Posts by Musashi

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Please chime in on a proposed restructuring of the ROM hacking sections.

05-19-24 04:10 AM

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Musashi

Posted on 09-24-12 08:40 PM, in Zelda3 Parallel Remodel

Link | Quote | ID: 152461

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Hey PuzzleDude, great of you to make this hack; It definitely makes Parallel Worlds more reasonable.

At the same time I also find that some of the creativity of the insanely hard original game was lost in the remodel. What I would really like is a hack combining elements from both. One where the monsters and pitfalls are less brutal, and backtracking reduced, but more of the little secrets kept intact.

To get to the specifics:

The new guardhouse is a big improvement. I was not a fan of how long Link was unarmed for previously. I might have kept some of the dark caves on the way there, and added some walking room in the place with the fire shooters, but not as much as was added in Remodel. I also agree with having the red boomerang available early and without backtracking. The old version had a thing where you either get the blue boomerang early on but miss out the red, or do without the blue until the snow world and get the red there. Poor idea in my view, so Remodel handles this better for sure.

In general, I see that Remodel lights most of the places that were dark in the original. I would have compromised on this; keep most of them dark, but add lightable torches. Din's Catacombs and Nabooru's Hole are deep in the earth, and as such, they're supposed to be dark.

Speaking of Darunia's Hole; I would have kept it more like the original, but added lightable torches in many places. When I played the Remodel, I went in with 2 bottle fairies and 14 full hearts, and even when I avoided every beam eye blaster (using save states), I still ran out of health due to all the unavoidable spike floors. I couldn't get the

Spoiler:
cane of Byrna

since the

Spoiler:
clue to get it is in the snow world,

so I had no choice to activate a cheat to finish the level. I'dve put

Spoiler:
the lost woods combination somewhere in Home World.

It appears that a

Spoiler:
message from Link's alter ego in the snow world

is gone; I think that takes away from the story. Same for the fact that a

Spoiler:
person living near the Lake Ruin

is now MIA now.

I would have kept of the puzzles intact from the original, particularly those where a Star Panel is there to tell you something in the room is not as it seems. In the Remodel, seems the star panels just tell you which jars have keys in them, almost making them unnecessary.

Impa's Ways: Remodel makes a huge improvement; the old Impa's Ways was just too confusing. The new version feels more creative to me.

Darunia's Cavern: Original was a Zelda-1-esque maze. Remodel has that Zelda 1 flavor too, but now its more linear. Both versions have their merits.

Parallel Tower: Before, you had to climb it 3 times, now, only once. I would've compromised with 2: once in each world. I like before how the first trip creates anticipation for the second trip via the crystal switch and the info about the super puzzle. I also find that part of the storytelling is that you have to

Spoiler:
chase Ganon up the tower in the Home World

. I also find that the Home world climb gives you a chance to get some mileage

Spoiler:
out of the master sword

rather than just

Spoiler:
fighting Ganon

with it. Getting the

Spoiler:
Ocarina at the top of the tower

and having that extra exit made it so that your reward for scaling the tower in Home World was

Spoiler:
you could travel to the top of it any time you wanted

. I was also a little disappointed upon seeing the

Spoiler:
Heart container and Bombos Medallion

were just

Spoiler:
offered up along the way

instead of

Spoiler:
being prizes for the super puzzle

. Finally, I have mixed feelings about the keys thing. 9 keys is bit much to keep track of, and I myself had to retry the tower a few times due to losing count of the keys I found or were still out there. At the same time, I thought having those keys outside the tower added an element of mystery to it (why is there a key here?). Overall, here's how I would do it:

2 Climbs required: First trip gets you a

Spoiler:
Mirror, a treasure key, and the Kokiri Emerald

. Second gets you the

Spoiler:
Ocarina, Silver Arrows

, and if you

Spoiler:
complete the super puzzle, Bombos and Heart container.

Keep some of the illusion doors and sub-bosses from the original, keep some of the dark rooms but add torches to them.

Keep it so that the L+X button move is needed for a certain part.

9 Keys needed: 3 in tower, 3 in home world, 3 in snow world. Add a switch (or a sub boss event trigger) on the 7th Floor, accessible only from Home World, that creates a treasure chest on the ground floor, located apart from other things, reachable by hookshot. Beside the chest there would be a teleporter to the start of the 7th floor. This way, if a player didn't have all the keys, they could go get them, and return to floor 7 without re-doing the whole tower. Alternatively, the parts requiring outside keys could be moved to a lower floor. Maybe: Lower floors of Snow world tower require 3 keys, lower floors of home world tower also require 3, and then you get keys in the tower itself to be used up top.

No backwards teleporters. Maybe have one that gets you the previously unreachable treasure box.

Final thing I would add to both versions is maybe a more satisfying ending story. I get such a

Spoiler:
"Mission Failed"

feeling seeing

Spoiler:
Zelda and the ladies return to the Snow World

without

Spoiler:
anything to make it livable

. I got to thinking that since the

Spoiler:
Ether Medallion was used to calm the cold wings around the Lake Ruin,

maybe the

Spoiler:
Triforce could tell Link to give the 3 medallions to Zelda

, and with them

Spoiler:
she can reduce the wintry conditions and produce heat

, thus

Spoiler:
making it possible to grow food and live more comfortably.

Musashi

Posted on 09-25-12 07:05 AM, in Zelda3 Parallel Remodel

Link | Quote | ID: 152467

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That all makes sense. I'm a little surprised that torches would be so hard to add, or that teleporters would be limited to 1 floor change. But yea, since its a hack and not full fledged reverse engineering of the game, I fully believe there will be restrictions on what can be edited.

I'll look again, but I could've swore that somewhere there was a floor switch that made a treasure chest appear in a different room. The 2 rooms were fairly close to each other I believe.

I'll also look again for the Lost Woods combination. Seeing as I finished the game with 19 hearts, I probly missed some things along the way.

I'll give both versions credit for helping me think about a spooky Zelda fanfic I've been prepping.

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