Link’s Lack Of An Awakening

Okay, so I was in Gamestation today buying the latest issue of ONM, and I decided to have a look at some of the preowned games in there. I noticed that they had a copy of Link’s Awakening. Naturally, I got quite excited, so I just HAD to buy it. When the guy serving me asked for only 99p for it, I thought I’d got a real bargain. However, it was not actually the case, as I discovered when I got home and attempted to play it. At first, I tried playing it on my GBA, to no avail. The screen either went totally blank, or had black lines across it. I tried using Pokémon Yellow in it instead, just to see if the console was playing up. It wasn’t. I then decided to pop it into my Game Boy. It still didn’t work. So basically, I am quite annoyed. I know it only cost me 99p, but I was really looking forward to playing it.

 

Untitled

I meant to post this ages ago, but never mind! At least it is getting done.

Anyway, some of you may have read the entry I wrote about Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak and how it had some LoZ references in it. Well, Nintento Official Magazine also wrote about them in their December 2007 issue! (It was a Legend of Zelda Special Edition) Obviously I got very excited, and planned on blogging about it straight away, but I only had a digital camera with which to get proof. Now I have a scanner and it makes life much easier, so here you go:

 

LoZ OoT

He is blonde, despite what others may say. I think I have probably already won this argument, but I thought I would let everyone know.

I haven’t blogged for quite a while. I’m not sure I can think of anything else significant to say. I guess nothing exciting is happening.

 

Lucky 27

Before you read on, please note that yesterday was the 27th of October. I only realised that this morning. I think it rather adds to the whole coincidence element of this (entirely true) tale. On with the whole purpose of this entry. Yesterday, I ventured out to a social line dancing party (yes, I line dance, and whatever you imagine it is like, I bet that you are completely wrong). The purpose of it was to find out how well I did in the bronze medal test that I took in Septemeber. (It was just a pass, but that is not an important part of the story.) Anyway, at some point during the night, we were told that we could take part in a game of Irish bingo. For those of you that do not know, Irish bingo is similar to normal bingo in that you have a card with numbers on it, but instead of having to get all of your numbers read out, you have to hope that none of your numbers get called out, because if that happens, you are out and have to sit down. My mother bought three tickety-card type things, on for herself, one for my sister, and one for me. At first I decided that I wanted the middle one, but then I changed my mind and asked for the top one. When she gave me the tickety-card thing, I noticed that three of the numbers were 7, my favourite number and the number of children that I would like ideally, 18, the age of some of my lovely, lovely friends, and 27, Mark Greaney’s age. This made me happy, because I like coincidences and I thought it was a rather lovely coincidence that we were playing Irish bingo, and his age was one of my numbers (Mark Greaney is Irish, nice coincidence, except maybe not that nice considering that the BBC website link up there says that it might be called ‘Irish bingo’ disrespectfully, but let’s not think about that). There were also some quite nice number combinations on it, such as 84, 85 and 86, and I think 33 and 44. The numbers started to be called out, and more and more people sat down. Eventually, there were just two of us left standing. Another number was called out… and… the man sat down! I had won! So I am now thirty-five pounds richer, which is quite pleasing. I think I deserved it because most of the people in that room probably earn money through work. It’s nice when things go right for us lazy ones. So, the point of me blogging this is not to show off that I won something, but to share my love of coincidences, and for people to get excited about the links between things, so that I do not feel so silly.

In other news, yesterday, my sister’s boyfriend Chris came round and informed me than an incomplete overworld map for The Legend of Zelda (original NES game) exists. After we did a rather long-winded google search, we finally found a scan of one with the blanks to fill in. After all, it would be less fun to have a complete one and not have to find out what things are for yourself. So now I can play LoZ on Gamecube and actually find my way around.

 In other other news, I bought a Legend of Zelda keyring today.

 

Let me count the ways…

No, not how I love thee. I am talking about the ways in which The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) and Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak (GBA) are similar. Yes, it may sound absolutely ridiculous, but I am being serious.Anyway, I will get to the point. Yesterday I finally completed Ham-Ham Heartbreak, after, I am going to be completely honest, quite a number of trips to Game FAQs, making it the second video game that I have ever completed (the first being Pokémon Ruby, and yes, I know I suck), and I couldn’t help but notice that there were a few extremely obvious Zelda references. As you can imagine, I got very excited, maybe a little too much so. Right. On to the comparison. First of all, in OoT, for those of you who don’t know, in order to become adult Link and basically get the game going properly, because, let’s face it, there is quite a large jump difficulty-wise, at least I found that, but let’s stay on topic. As I was trying to say, before I started rambling and making very little sense, in OoT, you have to collect three spiritual stones; the Kokiri emerald, the Goron ruby and the Zora sapphire, being, as you have probably guessed, green, red and blue, respectively. In Ham-Ham Heartbreak, you have to collect three marbles; one blue, one green, and one red. First similarity. The second similarity is that in OoT, you have to place the aforementioned spiritual stones in these little hole things in the Temple of Time. In Hamtaro, you have to put the marbles into slots in a pedestal. Thirdly, there is an extremely similar looking sword-holding pedestal in both games. So you’re there as child Link in the Temple of Time, and you pull out the sword from the pedestal, to find out that it is the master sword. Yay! And in Hamtaro, you pull the ’sword’ out to discover that it is…. THE LEGENDARY SPOON. Yes, a spoon. And a very useful one too. But anyway. The last similarity is that when you pull the legendary spoon out in Ham-Ham Heartbreak, there is actually Legend of Zelda music playing. Oh yes. In conclusion, Nintendo is fantastic. And they all lived happily ever after. The end.

 In other news, today I bought some castanets in the shape of a frog, and a glow in the dark star with a hat on it.