The Zoonami website’s Zelda: Ocarina of Time design analysis

Hooray, the Zoonami website’s back after a temporary absence! Martin “GoldenEye And A Bit of Perfect Dark” Hollis’ company may never have released a game I was interested in (whatever happened to Funkydilla, their proposed post-Amplitude/pre-Guitar Hero rhythm action game?), but they had a website that was surprisingly useful in some unexpected ways.

The most informative thing on their site is definitely the transcript of Martin Hollis’ excellent speech The Making of GoldenEye (which is, as we all know, the greatest game ever made). There are also a couple of other GoldenEye Making Ofs online, one at NowGamer and one summarised by Rllmuk forumite Graham S.

But also, the Zoonami website is home to this analysis of the puzzle design in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It’s part of the website’s “Intelligence” section, but it’s not linked to in that section’s main page. Hopefully the fact I’m linking to it here will enable Google to index it again – it really is a very good article about game design! Ever wondered just how complicated the Water Temple is that led to you getting stuck on it for so long? Now you know.

IIRC, the website used to have another article about the design of one of the Super Mario games (64? World?), but Archive.org’s Wayback Machine seems to be down for me at the moment so I can’t go back in time and retrieve that page’s URL.

What a difference a frame makes

Interesting blog post from Jaime Griesemer on the difference between a three-frame Halo melee attack and a four-frame melee attack.

An article on Martin Amis’ 1982 arcade games book “Invasion of the Space Invaders”

Ever heard of that book that Martin Amis wrote about early ’80s arcade games, Invasion of the Space Invaders, and wondered what it was like? Here’s an article giving a fascinating summary of it.

Rock Band Making Ofs

For Rock Band’s fourth anniversary, Harmonix have uploaded some interesting behind the scenes information about the series’ development.

Here’s an interview about the production of the instrument peripherals, together with a video:

 

There’s also this more general video about the games’ development:

Spy & Pyro

Probably the best Internet animation I’ve seen since Saturday Morning Watchmen a year ago.

Some very cartoony animation too… John K would approve! (Well, maybe. But come to think of it, probably not.)

Post-Wire links

Back in September 2009, The Wire finished being broadcast on terrestrial TV in the UK. I was finally free of Spoiler Fear and went on a post-series-internet-search-binge. Here are some of the interesting things I found, which I’ve been meaning to post here for months:

Sonic music with lyrics

I quite liked these.

They’ll do to pass the time while Adam & Joe’s Song Wars is away.