Not sure about Vagrant Story, but I really don't think Alundra is all that rare. I picked up a used copy in good condition not long ago for a tenner.

Outside Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, Zelda games - while colourful - are hardly happy and cheery. Many of the details in the stories are quite dark, tragic or disturbing, be it Majora's Mask or the original myths in the first few Zelda games. Twilight Princess also had some really freaky stuff in there and both bad guys had their share of trauma and tragedy to their pasts (enslavement, obsession, insanity).

The earlier Zeldas were also quite challenging, especially Link's Awakening (which also had a really depressing story and ending).

You really should play more, man. Just cause the grass is green instead of brown doesn't mean the game itself will be sugary ;)

I know, I know, I just can't get past the happy funtime Nintendo day-glo colours, the excessive use of small children as main characters and all the nonsense with flutes.

I loved Link to the Past when I first played it but thought Ocarina of time was just cloying in it's saccharine presentation. Since then, I played most of Minnish Cap (Which was too samey and basically LttP with slightly different layouts), watched a mate play Wind Waker for quite a while (Which features the most boring sailing around all the time mechanic I've seen since Suikoden 4) and watched the same mate play a bit of Twilight Princess (Which looked to me like OoT with shoe-horned in "Dark" bits and some furry fan service). I've actually got a copy of Majora's Mask, I might give it a go one day. At the end of the day though, I'm simply more of a God of War and Ghost Recon person than I am a Zelda person. The incessant air of cheeriness that pervades all Nintendo games really puts me off and lessens any sort of pathos you might experience as a result of in game tragedy. I'll take the end of Shadow of the Collossus or the escape from Soniere Prison in Suikoden over Link riding his horse with a sad face any day of the week. :)

Oh absolutely, I get that.
I just can't let an Alundra > Zelda quip slide, especially if the justification is that "zelda is too happy". Or anything else for that matter because Alundra is MEDIOCRE ARGL

Yeah but all that doom and gloom is only really apparent towards the end of the game, by which point you've been jogging around the excessively jolly game world for so long that it doesn't really seem that bad. The games I mentioned up there have a constant theme of struggle and failure throughout, right up to (And including in the case of SotC) the end. OoT for me was a kid running about trying to stop the charicature of a bad guy from taking over the world with his colourful magic spells.

Alundra isn't a brilliant game at all but at the time it came out, it was a nice enough change to be interesting and challenging enough for me to want to beat it just to say I did. With the Zelda games, once you've played one you've pretty much played them all in my opinion and it wasn't such a great experience the second time to warrant revisting agan.

If OoT hadn't come out at a time when there were so many awesome (And more grown up) games out on the Playstation I probably would have loved it but as it was, I had grown out of Nintendo by then and was enjoying games like Soul Blade and Tomb Raider and Wipeout so the appeal of what on the surface looked like a kids' game was pretty minimal.

You'd probably like Majora's Mask, Shin. It's surprisingly dark for a Nintendo game. The moon wants to join Link for a dinner party, but Link's all "no fat chicks". Being so far up, the moon fails to hear Link's reply, and ends up going to the dinner party, killing everyone in the process.

The moon pulls out, small children crushed together with cake and biscuits on its cheek. A single tear washes them away. Angry Sun from Mario 3 later discovers the moon hanging by the rings of Saturn.

A better question is, why do pigs fly.

:dover:

wow
 

crash london ill tell you what ..you are a game genius man..do you play al that game man i dont have that much STOCK .you could open a store for playing games and make some cash...this thread is nicee very nice

I heard that Crash obtained much of his game collection when he was in London.

And that's why his nickname is what it is.

Could just be a silly rumour, though.