Eastern Palaces and currency declines

One dungeon down, 10 to go. There's really nothing else to say.

I've played through the first dungeon of A Link to the Past (the Eastern Palace) so often that it's become rote. The image that kept popping up in my mind while playing through it: a straight line.

That's not to say that the Eastern Palace is a direct sort of dungeon. But it's definitely designed to get you to collect all three of the major dungeon items: the map, the compass, and the item. Though, part of that is just statistics, since more people are likely to turn right when given the choice (if I'm properly remembering my signs from the Dungeon Man dungeon in Earthbound). Not that getting everything in this dungeon really tacks on that much extra time. From start to finish, it must've taken just a little over 10 minutes to get through.

What I don't understand, though, is why you're given so many rupees. There's a cache in a room behind Sahasrala, there's a room full of blue rupees in the dungeon, and chests give you fifties and hundreds like the rupee's as valuable as all the sand in Hyrule. Actually, considering the fact that an empty bottle is going for 100 rupees in the Kakariko Village marketplace, maybe that's not far from the truth.

Away game special: A stylish turnabout

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies is an incredible improvement over the first few entries in the series. It looks really slick with all of its 3D sprites and hand-drawn cutscenes. Its music sounds smooth. But its voices don't really match what I'd expected of recurring characters like Phoenix Wright himself.

The game still plays like an interactive novel, but because of its 3DS sheen, it comes across as much more of a game. That graphics and sound can transform something as simple as a story told linearly with periodic breaks for interaction really says something about the power of what makes a game a game. On the one hand it makes things like ebooks with soundtracks seem like the first step towards a branch of interactive storytelling that could see things like Isaac Asimov's Foundation or Arthur C. Clarke's Stranger in a Strange Land get turned into novel-like games.

Of course, Dual Destinies is also a reflection of the power of the 3DS. Most of the games in the series that came before it were up-ports from the GBA to the DS so their graphics and music were less than impressive. Plus, they were also rather short. If the first case in Dual Destinies is any indication, then the rest of the game will be pretty lengthy - a quality that's also thanks to the game's being made for the 3DS rather than the GBA.

Almost Time to use the Wind God's Wind

The Wind Waker's whimsy's not lost on me yet. The game looks good even on an old, somewhat low-contrast, tube TV. But the game's style is what counts.

That, and it's lack of any concrete companion. Along with wanting desperately to roll bombs rather than just throw them, I was a little stuck on the first dungeon's boss. I'd completely forgotten that you could grapple onto the great Valoo's tail. Once that knowledge kicked back in, (thanks to the unintrusive King of Red Lions) though, the fight was over sooner than it began.

The only thing I didn't get in that dungeon was the Tingle trophy, since, I've not yet met Tingle and haven't bothered to hook up the Game Boy Advance (GBA). Hopefully the Wii U remake will just use the GamePad as the GBA - I don't even know how they'd connect what is now practically an antique with their newest console.

With the first dungeon done, I'm just about ready to get the song to control the wind - which means, more or less, free range of the seas!