#borble torble

listen i’ve gone so off the shits drawing benrey i couldn’t guess which design you’re referring to but REGARDLESS!!!

it takes a while and is almost certainly not the most efficient way to do it but frankly, i’m too lazy to use a scanner. hope this helps you in some way, and thanks for calling my art professional!!!

so glad someone recognized the subliminal message disguised in the hitman art. the alternative was this

grab a blanket and and get ready to lie down in the can of worms you just opened. my sincerest apologies in advance.

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS is a criminally underrated LOZ game with a brilliant soundtrack, phenomenal visual design (especially the characters), and well-made dungeons that stay true to many of the tool-oriented puzzle mechanics of previous games while adding its own unique flair in a variety of ways.

The Premise: The Natural Successor of The Boat, Apparently

Trains.

It’s bizarre. It’s totally unrelated to anything mildly Zelda. Why did they choose it? Who fucking knows. My guess is they were trying to survive off the boat hype of Wind Waker with a brand new type of locomotive. I don’t care because it made the Lokomos.

look at these dudes. these little guys. disabled musicians, absolute icons. i love them.

Anywho, the train as a mechanic is kinda just a reformatting of the boat in Wind Waker (and to a lesser degree, Phantom Hourglass). A weird choice, considering the overworld navigation of WW was a biiiiiiig point of criticism for that game. The HD version did a lot to repair it. ST has similar flaws but ultimately is no more unbearable than its counterpart. It seems the biggest change that having trains made, other than being fucking ridiculous, is in terms of the plot.

The Plot: Zelda Gets a Personality and a Big Fucking Sword

I doubt anyone who still owns a DS cares enough to go track this game down but I’ll say it anyways: spoilers.

Across the five kingdoms, over land and underwater, spreads a lace of train tracks, acting as the spiritual chains that bind some Evil Train Dude in the earth. Engineers are a revered class because they maintain the tracks in service of the spirits. I bring this up because credit needs to be given to the motherfuckers who were told to integrate trains into Zelda lore and who tried their fucking best.

Anyways, Zelda fucking dies, like, almost immediately. She gets murked by Sasuke 2 and a demon politician (who has one of my favorite villain themes). 

Link gets his tiny ass kicked because he’s not a twink swordsman, he’s a twink engineer.

Zelda is a ghost now and she is so fucking mad about losing her body. She is so mad she will accompany you on your whole quest just so she can strangle Chancellor Cole with her bare hands. This means not only does she get to develop a genuine friendship with Link but also an actual personality (Tetra notwithstanding). Plus, she plays a big role in dungeon gameplay. 

She possesses a darknut and gets a huge fuckoff sword. She uses it to kick ass and does so without mercy. The controls are wonky at times but I can and will forgive it for the novelty of letting Princess Zelda do harm. 

Side Quests Including but Not Limited to Extremely Divorced Bunny Man

Here he is. Bunnio. My favorite NPC. He divorced his wife to go make a rabbit sanctuary in the middle of the woods. He will pay you to catch bunnies for him and I always catch all of them because I’d die for him. If you meet his ex-wife, you can choose to bring her to the sanctuary where she will promptly tear his ass apart. However, she quickly realizes that love often means accepting your partner’s unconventional hobbies and so she decides to stay and take care of the sanctuary with him. LOVE WINS BABEY!!!!!

On a brief note, I wish so badly that the Anouki were in more Zelda games. They are bastards and idiots. They have extremely strong feelings regarding facial hair. I adore them.

Why It Failed, Aside from the Obvious

There are a lot of reasons why ST didn’t take off. The premise itself was enough to turn people off because its fucking trains. The DS wasn’t a popular console among classic Zelda fans at the time. However, I’ll still posit my own theory for what I think was a big factor: Phantom Hourglass.

PH was Spirit Tracks’ predecessor, also on the DS, and it is a grueling experience to play. It has a super repetitive dungeon mechanic (the ocean temple) which starts pissing you off by the second time you visit it. It adds a time restriction (the hourglass) that at first, appears to add urgency, but which you quickly realize is just the most boring and arbitrary way to force your players into perfecting their speedrun. The fact that it followed after Wind Waker, one of the best iterations of the series and the introduction of Toon Link, just made it more of a disappointment.

Basically, I think ST was doomed from the start because PH set a terrible standard for LOZ DS games and further cursed the Toon Link IP that was already being met with hostility by Zelda gatekeepers when WW first came out. 

TLDR: Being Charming and Bizarre is Enough Sometimes

The fact that this was one of two of my first Zelda games I ever played (the other being PH) definitely makes me several orders of biased. Because I wasn’t familiar with the traditional combat and overworld navigation of typical Zelda games, I wasn’t judging it by that metric when I played. therefore, I was able to enjoy the game for what it had rather than compare it to what it had changed.

It’s not a groundbreaking game. It doesn’t expand upon the existing LOZ universe with new deep lore. But its not supposed to. It’s just a funky lil Zelda game with all the cute characters, off the wall plot, and creative puzzles that make the franchise so popular. It’s cute, creative as hell with what it has and it knows what it is. It’s a lighthearted exploration into something weird, sweet, and unique. And damnit that’s just what you need sometimes.