zwolanerd

Okay, so I went MIA. I’ve been stuck on this stupid Oracle of Ages game for the better part of two months, and today I decided that I’d move on. I’d already decided that when I wasn’t able to complete Majora’s Mask, that I would try to finish every other game in the series.
So I’ve been stuck on a dancing mini-game for the better part of two months, and today I decided that it was either giving up or throwing my 3DS into the lake.

Oracle of Ages is the second of the Capcom Zelda games for the Game Boy Color. It does have a different story than Oracle of Seasons, this time Link is trying to rescue Nayru, who is the eponymous Oracle. She is kidnapped by Veran who goes back in time and kills the Maku tree. Not the same Maku tree as Oracle of Seasons, but another one.

There is enough reused between these two games, that you have to wonder why they didn’t just make a single larger title. This game is a lot less action oriented than its predecessor, all of the dungeons involve a puzzle or sequence that you need to follow. However, the boss battles are all fairly generic. If you had combined these titles, you would have gotten one proper Zelda game, rather than two half Zelda games.

That may be why the true ending to the game was hidden in the password system that integrates the two titles together. If you enter the password from your Seasons game, you’ll get a more detailed opening to the game. You’ll also find people throughout who give you passwords and secrets to enter in Seasons. This was an interesting idea, but something that probably was a bit ahead of its time. The passwords are all unwieldy, and they require you to jump back and forth between the games. This might have been better executed in a bigger single game. (This is likely why a third installment in this series was cancelled.)

I think that I am going to keep this on my 3DS to go back and try to finish the stupid Goron dancing at some point, but I’m done trying to power my way through it. These two games were flawed, but they show the growing pains of the industry at the time. There’s a lot of ambition, but the technology limits the execution.

Tags: Operation All The Zeldas, Oracle of Ages

Written by: Michael McConnell