Oracle of Seasons Part 2: This dungeon is Gnarly. Also, Holodrum is infested with Jawas.

You can tell it's the right dungeon
because it looks like a gnarled root.

When we last hung out with Link, he'd just gotten a key from the Maku Tree, who was much too busy doing stuff like sleeping and being a tree to save Din from the evil General Onox. It's our job to go through the eight dungeons in this game to grab the essences of nature in order to restore the seasons to their original cyclical format.

The first dungeon is called the Gnarled Root dungeon, and looks exactly the same as anything you might have found in Link's Awakening. Because there are so many of them, the dungeons in this game tend to be fairly short. This one's gimmick is the addition of a few rail tracks that Link can ride around on using a series of switches to get into new areas. The layouts of the dungeons in this game are simple and straightforward - the 2D nature of the game and the fact that it's on a Gameboy Color really limit the amount of complexity possible. That's not to say that they're boring as such, just a little bit less mentally demanding than some in other Zelda games. 

Remember this asshole?

Like in Link's Awakening, each dungeon has a sub-boss and a boss - once the sub-boss is defeated, you're given a waypoint that you can use to teleport yourself between that room and the entrance, which comes in handy. 

The dungeon's item is the Seed Satchel, which is actually one of the coolest key items in this game. There are five different types of seeds that you'll come across, each with their own unique ability. The first you run into is the Ember Seed, which replaces the Lantern in this game - it lets you light things on fire, such as torches. A lot of puzzles in this game depend on the various seeds in your satchel to complete.

Fertile soil! Yeah!

The boss of this first dungeon is Aquamentus, a dragon which is an obvious reference to the first boss of the original Zelda. Like most Zelda games, Oracle of Seasons is very self-referential, which is part of the reason why we love the series, so we can forgive it anything. (Right?)

Anyway, after you waste this guy, you get the first Essence of Nature - the Fertile Soil. Hooray! Just seven more to go. In typical style, Link gets spat out of the dungeon and the Maku Tree lets us know that there's some kind of special item we need to get from the Temple of Seasons. 

Little sidenote here, Oracle of Seasons actually has a surprising amount of subquest-y things you can do, considering how limited it is by the fact that it's on a Gameboy Color. You can plant Gasha Seeds, which grow into nuts that allow you to collect magic rings (a huge part of this game - magic rings give you special abilities.) Like Link's Awakening, there's a trading subquest which eventually ends up in you receiving the Noble Sword, which is awesome. I'm not personally a huge subquest fan, at least not the kind of subquests that show up in a game this old, so I tend to ignore them for the most part. Am I a bad person?

THIS IS SO FUN,
THANKS NINTENDO.

The next part of the game features Link encountering some weird Jawa-looking things, one of whom has a stupid bow and is loudly and conveniently complaining about a temple falling into her homeland of Subrosia. You now have to follow her around a bunch of trees in the best kind of mini-game ever - the "don't let the NPC see you" game! You have to follow her back to a hole in the ground around some trees and if she spots you, you have to start all over. Amazing.

Subrosia is an unfortunately large part of the game, as you'll have to return here to complete several idiotic fetch quests and mini-games in order to progress and get some key items, such as the magic flute and boomerang. We're down here for the Temple of Seasons, though.

The Temple of Seasons has four corners, each inhabited by a spirit of a respective season. As you get more key items from various dungeons, you will be able to access different parts of the temple. This time, we go visit the Winter Spirit's tower and receive the Rod of Seasons, which is basically this game's Ocarina of Time. It is the key item.

In the overworld, you can now change the season from whatever it is normally into winter. This freezes certain paths or covers them with snow, which allows you to access areas you couldn't before, including dungeons and caves. Hurrah! As you might imagine, getting the ability to change the overworld into different seasons is the master gimmick of Oracle of Seasons.

Stay tuned for next time, where Link unexpectedly goes through a bunch of dungeons to get items in order to defeat evil and return peace to Holodrum!

Oracle of Seasons Part 1: Link dances with the ladies, passes out in a few places and then gets advice from a narcoleptic tree.

I hope Link didn't leave the iron plugged in.

Like I said previously, the introduction is identical in both games - Link rides up to Hyrule castle with the intention of checking on the Triforce bits, and then they teleport him off to a mysterious kingdom where he has to complete some kind of quest.

Link is passed out in some bushes when the game opens, and much like Maron in Link's Awakening, he's found by a cute girl who decides for some reason to look after the freak of the week who happened to land in her back yard. What a nice person!

Hopefully they're not planning to trade Link's o

rgans for booze.

Anyway, once Link wakes up, you find that the girl who found you is named Din, and she's part of a travelling troupe of entertainers. The troupe's cook, named Impa (yeah) tells you that Din is apparently a popular dancer and she's been caring for you until now. Personally, anybody who drags in random strangers off the road seems a bit sketchy to me, but whatever. Link is trusting.

Link's dance moves are unsurpassed.

Once you talk to Din, she gets you to dance with her for a bit and you get a cute little cutscene image in full color, much like the ones in Link's Awakening. I wouldn't say that I'm over the moon about their quality or anything, but it's a nice touch and it enriches the atmosphere of the game a lot.

After Link impresses everyone with his solo jumpstyle moves, Din takes a second to notice the triforce mark on Link's left hand and comments that this means he's got a special fate and is a hero and whatever. They share a nice little moment, and then lightning starts shooting from the sky and destroys the troupe's wagons and makes the sky go black.

There's a scary disembodied voice called Onox which addresses Din as the "Oracle of Seasons" (must be some new age thing). It generally makes a dick of itself and then kidnaps Din in a big blue tornado, which Link is helpless to stop because he is so danced out. 

We get a helpful cutscene which shows Din imprisoned at the top of some kind of tower, where Onox explains to her that since he's captured the Oracle of Seasons, the seasons will be disordered and everything will die. I guess he thinks that is basically a good thing. Maybe he has hayfever or something. There's another cutscene in which the Temple of Seasons sinks into the ground, and we see that all over the land of Holodrum (where this is set) the seasons are changing rapidly and at random.

Link passes out in a snowy bank (he should really cut back on the partying) and is awakened by Impa, who explains that she's not a cook and is in fact the nurse of Hyrule's Princess Zelda. Impa was sent to collect Din, the Oracle of Seasons, and bring her back to Hyrule Castle because Zelda's psychic powers informed her that Din was in danger. Good job, Impa.

Anyway, she foists the task of saving Din on to you and asks you to go talk to somebody called the Maku Tree in Horon Village, who is the guardian of all Holodrum.

The first thing you'll notice as you start to wander around is that the seasons change as you go from place to place, which is marked by a little season icon that flashes up in the upper left corner of the screen. Depending on the season, some of the features of the terrain will change - snow banks in winter, fruit in the summer, etc. These seasonal changes are the gimmick of this game, and block or allow access to various regions depending on the season. As you control more and more of the seasons, you can access more and more different areas.

You have to go on a little fetch quest before you can even see the Maku Tree, which involves getting a sword from a cave on the beach. The similarities between Link's Awakening and this game become really apparent at this point - you'll see what I mean if you get a chance to play it. The items work the same way as they did in Link's Awakening, in that you can assign one item to A and one item to B, allowing for a variety of combinations depending on your circumstances.

Anyways, once you find the Maku Tree (pretty much the Deku Tree, you've seen it all before) Link wakes him up from a nap. The Maku Tree is pretty irritated that Din was kidnapped and the Temple of Seasons disappeared while he was sleeping, but says that the seasons being all wacky has sapped him of his power so it's pretty much your problem. He tells you you'll need eight essences of nature to get into the Northern Peak, where Onox is, and then gives you the key to the first dungeon (several of the dungeons in this game need keys to get into, just like Link's Awakening.)

So there's the intro to the game. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures!

Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages: It's like Pokemon, except without the Pokemon.

Titles: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (Fushigi no Ki no Mi: Daichi no Shou, officially translated as "Nut of the Mysterious Tree: Chapter of the Earth") and the Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (Fushigi no Ki no Mi: Jikuu no Shou, officially translated as "Nut of the Mysterious Tree: Chapter of Time and Space")
Original Release: February 27, 2001 (in Japan); May 14, 2001 (in North America)
Game #: 7 and 8

Chronologically: Unknown, but theorized to take place simultaneously on each side of the timeline. (One happened in the Child Link timeline, one happened in the Adult Link timeline.)

At least the cutscenes look good.

In the spirit of getting out as many Zelda games as possible in as short a time as possible, Nintendo released two handheld Zelda games in 2001, hot on the heels of Majora's Mask. These games were Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons. Like the games in Nintendo's other powerhouse series, Pokemon, the games were designed as counterparts to one another - not as entirely unique entries. If a player was keen enough to pass both Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, he or she could "link" them together with the use of a password and see the "real" ending of the game.

The Gameboy Color hasn't
changed much since Link's Awakening.

Originally, the games were planned as part of a trilogy (each game would have represented one part of the triforce,) but the concept was scrapped late in development and neither Japan or North America ever saw the release of the third game; this would have been known as "The Mystical Seed of Courage" and would have featured Farore in a leading role.

Farore, the (would-be) oracle of the third game.
Is it wrong of me to be grateful it never came out?

Both of the games start identically to one another. An unknown incarnation of Link rides towards a castle (presumably Hyrule castle) on horseback. He enters the castle and approaches an altar, on which the three pieces of the Triforce are resting. Suddenly, the Triforce pieces come together and resonate with Link, who begins to float, and is teleported by the pieces of the Triforce to what is either an alternate Hyrule, or simply another part of the kingdom. It's not blatantly specified.

Din, official damsel of Oracle of Seasons.

In both games, Link lands in never-never land (or wherever he is; in Seasons, the land is known as Holodrum and in Ages, the land is known as Labrynna) and meets either the Oracle of Seasons (Din) or the Oracle of Ages (Nayru). While these women are named after the goddesses in Ocarina of Time and share many of their characteristics, they are not the same people. In any case, both of them are kidnapped by the forces of evil very early on and it becomes Link's quest to save them and restore order to the land. Din's capture results in the seasons being disordered; Nayru's results in time being disordered. Pretty straightforward.

Nayru, official damsel of Oracle of Ages.

 In many ways, both Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages are to Link's Awakening what Majora's Mask was to Ocarina of Time. The engine, gameplay, and graphical styles of both games are nearly identical to Zelda's previous Gameboy entry. This is partially because of a lack of handheld console innovation - by 2001, the Gameboy (in one incarnation or another) had been around for over ten years. While (to their credit) Nintendo did manage to greatly improve the color and cutscene quality in the two Oracle games, they were basically dealing with obsolete technology.

Nonetheless, both games were both critically and commercially successful, selling to the tune of four million copies a piece. These games are some of the very few entries in the series that I've never played, so I'm really looking forward to enjoying them myself! I'll be playing through Seasons first, followed by Ages, so the first review will be slightly more in-depth than the second.

Stay tuned for more fun and frivolity with Link!