Tag: Legend of Zelda

Analysis

The Tripartite of Gaming: Theories on an Overlooked Medium

gaming-theories

Pardon me for going off topic – yes, I have no way of justifying this post and claiming its relevance to anime – but as I shift in and out of the mood to pursue Japanese cartoons with unparalleled amounts of zeal and energy, irrelevant ideas occasionally cross my mind. Having recently mentioned gaming in a post that was intended to have far more to do with anime than it did, I found myself taking a little break from this medium that we know and love, and indulging in a few solid hours of adventure and conquest.

Now, as for how this is relevant to the topic at hand: in taking a good look at the medium of video games from a perspective that has widened dramatically in the last several months, I’ve come to realize a few things that I never noticed before. In short, I think the enjoyment that players derive from games can be divided into three broad categories – entertainment, competition, and art – and that the mystery behind why some games appear to be “good” while others are “bad” is far less of a mystery than it appears.

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Editorial

Nostalgia Blinds…but it also Heals

nostalgia-1Shh! This is supposed to be relevant!

Believe it or not, I’m not here to beat this dead horse, nor am I interested in whatever dorama was stirred up long before I knew that the anime blogosphere existed. Incidentally, I read that post when I first discovered aniblogs, which was before I knew wildarmsheero – I enjoyed it devoid of its original meaning.

But I digress. To summarize, DarkMirage wrote something about the bias that many fans have toward older series, and the fact that nostalgia can blind. It used to bother me when I was still in elementary school, innocently enjoying my Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker when the so-called vets would harp endlessly on Link to the Past. It also bothered me when I first started watching older anime, and I wondered how some of the Ghibli classics like Nausicaa could ever be better than modern anime films like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

In other words, I agreed with the sentiment without having put it in words, I agreed with it when I first read that post around a year ago, and I still agree with it today. But it’s also important to remember that nostalgia isn’t necessarily harmful.

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