With the month of October in full swing and Halloween just around the bend, I thought I'd remind the you guys about the old story of the cursed Majora's Mask cartridge...

*holds flashlight under face and grins menacingly*


{ Artwork by WintersKnight }

Many, many years ago (September of 2010 to be exact), there was a dude who was out garage sailing, on the hunt for old N64 games to play on a system he got from a friend.

After finding a few classics from a few different places for a good price, he runs into a creepy, cataract eyed old man selling some effed up looking paintings on his front lawn. The old man runs into the house and comes out with a plain grey, unlabeled N64 cartridge with nothing but "Majora" markered on the front of it & the old man gives the kid the game free of charge.

Thinking "well that's pretty weird", the kid brings the game home, and after popping it into his console, quickly realizes that this is no ordinary copy of Majora's Mask.

The game has only one save file, simply named "Ben". The old man told him that the game was previously owned by a kid named Ben, so thinking nothing of it he deletes the file and starts one of his own, and names it "Link".

He starts playing his new file, and everything is mostly normal, minus a few weird glitches, non playable characters sometimes calling him Link, and other times calling him Ben. Thinking it was just a weird glitch or something, he mostly ignores it.

After getting closer to the end of the first temple, he realizes that he might not have enough time to finish before the end of the third day. So he does the Fourth Day glitch and everything gets pretty crazy from there.

All of a sudden he is whisked away into a terrifying, alternate version of Termina (Majora's Mask's version of Hyrule for people who haven't played the game).

Missing textures, reversed music, and a population-less town square occupy the game's Clock Town rather than the happy cheerfulness of the normal version of the game. Check out the video embedded below to get a better idea of exactly what the game plays like.



---

I don't want to share exactly what happens in the rest of the story here, because frankly I don't think I could convey how effed up it really is in my own words. I highly recommend you head over to where the ghost story was originally shared here and read it yourself. It's a long read, but totally worth it.

Every once in a while I like to go back and read it. Especially at this time of year, as the world's natural color fades to grey, the leaves fall off the trees, and everything is just a little creepier looking.

What do you guys think? Is the tale of the haunted Majora's Mask game really true? Or just an elaborate hoax? I know I like to think of it as real, if only just to add a little extra mystery to one of Nintendo's riskiest (& most abstract) games they've ever released. And especially with everyone wanting a MM remake on the 3DS, I think this is the perfect time to start talking about the classic game again.

The fact that E3 exists really amazes me.

The fact that our society has such an excess of "needs" that we can warrant and justify to ourselves that a convention of E3's size and sheer magnitude can exist for the sole purpose of videogames is kind of hilarious to me. Over 45,000 people flew in to LA last year from all over the world just so that they could pile into a packed convention center, play some games, stare at some booth babes, and then blog about it.

It's fucking awesome.

I had two big events that I would look forward to as a kid: Christmas, and E3. I remember my brother and I would count down the days until Nintendo's big E3 press conference (because really, who really cares about what Sony and MS have to show off :P), like literally drawing "X"s on my calendar with a big red Sharpie, getting more and more excited as the conference would get closer.

We didn't have internet access at our house until just a couple years ago, so the only way we got to the see whole "news" side of the gaming industry was through my Nintendo Power subscription and Morgan Webb & Adam Sessler on X-Play. And G4 has always had really good coverage of E3. They would have on show demos with the developers as guests, and lots of cool features and funny videos and stuff. My mom was even cool enough to let me skip out on school a couple times to let me stay home and keep up with all the hubbub going on on TV.

When I think about it, E3 is an escape. It's easy to just lose yourself in the excitement of it all. Watching the (almost celebrity like) game developers get up on their stages and talk about the things that they've been working their butts off on for the last year is exciting! Remember when Nintendo showed off the first trailer for Twilight Princess? I do! EXCITING! (I took the liberty of embedding said video for your trailer watching pleasure below.)



Moral of the story is, kids: E3 is just as exciting for me now as it was when I was a kid. I can't wait to see what Project Cafe is actually going to be like. I can't wait to see the hilariously bad jokes Jack Tretton is going to make regarding the PR fiasco some people like to refer to as "PSN".

And most of all, I can't wait to see Cammie Dunnaway make a complete ass out of herself on that stage, pretending that she knows shit all about videogames.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a fun, addictive videogame with an extremely creative gameplay premise behind it and a story that completely draws the player in and holds him there.

I've been a fan of the series ever since Curious Village was released back in 2008. I love everything about the games. From the cool European setting, to the hand drawn environments, to the stylized character designs. Unwound Future doesn't disappoint at all.

I don't think I would say it's better than the previous two games, because the game is pretty much is just the same a chapter based puzzle game for the DS starring a detective and his assistant in which they act gentlemanly and help people solve mysteries. 

And that's no problem at all. Because the game accomplishes that goal perfectly. The story feels like it's always moving ahead. The puzzles are designed so that they seem hard at first, but once you think about it for a while the answer is apparent. There's kind of that "aha!" moment ya know? And if you can't get a puzzle right away, it get's stored so you can go Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a fun, addictive videogame with an extremely creative gameplay premise behind it and a story that completely draws the player in and holds him there. I've been a fan of the series ever since Curious Village was released back in 2008. I love everything about the games. From the cool European setting, to the hand drawn environments, to the stylized character designs. Unwound Future doesn't disappoint at all. I don't think I would say it's better than the previous two games, because the game is pretty much is just the same thing: a chapter based puzzle game for the DS starring a detective and his assistant in which they act gentlemanly and help people solve mysteries.  And that's no problem at all. Because the game accomplishes that goal perfectly. The story feels like it's always moving ahead. The puzzles are designed so that they seem hard at first, but once you think about it for a while the answer is apparent. There's kind of that "aha!" moment ya know? And if you can't get a puzzle right away, it get's stored so you can go back and complete it later.  I'm damn ready for the 3DS to come out, but it looks like there's a bit of life left in the DS yet. Bottom line is, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is fucking awesome and you should play it. TL;DR version: Play the damn game already!

Let's just play pretend for a bit... let's just pretend that we live in an alternate universe. An alternate universe where the current state of the videogames industry was dramatically altered.

Let's pretend that the three big game console makers, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft decided to never come out with the PS3, Wii, or 360. What if the main three home consoles were - in 2010 - still the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox? How would the industry be different? Would videogames be as popular as they are now? What kind of games would be coming out right now? There really is no way that we could know for sure what it would be like, and it doesn't really matter anyway. But it really is fun to think about and guess what our favourite interactive entertainment medium would be like under said circumstances.

Think back to some of everyone's favourite games of last generation. Shadow of the Colossus, Zelda: Wind Waker, Final Fantasy XII, Resident Evil 4. All these games are absolute masterpieces, and if developers could make amazing games like these back then, imagine if they were still using the same hardware now. They would have the process of making videogames on last-gen systems perfected. I imagine there would be some unbelievably creative and different games being released now.

I would imagine that the cost of making games would be much cheaper as well. There were a lot of really cool, underrated, weird games last generation. The cult favourites like Rez on the PS2, Chibi-Robo on the GameCube, the Katamari games, Gitaroo Man, and of course the Persona series. Due to the lower cost of developing games, publishers could invest more money into smaller developer studios to create some really cool new gameplay ideas that just couldn't be possible on the 360, and PS3 because of how expensive they are to develop for.

(That last paragraph actually doesn't really apply at all if you think about the cool stuff coming out via digital distribution on Xbox LIVE Arcade, WiiWare, and the PlayStation network. Some of my favourite games have only been released as downloads. Braid, Machinarium, and of course the Bit.Trip games are all amazing.)

I hate to say it, but if Nintendo never did release the Wii, they probably wouldn't be doing as well as they are now. When it comes to sales, the GameCube is considered Nintendo's worst console of all time, and the system put a black spot on many gamer's minds. Since there wasn't nearly as many GameCubes sold as PS2s, Nintendo really did "lose" last generation, but I honestly have to say that the GameCube was my favourite system.

Nintendo made some truly spectacular games for the GameCube: Super Mario Sunshine, both the Pikmin games, Mario Kart: Double Dash, both the Metroid Prime games, and of course Zelda: Wind Waker. What if Nintendo never came out with the Wii and spent so much time and money focusing on minigame collections? All the money they used to make Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Sports, and Wii Music could have went to making actual games... Twilight Princess could have been released earlier because they wouldn't have held it for the extra year to coincide with the Wii's release.

But of course there would be negatives to the whole situation of the PS3, Wii, and 360 never being released; beautiful games only possible on the PS3 and 360 would cease to exist in their current form. Games like Uncharted 2, The Last Guardian (if it's ever released that is), and Metal Gear Solid 4 would be but fractions of what they are now. Online gaming would also be pretty much nothing in comparison to what it is now with Xbox LIVE, and none of those funky downloadable games would be around either.

I don't know, it really is crazy to think about how different things would be if history was different. It sure is fun to think about though.

I was digging through some old cupboards in our house last night when I found my mom's giganto pile of cross stitching materials. =D I decided "Hey, what a perfect way to make Cave Story sprites!". And so I did just that.

Seriously guys, this thing took me like 6 or 7 hours to finish... if you have no time (like I do) DON'T get into cross stitching. It's horribly addicting and I can't wait to make more game related stuff. :)

Picture unrelated. Obviously. ;)

Hey Dtoid community. :) It's garison here. You may know me from such places as the previous Dtoid Friday Cblog recapper! ... and that's ... pretty much it... ;)

Alright. Gaming. Right.

So I got the newly released videogame, Final Fantasy XIII recently. You wanna know how I got it? Well, do you? Well, as some of you know (probably not) I am currently jobless and have no job. AKA I have no money to buy $60 videogames. So I was walking around our local Extra Foods super market, and they just got a videogames section! Yay! So this chick who I know walks by who works at the store and I'm like, "Hey! You think you could hook me up with this videogame here behind this glass case?" you know, just to see what she says. And she's all "aight".

She opens the case for me and gives me the game. I'm like okay... and I stuff it under my shirt. I feel super awkward cause it was a super chips day (chips is teen slang in my town for "lazy". Chips -- "Lay's" the potato chip brand -- Lazy. Get it? If not that's okay.) and Iw as just wearing a thin tank top, a pair of jeans and flip flops. I walked out of the store like all super awkward like, but the people who work in that store are absolutely retarded, so they didn't even know!

Awesome right!? (I'm a terrible person.)

But anyway. I bring the game home, and start playing it. I really like it so far. It's pretty fun, and Snow is like the hottest guy ever, I just can't look away from him. He needs to stop caring about that chick Sara who turned into a crystal or whatever when that thing happens and start coming over to my house, you know?

I like the battle system, mostly just because I'm completely retarded when it comes to strategic RPG like battle systems, so it's pretty simple and easy to use. I'm probably only like 4 or 5 hours in so far (I have a bad attention span, I can't play a single game for too long without getting bored), but I quite like it so far.

I can't really comment on the "linearity" or whatever at the moment mostly because I haven't really gotten to the part where the game becomes non-linear. But I have to agree with my girl Colette Bennett when she said on the latest episode of Bit Transmission when she said that pretty much ALL the Final Fantasy games are super linear at the start, then open up near the end. STOP COMPLAINING PEOPLE! (PS: I haven't read the Dtoid 4/10 review yet. So don't talk about that in the comments kay? Thx.)

Um. Nothing really else has happened in the gaming life of garison so far. I've really been looking forward to the new Bit.Trip game. I know I talk about those games quite a bit. But I just love them so much you know? I'm excited to see how it plays, because all of the previous 3 games have each had only 3 levels for the player to get through, while [i]Runner[i] has like 34 levels I think I read somewhere? But for real. The game is going to be amazing.

Um. Videogames. Yeah. I wrote a lot already, so I'm just going to stop kay? Kay. Love you guys.

PS: I'm tagging this post as "Commentary" because they got rid of the "Drunk Blogs" tag. I didn't know what to assign it to... :/

PPS: Have a great time in Boston, Funktastic! I can't wait to read your interview with the Two Worlds II guys kay? Do my proud my boy. Just so everyone knows, I'll probably be at PAX West this year. I'm really hoping to make it, because last year was a blast. But honestly, I'm a poor piece of shit right now, and I have no money, so I can't make any promises, kay?