Weekly Featurette: Hyrule On Life

Tomorrow I will be starting my first weekly featurette: Hyrule On Life.

I will be taking a trip back to the Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, to visit some familiar foes in the mystical, far-off, occasionally warped by evil, land of Hyrule!

Day One: Queen Gohma begins tomorrow!

In-profile #1: Legion

I will be beginning this blog with an in-depth look at Legion from the Castlevania franchise, one of the most visually striking antagonists ever to feature in gaming or forget to visit me when I was in the hospital... NO I'M NOT BITTER ABOUT IT.

Legion, seen here from any angle AT ALL

Name: Legion, a word derived from the Latin legio - "military levy" or "conscription". The word has a long and allegedly colourful association with the Romans but he also went by the far less sinister moniker of Granfaloon. I THINK BOTH NAMES HAVE THEIR MERITS.

Gaming debut: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997), Sony Playstation

Other moments of glory: Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (2002), Gameboy Advance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (2003), Gameboy Advance
Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (2005), Sony Playstation 2 and Microsoft X-Box
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (2006), Nintendo DS

Profile: In this shallow, celebrity-oriented world (especially me), nothing is more important than your first impression. My good friend Legion sure made one when it debuted in the Castlevania series. Why? Let me explain!

Now when you saw the above picture of Legion, and if like most people you have a soul, you are probably wondering, "hhmph hmm, I wonder what ever oh ever this intriguing adversary could be", because it looks quite a lot like a colossal nude hippie love-in. BUT! The true nature of Legion is in fact only slightly less horrifying than that: Legion is an animated ball of human corpses!

Dun dun dun!

"That's right! I'm all of your nightmares rolled into one! Tee hee!"

WHAT HAVE I GONE AND DONE. Legion has been waiting a thousand years and devoured a million souls to make that pun, I have just MADE HIS DAY. He'll be talking about this for weeks.

Appearance: This is for the benefit of those of you asking, "just what the heck am I looking at, here?!" and I am merely including it as a formality.

To the casual observer, Legion is simply a ball covered in a rich, creamy layer of zombies, and although there is occasionally a soft core of tentacles, for the most part it doesn't get much deeper than that. Sometimes the zombies are grey, and sometimes they are pink!

Abilities: Legion had many abilities at his disposal, which included but were not limited to: dropping corpses, flinging corpses, controlling corpses, and of course, launching corpses, all of which I ASSURE YOU he used to the best of his ability!

Oh, and sometimes he shot lasers. See, it's kind of important. Here is a good example!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1ZnIK35K78

Nemesis: The vampire-slaying Belmont family in general, but in his first incarnation he foolishly attempted to tackle the son of Dracula himself, Alucard.

"Is someone talkin' about me?"

Go back to sleep, Alucard! I'm not talking about you!

Threat level: Despite his passing resemblance to EVERY SINGLE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF HELL ITSELF, Legion failed to field a credible threat to Alucard or those pesky Belmonts; who usually defeated Legion with a combination of strength, wits, agility, and peeling it apart in layers like a great, big, smelly, Faustian onion.

Goals: To be 100% honest with you, gentle reader, it's very unclear as to whether Legion had any goals, much less any long term methods of fulfilling them. Plus being a hive mind of restless souls might have had something to do with it, I'll check up on that later!

Is it an amorphous blob: Y/N?

A firm Y! This is considered important criteria indeed for a high calibre boss fight and will be something all future antagonists featured on this blog will also be judged on.

Status today: As you can see above, Legion returned several times to the series, but never quite managed to regain the same flair and showmanship that graced his first appearance. After a small glut of work in the handheld generations, the latest Castlevania titles have neglected to include Legion in their lineups.

Conclusions drawn: Legion is a boss battle of the oldest school... and I am not talking about Hogwarts! That place is SUCH A DUMP, I would rather stay at home and not learn magic at all!!

But back to the topic. Legion remains to this day one of the most memorable, surprising and shocking bosses of our generation... hehehe, a ball of corpses. That's morbidiculous!

Introductions are in order!

WINNERS: SOMETIMES THEY NEED THUMBS.

Welcome, confused blogger, to The Miniboss At The End Of This Level! Over the coming weeks, months, or years we will grow close and who knows, maybe even come to love each other? BUT for the time being we are complete strangers to each other and it is very very awkward when one person admits to another that they are thinking that. MAYBE I should start over!

I am the titular miniboss at the end of this level. You probably don't remember me or my stage very well, but I can understand that, it was a long time ago. When we first met, I attacked you using my long range ice blast and attempted to move in closer (to rend your flesh with my fangs), but my limited AI attack patterns resulted in me becoming trapped behind a 16 bit block. VERY EMBARASSING. It all becomes a blur from there... long story short, I think my elemental weakness to fire was my downfall! But that's enough about me.

I've set up this journal to let the world (and by world, I of course mean small community of like-minded individuals on the internet) know about the story of your most beloved bosses, antagonists, and adverseries in gaming. You've fought us time and time again. You've memorised our simple attack patterns, discovered our laughably obvious weaknesses, and sent us shuffling off this mortal coil as you charge after your goal, be it princess, the safety of the free world, or simply more violence. Now it is time for you to hear our stories.