Zelda Mini Games

Apologies for the late update - I was visiting my mum before Christmas (I get the snarkiness from her side of the family.) But now I'm back in the saddle with a game that promises much but delivers bugger all.

A title like Zelda Mini Games has to give you some hope, right? After all, The Legend of Zelda is a wildly popular and much-loved video game series. Unfortunately, the developer (who goes by the wicked cool screen name of chtfreak64) has fucked up royally on this one.

First of all, I know it's not a big thing and really I should focus on the gameplay rather than the aesthetics, but would it have killed the guy to make a nicer title screen? I know squat about programming and even I could have done a nicer job with Paint and some clip art. If he had been spending that time on making some good games, I suppose I wouldn't mind as much. But it seems like this particular loaf was squeezed out in an afternoon between playing Ocarina of Time and jerking off to naked pictures of the Princess.

For one thing, all four mini games are shooters. Would a little variety be too much to ask? If you were just going to have four shooting trials, why not make it one big game rather than this "mini games" bullshit? Anyway, I'll run through each of them, starting with "Bullseye."

Oh, I should also mention that when you start the games you get this .wav file of an annoying Japanese kid yelling, "Listen!" And then you read the rules of the game, supporting my theory that the migraine-inducing little brat is only there to piss you off and remove any last hope that you are about to play an enjoyable game.



OK, "Bullseye." It's very simple, really: fire at the target as it swings and score as many bullseyes as possible. And before you ask, no, the target doesn't move up or down, nor do any slide across the screen or pop out of the background, like they do in most other games of this type. All you get is that one target, swinging back and forth. And for something so ridiculously simple, it's mind-numbingly hard to do. The target moves so quickly that there's little point in trying to follow it, so your best bet is to leave the crosshairs in one position and keep clicking the left mouse button every time you think you can score.



Are we having fun yet? The answer is fucking NO! After forty-five seconds you can find out how well you did.



8% accuracy. Who knew trying to shoot a five millimetre wide circle moving rapidly laft and right could be so hard? And the awful thing? It gets worse as we move onto "Cucco Hunt."



OK, confession time. I'm not a big Legend of Zelda fanatic. I like the games, and I respect the series' place in gaming history, but as a Sega owner in my youth, I was never too familiar with them. So you'll have to excuse me when I saw this game and immediately thought, what the fuck is a cucco?



Oh, OK, it's like a chicken, or something. So can you answer another question I have? Do cuccos need to be shot in one particular part of their bodies in order to kill them? Because I was unloading on these fuckers as they flew past and I didn't kill squat. Either cuccos are hardcore tough birds, or the hit detection in this game is so bad it boggles the mind. I can't help but wonder if chtfreak64 simply took the code from "Bullseye" and, instead of having one tiny target swing left and right, had several dozen tiny targets fly across the screen.



Don't ask me how, but I managed to take down twenty-two cuccos. What can I say, I'm persistant.

After that comes "Rupees!!", the two exclamation points included to piss off English professors.



It's more of the same bullshit, really. Giant brightly coloured diamonds (or rupees!!) appear on screen and you have to shoot them.



Yawn and fucking yawn. At least this game is a little different, and it doesn't last as long as the first two. Strangely, rather than give you a score of how many rupees!! you did hit, the game would much rather tell you how many you didn't.



"You missed 4 rupees!" Wait, what about the six I hit? Don't they mean anything? Or maybe that's just another example of how I came close and then failed miserably, huh?

Shit, why doesn't this game tell me how it really feels? "You missed 4 rupees! You suck at this game! You suck at life! You're the reason your parents divorced! Everybody hates you! Burn in hell, you waste of oxygen!"

Or maybe not.

Finally - thank God, finally - there's "Kill Navi." Yeah, fuckin' kill him. Or her. Or it. Or... who cares?



Navi is the fairy creature that helped you in the other games by showing you the rules. Now, to show your gratitude, you're going to shoot it. Nice.

Unfortunately, Navi is hard as nails. It takes a few dozen shots to kill it, and it flies around the screen at great pace, appearing on the opposite side of the playing area every time it flies away. Combine that with a gun that can't shoot straight, and I'm surprised I've ever beaten this game. Also, every ten or fifteen seconds, Navi stops and shocks you with waves of electricity!



For something so small, it packs quite a punch - all it takes is three or four of those shocks to kill you. I've been killed so many times by that fucking fairy, it's embarrassing. On top of that, the developer rubs it in my face.



That's not a fairy - that's Chuck Norris with wings! That's Steven Seagal in a blue orb! That's John McClane yelling "Yippee ki-ay motherfucker!" as he blasts my ass back to the Stone Age! That fairy is a bad ass!

It's just a shame the fairy is in such an awful, awful game. Wait, that's inaccurate - it's in four awful, awful games! chtfreak64 is no doubt laughing his ass off as Zelda fans around the world load this game up on their computers only to watch the series they love bastardised for a bunch of shitty shooting games. They will not be held accountable for their actions.