Hyrule Chozo

Hmm that’s going to be pretty tough to find cheaper then that since that game is such a GC classic. We recently picked up Super Smash Brothers Melee and could barely find that anywhere. When we did it was 19.99 still after all these years haha.

I know.  There’s just something about first party Nintendo games that they never seem to come down in price.  I’ve bought canonized classics like Silent Hill 2, Half-Life, Halo, Psychonauts, Okami, and Ico, and never paid more than $10-15, usually much less.  But whenever I look at Mario or Zelda games, it’s like they’re still on the shelf, even if it’s been 20 years.

Favorite snow levels

Christmas is over, but here in Colorado, that means the snow and ice is just getting started.  To make myself feel better, I’ve put together a list of some of my favorite snow levels in all of gaming.  Share some of your favorites, too!

Metroid Prime - Phendrana Drifts

Super Mario 64 - Cold, Cold Mountain

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NES Sophomore Slump

I know this is not a new observation, but the original Nintendo Entertainment System was home to the firsts of a number of successful franchises, but it was also home to some weird, black sheep entries in those franchises, most of which were the second games in their series.  I don’t know what was happening at Nintendo at the time, but they seemed to believe that if you make a really successful game, you should make the sequel completely different than the first one.  Examples:

Legend of Zelda - The original Legend of Zelda was a top-down action game where you fought enemies on the fly and bought things out of caves.  Its sequel, Zelda II: The Adventures of Link, had you travelling the world from a pulled-back, RPG viewpoint until you encountered an enemy, a town or a dungeon, where the view would shift to a side-scrolling perspective.  There were spells, and towns, and even RPG leveling up.  The next game in the series would put everything right back where it was originally, leaving this sequel the odd man out. 

Super Mario Bros. - The famous first game in this series established everything about platforming and the Mushroom Kingdom.  You run from left to right, stomping on enemies and getting coins until you reached the end of the level.  Famously, the sequel, Super Mario Bros. 2, wasn’t even intended as a Mario game.  Nintendo just took a completely different game, slapped Mario characters on it and called it a day.  So, we got a sequel with different characters, different enemies, different worlds, and almost everything removed from the original game.  Most notably, you couldn’t even kill enemies by jumping on them, instead just riding around on them until you could throw a turnip at them.  Weird.  Once again, the third game in the series brought everything back to normal, leaving #2 the oddball.

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