Eruditorum Press

Anarchist spank inferno

Forest of Illusions

About Forest of Illusions

L.I. Underhill is a media critic and historian specializing in pop culture, with a focus on science fiction (especially Star Trek) and video games. Their projects include a critical history of Star Trek told through the narrative of a war in time, a “heretical” history of The Legend of Zelda series and a literary postmodern reading of Jim Davis' Garfield.

Posts by :

Hyrule Haeresis 2

, , 6

Video game sequels are a different beast than sequels in other mediums. In video games, a sequel is typically expected to improve upon its predecessor because video games are intensely technical. Since a game is thought of at least partly as a feat of software engineering, sequels are approached as a honing, refining and improvement of the original as much as they are a thematic and aesthetic continuation of them. In other words, we should think of video game sequels as new and improved models as much as the next chapter of a story, if not more so. On the other hand, the nature of a sequel demands in any medium of genre demands narrative escalation.
 
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a classic example of this duality. In an attempt to avoid repetition and falling into a rut, Shigeru Miiyamoto set out to create a game that was fundamentally different from Zelda no Densetsu and even brought together an entirely new development team in an attempt to push his designers creatively. From a mechanical standpoint, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link seems to be doing everything in its power to be as different as possible from Zelda no Densetsu: The original game used a top-down perspective akin to traditional RPGS, while this game is primarily a sidescroller, more similar to the Castelvania/Akumajō Dracula series. The game only takes an overhead perspective when traversing the overworld to move from location to location, during which points it more closely resembles the style of the contemporaneous Final Fantasy than it does Zelda no Densetsu.
 
Like many video game sequels of its vintage, including the following year’s Final Fantasy II and US version of Super Mario Bros. 2, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is indicative of a creative culture defined by a sense of playful experimentation where anything can be anything. That “Zelda 2” is so different from “Zelda 1” is irrelevant, because in 1987 no-one knew what “Zelda” was “supposed” to be. It wouldn’t be until the turn of the console generation where the belief started to ossify that sequels would be technically and mechanically identical to their predecessors, except “better”. And yet the problem remains. A sequel demands narrative escalation.
 
We are told Hyrule is in chaos. Roving bands of monsters wreak havoc across the land. Apparently the defeat of Ganon, central to the plot of the last game and to the Legend of Zelda itself, wasn’t enough to save the world. Lucky for us Link bears a sacred birthmark indicating that he is to inherit the Triforce of Courage, one third of a mystical artefact that united the kingdom of Hyrule under one banner in olden times and a key to a prophecy involving Hyrule’s royal family. After the death of the king, a magician fought with his son the prince and placed a spell on the prince’s sister, Princess Zelda, that cast her into an eternal sleep. With her went the secret to reforging the Triforce, bringing war and strife back to the kingdom.
…

Continue Reading

QuakeCon 2016 News Roundup

, , , 1

QuakeCon is an annual convention held by the Bethesda family of game development studios in Dallas, Texas. Originally created to showcase a massive tournament for the best competitive Quake players, in recent years it’s evolved into a kind of mini-E3 for Bethesda, where they show off new reveals, demos and trailers to closed-door-invite-only audiences in addition to the tournament that’s the centrepiece of the show.
 
I’ve traditionally not covered QuakeCon, and that’s for a variety of reasons. Primarily of course there’s the fact that it is largely invite-only, and there’s obviously a fat chance I’d ever be invited anywhere by game industry professionals. Also, I tend to focus my game journalism energies, such as they are, on the big E3 show in June. But times are changing, and now it seems a lot of companies like having their own events scattered throughout the year catering to their specific fanbases as opposed to putting all of their eggs in the E3 basket. QuakeCon has become that event for Bethesda, and since Bethesda has become one of the only two companies in the video game industry I actually care about anymore, this year I decided to pay closer attention to what was going on in Dallas. Indeed, Bethesda made no attempt to hide QuakeCon’s central focus at their E3 press conference this year, repeatedly saying they’d have considerably more details to share about their reveals at that show.
 
(Incidentally, speaking of that other video game company what I give a damn about, just as I was about to go to press it was reported that Pete Hines told reporters that Bethesda is in touch with Nintendo “all the time”, is “well briefed” on what’s going on with their new console, codenamed NX, and that “our philosophy is that we will put our games out on any format that supports the games as we envisage and make them. If the NX fits that from a technical standpoint, and fits the game that a developer in our stable is making, I don’t see why we would not put it out on NX. But it’s too early to say, ‘we’ll definitely be putting games out or not.’ Like with mobile, we want to have the right fit for the right formats”. So that made me exceedingly happy.)
 
This year’s QuakeCon took place between August 4 and 7, and while there’s no way I was ever flying to Texas, I kept a close eye on my newsfeed and Bethesda’s own blog this past week to keep track of the show’s progress and watching any trailers or other videos released to the public. As is Bethesda’s way, the emphasis was on quality over quantity, making a handful of announcements and showing a smattering of new footage from their current and upcoming games, but spent a lot of time talking about the core design philosophy and ethos that went into them to give us a good idea of a game’s feel and spirit, which I happen to find incredibly commendable.
…

Continue Reading

Myriad Universes: Divided Light Part 2: Of Two Minds

, , , 2

So the Ergeans are really annoyed that Alexander/Deanna, Lwaxana/Worf and Geordi/Selar are up and about, so they order them back to their cells. Worf (as Lwaxana) isn’t having any of that though and, in a single, beautiful moment I *really, really* wish Majel Barrett had gotten to act out, throws his/her head back, yells out a battle cry, body slams the Ergeans and powerbombs all three of them to the mat while bellowing “Cowards! This time you have bitten off a great deal more than you can chew!”.

Frankly if you’re not already sold on this book by the concept of Majel Barrett powerbombing aliens and immediately convinced this series is one of the greatest things in the history of Star Trek, there’s nothing more I can do for you, so you might as well pack it all in now.

Back on the Enterprise, the Sakerions exposit that while outsiders have long believed that the Ergeans were governed by a succession of triumvirates, this is actually not the case. In truth, there was only ever one triumvirate, but they gave themselves functional immortality through a machine that allowed consciousnesses to be transplanted from one body to the next. And due to the Ergeans’ strong regard for life, the donor body’s original consciousness was transplanted as well, so nobody would ever have to die. But over time, the triumvirate grew authoritarian as Ergean society went through hardship, and one day the people refused to transplant their consciousnesses, instead sealing them away in mind receptacles until the time where it was felt they would be needed again. The Sakerions think the Ergeans might feel that time has come, and they’ve chosen the bodies of Worf, Selar and Deanna as the latest “volunteers”. Captain Picard asks if the process is reversable, and the Sakerions say yes (luckily for us they managed to…acquire…the necessary technology from the Ergeans) but they will have to hurry, as the bonds between consciousnesses and their original bodies break down if they are separated for too long.

Down on the planet, the issue’s requisite fight scene is still going on. Selar (as Geordi) is busting some sick action moves until one of the Ergeans grabs Deanna who, as Alexander, is not in much of a position to fight back. It looks like Selar will be forced to surrender too until Worf (again as Lwaxana) unloads a phaser rifle round into his chest from across the room. Lwaxana herself re-enters the picture shortly thereafter, and is decidedly not amused by the alleged indignity of being forced to become a warrior. This is no throwaway joke either, because it’s promptly followed by a truly great scene where Alexander returns to the surface and expresses shock and horror at being able to feel the emotions of his attackers the same way Deanna Troi can, because it makes it difficult to be a warrior. To which Selar responds, “this is why Vulcans prefer peace”.

Geordi comes back and explains that he’s found a way out in the form of a sealed off room with a large energy flow.…

Continue Reading

Myriad Universes: Divided Light Part 1: Companionship

, , , 2

This is far and away among the weirder story arcs in the DC Star Trek: The Next Generation series. And given this is a comic book line that had the Enterprise literally meet Santa Claus in 1987, that goes a way towards saying something. And yet Divided Light is *just* audacious and weird enough to work: Michael Jan Friedman’s signature deft hand at writing the crew and his knack for having his stories’ main themes and motifs reoccur on multiple levels makes this one memorable for all the right reasons instead of all the wrong ones. Perhaps most importantly for our purposes, it marks the beginning of a critical and formative time when the spin-off media, particularly the comic books, steered the course of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
 
Lwaxana Troi is aboard, and is regaling her daughter with stories of her recent tryst with Constable Odo on Deep Space 9. Deanna seems a bit unconvinced that Odo is quite as malleable and impressionable as Lawxana seems to think he is, but as far as Lwxana is concerned Odo is her dream man. But Lwaxana isn’t aboard the Enterprise solely for social reasons; she’s been asked to participate in a diplomatic conference on the third moon of Sakerion, where it is expected that Ergeus, Sakerion’s neighboring civilisation, will petition to join the Federation, thereby bringing a long period of isolationism for that culture to an end. Lwaxana thinks the move would be a strategic gain for the Federation given that Ergeus is on the border of Cardassian territory, but is concerned about stories she’s heard about the brutal Triumvirates that have historically been known to rule Ergeus. Meanwhile in the phaser shooting range, Captain Picard and Commander Riker discuss how the Federation wants the Enterprise to send a contingent of engineering, operations and medical personnel to the conference as well, the idea being to present an “open and friendly image”. The two commanding officers remark that, given this, Ambassador Troi was the best possible choice.
 
In sickbay, Doctors Crusher and Selar are discussing the conference. Bev wants to send Selar over as a representative, to which she eagerly accepts. In the holodeck, Lwaxana, dressed as Snow White, has taken Alexander back to the time of Earth’s dinosaurs. It is casually mentioned in passing that Lwaxana’s powers of telepathy extend to the level of being able to effectively mind-meld with the Enterprise itself. Although Alexander loves the mesozoic adventure, he confesses to Lwaxana that he often feels frustrated that he isn’t allowed near anything “important”, and expresses a desire to visit the diplomatic conference. Lwaxana begins to broach the idea of taking Ms. Kyle’s class (including Alexander) with her to Captain Picard as an “educational opportunity”, but Jean-Luc accepts her proposal before she even finishes proposing it, although he suggests ending Worf and a security detachment with them just in case, to keep everyone safe. Evidently Captain Picard can read minds too.
…

Continue Reading

Flight Simulator: Star Trek: The Next Generation – Future’s Past/Echoes from the Past (Super NES, SEGA Genesis)

, , , 3

Thus begins the odd, postmortem life of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
 
It’s interesting how Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine only seemed to increase their cultural capital after the TV shows themselves were cancelled. 1994-1996 can in some ways be read as the peak of their popularity, with their syndicated reruns capturing the world’s attention almost more than they did in their initial run. Really the only comparable case study on this front would be their predecessor. And the tie-in media and parody works reached a creative fever pitch right alongside them: Although there was a brand new Star Trek TV show and film series in the works, it’s the franchise’s Long 1980s output that seemed to to hold everyone’s imaginations the strongest.
 
This was an odd period in my own life and personal fandom because of this. I’d read “All Good Things…”, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine wasn’t in stock in my corner market anymore. As far as I was concerned those shows were thoroughly done and over…Yet Playmates’ toy lines for them soldiered on for two years more. The DC and Malibu comics series continued to go strong, and I had a whole year’s worth of stories to catch up on. I didn’t watch Star Trek anymore, yet my Star Trek “fandom” was, at least for the short term, just getting stronger. And in 1994, the serious big kid video games started to come out, and I certainly took notice.
 
1994 marked the peak of the fourth console generation, a hardware cycle utterly defined, at least in the West, by the turf war between Nintendo’s Super Famicom (A.K.A. the Super Nintendo Entertainment System) and SEGA’s Mega Drive (A.K.A. the SEGA Genesis). This was a fandom war more or less initiated by SEGA’s North American branch in 1989 when they aggressively marketed the Genesis as the home console for hip, edgy young adults (basically meaning 12-year old boys) in contrast to the NES, which they positioned as, if you’ll excuse the phrasing, a baby’s toy. SEGA of America made their case primarily by comparing (and misrepresenting) internal specs and had an increasingly hard time maintaining this image after 1991 when the Super NES, in almost every measurable way a technically superior machine, was released as a direct competitor to the Genesis. In spite of an archetypal video game industry moral panic kickstarted by Mortal Kombat and enthusiastically pushed by Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman, which briefly saddled Nintendo with a dreaded uncool “kiddie” reputation, they remained the industry leader throughout the fourth generation and are today generally considered the cycle’s “victor” by the sorts of unfortunate and disturbing people who keep track of these things.
But that’s still a year or so away. In 1994 we’re at the cultural, commercial and creative peak of the fourth generation with cult favourite critical darlings like Super Metroid and Final Fantasy VI and the pop culture juggernaut that was Donkey Kong Country dominating industry news and the playground set alike.
…

Continue Reading

Review: The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek

, , , 2

When I was writing my first volume of Vaka Rangi, I was faced with a dilemma on how to frame the book. I have little to no personal or nostalgic connection to the original Star Trek or its animated sequel so my episode-to-episode reactions were by definition going to be mostly as I saw it. But I still wanted to come up with something unique to say about this most important period of Star Trek history, so I initially decided to structure the book around telling as “real” a story about the franchise’s formative years as I could, with a careful eye towards historical mythbusting in general, in particular how it pertained to the shows creator, the ever-mythologized Gene Roddenberry. I soon realised, however, that this was a task far too massive for me to undertake given the scope of the project I had cast, and quickly found myself intimidated and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of conflicting stories and seemingly deliberate disinformation surrounding Roddenberry and Star Trek. While I still hoped to convey a general idea for what Star Trek actually was and was envisioned as being (and I do feel, and hope, I managed some degree of success), the behind-the-scenes stuff became far too complicated a topic for me to tackle with any aspirations of genuine comprehension.

Thankfully, the task was not too overwhelming and intimidating for Lance Parkin, whose new book The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek, is an unauthorized biography of the man in question that sets about clearing the air and getting at the heart of what sort of a man Gene Roddenberry really was, and how he both shaped and was himself in turn shaped by what Star Trek came to represent. Readers of this blog will no doubt know Parkin for his work with Doctor Who, but for those who might not know he’s also an accomplished writer and chronicler in other genre fiction circles. He’s previously written a similar biography of Alan Moore, as well as series guides for both Alias, His Dark Materials and the *entire* Star Trek franchise up through the third season of Enterprise. He’s also contributed to Star Trek Magazine and written a number of interesting critical analyses of the series independently, so he’s well poised to take on the task of retelling the life story of the man who perpetually seems to be at the centre of it all.

The problem, as Parkin himself outlines it in his Introduction, is that there have traditionally only been two ways of looking at Gene Roddenberry. Either he was a prophetic visionary messiah who dreamed a wonderful dream of a utopian future who fought and died for the ideals it stood for, or he was a lying, cheating, manipulative scumbag and self-promoter who saw that a passionate group of fans had taken a throwaway idea of his and turned it into something special and then set about revising history and making everything about himself so that he could cash in on it.…

Continue Reading

Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Wave 2 (Part 2)

, , 0

We also got some new action figures to go along with our new models, all based on stories from the second season. This wave is a healthy mix of variants and new figures (and, like TNG, once again spread out across 1994 and 1995), and really, just about more than anything else from this period, tantalizingly points at how interconnected the worlds of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine really did seemed poised to be at one time. First up, let’s talk about the predictable variants: There’s “Emissary” Jadzia Dax and Doctor Bashir, that is, them in the TNG-style two-piece suits with the polygon design instead of the DS9-style black jumpsuit and open collar shirt. I talked about Dax the first time I did Playmates DS9 because she’s one of my favourite toys in the whole line, expertly re-using the already excellent Duty Uniform Deanna Troi body sculpt. I don’t have Bashir though, because his Wave 1 figure was already pretty good and he feels more superfluous to me. There’s also Q in the DS9 jumpsuit, from “Q-Less”. But really, when it comes to Qs, my advice is still to stick with the TNG Wave 3 judge’s robes one.
 
Q is your biggest hint as to the defining feature of this wave: In a word, Crossover. In fact, almost the entire 1994 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine wave was actually made up of Star Trek: The Next Generation characters-The only actual DS9 figures in this first batch are “Emissary” Dax and Bashir. To complete your “Q-Less” set that you apparently have for some inexplicable reason there’s Vash, who, interestingly enough, gets her one and only Playmates effigy on this side of the wormhole. There’s also, somewhat astoundingly, yet another Lieutenant Thomas Riker! And this is 1994, so well before he made his non-TNG reappearance, so it makes precisely zero sense for him to be here. He is straightforwardly the laziest and most indefensible variant in the Playmates line so far, being a literally just a DS9 Wave 1 Miles O’Brien with a TNG Wave 1 Will Riker head, creating a kitbash the likes of which will never and can never be explained.
 
I mean come on. No one, but no one rolls up the sleeves of their uniform except Miles O’Brien. That is an iconic distinguishing physical tic of the chief’s. Without even getting into questions about why the hell Thomas Riker is on Deep Space 9, that body simply should never have been re-used.
 
 
Thankfully, the remainder of this first batch is considerably more interesting. Miles O’Brien gets a lot of love (his body being repurposed for a nonsensical Thomas Riker notwithstanding): Next year he’ll be outfitted with his dress uniform, but in 1994 he gets an absolutely vital variant: “Chief Miles O’Brien in Starfleet Duty Uniform”. That’s right, this is Transporter Chief Miles O’Brien. Miles O’Brien from Star Trek: The Next Generation. As one of the very first characters to be introduced in the modern age of Star Trek, it’s wonderful to have a representation of Miles from this stage of his career.
…

Continue Reading

Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Wave 2 (Part 1)

, , 1

1994 didn’t see Playmates unveil a lot for fans of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine side of the Paramount lot, but what it did release was more than enough. Because for the first time, Starbase Deep Space 9 was finally immortalized in plastic.

If you wanted a model of the one-time Terok Nor back in the day, your options were pretty limited. There was, of course, the laughably expensive and decadent pewter desk sculpture I talked about in my essay on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine, but you weren’t going to be getting that. AMT/ERTL released a model kit of the station in 1993, but model kits are aimed at a very specific sort of fan, and I was not that sort of fan (I did eventually get one, as well as the 1995 re-release that had a fiber optic lighting system, but my crafting skills are so hopelessly inadequate I was never going to be able to do it justice). No, for the overwhelming majority of people, it was going to be up to Playmates to give us a version of Deep Space 9 we could take home and display on our shelves. It’s kind of surprising this wasn’t a 1993 release: After all, you’d expect people would want the titular space station straight away-The Enterprise was among the first wave of releases for the Star Trek: The Next Generation line. But the Playmates Star Trek: Deep Space Nine line was always smaller and more subdued than its sister, and maybe there was concern during development as to how the new show was going to take with people.
 
 
Even when it did come out, I remember this being a right bastard to track down. I seem to recall only actually seeing it in the toy store once, and I keep kicking myself for not springing for it then and there. I never saw it again until eBay was a thing, by which point it was going for astronomical prices as a collectible. Long story short I finally was able to find one for a more reasonable investment (*in 2009*) and I’m proud to say DS9 now occupies a prominent position in my collection. In terms of detail, this sadly trends to the toyetic side of things, and some of the more subtler nuances of the shooting model have been lost in translation. But, it’s of a piece with the Playmates Enterprise at least. Speaking of! The Deep Space 9 toy actually comes with a little miniature Enterprise that snaps into one of the docking pylons! It’s little touches like this that really endear the Playmates line to me, and to this day this is one of my favourite things about this model.
 
 
Primarily because it demonstrates how intertwined and interconnected Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were supposed to be in the beginning. The Enterprise is featured prominently on the box art, and Deep Space 9 is specifically called a “command post”, which reminds me of those old jumbo GI Joe or Micro Machines playsets you could get to play with all your figures in.
…

Continue Reading

Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation Waves 3 and 4

, , 4

The final group of toys in Playmates’ Star Trek: The Next Generation line (that is, before all of their Star Trek toys were consolidated under one homogeneous brand label) have something of an unusual release history. The third wave released in three parts over the course of 1994, surrounding the premier of the movie Star Trek Generations, with a fourth dropping in the summer of 1995. I love how, as far as Playmates was concerned, Star Trek: The Next Generation fully remained an extent, relevant and marketable brand for at least a full year after the TV series itself went off the air. Even though the show was over, Star Trek: The Next Generation remained very much a present cultural phenomenon for some years after the fact, a theme I’ll be returning to in the remaining chapters of this volume. It almost kind of makes you wish the show itself had been around to bear witness to that, but that’s beside the point tonight. Tonight, it’s all about the toys.
 
And what toys they were! Playmates had already endeared itself to me as the makers of probably the greatest plastic effigies of anything ever, and these waves contained a number of my absolute favourite figures in the whole line. I am combining both of them into one essay, however, because a couple of these batches, particularly the 1995 one, didn’t quite have the same volume of releases as past years and I’ve already covered a great many of them in previous posts in this series. There was just no way I wasn’t going to talk about Tasha Yar, Ro Laren and Duty Uniform Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher in the bridge crew essay, just to name a few notable examples. There were still a lot of new figures, of course, but the first set of releases from these waves continued the pattern from wave 2 by giving us a lot of variants: Aside from Duty Uniform Deanna, we got Commander Riker as a “Malcorian” (from “First Contact”), Geordi as a “Tarchannen III Alien” (from “Identity Crisis”), Worf in a “Starfleet Rescue Outfit” (from “Birthright, Part II) and two figures based on “Unification”: Captain Picard and Commander Data as Romulans.
 
 
I didn’t have any of those figures except Captain Picard, and let me tell you, boy is he ever a boring toy. Although the likeness is absolutely spot-on, you’d expect that from Playmates by now and he has a whopping five points of articulation: Two shoulder joints, two swivel arms and a neck joint. He’s so boring they had to include the “Romulan Disguise Kit” as an “accessory” which, upon careful inspection, seems to mean not just his clothes and facelift, but a generic Starfleet bag with a Romulan insignia on it. Romulan!Picard also suffers the same fate as Guinan and Doctor Crusher (and another figure in this line) by being plagued by the curse of the long jackets: His Romulan hoodie or whatever is a solid chunk of hard moulded plastic, which means any action in the torso or legs area is out of the question.
…

Continue Reading

Hyrule Haeresis 1

, , 6

“’Suppose that truth is a woman-And why not? Aren’t there reasons for suspecting that all philosophers, to the extent that they have been dogmatists, have not really understood women?’ There is thus a residue that philosophy has not known how to read, for which it has not been able to account. When matters become urgent or when truth is at stake, Nietzsche gives this residue a name: woman.”

–Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, as translated by Judith Norman, as cited by Avital Ronell in conversation with Anne Dufourmantelle in Fighting Theory

Zelda no Densetsu (lit. The Legend of Zelda) opens up with the declaration that this is a legend that has been “passed down from generation to generation”.

The Legend of Zelda has thus been, from the very beginning, something from the recesses of our shared memory. The secret history of Zelda is that she truthfully only exists at her purest in an unknowable primordial state lost long ago to the collective dreamtime. Even the “original” Legend of Zelda arrived in its present state shaped by the expectations and experiences of its previous incarnations. It is also, first and foremost, a fairy tale in the most classical sense: It is a coming of age story about a boy becoming a hero and, through doing so, finding his true self.

Not only is The Legend of Zelda a fairy tale, it’s a very specific and particular fairy tale, namely, Super Mario Bros. Designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka were working on Zelda no Densetsu for the Famicom Disk System at the exact same time they were working on Super Mario Bros. for the Famicom (though Super Mario Bros. was to be released first in 1985, a year ahead of Zelda in 1986), and the two titles wound up sharing a great deal of thematic concepts and overtones. One of which is the plot: In both games, a peaceful fantasy kingdom is invaded by an evil wizard from another land. The only person powerful enough to stop the wizard is the kingdom’s princess regent, who is captured and locked away so she can’t fight back. A humble, unassuming everyman steps forth and volunteers to go on a journey to free the princess, repel the invaders and bring peace back to the land.

The first way in which The Legend of Zelda is transformed from its dream-state thus comes about as consequence of being filtered through the lens of Super Mario Bros. And there are certain things irrevocably lost and altered in translation: Most notably, Super Mario Bros., as we have since learned from games like Super Mario Bros. 3 and recent statements from Mr. Miyamoto, is fundamentally a travelling stage show reinterpreted as a video game. There is no constructed “Mario Universe” and the Mario characters are merely a troupe of actors. The basic story of Super Mario Bros. is reiterated in every “serious” mainline Mario game because it is nothing more than a stage show being performed in different venues at different times with different interpretations from the company.…

Continue Reading

«‹ 9 10 11 12 ›»