“The Legend of Zelda Rhymedown Spectacular” video

There was a time long ago when the name Yahtzee was attributed to a board game but, due to the overwhelming success of Zero Punctuation on the website The Escapist by creator Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Crowshaw, the name has now become synonymous with yellow backgrounds and ranting about video games. However, it seems he has teamed up with Jim Sterling, another of The Escapists’ reviewers, for Rhymedown Spectacular where they read poetry they have written. I visit the site almost every day yet I didn’t know they did this until very recently but it seems as though it’s been a regular event for the past 4 months. In one of their recent videos, one of the poems was about The Legend of Zelda and, given that it’s The Escapist, I was looking forward to hearing a funny poem based around my favourite game franchise.

How it actually turned out was… really not expected. Take the jump to find out why!

Having never seen a Rhymedown Spectacular before I thought it would be both of them reading the poem together but it turns out they do a separate poem each. Yahtzee’s poem was about moving to a new house so, after sitting through that waiting for the Zelda poem, Yahtzee finished his poem and Jim appeared. Jim starts at 2:25 and it’s not long before he mentioned the land of Hyrule so I knew things were about to get awesome…and then things gradually got weirder.

I’m not sure if the poem is supposed to be about Link or a random villager but it starts off sounding like a story of a heinous crime, hiding from persecution and fear of being exiled. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ I hear your ask. Well, nothing at all, it’s a good idea for a poem. A person committing murder and seeking sanctuary would easily make for a gripping story. It makes sense he would seek sanctuary from Ganondorf who, being evil himself, casts no judgement upon him and allows him to stay but it’s what our mystery protagonist has to do to ‘earn his keep’ that I really wasn’t expecting. He has to tickle Ganondorf.

I have no idea where that came from and of all the things Ganondorf would want the person to do, tickling him is certainly not one of them especially while the tickler wears feathered gloves, a mask of Dave Boreanaz and listening to Ace of Base. It could put a new spin on what The King of Evil is like when he’s not out trying to gain the Triforce but after the line ‘hope’s no longer mine’ maybe it’s all part of a diabolical plan to drive the new resident deeper into insanity.

He does say towards the end that he understands the story is weird, rather than fun, but justifies that by saying most people turn the video off after Yahtzee’s finished anyway (a comment I found hilarious) and I do agree the story is certainly weird. I’ve listed to it a few times and, once the plot made sense, I quite enjoyed the poem. It may have been better if it was either a poem about the person’s retribution and decent into madness after what they did or a light hearted poem about panicking after a mistake but, for me at least, trying to incorporate both didn’t quite pay off.

Let us know your thoughts of the poem in the comments below.

Source: The Escapist Magazine