Tom Butt rides again

Woah. Derp. Derp dee derrr. So, how's about them blogs, huh? I start things and then I abandon them on the streets; cold, hungry and sleepless they pad around in some dark alley until they either die from exposure or I decide to toy with them some more. So, like the crack baby's father may return to his creation, so I too return to mine. Deal with it.


Ok but seriously, you guys. Turns out that you don't need/can't take care of a creative outlet when you don't have any time to have a spare thought to yourself. But now I do; coincidentally, the new Zelda also happens to be out! And I want to talk about Zelda! Because this is my blog and we'll do what I WANT.

If I were to ask you, dear readers, what your favorite Zelda game is, I think I could predict what 92% of you would say. Standby Item music.. get ready for it...... You would say: The Ocarina of Time. (Cue Item music) Yes, The Ocarina of Time, the N64's master gem and the top dog on a bunch of video game magazines and websites.(You'll notice it doesn't appear in like, three of those lists) Not only will people tell you that OOT is their favorite Zelda game of all time, but that it is THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME AHHHH SHOUT IT OUT LOUD LET ME HEAR YOU SAY YEAH-UHHH.

Well stop it.
The Ocarina of Time is a great game. It really is. It sits right next to Super Mario 64 as one of the big pioneers in 3D gaming. It's open-ended, it's huge and the temples are infamous. But it isn't the best Zelda game. If you clicked that link above leading to the zelda commercial, you may notice what I did. I'll just post the comment here, because this is exactly what I'm driving towards here:

"howtojuggle3balls"....?   says:

This is just simply the best game I've ever played. When it comes to videogames it's not all about the graphic and impressing effects. It's also about the story which most games lack these days. Anyone saying this is a bad game and that it sucks must be one of these two things.

1. A completely retarded person.

2. A 8 year old kid who grew up with assasins creed, CoD.

I must add that I will play through this game soon again for the 10th time or more. It's magic, they never get old or boring

Thanks, howtojuggle3balls, I couldn't have said it better myself.

I hope you're starting to see where I'm getting at here. I'm going to ignore howtojuggle3balls' brilliant rhetorical move to alienate everyone who might disagree with his statement.

Wait, no I'm not.

We live in an age where it is ridiculous to post things like this. I want to find howtojuggle3balls and take away his internet privileges forever. Or at least until he can behave like a civilized person. What people forget so often is that the internet is public. YouTube is a big city square where people visit. Get on a subway or a bus or a plane and call the people you're sitting with "Completely Retarded." Go ahead. Do it.


"Excuse me, sir? Would you like something to drink or some peanuts? Maybe a hot towel?"

"Are you completely retarded? I'm allergic to peanuts, you bitch."

It's the Same. Fucking. Thing. So there we go, minor soapbox moment, be nice on the internet. The second point that howtojuggle3balls proves without realizing it is demonstrating to us the dangers of Nostalgia. The second category of people who don't think that The Ocarina of Time isn't the greatest game EVAR and the ones who aren't mentally challenged are "A 8 year old kid who grew up with assasins creed, CoD." Guess how old howtojuggle3balls probably was when OOT came out. Gaming is a young thing. Not much more than 25 years old. I must have been 10 when OOT came out. Kids are going to love anything with bright colors and stabbing. Look, these 8 year olds are going to grow up thinking that assassin's creed was the BEST VIDEO GAME EVER FOREVER AND EVER AMEN, because they were 8 when they played it and it was fucking awesome. Now being 22, everything seems to suck more. It's harder to get as involved in video games(Unless it's Skyrim in which case I just black out and wake up 5 hours later in a pool of what might be my own blood and a pile of butterfly wings) because we aren't 8 years old. It's just not going to happen.


So here's the deal. The way I see it, labeling The Ocarina of Time the title of THE GREATEST GAME EVAR CREATED BY MANKIND is kind of selling ourselves short. I mean, there's another 12 whole years of games after that. I refuse to believe that we've peaked. It infuriates me that websites like IGN list the original Super Mario Bros as the greatest game in the entire lexicon of gaming. That's ass-backwards to me. If we're going to go with a Mario game, pick Super Mario Galaxy 2. You know.. The one that's pretty much been in development for the last 25 years, starting with SMB. To call Super Mario Bros the top game ever created is like saying that Happy Days was the greatest TV show ever and television is calling it quits or that artistically, we peaked at cave paintings. It's if we stopped movies at "Gone With the Wind."

And really, let's face it. Ocarina of Time was a 3D blown-up version of A Link to the Past, a game which also has a dear place for me, but not by any means the end-all be-all. The "Story" that howtojuggle3balls touts so heavily in YouTube comments sections isn't much more than that of the previous three Zelda games: Go rescue the Princess, Gannondorf is bad and watch out for cuccoos.

I'm about to blow your minds here and tell you that my favorite Zelda game isn't OOT. No sirs and ma'ams. It's Majora's Mask. Majora's Mask took what was great about the Ocarina of Time and expanded on it. I've heard it referred to as the "Empire Strikes Back" of the Zelda franchise, and I haven't been able to think of a more proper nickname. It's darker and the story is much deeper. You have to save this place from THE MOON CRASHING INTO THE EARTH, KILLING EVERYONE. Woah. The gameplay is left virtually unchanged, but it stands out because it's such a break from the mold. The Master Sword, Princess Zelda, and Gannondorf all sit this one out. And the world doesn't end! Well, unless you fuck up that whole moon thing... Unfortunately for me, and for the progression of video games as a medium, one of the titles sold 8 million copies and one sold 3 million. So now, instead of bold new story ideas and exciting new gameplay, we get the Ocarina of Time every two or three years. Rather than the Expansion we got with Majora, we get a Re-Hashing of elements from OOT. They didn't even bother to keep the swimming from Majora's mask in Twilight Princess. I think that's the moment in Twilight Princess that I realized that I was just playing a big, bloated version of OOT. And it makes me sad.

Here we are then. The new Zelda game. I've played up through the first temple now, and it's been awesome. But I can pretty much tell that this is another reshaping of some old ideas over again. And it's that loss of potential that I lament. Wondering what could have been had my precious Majora's Mask just been a little more popular.

What if we could just erase nostalgia? Would we be in a better place in gaming? My generation is one that's decided we need nostalgia NOW and not 30 years down the line, and that is especially apparent in video gaming. Look at Super Mario 3D Land, the new 3DS title. Now, I haven't played it, but the design influences are pretty blatant. Tanooki suits. Nintendo has figured out how to play their nostalgic twentysomethings who grew up with their titles like fiddles.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pop Skyward Sword back in.