11/22/2006 Previous page


Between this update and the last, I attempted to wire the Wii. I hadn't expected to be doing this, as I don't really have Wi-Fi.....but when I ran the search for a wireless connection on a whim, the Wii actually picked up somebody's.

Hah! Jackpot! ....Until the lock graphic and "Secure connection" messages greeted me, and asked for a password.

I had no idea. I randomly entered in numbers and letters and submitted them, with the expected answer of "Password Incorrect." I figured I could do this every so often and try to get into this guy's internet. My second attempt was to enter the same letters that made up the guy's name.

It worked. "Settings saved! Now connecting." Double Hah! Hooray for lazy security!

After twenty anxious seconds, a disheartening error message appeared, ending my 5-minute adventure. I suddenly remembered what I've read--that the only guaranteed way to get your own Wi-Fi to work is to buy Nintendo's USB attachment. Many people have been wrestling with their own connections, and I can't break into wherever this guy lives and adjust his Wi-Fi to fit what my Wii will take. For now, anyway.

The ending to this game is on YouTube already and I'm still stuck in the beginners' village. It's not my fault they made fishing a requirement. Read on for more on that.....

I know these pics are filled with lines that will give you a headache, but snapping photos of the TV screen is all I've got for now. I'm saving my progress to DVD, and once the DVD is full I'll be able to recapture all these scenes properly. So as you try to decipher what's going on in each screenshot, be assured better images are coming.


"Goat In!" is the new "Shine Get."

One of the first tasks you must complete is herding a bunch of goats into a barn. They practically steer themselves, so it's not that hard a task....the real main point of this exercise is to familiar yourself with your horse's controls.

It's yet another "T & M" family! I think now that "Tal & Mal" is the Zelda series' form of "Cid."

These kids are talking about a slingshot. Not only am I getting the horse right away, but the slingshot as well? Too good. (As for the sword, it has to be SOMEwhere....)
Being unfamiliar with the landscape, I had to hunt for their parents' shop by going in every building. Inside one, I found a dog I could pick up.

"Why are they letting me pick up this dog?" I thought. Then I saw it: the open lit fireplace.

Unfortunately, video game physics kicked in and some invisible force field repelled the dog away from the fireplace when I tried to put it there. They've already got the T rating; what's to be afraid of here?

After exploring a while, and hearing everybody gripe about one problem or another, it became clear that nothing in this village was going to change until I solved them all. The shopkeeper wouldn't sell me the slingshot because she was too worried about her cat. I found the cat, but it refused to be caught.

To catch the cat, I needed a fish from the creek. To get a fish, I needed the fishing pole, which seemed to be nowhere until I helped a woman find her baby's cradle (get this, it was actually on top of a large rock in the middle of a small canyon. How?) She promised me the pole in exchange for my good deed, but I had to follow her to her house to get it. She must be a lot older than she looks, because she's one of the slowest people I've ever met.

I found an area with fish and tried my luck at fishing. After a long, long period of just waiting around and wiggling the line, I thought there must be something I'm missing. One examination of the game manual's "items" section revealed that bee larva was good fishing bait. Somewhere else in the village, I'd passed a man who was throwing rocks at a beehive, trying to get it down. I suppose now I should try as well, but it would require....THE SLINGSHOT, bringing everything full-circle.

But...I can't....GET the blasted slingshot. I'm never getting out of here!

I made one other attempt at something else. When I talked to the man a second time, he threw another rock--and the bees had enough of him and chased him down into the creek. I thought, "perhaps he knocked something loose." There was no bee larva on the ground, so I climbed up to the nest itself--and got stung out of half my hearts. Real brilliant.

11/23/2006



Because it's Thanksgiving, that's why.

You can call it sacrilege, but I enjoy Thanksgiving more than any other holiday, including Christmas. Look at the facts: you get a four-day weekend. You get all the food you can stuff in your face, and all the world premiere movies and specials network TV can dish out. You also get the crackling excitement in the air of the true beginning of the Christmas season. Once Christmas happens, it's all over.

I have more traditions for Thanksgiving weekend than I do for Christmas. I always have to wake up with the dopey parade--I can't miss that stupid parade. It's overcommercialized and unabashedly preschool-skewing, but I have to see which corporations paid for balloon space this year. I have to know how many school buses could fit inside Pikachu's 3000-inch-wide torso, even if I don't recognize the unknown "singing sensation everybody's talking about" who's butchering a 30-year-old song behind him. I have to hear every last one of Al Roker's lame puns. And after it's all over, I have to check out Matt's X-E review of a past parade, unless he still hasn't finished it.

After the parade ends, relatives start arriving with turkey, pumpkin pie and all the obligatory requirements, plus a few Tupperwares full of unknown substances I never touch. The living room TV stays on for the Purina Dog Show, and everybody eats and comments on the poor judging choices and what dogs they love and what dogs they can't stand. One guy said he would love to have a Great Dane named Jesus, because every time he met a nasty person he could yell, "SIC 'EM, JESUS!"

Click the pic to watch my family opinionate as the grand prize winner of the dog show is announced....

After the meal and dessert, I gathered everyone around my own set to demonstrate the Wii's powers. First I inserted my cousin's SD card and manipulated several of her photos. My 91-year-old grandfather was given a pair of rad oversized shades...and then green hair.

I put Wii Sports in, but decided it was lacking a Mii, which I had never made before. I had lots of input for my first attempt, and all our ideas led to this:

A pudgy spiky-haired man with the unusual name of "V M." "Why does he have boobs and why are they floating in front of him?" asked one kid.

We weren't entirely clear on the rules of tennis beyond the rules of Pong, so some of the messages we were getting made no sense to us. One man's match lasted longer than anybody else's because he kept getting the message "Deuce." "YOU'RE a Deuce!!" he finally screamed at the screen.

Click either picture to watch a cousin's wife play Wii Tennis. This was the first time any of us had won the game, though it should be pointed out her victories seemed to be through complete luck.

It was through her that we discovered in Wii Bowling, you can throw the ball backwards into the crowd. The ball always stops before it reaches anyone, though....wasting a great gag opportunity.

Everyone who tried the Wii loved it, and also loved its $250 price--they all swore they were going to find a way to buy one of their own. This day was so fun that it almost didn't need the Wii, but it was a nice thing to have. You can also add to all this the fact that my ISP upgraded my Internet service yesterday to five times its previous speed, for no cost. This is the day that just keeps on giving!

As for the game these pages are named after and supposed to be about....I actually did get out of the village, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out how.

11/24/2006


I solved the bee nest problem, but I needed help. It turns out you have to stand on a tall pillar and whistle into a flower, which summons a hawk, which you guide into the nest with the remote targeting. Kind of cruel on the hawk, but whatever gets the job done.

Hey, I know how you feel--I didn't think of it either.

I was also told how one catches a fish. It's done by yanking the remote up in the air whenever the fishing line bobber dips to its lowest point. ....Nothing in the game told me a fish was on my line when the bobber did that. I assumed fishing worked the same way it did in Ocarina of Time, where I waited around until I felt a tug. This is Nintendo, inventor of Navi; a company that has to inform me whenever a goat goes into the barn with a loud shout of "GOAT IN!!" And yet, for some reason, they didn't feel like adding any kind of rumble or movement to tell me when I had a fish.

But the confusion didn't end there. When I finally caught a fish, the cat began following me. "Aha, perfect, now I can lead it back to its owner," I thought, and walked back to the shop with the cat trailing behind. Yet when I entered the shop, the cat didn't follow, and the owner gave me the same sob story. And when I came back out, the cat was back at the creek again!

I asked for online help a second time. They told me I was supposed to give the fish to the CAT. That made sense, until I tried every button available and found there was nothing that let me give an item to someone else. What....the....

So I went back online a THIRD time, and by now this town and its music were getting rather old. It turns out I'm actually supposed to catch two fish, and upon catching the second one a cutscene would automatically start where the cat bit the fish off my line and ran off with it. Obviously, none of this was intuitive at all. But I finally ended this stupid sequence, and FINALLY, FINALLY BOUGHT THE SLINGSHOT.

"You know this weapon's for kids, right?" the shopkeeper told me when I bought it. I resent that. Open your mind, you cow.

Once the children of the village saw my new slingshot, they begged me to give them a demonstration of my talent with it. This, of course, led to a disguised training exercise where I hit bullseyes and scarecrows.

After this, they confessed they wanted their own slingshots because, like all children, they wanted to hit monkeys with them. A monkey appeared out of the bushes right after that, and Talo was so fed up, he chased after it with malicious intent, slingshot or not. "Oh great, could you go catch him?" the older girl sighed.

I followed the path after Talo, but kind of took my time. The game had finally given me a sword (a lousy wooden one, but a SWORD nonetheless) and I was practicing my sick slick slashing moves on the grass. The Rupee payout wasn't as generous as past Zeldas have been regarding this activity, and this was even more annoying when I veered off the path and met a man who would fill my lantern oil for more money than I had.

I still had some oil, so I could at least make it through the cave ahead. Plus, I could wave the lantern with the B trigger button and light the fire under his pot. Once I did that, he offered me some Nasty Soup. Wow, I don't know what the point of this item is, but not every game will let you collect rancid soup product, so I accepted the offer.

Continuing straight, I entered the cave and found Talo's play sword stick lying on the floor. Uh-oh.

I had to fight a few Deku Babas and burn a couple spider webs to get through the cave, and I thought "this will surely lead to the first dungeon, where I'll rescue Talo!" No such luck; I only emerged in another part of the forest. (The AI is greatly improved from any other 3D Zelda; the Deku Babas will now chomp on your body and shake you like a doll if you let them.)

After I ventured a ways further, I met a mynah bird with a large cranium who told me I was super and that he was selling wares for me to buy. The right jar held a lantern refill, and all I had to do was dip the lantern into the pot.

As I walked out, the bird expected me to pay. Yeah, right, what's HE going to do about it? I ran off as fast as I could with the free oil while the bird got a couple pecks in and cursed loudly into the distance.

I defeated Malo's small-time captors and freed him from his cage. (From the sight of the boulders blocking a doorway behind him, I expect to be coming back here sometime later.) After this the game returned me to the village, where the mayor of the city told me I'd be delivering an important gift to Hyrule Castle. "Maybe you'll even meet Princess Zelda! Ha ha ha!" Yeah, wouldn't that be far-fetched....

Link's galpal, Ilia, spotted a bruise on his horse and griped at me about it, then said she was never letting me take "Epwna" to Hyrule. With that, she led him away.

I know...I probably wasn't the first to name Epona that, and I definitely won't be the last.

The game can't continue if I have no way to ride to Hyrule, so Ilia had to be given a smooth talking-to. She gave in, but gave Link another piece of advice he's obviously going to ignore (see left).

Suddenly, the game got exciting! Three thugs riding wild boars stomped into the spring area and stabbed Ilia with an arrow, then clubbed Link cold and ran off with her!

The thugs blew some kind of horn and a portal to an alternate universe opened up. When Link woke up and chased after them, he was surprised to see a really strange energy doorway in place of what was in the path before!

And when he entered it, you'll never guess what happened....

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