Collection Oddities: Zelda Bootleg Crossbow Toy

 Let me start off by saying this is NOT an official Legend of Zelda item. It is in no way associated with Nintendo or any other company that owns a license for making Nintendo products. Normally we do not support companies or individuals who deal in "unofficial" merchandise, but occasionally we see something that's completely unlike anything available officially (often for good reason, see the Sailor Moon Car Pencil Box) and we add it to our collection.

That in mind we bring you the Crossbow Training Crossbow.

Completely Generic (wink,wink) Crossbow Training!

 Now with the above "this is a filthy dirty nasty bootleg" disclaimer in mind, you do have to give this a bit of credit. It doesn't actually have the audacity to claim it's in any way associated with the legend of Zelda franchise. It just happens to have a blonde elf like young man in a green suit on the package, who just happens to be posed similarly on the official product. Most of us have probably encountered someone's Original Character creation who looks surprisingly similar but absolutely IS NOT LINK. (Kind of like how this character absolutely NOT Vincent Valentine from FFVII) It could also just happen to use the same lettering as the official release of Link's Crossbow Training on the Wii. So it's possible that the link between this item and the Legend of Zelda franchise is all our heads...but probably not. Regardless it's time to take it out of package.

Gun + Bow = Crossbow!

So here it is in all it's glory along. Though I forgot to take a shot of it with it's "quiver" of arrows, but there's not a lot to see there, it's a piece of plastic that holds plastic arrows yay! There was some assembly required, but it mostly consisted of turning the bow part sideways and sticking it onto the gun part. There was also a piece to help keep the bow straight on the gun, but I broke mine trying it put it in. It didn't seem to effect the performance at all though.

It's made of super lightweight cheap plastic with a weathered bronze metallic finish. It has surprisingly detailed and attractive molded designs all over it. Though as a point for the "this is an original creation, completely unlike Zelda." argument, the designs look like some sort of low brow steam punk knock off rather than the Crossbow link actually uses in the game:

Link's Official Crossbow

Functionally speaking it works, but it's not great. First to set an arrow you have to hold the trigger pull back the bowstring and the release the trigger while you're holding the string back to lock it into place once you've done that you can slide the arrow in, just make sure it's completely in it's proper groove or it will split the bottom and top pieces of the gun, like you'd expect with any quality piece of craftsmanship such as this. Once you've carefully set the arrow, you have to hope that all that nonsense about arrows being useless at point blank range is completely fabricated because you have about a 5 foot range and even then it flies pretty slowly, so you'd probably have trouble taking out anything stronger than a Keese made of paper. On that note, for a crossbow "training" toy, it's conspicuously devoid of targets or other training aids, so you probably will be making those paper Keese. Or you could always shoot at your friends and loved ones provided you aim away from the face and they're willing to stand approximately 5 feet away from you.

Locked and loaded for point blank mayhem!

Overall, it's an interesting oddity, but once it's out of the package it has zero identifiable connection to the Zelda franchise or link. Leaving you with a so/so cheap plastic toy. These have been floating around eBay lately for cheap, so if you're enchanted by the novelty of a Zelda bootleg that's not just a crappy rehash of an official item, get one. For most collector's though, it's not going to be worth the space it takes up on your shelf.

~Stephanie

Don't forget to stop by our shop:

Why we're not Friends with the PS3

I originally wrote this post for my personal blog, but thought a wider audience might enjoy commiserating. I also I added pretty pictures to this version.

For Christmas my mom bought us a Playstation Move in a bundle pack (the Mayhem Bundle for those who are curious) with 2 games and a gun as well as one additional game. We didn't particularly want a Move because we have a Wii that takes care of all our motion gaming needs, but we've been wanting to get the House of the Dead Overkill: Extended Cut that's PS3 only, and we like shooting digital things and it was already there, so we decided to keep it. We played the separate game, Everybody Dance,  right away after Christmas and it was fun enough, but after that initial trial run though we've been ignoring it. My Mom has been asking me if we tried the 2 bundled games yet and I've been tired of telling her no, so today while everyone else in the household was occupied and I wasn't doing anything better I decided to try one. Only that's not at all what happened.

First I had to try to set up the little Move motion camera, as we'd kind of fudged it when we used it at first. The Move it doesn't work without that so it's sort of an important part. Unfortunately because of the aforementioned Wii we already have a little gaming doodad on top of our TV See hand Illustration:

My MSN Paint Skillz are AWESOME (though I didn't actually make this in paint)

Two gaming doodads trying to be in the center of the TV just wasn't working out.  After several attempts of shifting, twist tying,  and sticky thing-ing, I admitted defeat and just sort of fudged it again by wrapping it around the Wii bar and letting it sit a little bit precariously off the TV.

My Skills are still lacking but I used a nicer arrow this time.

Then, I got out the gun. The Move Gun we have is called the sharpshooter and it is a big ugly mess of a thing.

In spite of the name probably won't help you get a high score in Hogan's Alley

It might be fine for men with longer arms and no pesky breasts in the way, but for me just trying to hold it was difficult, and gaming with it seems like it might be borderline impossible. The Wii zapper is a much much better design. In any case, in spite of my disappointment with it's size and unruliness, I decided I'd still try it in game.  I popped in the game disc and naturally because it's a PS3 game it had to update.

I was expecting this update because I think I've had maybe 1 PS3 game ever that hasn't wanted to update immediately when you put it in, it's one of my biggest peeves about the system as a whole. But this game (Resistance 3 if you're curious) had not one, not two, not even three updates it wanted, it had four mighty updates that we had to install to play the game.  If you've never had to go through this experience on a PS3, one update is usually enough to make you give up any hope of playing the game you're interested in. They've take anywhere from 15 minutes to a half hour in our experiences and that's just for one! So we decided to let it go ahead and do it's dirty downloading while we did other things. Approximately an hour and 15 minutes later, it was finally done. (Amazing that our XBOX360 also demands to update games but can do it in a fraction of the time)

Over and hour is a completely reasonable amount of time for an update download isn't it?

By this time Jen had finished the paper she was working on, and I was the one looking over it so I decided she could try the game. She wakes the controller/gun back up (they go to sleep after a period of inactivity) and navigates to the game start only to discover she has to calibrate the controller before she can start. This is normal with any motion controlled game and really a good idea, but most things let you point at the corners and center of the screen and call it a day. Not the Move, the Move wants you to swing the controller around your feet while standing on your head and facing due North...OK I may have embellished that part slightly, but it was much more involved than any other motion controller/console I've played with. So Jen tried unsuccessfully to complete calibration with the controller still strapped into the gun apparatus, naturally, it refused to work. So she took it out of the gun (not hard necessarily but still sort of involved) and finally got it to work.

So finally she starts the game again and it has to install...That's right it needs to download itself to the hard drive so we can play it which for some reason it didn't do when it was doing all that other downloading an installing. Back in my day console games ran from a disc or cartridge with very little of this crazy downloading business *shakes head*. In any case the little install bar took about 15 minutes to finish, but that alone wasn't enough then it also had to install it's trophies so we could rub in our friends faces exactly how many hours we spent killing an unreasonable amount of digital creatures in new and exciting ways and gaming isn't gaming without that!  But after about 5 minutes of the trophy loading we realize the game has frozen and that was the last straw. Jen turned off the PS3 and played GTA IV on the XBOX360 instead.

This is all we've been able to see of Resistance 3

Whenever I hear someone talking about how much they LOOOOVVVEEE their PS3, I can't help but wonder if they've ever played another console.

~Stephanie


Don't forget to stop by our shop:

Notes on Demise from Zelda Skyward Sword

There are totally spoilery things in this entry, but if you've read anything about Skyward Sword you've probably seen anything that's going to be covered here as I don't plan on going into too much of the plot line.

I'm aware that I am totally late to the "my thoughts about Skyward Sword" Party. I had the game pre-ordered and got it right away and started playing it right away, so theoretically, I could have done this back whenever every other Nintendo fanboy/fangirl  was doing it, but I didn't because I kept getting bored with the game and finding other things to do, I've gotten to the end finally so I feel like I can appropriately make my comments now. I'm not going to go into all my various grievances with the game as a whole (at least not right now), I just want to talk about one little element, Demise.

Demise is your main antagonist in the game and while he has the common decency to stay in one spot and start trouble rather than following you from temple to temple, it pretty much always comes back to demise. Now my problem with this is that demise starts off as  The Imprisoned. As far as I'm concerned, it's cute, not terrifying. I mean look at this thing:

The Imprisoned

Sure he's got big pointy teeth, but they just add to the cuteness. I mean look at those little wiggly toes. My first encounter with him, was not upsetting, it just made me giggly. In spite of their obvious design differences his armless largely faceless appearance reminded me of the Mome Raths in Alice in Wonderland. While the Mome Rath thing might just be me, clearly it's not just me thinking it's cute, if this plushie and it's responses are any indication.

The imprisioned form of Demise does go through a few "upgrades" and while once is grows arms it does remind me less of a Mome Rath, it does not get any less cute. In fact it's arms are so gangly and silly looking it might actually be cuter.

The Imprisoned 2nd form

 Later on it even flies, but it's basically as the same as the arm one only with a halo.  In spite of the fact that each of these subsequent incarnations causes bigger and more annoying problems for Link, it was hard to take him seriously at any point. That being said I could live with demise being perfectly silly after all the game take great pains to let you know that he isn't at full power in any of those incarnations. So basically that it's an adorable big bumbling monster, is something to be thankful for, not mock.

However as one would expect that's not the final word on Demise. Eventually Demise gets all his unimaginable power and becomes Akuma from Street Fighter.

Demise from Skyward Sword

Now it's possible you've been living under a large rock for awhile and don't really know much about street fighter or Akuma.  This is Akuma:

Akuma from Street Fighter

Still not convinced? Here's the handy split screen version:

Demise and Akuma are totally the same guy

I think the Split Screen version is pretty irrefutable evidence that Akuma got tired of being Dragon Punched and Cannon Drilled and decided to take out his demonic rage on what would become Hyrule. Which if it were the official story of the game, I personally would enjoy. But there's a whole contingent of people who argue, sure maybe he kind of looks like Akuma, but it's clearly supposed to be a precursor to Ganon/Ganondorf. I admit the game certainly makes it seem that way, except well, this is Ganon:

link to the Past Ganon

And if you're not as old school, this is Ganondorf (different from ganon if you buy into the human beast form having 2 different names thing):

Ocarina of Time Ganondorf

And this is Ganon, and this is Ganon even this is Ganon, and well I could go on for quite awhile, but I won't because the point is the Demise to Ganon thing doesn't work for me. Demise is clearly an Akuma who wandered into the wrong game universe.

So basically Nintendo brought me and the other Zelda fans an antagonist who starts off cute and becomes an escapee from another game franchise. This would be annoying in any game, but Skyward Sword was touted as the definitive back story of the whole Zelda saga, making it especially heinous. Would it really have been so hard to create a legitimate demon precursor to one of the most important and well known characters in all of gaming History?

I don't say this that often, but I'm really disappointed in you Nintendo. I feel like you've done a great disservice to the franchise.

~Stephanie

Don't forget to stop by our shop:

Happy December!

Happy December!

First up we've made an important update at Avane, we now take credit cards directly so you can use your Visa, Mastercard, Discover or American Express card directly on our site using our secure server. We do still accept Paypal and Google Checkout Payments for those who prefer them.

Because we are in the midst of the Holiday Season, we're seeing a lot of gift orders. If you're planning on buying a gift you should make sure to check out our Order Cut Off Dates for Holiday delivery:

	First Class	Parcel Post	Priority Mail	Express Mail
Domestic Mail	December 16	December 15	December 20	December 21
International Mail	December 7	N/A	December 9	December 12

International Customers will have to get their orders in ASAP to make delivery by December 24th, but there's still a lot of time for customers in the US to get in their orders. To help you mark everyone off your list we're offering a coupon code for 25% off on orders of $75 or more. It's: Holiday2011 this code expires on December 21st so don't miss it.

Additionally we offer Gift Certificates in any amount from $1 to $500. Gift Certificates don't expire and don't have any fees, they're the perfect gift for any hard to shop for fan of vintage geekery.

We have over 800 items in stock right now many of which would make excellent geeky gifts for friends and loved ones.

 Don't forget to stop by our shop:

Sailor Moon Fans are Everywhere

In preparation for the Holiday shopping season we've been adding new items to our shop. This involves a lot of tedious prep work which means we spend a lot time watching various stuff on Netflix while we do it. This past weekend we decided it was a great time to watch documentaries about Drag Queens (hot on the heels of the previous week's household marathon of RuPaul's Drag Race).  So while watching Wigstock: The Movie , Jen spotted what she assured me was a Sailor Moon wand. I wasn't looking up at the time and thought she may have just been suffering from a Sailor Moon obsession, which she is, but wasn't the cause this time. She backed it up and lo and behold  a Spiral Heart wand:

 Moonies, they can pop up anywhere at any time. Given that the documentary was filmed in 1994, this young lady was clearly ahead of her time as Sailor moon wasn't even airing in the US yet. Hats off to you random unnamed moonie, thanks for making our day a little more interesting.

~Stephanie


Don't forget to stop by our shop: