and All Consoles

With all the hours I spent playing games from the Legend of Zelda series, I could have learned to speak a language fluently, or could have gotten a Master’s Degree in nuclear engineering, but no matter.  It was fun and engaging.  Zelda is the granddaddy of all adventure games as far as I’m concerned, and the new Wii A Link To The Past brings it all back.  Now, you can invest more of your life into exploring Hyrule!

Now receiving transmission… it’s a telepathic message from Zelda again!  Your mission is to find the Master Sword, then descend into the Dark World to do battle with the fearsome Ganon.  Defeating Ganon will bring peace back to Hyrule and, who knows, maybe Link and Zelda have a chance after all.  Eh?  Know what I’m saying?

But the real, exciting, totally new, super-cool feature of the new game is its multiplayer setting.  It’s called “Four Swords.”  You and up to three of your swashbuckling buddies can play the game together.  Four Swords is a totally different mission.  You get a message from Triforce, and the levels are set up so that you have to cooperate with each other to beat them.

In the Four Swords mode, you not only fight, but also have to solve puzzles.  For these, you have to work together with your friends.  You also collect rupees, just like in the original game, so you have a chance to compete with one another too.

Like all the games in the series, you meet strange men in caves who give you tips and sell you things.  You get crazy abilities from things you find.  You battle your way through the depths of Hyrule to get keys that open doors to the places you need to go.  One of the magical items that you use is a Magic Mirror that allows you to teleport from the Light to the Dark Worlds.

The graphics look great, and the music is fantastic.  It has the classic graphics from the old game.  They haven’t changed a thing, which makes it kind of charming.  The music is new, though, and it’s just as cool as you would expect from a new Zelda game.

One thing that’s caused us to lose hours of our life with Zelda games is that they are long.  A Link To The Past is no exception.  It takes forever to get through the whole game, so it’ll suck you in.  And, once you beat it, it’s been so long since you first started it, that you’re ready to go back through it all over again.  If you buy this game, you might as well take a lengthy vacation from work and hang up your social obligations for a while.  It’s engrossing.

A Link To The Past is the third Zelda game to be released on Wii in a relatively short time, but it is definitely the best of the three.  It was released some time ago on the Game Boy, but other than that, it hasn’t been available.  It’s definitely worth the money, especially if you’re a lifelong Zelda fan like me.

Nintendo has already had great success with the release of its new Wii gaming console. Of course, as soon as the first games were released and popularized, hackers started trying to find ways to create “backups” of these titles. Of course, by backups, they really mean “illegal copies”. Besides being illiegal and unethical, creating bootleg copies of games undermine the efforts of hard-working legitimate game developers and raise the cost of production for new titles. Fortunately, Nintendo has made it very difficult to crack their games, as the following recent efforts prove.

Attempt #1: The “GOD/WOD Unscrambler”

Recently, someone claiming to be an engineering student released what was supposedly a Windows application that could copy Wii games. He says that the app will take the data from any Wii title and dump it onto your PC as an ISO file. Supposedly, his program works similar to DVD ripping programs and if you doubt it you can check the source code as he released it publicly.

The problem? Since there’s no Wii mod chip or emulator, there’s no way to test and find out if the ISO files created work. Furthermore, anyone who downloads and runs his app takes the risk that he’s actually just trying to poison your PC with malicious code.

Attempt #2: The So Called “Wii Disc Dumper”

Any fool brave enough to use a trademark as powerful as one owned by Nintendo in the name of a program that claims to steal content certainly deserves a mention here. This program is supposed to be able to rip your Wii titles straight to a DVD-R for playing later on.

Of course, the developer states that it only works with several specific models of LG DVD drives. Also, it takes at least 50 hours – that’s right, more than two full days – to dump one title. Then, once you’ve wasted all that time, you still just have a DVD with data on it that you can’t test, because again, there is no mod-chip for the Wii that will allow you to play burned games.

If only you spent those fifty hours doing legitimate work at a real job, you would have earned enough to buy all the latest Wii titles legally. Also, you would have been supporting all those game developers whose hard work and creativity provide this form of entertainment for you.

Attempt #3: The SD Card Hack

There’s also a popular video over at YouTube that supposedly shows someone playing a burned copy of Zelda: Twightlight Princess. Apparently, they use a combination of a burned DVD-R dump of the original title, plus an SD card with some special mod on it that tricks the Wii into playing the ripped disc.

This video was quickly debunked though by those watching it. Turns out, the guy likely had another Wii plugged into the TV set that was running a legit copy of the game. So much for that illusion.

Eventually of course, the hackers will likely find a way to quickly and easily rip illegal copies of Nintendo Wii games, and develop a mod chip that will allow you to play the burned copies on your Wii. Hopefully though, Nintendo will make life as difficult as possible for these thieves and do their best to protect the hard work of the game creators.