A Link to the Past

Welcome to a brand new issue of Ninja Sparks.

Last weekend was Halloween, but I’ve got something else on my mind. Next weekend sees the release of the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake.

The original came out the year I started university, and I spent an extraordinary amount of time exploring Hyrule. This was before YouTube walkthroughs and comprehensive online guides, so getting stuck often meant staying stuck.

I was so obsessed that I managed to work Zelda into several university projects. Looking back, I suspect it had more influence on my future career than some of the actual coursework.

Nearly thirty years later, I’m still making games and still trying to capture a little of that Nintendo magic.

I’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on the new version later this week!

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Spelunkr

Spelunkr is a rather unusual website I discovered recently. It’s a bit like an online TV station, using archived media from archive.org to broadcast hundreds of old shows across dozens of channels. Unlike Netflix, you can’t pick and choose what you want to watch. You have to tune in to whatever happens to be showing at the time.

There’s anime, Star Trek, classic cartoons, and a variety of other shows spanning different genres and eras. It’s all free, with no additional adverts, and the website looks like something from the early 2000s.

Many of the videos have been digitised from old media formats and uploaded to archive.org. As such, some have adverts embedded within the original recordings, which feels rather strange. I was watching a Toonami broadcast from 1999 and getting cartoons interrupted by old commercials from that era. In the UK, cartoons generally don’t have ad breaks, so it felt quite jarring.

I regularly think about the loss of media in general. It’s disappointing how easily films, cartoons, websites and video games can disappear, considering how much time and effort people put into making them.

Video games can be emulated, but rights holders often see this as piracy, even when the games are no longer available anywhere else. Cartoons and TV shows can be delisted and removed from sale, making them effectively lost to the world. All that artistry and effort, vanishing.

So I really appreciate projects like Spelunkr that give new life to old media and make it accessible to a wider audience.

Try Spelunkr

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Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake Trailer

I’ve always found it a bit odd watching reaction videos on social media, seeing people crying over trailers for games or movies. Then I watched the trailer for the Ocarina of Time remake and found myself getting slightly emotional too. Not crying emotional, but nostalgic for times past.

Ocarina of Time, and Zelda games in general, have had a massive influence on my game development sensibilities. I’ve always wanted to make a Zelda-style game. More than 30 years after playing my first Zelda game (Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy), I feel like I’m getting closer, but I’m still not there.

It’s not an easy thing to achieve, capturing the magic and sense of adventure that those games evoke.

Maybe one day I’ll get there.

Watch the video

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Project Updates

I’ve mostly been working on my retro skiing game over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been really enjoying making this and feel like it could become a proper game, rather than just a little web game.

I’m hoping the retro graphics will give it a timeless quality. They also make development much quicker, letting me experiment with new ideas without worrying about throwing away hours of design work.

The original game jam version was just a time trial, a race to the bottom. With this updated version, I’ve been trying to add lots of little touches that make the world feel more alive.

Interactive things like flags you can knock out of the way, rocks you can smash through, or fires you can ski through (that temporarily set you on fire). None of these things are particularly complicated, but they make the world more engaging and create little sparks of joy as you play.

I’m currently working on a level editor that I plan to make public, so anyone can create and submit levels for the game. I’m looking forward to seeing what other people come up with. I suspect they’ll think of things I would never have considered.

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Sparked Discoveries

Here’s a handful of odd and interesting corners of the web I stumbled across recently:

Ask the Developer: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

One last Zelda thing for you. Nintendo has published a new edition of its Ask the Developer series, talking to the team behind the Ocarina of Time remake.

I’ve long enjoyed these interviews. Getting an insight into a company like Nintendo, whose games I’ve loved for so long, is always fascinating.

The team includes people who worked on the original, people who played it growing up, and people who had never played it at all. I like that they’ve brought together people with such different experiences of the original game, whilst still trying to capture what made it special.

One section that stands out is when Eiji Aonuma explains that he initially requested additional fast-travel points for the remake. However, testing revealed that players missed discoveries they would otherwise make while travelling across Hyrule. So they took them out again.

I found this particularly interesting because I often avoid fast travel myself. Much to my son’s annoyance, I quite enjoy running, riding or driving around game worlds rather than instantly jumping between locations. In Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, I barely even used the horses, preferring to explore everywhere on foot.

David Rumsey Map Collection

My son and I both love maps, real ones and fictional ones. We’ve spent a lot of time together drawing our own maps, imagining new worlds and designing our ideal places.

The David Rumsey Map Collection is an enormous archive of historical maps, with examples dating back hundreds of years. There are more than 150,000 images of maps, books, posters and postcards.

I find it fascinating seeing how mapmaking and map design have changed over time. This archive is an incredible resource for exploring that history.

Little Troubles in Spooky Town

I thought I’d end the sparks with a little bit of late Halloween fun.

In Little Troubles in Spooky Town, you play as a little ghost trying to find their place in the world. You wander around a small town helping townspeople with odd jobs and solving little puzzles.

The game’s tagline is about proving to everyone that you can be whatever you want to be. A lovely sentiment!

It’s a free browser game by Kenney, a developer and artist best known for creating an enormous collection of free and affordable assets for indie game developers.

You can find more of Kenney’s work on itch.io.