So I'm playing Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It's an old SNES game, on my evil emulator.* It's pretty good, though the story is a little flat, and the action leaves something to be desired. As a devoted fan of the RPG, I like the richness of gaining experience and choosing skill. That way the game is different for every person who plays it. In LTTP (as the Zelda fans call it), there isn't much of that. The action is hack-and-slash, and any spells you use are the result of items, not chosen skill. Just stuff you pick up along the way. You gain experience in the sense that you become a dab hand at using the boomerang and sword, but otherwise Link is the same little dude throughout the game. Oh, and I miss the group mechanics. Learning how to distribute strengths amongst your characters. I wonder about the people who hold LTTP as their favorite videogame, what it is that this game gives them that other games don't.

Taking that into account, it is a dynamic game with plot twists and things to discover and learn. There are secrets you can discover by being curious, innovative, and observant. For being one of the first games on the SNES, the graphics aren't that bad (though they are no match for the FF's and Seiken Densetsu 3). It has kept me playing, though I'm not dreaming it. (No really. I dreamed about Crono Trigger all the time when I was playing it.)

Number of times I used the word "game" in the previous 2 paragraphs: 8.

So, don't let me spoil it for you, but there's a Light World and a Dark World. Light World is your ordinary everyday, but in Dark World, people appear as their true natures reveal them to be. For example, Link first appears as a pink bunny (because he is gentle and sweet?), while another person appears as a ball "because he is always changing who he is."

And get a load of this: The palace guards dressed in blue, aka policemen? They appear as pigs. Genius.

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I'm playing the emulator because I'm waiting till my roommate is fully moved out before I set up the PS2. I plan on moving around all the furniture in the living room, including the TV and electronics, and not having the PS2 out there means one less set of cords to untangle and disconnect.

But he has moved his bed and his essentials to his new apartment, so he's not actually 'living here' anymore (though he still has tons of stuff in his room and the apartment. God only knows how long that'll take). First order of business: clean the bathroom. Hallelujah.

1:22 a.m. 2004-05-03�