Homebrew of the Month: Ature

Ature

Developer:  Beoran

Available:  (ROM ONLY) Atariage.com

Pulling from the archive again this month as I await some excellent new games to arrive in the post.  Ature was a game I picked up at an East Coast gaming convention back in the days when that was a thing.  The game had just been released and Beoran, the developer, had granted a few folks the rights to distribute physical copies of the game.  I picked up a boxed copy for around $45 American, I believe.  It was very exciting to pick up a brand new game at a convention (this wasn’t quite as common as it is today).  Ature was even more of a thrill because it was an adventure game at a time when those also weren’t really a thing.  And even seven years later, it still holds up as a solid adventure game for your VCS.

What All This Then?

Ature is the story of Signe, a young sword fighter whose family has been tasked with protecting the mystical tree that protects the land.  All was going well until a black ship carrying the evil queen Ikaza landed on Ature’s shores.  Ikaza has threatened to destroy the mystical tree by draining all of its power.  She’s turned everyone except you to stone and has started to use her evil to pervert the land.  You alone must travel far and wide defeating the queen’s minions and solving the dastardly puzzles she has put in place to prevent anyone from overthrowing her rule.  Only by finding the three leaves of the mystic tree can you break the curse and confront Ikaza face-to-face.

Ature is a standard adventure game in the vein of well-loved classics like the Legend of Zelda.  You travel the land using your sword and some limited magical abilities, defeating enemy monsters and seeking out switches and mini-bosses that will open new paths in the world.  Every time you defeat a boss or flip a switch you will be granted access to more of the world, special weapons or powers, and eventually the final showdown with Queen Ikaza.  By defeating enemies you gain experience and increase your combat ability, health bar and magic points.  You can also find helpful items that increase your power.  There is a book that lets you consume MP (called Numen Points in this game) to shoot energy beams from your sword.  There is a shield that protects you from shooting enemies.  And so on.

How Does it Play?

Really, really well.  The world is a pretty decent size, particularly for this era of homebrew.  There are many distinct areas to explore and wide varieties of enemies to fight.  The game follows pretty standard adventure game rules.  You start out with access to a small part of the world and as you defeat enemies or find switches you are granted access to new areas.  These new areas often include power-ups or weapons you will need to gain access to the next area.  The game isn’t linear, however, and you will want to keep checking back on certain areas to see if something new has been unlocked.  You’ll sometimes be able to see an item locked behind a wall that won’t open until much later in the game.

Signe controls just fine.  You can walk with your sword extended to stave off instant attacks when you enter a new screen.    Collision detection with enemy sprites is pretty generous, except with the Invisible Enemy, who is a real pain in the butt.  Defeated foes drop power-ups to restore health and magic points.  Again, all pretty standard stuff, just not stuff you see much of on the Atari 2600.

The game isn’t perfect though and it suffers from a few of the idiosyncrasies of its day.  Not all of the mini-bosses respect the boundaries of the play field, so occasionally you’ll be in a room that passes through the boss room, but is not in the boss area, and the boss will march over and crush you.  Typically this can be avoided just by moving quickly, but it’s something that should have been cleaned up in play testing.  Some rooms are nearly impossible to see on a real TV with real hardware because of the coloring choices.  There are two pink rooms in the Ruby Mountains that are really tough for this reason.  The manual doesn’t tell you enough about the icons in your inventory so that you really understand what you’ve picked up (if what you’ve picked up shows up at all.  In the screenshot below I am very late in the game, on my way to Queen Ikaza, but it’s hard to know fully what I have in my inventory.  I have some kind of cross thing, the Numen Shield (that one is obvious), something that looks like a crown, and what looks like bottom half of E.T.’s telephone.  With some careful study of the gameplay, you can eventually figure out that you have the Numen Sword, Numen Armor, and the two Mystic Books, but a simple item legend in the manual would be helpful.

Let's see I've got 4, uh, things, here.  I'm ready to take on the boss!

These are minor technical details, but they reveal a lack of polish that would otherwise make this game absolute top tier as far as VCS adventure games go.

Whistles and Bells

Well my copy came with a swanky box and instruction manual, but that was seven years ago and the guy I got it from has kind of disappeared from the community, so chances are good that’s not going to be your experience.  However, because the game is open source and the ROM is available, you can always contact Atariage and have them make you a custom cartridge with whatever swanky label, manual and box you want to create and pay for.  The game does feature nice, big graphics with well drawn and thought out play fields and interesting looking enemies and bosses.

Apart from that Ature is exactly what it is: a great game strong on fun and light on spectacle.

Final Assessment

Ature is a great adventure game for the Atari 2600.  It takes about an hour to figure out and beat, especially if you get stuck fighting the Invisible Enemy repeatedly like I do.  There are lots of places and things to explore and tracking down all of the power-ups and abilities is part of the fun.  Once you’ve beaten it, it’s fun to run through it again knowing what you know and seeing how quickly you can save the land of Ature.  After that, you can probably shelve it for a while and then pull it back out once you’ve forgotten every last nook and cranny of the map.  Pretty standard adventure game stuff.  In recent years there have been many more really incredible adventure games for the VCS.  People are finally starting to figure out how to make these kinds of game shine on the Atari, and it’s games like Ature that got us to where we are today.

None shall pass.

Tips and Tricks

Home is Where the Heart(s) Is:  Signe’s home will always have health power-ups.  Leave the screen, return, and the heart will reappear.  This is a big help late in the game when you get defeated and respawn at home.  Several trips back and forth between screens can start you off with full health again.

These Bullets are Too Expensive:  I tend not to use the Book of Striking.  It costs a Numen point every time you use it and enemy movements are pretty erratic in this game, so you aren’t always guaranteed a hit.  I prefer to save my Numen points for healing with the Book of Life.  There is only one place where you must use the Book of Striking to hit a switch that is otherwise unreachable.

I'm not saying where, exactly...

Get Her, Ray!:  Most of the mini-bosses can be bum rushed and taken out with speed.  There are a few that you will want to strategize for, but don’t be afraid to take the very direct approach.

You Can’t See What You Can’t Hit:  The Invisible Enemy is one of the most annoying and troublesome mini-bosses in the game.  You’ll encounter him late in the game near the Sea Shrine.  The only way you’ll know he’s there is A.) you’ll die almost instantly upon entering the screen. OR B.) before you die you’ll see a small dash moving towards you.  That dash is the only indication of where the Invisible Enemy is.  Don’t mistake it for his shadow, because it doesn’t work like that.  Go into the battle with full health and make a dash for the bottom of the screen.  As the dash approaches, stab at it from the bottom. You’ll know you’ve hit it if the dash jerks in one direction or another. If things get tight, run a circle around the dash until you can get back to a “from the bottom” attack stance.  Stab.  Repeat at least 6 times.  It will take some practice, but this is the ONLY way I have been able to defeat the Invisible Enemy.  He’s a pain.

Oy vey, this guy.

So there you have it!  A solid adventure game for the Atari 2600 that might have flown under your radar.  It’s not the flashiest game of its kind, but it’s a lot of fun and is a very welcome addition to an underserved category of games on the VCS.  Legend of Zelda fans will feel right at home exploring the world of Ature and vanquishing the evil Queen Ikaza.  If you missed Ature before, at the very least, download the ROM and give it a look.

The Learning Curve: 5 Hours with River City Ransom

The legendary hype surrounding this game has haunted me since bygone days of yore.  It was a Double Dragon RPG that combined everything you loved about scrolling fighting games and everything you loved about Final Fantasy.  People used to talk about it at school like it was the ultimate game. Yet I never got a chance to play it in its original era. It wasn’t until I was an adult gamer that I managed to track down a copy to finally find out what all the 30 year old buzz was about.  And I couldn’t have been less impressed.  Sure it played like a really great Double Dragon game, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to level up, or what I was supposed to buy at the mall.  It doesn’t help that I didn’t have an instruction manual, but that is easily remedied these days with the internet, so that’s not a valid excuse.  Despite numerous attempts to immerse myself in the world, I just couldn’t get River City Ransom to click, which makes it a perfect candidate for The Learning Curve!  So let’s spend 5 good hours with River City Ransom and see if I can recapture the magic I heard so much about all those years ago…

Hour 1:  

Having played this before, I know the general gist:  You roam the neighborhood fighting gang (the late 80’s high school kind, not the scary late 90’s LBC kind) members and taking their lunch money (who’s the bully now?!).  You can then go to the mall and buy stuff to help you be a better fighter.  A quick run through of the instruction manual confirms all of this, gives some insight to what you might want to buy at the mall, and provides a litany of moves to learn with the promise of more possibilities in the game.  Most importantly it outlines the objective of the game:  defeat the gang bosses, gain access to River City High School and rescue your girlfriend from Slick.  Things are always so much clearer when you read the manual…

That said, the first hour of game play still feels rather pointless.  Every street or area is occupied by a random gang, steadily increasing in difficulty as you progress.  Mini-boss battles are announced only by a change in music and an increased chattiness of the characters.  But ALL battles in this game are COMPLETELY optional.  Don’t want to fight Moose right now?  No big deal, just walk past him and exit the area.  On the one hand, this is kind of great.  You must beat all of the bosses to progress, so you can skip all you want, you’re not getting to the end of the game until you fight them.  One the other hand, this makes it really hard to know where you need to go and what you need to do next.  

The game is also very frustrating out of the gate.  Prepare to “die” a lot.  And your pocket money is cut in half every time you die.  So everything in the game is prohibitively expensive.  One of the keys to success is buying books and gear to improve your fighting stats, but when beating a bad guy nets you 25 cents and the book costs $25 and you die pretty regularly, amassing $25 is a monumental task.  It’s hard enough scraping up enough dough to buy some food to stay alive.  This means that for my first hour I am spending most of my time beating up bad guys, getting my butt kicked, and using all of my savings to eat enough to stay alive.  Sadly, due to the penalty for dying, this is a process of diminishing returns.

Since your stats only improve by eating the right foods, reading the right books or equipping the right gear, “leveling up” is very slow and very tedious.  I spent a great deal of my first hour grinding with very little pay off.

On the up side, the game really is the Double Dragon RPG you always wanted.  The game plays silky smooth and while the combat, at least for now, feels like a lot of button mashing, there are a lot of moves to learn and execute.  I like the design and feel of the game quite a bit, I’m just very frustrated at an hour spent with not much progress.  I managed to defeat the first boss and buy the Arc Circus jump attack, but that’s about it.  Let’s hope Hour 2 brings more progress.

Hour 2:  

Considering my frustration at the lack of progress in Hour 1, I decided to spend all of Hour 2 grinding.  Just good ol’ fashioned, slow and monotonous grinding to try and get enough money to improve my stats, learn some new moves, and get some gear.  It was slow going, but I was able to eat enough stuff to boost a few stats. This is not as easy as it sounds either, because eating certain food will boost your stats, but since it doesn’t happen on the stats screen you don’t really get an appreciation for what improved right away.  Considering the number of food options it is also tricky to remember exactly what food boosts which stat, so I spent a lot of time just eating everything and trying to boost whatever I could.  Eventually I noticed that my weapon stat was getting pretty high, as was my kick stat.  Whatever food I was eating to stay alive was giving me strong upgrades in those departments.

I also bought the Dragon Feet technique which essentially gives you Chun-Li kicking powers.  This is MUCH better than the Arc Circus move and should have been my first purchase.  It makes grinding much, much easier.  As you fight better enemies you make more money, so your buying power increases dramatically, but getting to that point takes a lot of work.  I think I’ve pinpointed this as the Learning Curve for this game, but we shall see.  I’m still only barely covering my food expenses, but slowly I am getting better at combat and improving my cash flow.  I did buy some sneakers and that has improved by kick power.

Not much actual progress towards the goal, though.  I think I may have gone one screen farther than I had in the last hour…

Hour 3:

Do NOT save your money.  Every time you get to a mall, spend it ALL.  When you die you get to keep your items, but your cash is cut in half.  Considering how often I die in this game, trying to save up money, when not actually grinding, is always a losing proposition.  So when you make it to the next mall, buy whatever you need.  Buy take-out food, because you can keep it and use it, even if you die.  That is Lesson #1 from Hour 3.

Lesson #2:  Spam Dragon Feet.  And spam it like crazy.  Even the toughest foes who block it constantly will eventually fall to its rapid barrage.  Also, because my weapon stat is so high: spam weapon attacks.  Basically my strategy during Hour 3 has been to enter a screen, fend off as many bad guys as I can with a bat or whip, then, should one get close enough to knock the weapon free, spam with Dragon Feet until all are dead or I can retrieve my weapon.  This strategy has made the game infinitely easier.

Employing this new cheesy technique I was able to make enough money to buy the Army Boots dramatically improving my kick skill.  I was also able to fight my way to the gates of River City High School, however, I clearly have missed several bosses along the way because the gates remain locked.  Bosses seem to appear after you have cleared all the regular goons from a screen, so I need to go back and clear all the screens to uncover the bosses I have missed.

Also, I went to the sauna, paid $3.50 and got to see Alex’s bare ass.

Ummmm....

Hour 4:

The Boss fights all start with a long winded speech by the boss during which they are immobile.  Use that time to wail on them, pin them against a wall, and blammo! instant win.  At least mostly.

This combined with the spamming strategy from Hour 3 allowed me to beat this game in about 15 minutes during Hour 4.  I tracked down each boss (when you beat a boss, they will tell you where to find the next one), pounced on them as soon as they appeared and started yakking.  Weapons kept the earlier, slower foes at bay, Dragon Feet handled the rest.  Once I got in to the school things got dramatically tougher, but I was still able to take out all three (four really) bosses on two tries with little difficulty.  The increased strength and speed of the foes inside the school took me by surprise the first time, but I went back in with plenty of food to keep me going and pretty much walked to the end on the back of spamming Dragon Feet.

Hour 5:  

With River City Ransom beaten I decided to use my extra hour to play a little Adventure of Link.  It’s been a few years and I’m WAY rustier than I used to be at this game.  Once upon a time I could beat it in a single sitting and usually with only one, maybe two continues.  Now I find myself exploring the palaces like it’s the first time and I’m already 7 continues deep.  With my 5th hour I was able to take out the fourth palace and get the general exploration of the Eastern Continent completed.  Love this game!

Brave New World!

Dating in Hyrule is super easy!

I like to pretend this guy is the Evil Magician from story in the Instruction Manual

Final Appraisal:  

I totally get it.  I can totally see the charm of this game.  It truly is a Double Dragon RPG and once you understand how to progress against the bosses and how to grind for money, it’s a lot of fun.  However, it is also EXTREMELY short.  Knowing what I know now, I’m willing to bet I could beat it in under 2 hours.  Buy Dragon Feet, grind while spamming DF to amass enough money to buy the army boots and boost kick stat, beat all bosses, THE END.  But I now completely understand the charm of the game and why so many people like it.  

Learning Curve:  

Even though it took me 3 hours to really get a feel for what’s going on, I’m going to cut that in half and say that you can get over the learning curve in this game in 1.5 hours.  I feel it would take the uninitiated that long to get used to the way the combat works, grind their way up to a level of competency, and get a feel for how to best use trips to the mall.  Just make sure you read the instruction manual first.  Once you get over the learning curve, this game won’t take long to beat.

(Editor's Note:  As a mini-proof, I was able to beat all of the bosses and the game in about 10 minutes while taking screenshots for this article, so add about an hour of grinding, and I think it's an easy beat)

Will I Finish It?  

Already did.  Will I play it again?  Most definitely.  I can easily see River City Ransom being a fun afternoon’s diversion in much the same way I play through something like Castlevania or Legend of Zelda.  Great game.  Although I will say it’s worth finishing in a single sitting because it has a ridiculously long password for saving your game…

And this password doesn't even include the ridiculous punctuation some of the letters have!

A Closer Look at the Legend of Zelda: Outlands

Only recently have I been enlightened to the fact that there is and has been a thriving homebrew and hack community within the world of the NES.  Long time readers know that I am a huge booster for the Atari 2600 homebrew community, so naturally, the news that the NES also enjoyed such treatment piqued my interest.  Of particular buzz is a hack that everyone hails as a masterpiece: The Legend of Zelda: Outlands.

Lauded as the natural successor to the Adventure of Link (and probably taking place somwhere around the time of Link's Awakening), Outlands takes place in the wilds that exist outside the kingdom of Hyrule.  Link has ended up there, bereft of his weapons and tools, following Zelda who had entered a portal that is the only way into or out of the Outlands.  It seems this strange territory is in terrible jeopardy.  The Thunderbird, denizen of the Great Palace in Adventure of Link, has escaped his defeat at Link's hand and has stolen the Triforce of Power!  The Thunderbird is now threatening the relative peace of the Outlands from his hidden stronghold.  Link's mission is to seek out the 8 Tetrarch Fairies, unbind the spell that seals the Thunderbird's fortress and take back the Triforce of Power.  It's not going to be easy, though.  Things in the Outlands are quite different from things in Hyrule and Link must search far and wide if he is to recover his possessions and free the Tetrarch Fairies.

EGADS!!!

LoZ: Outlands is a comprehensive hack of the original Legend of Zelda.  Pretty much everything you know has been changed.  The world map is completely different, the locations of all items, enemies and labyrinths have been changed.  Enemy, NPC, and item sprites have been given an update as well as aspects of the scenery.  The core gameplay is the same: find 8 items and a special weapon, enter the final dungeon and defeat the boss.  The structure of the adventure that accomplishes this, however, has been rather radically altered.  The biggest question, in my mind anyway when I first heard of Outlands, is: has the game been changed significantly enough to make this more than just a new coat of paint on an old horse? (and why are we painting a horse in the first place?)

Overall, I think the answer is "yes."  The hack does many, many wonderful things to create a whole new world and adventure for our friend Link.  However, there are a few areas where the hack falls short of perfection.  It is the purpose of this Closer Look to highlight the many things that LoZ: Outlands does right, and to analyze those places where it misses the mark.  As always, I am coming at this from a fairly neutral perspective.  I have a deep seated love for the original Legend of Zelda and the entire Zelda series and mythos.  I go into this game with only the knowledge provided in the exceptional instruction manual and the overwhelmingly positive buzz that has surrounded the hack in the ten years (!) since its creation.  As this is clearly the labor of love of a member of the classic gaming community, I would like to close this introduction with a hearty and heartfelt appreciation for the time and temerity that it took to make this hack.  Your hard work is greatly respected.

What the Hack Gets Right

We'll start off with the things that Outlands gets right, and there are so many cool things that this hack knocks clean out of the park.

Bagu, you say?

 Retro-fitting  If you took a big fat bucket of charm and dumped it all over this game, the label on that bucket would read "retro-fitting."  I have no idea what that means, but perhaps the most striking thing about this hack is how successfully the programmer has taken beloved aspects of subsequent Zelda offerings and integrated them in the confines of the original LoZ.  Small touches like boulders which now resemble the liftable stones from Link to the Past and the inclusion of handy gloves and ocarinas are just the tip of the iceberg.  The Outlands are populated by familiar faces such as the Gerudo and Gorons which add a layer of depth that the original LoZ only hinted at with its occasional merchant or old lady living in caves.  Of course, at that time the legendary races that populate the Zelda universe were yet to be invented (with perhaps the exclusion of the Zora or Zola...), and it is only through the magic of retro-fitting that these peoples can now take up residence in the 8-bit world.  Furthermore, the labyrinths have been given the themes and colors of what are now classic dungeon types first made famous in Ocarina of Time.  In seeking out the Tetrarch Fairies, you'll plunder a Water Labyrinth, Desert Labyrinth, Spirit Labyrinth, Forest Labyrinth, and so on.  All very cool touches that somehow reach forward in time and give the Zelda fan a twinge of nostalgia.  Another nice touch is that the programmer didn't feel the need to include everything from future Zelda stories, but just enough to firmly plant Outlands into the mythos.  Outlands is worth playing just to ferret out of all these nice touches.

The Desert Temple

Bring a ladder to the Water Temple!

Fairy by the waterfall, very cool!

Map Revision  You may have memorized the old Hyrule map backwards and forwards, for both quests, but you can throw all of that out the window.  The geography of the Outlands is radically different from the Hyrule you know.  Oh sure, there are still bushes to burn and rocks to shove around, but the layout of the land is like nothing you have seen.  As a matter of fact, when the game opens you'll only have access to about 30% of the total world, unlike in LoZ where you can pretty much go everywhere right from the start. (more on this aspect of the topography in a minute).  In the redesign there is a closer attention to creating distinct areas of the Outlands.  There is an icy maze of crystal, a shadowy desert, and foreboding red mountains to explore along with the usual assortment of forests, graveyards, and bodies of water.  As icing on the cake, the landscape is peppered with fairy statues.  The hack really excels at taking the familiar terrain of old Hyrule and turning it into its own land. The Labyrinths have also undergone some nice improvements.  The are basic cosmetic changes to the walls and doorways, but there are more substantial changes to the placement of objects and obstacles in rooms that make the labyrinths feel very fresh.


New Enemies  As part of the retro-fitting, there are many new, yet familiar foes to do battle with in the Outlands.  You'll recognize classic LoZ enemies like Goriyas and Wizzrobes, but you'll also see enemies from other games like bots and lowders from AoL.  As an added touch, all of the bosses have been given a face-lift as well.  Giant Stalfos that shoot magic, huge cycloptic blobs that ooze across the floor, and a Wizzrobe Master that is a dead-ringer for the evil Magician Carock from AoL all await you.  Bear in mind that this is merely a hack, so the key to defeating these bosses are exactly the same as their LoZ counterparts, but that doesn't make seeing them for the first time any less exciting!

New Formula The original LoZ was wide open at the same time that it was straight forward.  On the one hand, you could roam the entire world and see just about everything; on the other, the item you found in one labyrinth often played into some aspect of the next.  Outlands eschews that formula for something a little less linear while opening larger sections of the world as the game progresses.  Not every labyrinth contains a new item or tool.  Some labyrinths have more than one heart container and you don't always find them in the wake of defeating a boss.  The captured Tetrarch Fairies are sometimes right inside the door of the labyrinth and sometimes hidden in rooms not even located on the map.  While some things operate the same, trade Bagu's note for the ability to buy medicine, you'll not get everything the way you did in LoZ; you'll have to buy the white sword from a Goron salesman instead of earning it with heart containers. Expect trickery from the get-go and don't assume that the thing you need is waiting for you around the next bend.  Case in point, you'll not be able to complete the first labyrinth without finding a hidden item in the third that lets you get an item from the second which in turn grants you access to the fourth wherein you can find the weapon that will allow you to complete the first. Oh, and you'll not find the wooden sword until you locate and venture into the first labyrinth to even the game started!  This new formula makes a great challenge and gives a fresh take on an old adventure.  (that said, it's not all roses and birthday cake, as you'll see in the next section)

Zelda is along for the adventure and appears in the labyrinths to give you important items and information!

Innovation Finally, perhaps the most impressive aspect of LoZ: Outlands are the innovations added by the programmer.  I know I said earlier that this was a hack, but somehow the programmer managed to sneak in a few new tricks.  The biggest and most influential new feature is the use of one-way passages. These passages come in a couple of shapes and sizes, the least of which are rock walls that Link can pass through in one direction, but not the other.  The flashier passages come at the hands of devilish wizzrobes who can either transport Link to just the right place or exactly where he doesn't want to be.  Learning these passages will be essential to success in your quest and will open the game up in very new and exciting ways.  Innovations like this in a hack are very welcome surprises!

And now, the other shoe...

Where the Hack Misses the Mark

This is a very, very ugly place to be

Difficulty  My first real problem with Outlands is that the difficulty never seems to ramp.  Unlike the original LoZ, in which the enemies became more powerful as you explored the far reaches of the world, and the dungeons more treacherous as you gathered more and more Triforce, Outlands' difficulty peaks right at the very beginning and has no where to go after that.  You start the game with no offensive capability and must explore a good portion of the available world in order to locate the first labyrinth and therein, the wooden sword. This wandering results in lots of early deaths at the arrows and stones of the overland foes and is unnecessarily difficult.  On the reverse, once the white sword is obtained and the fourth labyrinth is breached, the difficulty actually drops off considerably, only seeing a slight resurgence in the final two labyrinths.  There has been an effort to overload many of the screens with a wealth of enemies, but this lends more to the annoyance factor than the difficulty.  There are certain choke points in the game that are maddening early on, like the coast line with the dock, that become pedestrian after a few necessary items are acquired; with the ladder it can be bypassed entirely.  The wizzrobes that inhabit Ganon's Mountains are plentiful and annoying, but not as terribly troublesome when you approach with the Goron shield and red tunic.
The biggest problem with this imbalance of difficulty is that it kills the fun factor very quickly for the player, even a seasoned Zelda fan like myself.  I don't want to wander around and be killed ten times just trying to find my damn sword.  It gets old fast. I have heard tell the second quest multiplies the difficulty exponentially.  If this be the case, I would hope for better balance in it (and more on this to come).

Change for Change's Sake is not always a Good Thing  For all of the delightful graphic changes that make this game so very special, there are also some changes that simply do not make sense and create discord in an otherwise respectful re-imagining.  What is the thought behind exchanging Keese for Peahats?  Is there logic in Like-Likes that split into Dark Fairies or Pols Voice that divide into Peahats? These changes are not only unusual, but are in defiance of standards set forth by the Zelda Universe.   Peahats are generally regarded as giant creatures that require all of outdoors to soar the sky, only to be attacked when they land.  They do not fit in the underground, despite the programmer's attempt to explain this away in the manual.  And there is absolutely no sense in the idea that a Pols Voice would split into two peahats!  The hacked Like-Likes, called "Unlike-Likes" do not leech unto Link and steal his shield (that honor is now bestowed upon the red Zols), but instead split meekly into dark fairies (which are cool new enemies, but make little sense to be contained within the purple pancake monsters).  There is nothing in the Zelda mythos that reconciles these madcap changes. Furthermore, smaller changes also don't make much good sense either.  There is needless swapping of sprites in the case of deelers for octoroks and octorocks (AoL versions) for river Zolas.  These small swaps seem inconsequential, but if so, then why make them?  I would much rather see land-based octoroks and some new sea creature plaguing me from the water's edge, than to see these throwaway alterations.  Another senseless swap is the exchange of Wizzrobes and Lynels.  Not so much for the placement of either, but for the haphazard nature of the swap.  The programmer thus far has shown absolute brilliance in his ability to alter the game's mechanics to his will, yet this change lacks any depth and the result is a curious betrayal of characterization.  Are we to believe that because the wizzrobes now roam the surface, they can no longer become immaterial and skulk through the scenery as they did in the labyrinths?  Perhaps it is the sunlight that does them in? And have they forsaken their deadly magical rays for mystic bolts shaped like daggers?  To what end?  Likewise, the Lynels, by virtue of being underground have suddenly revealed the ability to traverse walls and blast Link with devastating spells?  I don't see a problem bringing the wizzrobes into the light or casting the Lynels into the pit, but why not take a few extra pains to make the exchange complete and keep both races in the manner to which they are known?  Or even better still, to grant them new Outland abilities that do more than simply juxtapose those well known in Hyrule?  If the full change could not be accomplished, then perhaps it would have been best to leave things as they were. A similar case can be made for the Wall Masters who have also been relocated to the overworld and have taken on the behavior of ghinis.  This problem is compounded by the fact that there seems to be no way to actually destroy the Wall Masters that are generated from touching the gravestones.  This makes travel in the Graveyard of Serenity a chore.  (on the reverse, the substitution of the new enemy Cages for the subterranean Wall Masters is exceptionally well done, if entirely underused).  I wouldn't have minded seeing a few ghinis in the labyrinths...

With so many amazing graphic enhancements in Outlands, these aberrations are confusing and disappointing.  The programmer has demonstrated a loving appreciation for the Zelda mythos and extraordinary attention to detail, but these maligned changes seem needless and incomplete.

Yes, but where is level 6??!!

If You're Going to Kiss Me, Do It  Given the challenge of the game, the programmer does throw a few bread crumbs to ease the burden of locating the well hidden secrets of the Outlands.  In the first four labyrinths, Zelda will appear and provide a valuable clue as to the location of the next labyrinth's entrance.  These clues are often just telling enough to point you in the right direction without plainly telling you where the entrance is.  And then, after completing the fourth labyrinth, it is over. You'll get absolutely no help whatsover finding the entrance to the sixth or seventh labyrinth.  None.  As a matter of fact, the sixth labyrinth is so contemptuously tucked away in a forgotten corner of the overworld that I nearly deserted the game over its discovery.  I cannot discern the motivation to lead the player so far along and then simply turn them out on their own when the quest is in full swing.  Thankfully, the clues resume in the seventh labyrinth, but by then it is probably too late as the search for the previous two labyrinths has most likely uncovered the entrances to the final two.  I really like the inclusion of the clues, but their sudden disappearance mid-quest seems cruel and unnecessary.  The result is a lot of time spent endlessly wandering the countryside, burning every bush, bombing every wall, and pushing every stone.  While the original LoZ featured some of this, I never had that much trouble finding the essential stuff. (I admit there may be clues in Labyrinths 5 and 6, but I scoured them pretty completely and found nothing.)

This is the entrance to the 6th Labyrinth.  Screw you Outlands!

Brave New World, What You Can See of It  As I mentioned earlier, when the game begins you only have access to about 30% of the entire overworld.  Certain areas can only be accessed once the raft or ladder have been obtained and that takes a while.  The result is a world that is very confining early on.  There is a real sense of accomplishment once you are able to open the world up a bit, but the difference is jarring when you are used to the original LoZ where the entire world is yours to explore.  This is a minor quibble, but when coupled with the difficulty disparity mentioned above it makes your first few hours in the Outlands a touch frustrating.

Labyrinths, I Hardly Knew Ye  In the section above I praised the face-lift given to the labyrinths in terms of their appearance and the smart use of retro-fitting, however there is one area in which the newly revamped labyrinths fall short of their well designed predecessors.  The labyrinths in the original LoZ's first quest were all shaped like animals or other recognizable shapes.  The second quest's labyrinths spelled out "ZELDA" and then got nasty.  In Outlands, most of the labyrinths aren't shaped like anything in particular, and many of them look like the skeletal remains of labyrinths from the original. (looking at you Dragon labyrinth that shows up again as Level 4...).  Again, for a hack that changes so many great things so completely, to leave this kind of detail unfinished is disappointing and unexpected.  This might seem like a small nit to pick, but if you got the most incredible ice cream sundae and there was no whipped cream, I think you'd feel a little let down (you can have that damned cherry, I have no use for it).

Final Look

Anyone who truly loves The Legend of Zelda, will find LoZ: Outlands a well-crafted re-imaging of the classic adventure.  Great pains have been taken to shape the clay that molded the original game and transform it into something very fresh and new.  The greatest delight is found in the exceptional retro-fitting and innovations that enhance the basic game engine.  The challenge level is greatly improved and is on par with the difficulty found in the original game's Second Quest.  The hack is not quite perfect, but the troublesome elements would only turn off those not intimately acquainted with the original game, and those people are clearly not the target audience for this hack.  Seasoned Zelda players will tough out the imperfections and be rewarded with a gaming experience that both invokes nostalgia and introduces new levels of challenge. I played The Legend of Zelda: Outlands on an emulator, but it is available on cartridge as well and I hope to one day acquire it for my collection and so that I may tackle it the way it is meant to be played, on the actual hardware.  After all, I never found the Master Sword or Book of Mudora in my first outing.  And I made a stab at the second quest, but got so annoyed because the second go round feels like it has been made overly difficult for difficulty's sake alone.  I get the challenge of scouring 4 labyrinths armed with nothing just to find the wooden sword, I appreciate just how hard it is to defeat a four-headed Gleeok with only a wooden sword and the green tunic, but there is only so much repeated beating you can take before all of that loses its charm.  I like a challenge, but I also like to have fun. Maybe having the game on cartridge will inspire me further...

You have to admit, that Thunderbird looks cool in the final Labyrinth!

(please note, some images in this article have been taken from the Instruction Manual provided with the download of the hack and credit for them goes to the original programmer)