A Paean for the Old School Gamer

Like a lot of games journalists, you sit down watching E3 thinking about what you’re going to write. You try to build it up as you go, and write the article in your head. Then, put it on paper.

With Nintendo, I had an initial thought, almost immediately: God, this new Zelda looks awful. The creator can’t even make it work, hell if I can. And it’s not coming out to 2011? Christ almightly, we’re going down disappointment alley, and all the thugs have their knives out.

I don’t know when my mind changed. As cool as it was (expect a whole post later!), Epic Mickey didn’t change my mind. I knew it was going to be cool, and while I didn’t know it would be quite so cool, it couldn’t change my mind. I don’t think it was at Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, which looked pleasant but inoffensive (kind of like Golden Sun as a whole). Kirby: Epic Yarn definitely…got me going, a little bit. But this isn’t a triple A title. This is a title I’d love, for sure, as a Kirby aficionado and a lover of Yoshi’s Story, a game it shares aesthetic similarities with, but it didn’t change my mind.

No, I lied at the beginning of the last paragraph. I know exactly when my mind changed. Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Just let it sink in.

Okay, you’re there, right? Remembering the days when you played Donkey Kong Country, or its sequels? For me, it was only a couple months ago when I last played through them. The magic. The beauty, but also the crunch, the difficulty. And you look at this new game, and it boggles the mind. It really does. It never occurred to me that Nintendo could pull off something so profoundly right that it is beyond belief. Something so profoundly perfect.

They built on this utter, massive enthusiasm with Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS, which, quite frankly, looks better than The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It looks like Zelda, but with an epic sense of scale, massive battles, and what looks like similar gameplay. Honestly, it looks fantastic, and exactly like I’d want a new Zelda to look. Which is disappointing, when you think about it, considering Nintendo apparently knows how to make a Zelda-like game right, but refuses to do it.

But that’s okay. Between Epic Mickey, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Kirby: Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kid Icarus: Uprising, I’m willing to forgive them for what could be the first Zelda game I don’t buy. As usual, expect more from us as we find things fantastic. And personally, I find a lot of things fascinating here.