As of right now, I'm writing out what's basically going to be my script for the introduction video on a project that I'm currently working on.
*Didn't that used to say Nintendo?
*Since when is the triforce blue?
*sigh, Hi folks, welcome to Let's Play The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds. For those of you not in the know, Parallel Worlds is an extensive romhack of A Link to the Past released in 2007 by hackers Euclid and Seph. A Link to the Past has pretty much been gutted here and we're left with a brand new overworld, 12-ish new dungeons, a new story, new sprites, rebalanced items, a new HUD and altered game mechanics. Parallel Worlds may as well be its own game at this point, the only problem is that it isn't a very good game. You know what, that may be a little too kind; Parallel Worlds is the biggest trainwreck to hit the romhacking scene. This game is held back by one gigantic, if not monumental flaw; it's way too hard and oftentimes unfairly so. Not only is the game overly difficult, but there was literally no care put into where certain enemies would be placed. In fact, I feel that there are several times when Euclid and Seph went out of their way to make the game as painful and as hateful as humanly possible. The real tragedy here is the romhacking itself is good, the game is relatively pretty and there are some ideas that I think would genuinely benefit the Zelda series if Miyamoto ever applied them.
Before I start and show off this clustered mess of a game, I just wanted to start off with an introductory video explaining a few things.
First off, despite hours of trying to figure out a solution, I simply couldn't work out a way to record from my stereo mix on my laptop. I know that it may be a little bit unfun not hearing the classic music or the sound, but I've decided to remedy the situation by adding backround MP3s to the videos. They're going to be fairly quiet as you can hear right now and I'm going to try my damnedest to try and make my choices as fitting as possible. I'll start off with each video with the appropriate song that corresponds to whatever I'm doing in the video. From there, I'll probably deviate to other fitting music, almost untirely from other games with a similar feel or similar sound and go from there.
Secondly, this game has been LP'd before. Zomodok and Diabetus did a pretty good one on the Something Awful forums a few years back and it's probably the best LP currently out there. Now, if what I said was true, there would be no real reason for me to LP this, right? Well, despite my compliments to their efforts, the first half of the series has kind of fallen into ruin with the original videos either being in terrible quality or just plain lost. You can't go back to the LPArchives and watch the end of the game, the videos are simply lost to time. Even so, the videos that are there are pretty lengthy, mostly due to it being their first time through the game. The videos have a lot of fluff and could have used some trimming back. This is something that I've taken into consideration with my plans for this LP, and hopefully I can do their previous work justice. Also, I know there are at least three other amatuer LP'ers on Youtube who have also done the game, but I feel that there really isn't a whole lot of polish behind their work. Once again, there is a lot of fluff to their videos and hardly any crunch so to speak.
Thirdly, I've never really done an LP before. This is all a learning experience for me and I'm really not expecting to be the best around town when it comes to making these videos. I have a tendency to be pretty monotoned and I'm pretty guilty of being a mumbler and I often trip over my own words. I'm really not the kind of person who should be LPing at all, but I'm going to try and do it anyway. Hopefully I'll improve quickly, but I can't promise that my commentary is going to be the backbone of the LP.
My fourth point is that I'd really like for this series to be a community LP. When I say this, I mean that this game gets pretty nonlinear around the 1/4th point. When you get to the Darkworld in Parallel Worlds, you're pretty much given free reign to go wherever you want and do the dungeons in whatever order that you desire. The item in one dungeon is never required to finish another. When it gets to that point, I'll let everyone know what dungeons have what items and let you guys go hogwild when it comes to the dungeon order. Another neat little thing about Parallel Worlds is that the Darkworld dungeons aren't required to beat the game. All you need to go through the endgame dungeon is the Cane of Somaria and the Fire Rod. I'll also apply the same rule with getting items in the overworld so long as there are certain stipulations to make the game playable for myself.
Lastly, I won't be using savestates throughout the LP. This is one of my biggest gripes in both terms of watching LPs and when it comes to playing fangames and romhacks. As such, I will be forgoing them altogether.
All that said, I hope you'll continue and watch the series as I play through this monstrosity. Thanks for you time and have a good day.
