One of the first video game songs I remember really enjoying was Gerudo Valley from Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. Back when I had a crappy computer and little hard drive space, I would listen to MIDI files and Gerudo Valley was one of the few songs that had a pretty good version out there. Of course, now that disk space isn't an issue, I've moved on to MP3s. However, I still find myself listening to more remixes than the actual original itself (because, let's face it, the N64 instrument library sucked). But, anyways, here are this weeks Gerudo Valley music picks.

So I decided to do Midna today. There are parts of this picture I kind of like but overall I really hate it. First off she looks like a guy. Second her head is not wide enough and I scrwed up the shading on the face so it's hard to make out her eye. The body I'm happier with than what it originally was, but it still seems... off. Ugh. Maybe whatever I draw tomorrow will be better.

I need to do more drawing to help beef up my skills. As such I have set up a little exercise for myself: select a theme each week and do a drawing every day. This week's theme, as the title suggests, is Zelda. Specifically, Twilight Princess. So I bring you my first "masterpeice":

Honestly, I'm not terribly thrilled with this. All I can say is I can't wait to get my Mac Book Pro from the school loaded with Photoshop so I can use tools I'm already familiar with. My Prismas are nice, but they lack an undo function.

I had the top 5 post all written up and something went screwy when trying to post it. Now it's gone. Lost forever in the digital mines of hell. I'll give you the basic rundown without the commentary because I don't feel like typing it again.

Top 5 Games I Can't Wait For

5. Final Fantasy VI DS (not confirmed, but you know it's coming)

4. Pheonix Wright: Trials and Tribulations

3. Eternal Sonata

2. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

1. Super Smash Bros Brawl

I'm going to have to reserve some money because these all come out within the first couple months of school.

I'm going to do something interesting this week and post all sorts of nonsense top 5 lists. Why? Because I can. That, my friend, is the beauty of the internets.

Top 5 Games I Wasted Too Much Time Playing

5. Guitar Hero (I and II)

I will go on the record and say this is probably the best game of this generation. If I were getting paid per hour to play this game the same amount I'm getting paid to push carts I'd be freakin' rich. I figure I've probably played Freebird alone somewhere around 50-100 times and it's a ten minute song. It never really gets old.

4. Final Fantasy VI

Only the best RPG made for the SNES, nay, of all time. I've fully completed this game three times, partially many more, and I plan on playing through it again before I head off to college. It's that good.

3. The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past

I remember the first time I finally made it through this game. I'd been playing it for darn near a year. I probably explored every nook and cranny and thensome. I've since made it through twice on GBA and clocked many more hours on PC via emulation. Defeinitely one of the best games ever.

2. Super Mario Bros. 3

The very first game I ever played. I haven't played this one to completion as many times as other games (due mainly to the fact that there's no save in the original NES version) but I did play it almost every day for pretty much the entire life of my first NES (two or three years). I have it on for my NES now (and I crack it out once in a while) and have the GBA version. This game pretty much set and holds the standard for all patforming games. Nothing's come close since.

1. Tetris Attack

Oh, my gosh. Where to begin. I've clocked more hours on this game than probably all the others combined. I've spent countless hours writing this game on five different occasions (and am currently doing so again). I haven't bought Plant Puzzle League for DS because I'm a Tetris Attack purist. Give me Blargg or give me death! Actually, I probably should buy it just for the online play, but I'd use standard controls. None of this touch screen crap.

I do need to mention that Rogue Squadron, Episode I Racer, Zelda OoT, and Mario 64 are close runner ups. So, there you have it. Day one completed. Stay tuned for more inaninty on here at dxprog.com.

Link in Love

In my opinion, the best artwork I've done to date. Not necessarily the best joke ever, but it was good enough to hit the Joystiq poll so I call it even.

Pedophilia

I'm sorry. I did a Michael Jackson joke. Please forgive me.

Firstly, today's comic.

I'm not sure if I've said or not, but I'm currently in the middle of my two week hiatus from Wal-Mart (unpaid, sadly, but I'm not one to quibble when it means two weeks of care free goodness). One of the things I vowed to do in my two weeks of freedom was teach myself how to play piano. Overall I'd say it's going pretty well and having a keyboard that totally rocks helps ;-). But don't take my word for it, here's me playing a little piece of Zelda music (actually, I've been passively working on learning this piece for over a year :-P):

[video=http://www.youtube.com/v/BJCFtI9wjcQ]

I'm hoping that by next summer I'll be proficient enough to play the song in its entirety (without screwing up) along with some others (Final Fantasy X's To Zanarkand being of them).

Speaking of FFX, I am currently enjoying being beaten by the game. The story started off kind of slow (almost to the point of me deciding never to play again), but it's picked up to the point of having me completely sucked in. So I've been playing a bit lately (excluding all my annihilations I believe my play time is somewhere around 26 hours) and hopefully I'll have beaten the stupid thing before I have to go back to work (at which point I'll start playing FFX-2).

I've started on a DS game. That's all I'll say because I tend to make these announcements with all sorts of grandiose promises and give up after about five minutes of coding. Yeah... it's dumb.

Okay, now you're all caught up for the next several months. I'll probably post something again before I go to college next fall.

Comic

Another comic, yay! Anybody who has ever played multiplayer FSA will know exactly where I'm coming from... force gem hogs!

Indeed, they don't. To start my day off I was awakened with the news that my copy of Zelda: The Minish Cap came. And on top of that I also got my first trial issue of Nintendo Power. Of course, this was all dampened by the news that American School sent me Geometry. Fun....

Okay, so that was all cool in and of itself (except the geometry). I then carried out my normal routine of checking ACC, YPN, and Slashdot. After that, being at a loss of what else to do, I decided to see if a verdict had been reached on the game contest I entered. I was expecting the "Judging is now taking place" message which has greeted me so many times in the last three weeks. But instead, there on the front page were screenshots of my game and in glorious, itilicized large font "Winner: TAttack". Now, you tell me that if that were to happen to you you wouldn't be a little eccstatic ;-). So I will now be awaiting my free copy of VB.NET standard (which, ironically, is the same promotional thing I got rid of just a couple months ago :-P). I plan on finding some sort of cheap .NET book at Gardener's this Saturday and selling the whole kit and kaboodle on eBay (just like last time). I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the money yet, but for the moment I'll think I stash it into savings for safe keeping until I pick up my copy of Zelda: Twilight Princess in Novemeber. Chances are, though, that I'll have a job by then and it won't be an issue.

This day was a long time in coming, and it'll be a long time till something like that happens again. But I'll be waiting ;-).

I'm currently bogged down by a bunch of various projects and am having some trouble getting myself motivated to complete them. The biggest is, yet again, Tetra. I'm also starting some GBA dev and trying to get ACPD3 finished.

In other news, I finally seem to have gotten accustomed to the grips in my bowling ball. The other night I shot my current all time high of 172... very sweet :-D. I also shot an all time high series of 501.. also very sweet ;-). I'm hoping to take advantage of some of that beautiful free bowling tonight or tomorrow. Dad's got the rest of the week off so I don't think it'll be too hard to swing ;-).

I've gotten myself hooked on Final Fantasy III/VI again. Console Classix is a very, very cool thing :-) (though, I'm kind of mooching off my younger brother's subscription ;-)). I'd forgotten how great that game is. I'm considering getting the FF anthology that was released for the Playstation, but I'm not sure yet. One thing I am sure of is that this weekend I'll be reserving my copy of Twilight Princess... it looks oh so cool!

Well, I'm sure I've bored y'all to tears, but hey, now you get ae more personal insight into the person known as... dxprog!