweet lovin'.

But don't worry, Republik is also including support for gender orientation, so if you're, er, chasing after pants instead of skirts, or just want to try out what it would be like, this game is also for you!



Does this picture excite you? Well, soon you'll be able to be taking part in that intimate moment... and more.

This isn't the first time a game has had sexual intercourse content. The only one I can think off offhand is Furcadia, which has content that, well, leaves me absolutely speechless (warning, explicit content).

Now in recent months we've heard a lot about guys playing MMOs as Night Elves or whatever and talking all hot and dirty to get cool items as gifts—good on them, I say, if you're stupid enough to give gifts to someone just because they've used a low-poly female avatar you deserve to be taught a lesson—but what will we see with this game? Now for me, and I'm sure most straight guys out there, to play as a girl with a guy coming onto me, um, er, yeah. Dirty.

But faking your gender does give you another option. If you're a guy who likes lesbo action, just play as a girl and find another hottie. Really, the possibilities of people misleading others by choosing a gender or orientation in order to have exactly the sort of interaction they want is... disturbing.

But the main thing is that they're targeting this mainly at women. Now women have traditionally had to get storytelling from Mills & Boone (or similar) and visual acting-out from The Bold and the Beautiful, but now they can have it all at once, as long as they get a guy to play along.

No doubt there will be "story" servers that are like a soap episode, as well as "action" servers that are like a whorehouse.

I can harldy imagine what the update patches are going to contain. Having seen a variety of Milles & Boone covers at the library on the way to the magazines section I think the downloads are going to be fascinating. Women seem to be able to get off to pirates, vicars, cowboys, foreign cousins, and all sorts. Not to mention, um, things made of leather or PVC. So there's certainly a lot of value for money as far as the update patches go.

I do wonder how many guys they'll get wanting to act things out. I mean if you're a fan of text adventures this is no doubt right up you're alley, but if you're itching to get to the cybersex part of this new medium then it's going to be a little frustrating.

One can only wonder if the actual, er, "act" part of the game is going to be a cutscene or if it will in fact be something like Hot Coffee.

Anyway, if it succeeds, well, maybe the next The Sims game will be a clone of this or even a spinoff... hmmm...

I can't predict if this will succeed, but it will greatly depend on how many guys actually want to spend the time to roleplay. And if you're willing to do that just to have sex with another person, you seriously need a girlfriend as fast as possible. It may come out to vaguely the cost of a Playboy subscription, but it's just... weird.

Anyway Jack, now it's your turn. Extract your dentures from Rockstar's shoulder (if you can, they're pretty deeply embedded) and sink 'em into this little gem. Of course children won't be able to have prolonged access to this content, but at the very least the demo period will lead to some psychological damage. Cool. —Garrett

Jack-tastic update: The Barrister Strikes Back

We've already covered how the National Institute on Media and Family (NIMF hereafter) has disowned Jack. Now Jack is turning his sharp tongue on them, although it's admittedly with a softer tone than that of his childish and insulting responses to the gaming press.

Notice that he's forwarded this email to GamePolitics; it seems if you get in his bad books he'll add you to his CC list for a while, as the VGCats creator can attest. I think this is very bad form. What he says to another person should not be bandied around to unaffiliated contacts. The fact that he's probably doing this so that the gaming press can publish his letters as a now-public humiliation of the target of the email. Bad move, Jack, bad move.

Jack may be a killer laywer, but he's clueless about politics. "I certainly ... [lost] respect for Senator Clinton when she decided, after that, to attend a fundraiser thrown for her by the video game industry and by ESA's Doug Lowenstein."

Now why, Jack, would she not attend a fundraiser when she is its intended figurehead? Many people already think of her as a stupid bitch trying to launder votes from soccer moms er, using dirty politics to gain public favour, and for her to turn down a charity function just because it's run by an enemy would be political suicide; she needs to look good by attending, even if it were run by Satan himself (whom Jack seems to think Doug is an emissary of anyway).

Hillary's campaign is largely tied to the success of Jack due to her own decisions. If he's still in the public's good books by the time her campaign rolls around that's all good for her, but if he keeps doing this kooky stuff she's going to cover up her connections with him faster than a run in her nylons.

Dave seems to get the last laugh, however, by copy-catting Jack's terribly bad-faith forwarding technique to send a copy to, of all people, Bill Gates. Sure enough, Jack gets his knickers in a twist! "[Bill] is a guy whose Halo trained Malvo to kill in D.C." However as a well-read GP reader points out "yes. It was Halo that trained ... [him] It was most definitely not his father ... the military-trained sniper ... who actually performed most of the shootings."

I'm sure Bill was laughing his rich and successful ass off as he read this ridiculous diatribe. What does Jack expect Bill to do, stop producing a game just because someone used it as a lame excuse to try to get a lighter sentence? See that rating on the box, Jack? It's an M. Halo's not for Little Johnny, it's for those definitely old enough to psychologically deal with the content therein. The fact that stupid parents buy it is not Bill's fault, nor Bungie's fault, nor the ESRB's fault. It may be Wal-Mart's fault, but that may soon change as we've just covered.

In other news, a Jack Thompson mod for GTA: San Andreas has just been announced. I'll certainly give this a go sometime soon. Of course as we previously saw Jack can't take a joke, so the next thing we know he'll be calling for a vendetta against "illegal" modding, until of course someone points out Epic's pack-in modding tools and in-depth manuals, at which point just like on ChatterBox he'll make some vague claims about copyright holders who don't prevent "illegal" modification losing their intellectual property rights... I must say, this is Jack's biggest "WTF?" moment yet. Countless people buy Unreal games just to mod them and have created some incredible total conversions... and despite all their so-called IP abuse that ™ on the box ain't going anywhere for a long while yet. Read a EULA some time, Jack, you never know, it might surprise you.

You almost don't have to point out Jack's errors, in a way, he does a good enough job of making a complete ass of himself as it is. Jack, let's have another H₂O toast in your honour! Ah, the spring of '05, 'twas a good year for tap water... —Garrett

No more M+ games for Little Johnny: two state-wide laws are about to come into effect

According to Central Michigan Life this law comes into effect on December 1—just in time for Christmas. Hopefully the Little Johnnies of Michigan won't be finding the latest GTA under the tree this year.

I think this is a major win for gamers everywhere. Underage children should most certainly not be playing these games anyway, and in a way once they're properly restricted they'll feel more special to you once you can access them, kinda like holding off having sex until your wedding night. But I digress. Anyway, this basically means it will be a criminal offence for a child to buy an M or AO game.

Unfortunately retailers don't share these sentiments, "[they] fear it will hurt video game sales statewide." I myself don't agree with this; when I walk into my local The Warehouse or K-Mart or EB or whatever on any given day there will be about a dozen 20-somethings merrily shopping for Xbox and PC games, with two or three Little Johnnies milling around and pawing at PS2 copies of GTA: San Andreas and similar, hopefully in vain. Those are good statistics, because it's the geeky guys who have all the money to burn.

With children of the current generation rapidly maturing and coming within the age group themselves they'll have an entirely new buying generation in addition to this one. I also don't see gaming interest dying out within the current mature age group; I'm 21 and have been merrily gaming since 1996, but I don't see me stopping. Even by 40 I'll still be lusting after er, waiting for the Xbox 12.

But I decided to cover the best news first; now comes the worst, and that's thanks to—who would have guessed?—Arnie. Kinda like how he was evil in the first Terminator movie before he turned good, the California governer is now helping to introduce an abusive rating system that will impact gamers everywhere.

According to Gamespot, "...[the boxes will] be marked by a 2-by-2-inch sticker with a "solid white '18' outlined in black" on their front covers". Ugh. The mind boggles to imagine what this would look like in the flesh, er, plastic.

This law is stupid and abusive. Many modern videogame covers are minor works of art; the ESRB's clever rating label design does its best to avoid defiling the box art—but what will this new rating sticker look like?



See this? Work. Of. Art. Even if you don't like the game contained within, line-art is a beatiful thing. See the discreet little ESRB logo in the corner? It barely gets in the way of the box art, but it's still clearly visible.



See this? Mockup of Arnie's proposed rating label. No I didn't exaggerate that, I checked its dimensions twice; regardless of your screen resolution, 2 inches by 2 inches looks fudging huge. Now imagine that crap overlaid on the box above BESIDE the ESRB rating. According to one report both stickers will feature alongside each other (since the ESRB is a national requirement I guess it can't be overridden and obscured due to a state-wide law). Once that's done, how much of that luscious box art will be left?!

Now I know a lot of modern parents out there are stupid enough to buy games for Little Johnny despite the ESRB's tastefully-sized rating sticker, but are they that stupid that we need to make it larger than life? Even a person with macular degeneration could probably read the ESRB's M!

Naturally the ESRB is uber-pissed by this stupidity and is going to try to stop it, and we can only hope they succeed. UPDATE: they're already preparing to press charges. Kudos ESRB, this update's aqua-toast is to you.

And so within less than a week of each other we've had some good news and some bad news. Hopefully just like in Terminator 2 Arnie can be reprogrammed back onto our side, but until then it's gonna be hell for gaming in California. —Garrett

National Institute on Media and the Family ousts flagbearer Jack Thompson

This is just a short one folks! (folks? As if anyone reads this...)

This is truly a great day for the gaming community--and no I'm not talking about the imminent release of GTA: Liberty City Stories, that's unfortunately still a while off. No, I'm talking about the National Institute on Media and the Family giving ol' Jack the boot. He's set off to slay corporate dragons in their name, but his damsel has torn her scarf from the forked tongue that serves as his lance.

But enough stupid metaphors, back to the man himself, Jack Thompson... this guy is blogging GOLD, man. He's always up to something. And considering some of the crap he's proposed in the past I sometimes wonder if his email account got hijacked by a malicious slanderer.

But no, it all made sense after his 80-minute ChatterBox interview, where he said, and at the time I rewound multiple times to make sure I'd got the context, "I'm out to destroy Rockstar". Now originally Jack portrayed himself as being against minors accessing mature games—something I am wholeheartedly in favour of, even before I saw posts of the nature of "What's the purple banana do?" in some GTA: San Andreas forums—and this is why the institute was behind him; keep M-rated games out of the hands of Little Johnny, all good, right?

Wrong. He's now out to destroy any company that "markets murder simulators" to children" (not his exact words, but his meaning). Why he chose R* as his scapegoat over EA, who arguably creates far more shooters and most especially "sniper trainers" than Rockstar does is a mystery; sure, the media has always favoured going after R*, but never so voraciously as Jack.

Taking into account the fact that Jack has no scientifically-detectable sense of humour, as well as his well-documented selective amnesia, I do sometimes wonder if he's, y'know, not quite all there upstairs. The more he does, the more I think about this fact, and I'm not kidding.

Anyway, this is a serious blow to him and a major win to us. Previously he's been going around touting the institute's name (and with their blessings) but he can no longer do this. Now, besides Hillary, he's virtually alone in the big bad world, just him and his ideals against the either bemused or seriously ticked off combined forces of R* and the ESRB.

Thompson's made some powerful enemies, and his strongest ally has just deserted him. Maybe he should just save face by retiring shortly—while he's got any face left to save after all these outbursts; an apology, the literary equivalent of Botox, might help some—and concentrate on relaxing with simulations of his past achievements.

Jack buddy, this drink's for you... OK, so it's only mineral water, well, a bottle that used to hold mineral water, but that's not the point: you truly are a marvel of this modern age. Without you we'd only have The Simpsons reruns to keep us laughing. Not that that would be a bad thing, but variety is a good part of every healthy diet, or so the "Veggie Monster" now tells us. Is nothing sacred? —Garrett

The greatest Zelda game you've never played... and I'm here to guide you through it

Today I'm talking about BS Zelda: Kodai no Sekiban, a Zelda game even the most dedicated of fans often haven't heard of. What is it? Well, simply put, it's a Second Quest for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The reason you've never heard of it is that it was only available in Japan. It seems those lucky people get all the best games!

First, a quick look at the game itself.



The title screen... it looks pretty forboding, and the game hasn't even even finished downloading yet. You can see the progress bar. It apparently took six minutes to download a week's episode (talk about load times!) but after this point the game was completely load-free just like any other cartridge game was.



This is clearly not the A Link to the Past we all know and love... but in some ways it's better.

As you can see, there are a lot of changes here, most notably the clock. The clock controls various elements of gameplay. At certain points things will happen such as fog descending on the overworld (pictured), a rainstorm taking place and extinguishing any lit bombs outside thus constricting exploration, and sometimes enemies will start leaving large quantities of rupees when killed.

But since it's a download, how then did players get this game to the console? Well, they had to buy an addon called a Satellaview, or BS-X, that sat underneath the Super Famicom (Japanese SNES); this functioned much like the Genesis' SEGA Channel system, although content was provided via a satellite radio subscription rather than a modem. The games were downloaded in daily doses; they usually came in four parts (one for each day) and were only playable during one fixed hour of a particular day, much like your favourite TV show, and there were also later reruns of these downloadable episodes.

It was possible to begin the game after it had already started and race to finish during what was left of the hour hour, but the game, even if you'd already downloaded it, ceased to function outside of that hour. This was because the games had live voice acting and streaming CD-quality music, data which could not fit on the flash-cart and was therefore thrown away just like a radio signal.

This means that even if a player removed the flash-cart after playing and never erased it, the data on it was completely useless to them! It is only with the advent of emulation that these games were able to be extracted from the cartridges and could be made playable once more, although making the BS-X code work without the live satellite has been a long and difficultpath.

Yes, that's right, even the original Japanese players who still own the base unit and flash-carts cannot play more than a small handful of BS-X games (the ones that did not feature streaming audio) outside of emulation, yes, the dreaded realm of... ROMs.

But is emulation such a bad thing in this case? The abandonware movement has already used some relatively convincing arguments to explain their legal stance, and are ROMs really any different from old DOS games? Indeed, a game that even legal owners can no longer play is surely the strongest abandonware argument of them all.

I long for the day when Nintendo includes this game in a collection of old Zelda titles. With the Revolution's upcoming downloadable content having it as a download once more is a possibility. However this hope was basically smashed when cent208 from the forums got the chance to meet the great Shigeru Miyamoto at a signing event. When he finally made his way down the queue he showed Miyamoto some screenshots and asked, through the interpreter, about the likelihood of a US release. Shiggy was absolutely mystified for a few moments, but finally managed to give a definite "no".

However cent's wording revolved around the US (and thus Shiggy's reply may have only been pertaining to that region); it may well be the Japanese will once again get to experience this game (what, I can dream, right?), but it's still a terrible blow for the fandom as a whole, although, unlike Twilight Princess' delay, it's one most aren't even aware of.

And so it is that the only way to enjoy this game remains the inaccurate emulated version. Work has been done to make the game less buggy, and in recent weeks a complete translation has even been completed, but the biggest loss is the dungeons. When you begin the game this is the sort of scene that will greet you:



As you can see, all the dungeon walls except for doors and bombable openings are currently lost, and floor and mezzanine tiles have also vanished. Reports from hackers vary as to whether they think this is merely some mixed up pointers due to BS-X design differences or that in fact the dungeon data is not in this dump, but regardless of what actually happened to them the fact remains that they are both invisible and intangible to the player.

Despite these grave flaws the game is still fully playable from beginning to end and is still an enjoyable experience. Despite the one-hour limitation of each of the four parts it is still a fully-fledged Zelda game, with many interesting secrets throughout the game world. All the heart pieces and other such goodies are now in different locations so a veteran can't blaze through this game's secrets.

Anyway, on to the latter part of this post. It has taken me a long time and a lot of backtracking, but my guide to the elusive BS Zelda: Kodai no Sekiban is finally converted and is now available for both reading and editing(!). I have laboriously mapped out all the game's secrets as well as ways to work around the glitches so that you don't have to.

This is not GameFAQs, although I have an old copy up there too; no, this one is HTML-based and has guiding illustrations at virtually every step along the way as it follows the Hero of Light's epic journey to vanquish the ancient evil. It is also a wiki, meaning that anyone can jump in and edit, and I do encourage all readers out there to help improve and expand as you see fit, just because it's complete doesn't mean it's finished or perfect (and it is neither).

It's still taking me a while to exorcise the last of GameFAQs' demons—that being what was originally a total lack of illustrations and a large amount of ASCII-centered formatting—but the majority of the work is now done and the guide is now better than ever before.

In closing, thanks to Euclid's excellent work on the translation this game is now more accessible than ever. I'm content with its current level of playability, but I'm still not completely satisfied; between the lack of a hacker actively working on fixing this game and Miyamoto's answer regarding their official localisation, there's a lot that could be being done for this game that simply isn't. But I guess that day will come eventually, and I will be there waiting for it.

—Garrett out.

For more about these games and the BS-X in general, I've collected some useful links:
Satellaview - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The BS Zelda HomePage - THE place to find everything about BS Zelda games
BS Zelda: Kodai no Sekiban - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
BS Zelda: Kodai no Sekiban complete wiki guide on Gameinfo

A Fistful of Rupees Vol. 1 : Link's bastard son?

I originally posted this on The BS Zelda Homepage forum, but it's mostly blog-esque anyway so I'm reposting it here. I do intend to continue this series, and I've already got multiple drafts in varying stages of completion, but I'll only post when I've got something as intricate as this to publish.

This is the first in my new series of articles and exploratory debates that I call A Fistful of Rupees. As you can tell, it's inspired by Behind the Rupees, but I've got a few of my own twists, and I'm going to try to avoid covering any topics that they have already done an incredible job on. I doubt I could bring anything new to the table, and so I am instead focusing on topics that they have overlooked or not thought important enough. Anyway, on with the show.

---

A Fistful of Rupees Vol. I : Link's bastard son? A fresh look at the upcoming Wind Waker-lookalike, Wiki.

Every Zelda site under the sun is focussing on Zelda 2005 right now. However, The BS Zelda Homepage has always been different, so I decided I ought to start this series with something unique. Other Zelda sites have mentioned it in their news, but not really *examined* it, which is what I am now going to do.



Now look at these two logos... you'd say both were concept art for the same game, wouldn't you? It even has the same curly wave things. That's just going too far already, right?

But wait, there's more! When I first saw the Wiki screenshots I immediately thought "WOW! Wind Waker II!" Even though there's never been a direct sequel to any game in the series, except in the case of AST, that was still my initial thought.

What's in a name?

What does Wiki mean anyway? Well, it's got nothing to do with the latest internet trend, editable-by-all web content. If they're using the dictionary definition, Wiki is derived from wiki-wiki, a Hawaiian bastardisation of the English "quickly quickly". By choosing a Hawaiian-derived name, this seems to indicate an islandy theme. Yet another slap in the face for The Wind Waker.

A non-Zelda Zelda game?!? Well, yes.



Unfortunately IGN gave away the answer as to which was which, but without that caption how would you know? IGN made a good comparison, you've even got the yellow child on one side and the yellow dog on the other. Very well chosen screenshots. Now we all know "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" but to me this is a bit too close to the bone.

Spot the Difference



Which is Link? Um, er, um, darn, they both look so alike, I can't tell. Did Link change his clothes between photo shoots? Wait, this is taken with the DX Pictobox, right? Let's take a closer look at Link... and, er, "Link II".

Now this is just plain silly. The hair, the eyes, the blue, the orange highlights (albeit a different shade, orange is *still* orange), the wisp of a nose, heck, even the eyebrows are identical. It's like they edited the ISO or something. Laughably, RuliGames alludes to it being an expansion pack spinoff!

Who the heck is Webzen?

Now, why would a company do something that's so obviously legally dangerous? In a word, publicity.
Ever heard of Webzen? No? They're a big Korean MMO developer. MU Online? No? It's a current Webzen MMO. Ever heard of All Points Bulletin? No? It's an upcoming Webzen MMO. And the list, no doubt, could go on. But have you heard of Wiki? Oh, yes. See? The system works.

So because their games are otherwise unknown they are looking for ways to make headlines and get noticed.

""The number of variables are in the tens of thousands," said Webzen representative Choi Hyun-woo in an interview with Korean newspaper JoongAng Daily, "We are still in the middle of developing the game, which will begin closed testing services in December." Now they spew this crap about there being thousands of character customisations possible, but it seems rather ironic that of all those "infinite" combinations the one they chose to create to show us was a dead-ringer for Link. You can't tell me that the Wiki hero is *not* Link... and it looks like Nintendo won't have a bar of it either. It's not open fighting yet, no-one's thrown any punches, they're still in their corners and the bell has yet to ring. Nintendo merely said they were taking "natural steps", but even so, that's fighting talk. We know what those steps will be. Better worded, sure, but they might as well come right out and say "Leave our Link well alone, don't make us bankrupt your sorry thieving asses!!!"

But this is all good as far as Webzen is concerned! As long as they can tread this thin line between "dangerous allusions" and "direct ripoffs" they will make a mint. So far, they are still on the trapese, but at any minute they could tumble like the City of Heroes' creators did. But why? Why risk it all, risk everything you've programmed and planned over months, all for what? Who's gonna buy this game? Well, everyone. Or, at least, the fanboys, and we all know that's where the motherload of sales lie for this particular gem.

OMG its liek ww but wit way hella better gfx n stuf! it r0x0rs!!1!

When Zelda 2005 was announced some fanboys cried because they preferred WW's style, and wrote 50-page pledges to Nintendo about how the cel-shaded style was the best representation of Link's vulnerability and so on. Mindless crap. Who do they think they are?!? Only Miyamoto and Anouma have any say on core Zelda content. Capcom writes some stuff but no doubt it has the hand of Miyamoto upon it too. Miyamoto invented Zelda, plain and simple, then Anouma expanded upon it (or, some would say, wrecked it), and they don't need 12-year-old fanboys telling them what to do for the next game! The graphics are planned around the game's story and features, not the other way around! If they'd kept with the kiddie style we could never see a "serious" Zelda like OOT or Zelda 2005 again. That sort of serious mood and combat and plotline wouldn't fit WW's hawaiian holiday graphics.
If this game had come up on a gaming site without Link being featured, people would have talked about the visual style being unique and maybe someone would have twigged to the fact that it was reminiscent of WW, but most would have said, "meh, gimme WW any day over THIS crap. WW looks better IMO!" It would have just been yet another upstart MMO trying to play with the big boys (Everquest, Ultima, etc.). But by including this ripoff character (let's call him "Liki") Webzen has irreversibly planted the seed in the collective subconscious. People's attitude towards the game are now different from what they might have been. A certain percentage will say "I hate them they're robbing Nintendo blind!" (one ZFGCer's wording was "Zelda's been voilated!") but a large proportion will actually want to play the game. Heck, even *I* want to try it, merely because of its Zelda ripoff nature. Nothing else really, I can't think of one good reason to try it besides that.

Now it's one thing for a game to be strikingly similar to another and ride on the fame of its usually superior predecessors (Crash Bandicoot, Croc, Spyro, Ty, Scaler, etc. etc. etc.), but this is different. Their entire marketing strategy and so on is centered around the Wind Waker style. Love it, hate it, WW is here to stay, and so it appeals to two groups, those looking for more and wishing there was a WW sequel, and those who can't/won't afford a 'Cube just to try the game.

Previous cash-ins

A few games in the past have tried to cash in on the latest Zelda at the time, but usually only gameplay-wise. The only one to really try to be a graphics clone was Crusader of Centy for the SEGA Genesis.



Crusader of Centy cashed in on A Link to the Past mainly because Genesis owners were looking on in envy, and we all know unhappy fanboys hurt sales! However it had its own storyline and hero and gameplay mechanics; the only real inspiration was a vague LTTP-ish graphical angle and colouration style, and the insides of houses and dungeons didn't feature Zelda's bizarre "see all walls at once" camera angle. It was clearly an inspired game, but it took the vague idea and ran with it. Wiki ran, but, despite its name's speed-related origins, it sure didn't run far! Wiki is riding on one huge fan wave here.

The tides of fame

The fame waves are steadily rising. The "I miss WW! I hate the 2005 style!" crowd may well latch onto it when released. Through their tears, as if in a vision, a game rises from the ashes. It's not Wind Waker II, sure, but it's better than nothing which is exactly what they've got right now.

But as waves rise, so too they crash down. And it seems Wiki's will be crashing sooner than intended, but not necessarily due to the threatened lawsuit on the horizon. Crusader of Centy cashed in while LTTP was still the hot topic, but as for the current period with Wind Waker, the focus has shifted to the new bad-ass Link of Zelda 2005. Will Zelda fans want to go back to the "kiddie" style again after drooling over the new game's videos and such? Or should Webzen have announced this game a year ago? I know it takes time to design a game, but even before Zelda 2005's appearance they'd already waited dangerously long to show off their cash-in; and in the meantime Zelda 2005 suddenly springs up. It not only takes the cake but also steals the show, the scene, first base, first prize, the oversize cardboard cheque, the sports car, and the bikini babe on its hood.

Zelda 2005 has blasted into the gaming community after the lull that was (like it or not) known as The Wind Waker, and has potentially made the Zelda license stronger than it has ever been in its two decades of existence. So, what now? What slice of the pie is left for Wiki when it's been outmoded by the cooler graphical style? Will the WW-lovin' fanboys be enough to pull in the sales they want, or will the ones who have already given up on WW and changed their focus to Zelda 2005's graphics turn their noses up at it as a ripoff of their "lost love"?

But even if the style being superceded doesn't affect *sales*, there's still the ongoing gameplay "coolness" to consider. They need to keep gamers hooked, because we all know the money's in the subscriptions when it comes to a MMO. When people actually play it, will they leave the hi-res textured beaches of Wiki bare merely because when they actually get to try it the gameplay's not Zelda enough for them? According to the joys of Translator English it's a "FPS MMO", rather than "click, wait, click, wait" like the majority of money-spinners. So it sounds like the gameplay will be Zelda-ish enough to swing it, but even so it's not like they can get away with featuring the Hookshot and Boomerang and other Zelda "trademark" items such as we expect to see in a Zelda game.

It's one thing to buy a one-off game (like WW itself), find you don't like it, chuck it in the closet but still get it out to play once in a while... but Wiki's not like that. It will have signup fees, so whatever money you put into it before you decide you don't like it is lost forever (unless they have some sort of creit redemption system). And so there'll no doubt be dozens of Zelda fans bemoaning how awful the gameplay is and how they prepaid for a 3-year discounted subscription and so on. And they'll never go back, because they can't, that'd cost more money, and even if they could still continue with their unused subscription credits all the other players would have hugely higher levels by then and so they'd never catch up. Whereas a single-payment game, whether online or offline, can be picked up later. Hey, just 'cause it sucks you can still play it if you're bored, it's "free" anyway. Whereas looking at that Wiki box in the closet and remembering how much hard cash you essentially poured down the gurgler over those months that you played it may make players loathe the game even more than the average

Not to say the fact it's an MMO alone will kill it, but if it is an un-Zelda MMO then Zelda fanboys will likely leave and not return because they probably want Zelda graphics and gameplay together or no Zelda at all. So all Webzen's design efforts and monthly improvements may actually result in a loss of profitability.

The future?

What lies ahead for Wiki? Stormy seas that rock the boat and capsize it, sending it to a watery grave, or gentle waves, perfect for all-day surfing? Will Zelda fansites add side sections for it as a reluctant "cousin" of the Zelda series, or will it be cancelled and demoted to an "other games" page beside the infamous crappiness of the CD-i games as merely a side note? Only time, and potential Nintendo lawsuits, will tell. In closing, I think things shall become very interesting in these next few monts. You can find more about Wiki at these sites. —Garrett

News sites:
IGN Cube: Nintendo on Possible Copyright Violation, the news update that started it all!
RuliWeb news article (Korean) with some very good comparisons and hi-res screens.
Gamasutra (Korean) with some users' thoughts on the matter.
Game Meca (English!) with more info and details
Chosun's coverage (Korean) with some more thoughts.

Forum threads:
Zelda Fan Game Community: "Zelda has been violated!"
Zelda Elements discussion
the old BS Zelda forum thread (404'ed!)