Zelda Universe-25 Years in 25 Days: 2008

We are counting down the final days until Skyward Sword’s release and for today’s installment of Zelda Universe’s 25 Years in 25 Days they cover the year 2008. Although no new Zelda game was released this year there were plenty of other things to keep fans busy. This was the year that two webseries, The Legend of Neil and There Will Be Brawl, were released and they both starred Zelda characters. Also, two more books were released, one being a new manga by Akira Himekawa telling the story of Ocarina of Time, and the other being The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am. Then, IGN decided to join in on the April Fool’s Day pranks when they released a trailer showing a Zelda movie in the works.

The last and perhaps one of the more important things to be released was Super Smash Bros. Brawl. This is the third and most recent game in the series. It is also the biggest where fans had the option of playing as one of 35 characters on any of the 41 stages. Zelda characters included Zelda, Link, Toon Link, and Ganondorf. To learn more about everything that happened in 2008 head over to Zelda Universe and be sure to leave your comments.

Brawl would introduce the a great degree of randomness, starting with the ability to just random slip and fall down when quickly reversing course, and the chance of which would increase dramatically as your damage percentage continued to rise. Players would also be forced to contend for the Smash Balls, and getting the coveted item (and almost guaranteed kill that would occur as a result) seemed to favor the lucky instead of skillful. And finally, characters seemed to be more unbalanced by expert players than Melee with almost every tournament champion winning through with Meta Knight. (In fact, Meta Knight was recently banned from tournaments as a result.) Though it was never Sakurai’s design goal to make a serious fighting game akin to Street Fighter II, The King of Fighters, and Guilty Gear, many players were clearly expecting something more along those lines, especially since Melee had become one of the six major tournament fighting games in Japan.

Even though we would not get another Zelda game until the following year, it seems that 2008 gave us more than our share of Zelda goodies. I love playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, although I must say I am not that good at it. Whenever my friends and I hang out we can usually be found playing that or Mario Kart as we are limited in multi player games. I can never remember all the combinations of buttons so I am usually the one just button mashing and hoping I don’t die. I did actually learn to play the game once and I was taught using Toon Link so I am pretty good when I play as him. Other than that, I just hope for the best, but it’s all good fun.

What do you guys think? Were all of these Zelda goodies enough to hold you over until the next game? How do you feel about Brawl? Is it the best in the series or does it fall short of the ones before it? Do you actually know all the button combinations or do you also just press buttons and hope something happens? What character do you usually use? Tell us in the comments and check back tomorrow as we cover 2009!

Source: Zelda Universe

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