I never actually claimed that the Dark Mirror and the Mirror of Twilight are the same object, just that there was a connection.

That said, however, there's nothing that prevents the two from having the same purpose. Just because one mirror that did one thing was destroyed doesn't mean that a different mirror with a different name doesn't in fact have the same effect. The Dark Mirror and the Mirror of Twilight have very much the same purpose in both of their games with very similar backstories...

Having played one game in the Tales of series that had full voice acting... and then having to go back to a game in the same series that didn't have full voice acting, I will say that the lack of it in certain spots ultimately made the game feel much less polished and incomplete.

I would posit that, once Zelda does get real voice acting, having a similar Zelda game without it (at least on the console) will yield the same effect, and the only reason why there are staunch opinions against it is because Zelda, as of yet, hasn't actually tried it.

It sounds like you're under the impression that this is a joke. :)

XY females and XX males is actually the XX/XZ system! (Totally found this during my research for the articles.)

I had that in my mental notes at one point. It would be that I forgot one. Ah well.

You'll notice that nowhere in my article did I say that story is MORE important than gameplay. Just that they were were equal in terms of importance when it comes to Zelda games.

Thanks for reading. :)

The Legend of Zelda, from a story perspective, has traditionally taken inspiration for its story from two primary sources -- legendary fantasy (think King Arthur) intermixed with classic fairy tales. However, the fairy tale mantra is much stronger than many would give it credit for. Nintendo is very good at hand-waving over anything deemed "too complex" or "too technological" and making the best of whatever they currently have. For example, when it comes to graphical capability, Nintendo is rarely hindered by it and tends to make beautiful artwork out of what they actually have. The term best used to describe this is "abstraction"; they don't worry necessarily about being truly photorealistic or setting-realistic and just present the 10,000-mile high view. Now, in comparison to HD gaming these days there is a definite difference; however, standing alone, it's not bad.

Fairy tale narratives are famous for their abstract principles in setting and characterization. Much like old Western films where good guys wear white and bad guys wear black, it's easy to tell who the good characters are and the bad characters are based upon principles of "beauty." It's easy to see magic tossed in without explaining its origins. Royalty is used as a crux for commoners to aspire to. Zelda uses all of these principles in their narratives. Zelda, at its narrative core, is a story tale with bits of legendary fantasy sprinkled atop of it.

The problem with fairy tales, at least for me, is that there's no depth to it. There's actually some fairly humorous commentary about how vacuous Disney films based upon fairy tales are, where the main character is often witless or, if nothing else, in a rush to make rash decisions to pursue a dream to be loved by some white-knight prince. Fairy tales, at their core, aren't meant to have real principles or real emotion invested into them, and herein lies the connection to Zelda. We've seen Nintendo orchestrate solid characters that we all know and love. However, their story never really has any depth. It's a simple story with just enough detail to entertain for 30-40 hours but never enough to really flesh out a full universe.

Say what you will about the actual plots of Halo, Assassin's Creed, and whatever. You may dislike the plots, and that's fine. But ultimately, you can't deny that they build very interesting worlds.

Actually, I do develop games for a living. :)

I made a Japanese Amazon account a long time ago for another thing I wanted to import, so my details on exactly what you have to do is really fuzzy. It required doing some clever amount of Japanese funniness, such as picking a prefecture and all that. I think.

However, it should be possible, once you have an account, to list a Stateside address as your shipping address. The shipping for me for 2-5 day delivery was $40, which isn't terrible for that expediency.

Yeah. I don't think HoH was originally designed to take such a hit from tons of people downloading big files all at once, and it sounds like the server got auto-shutdown by the admins. Hopefully it'll come back soon.