Inviting You All to #Zeldathon

My friend, Dani Kelley, and I were talking a few weeks ago on Facebook about the video game series The Legend of Zelda, and she had a brilliant idea: she wants “to play every single Zelda game…and…write about it.” 

But as we all know, “It’s dangerous to go alone.” 

So, Dani is inviting bloggers/tumblrs/twitterers to join her. Being the huge geek that I am, I’ll definitely be participating. I’m actually hoping to talk about the gender ideologies, and the feminist theologies in the different games. I may even share some of the superbly nerdy Zelda fan fiction plots I made up in high school.

I thought I’d invite you all to come along, or at least give you all a heads-up, because it’s about to get geeky all up in here!

Here are some general guidelines that Dani has set. You can read the full announcement here, or check out the tumblr she’s dedicated to #Zeldathon here!

The plan.

You are invited to join me in playing through every major console Zelda game — if you write about your experiences. You can write as you go, live-tweet or live-tumbl, or write a final big review at the close of the game. It’s totally up to you. The tag we’re using to unite this particular synchroblog is Zeldathon (thanks,Paige!).

I want this to be super flexible. So here are the very loose guidelines:

• You don’t have to play every single game. The major console games alone are: the Legend of Zelda (NES), Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES), A Link to the Past (SNES), Ocarina of Time (N64), Majora’s Mask (N64), Windwaker (Gamecube), Four Swords (Gamecube), Twilight Princess (Gamecube and Wii), and Skyward Sword (Wii). You can pick whatever game you want to play. You can even play the non-major releases for Gameboy or DS. It’s totally up to you. However…
• Every major console game needs to have a full review. That’s nine total reviews. If you’re up for that, let me know in the comments which game you’d like to review. Each game can have multiple people playing and reviewing (this is where the live-tweeting or blogging as you go comes in, for sure). But a complete review of each game from someone would be fantastic. Claim your game in the comments here! (And remember, you can play as many or as few as you want, whether or not someone has claimed it or not. All reviews, tweets, and thoughts are welcome!)
• You choose what kind of review you want to write. Are you a feminist who wants to examine expressions of gender in the game? I would LOVE to read that. Are you a hardcore gamer who understands better than I do the intricacies of storytelling in video games and want to critique the story of a particular game? Do it! However you want your review to go is completely okay. If you want to go crazy and write a whole series, either about a single game or about the entire Zelda universe? Please, please do, because I will read the hell out of that.
• However you want to play is okay, too. Are you a completionist? Tell us how unbelievably hard it is to complete every side quest and find every piece of heart. Do you just follow the plot with little deviation? That’s fine. Do you get frustrated and Google that block puzzle? No shame here. (At least from me, because my philosophy is if the game gets so frustrating I’m not having fun anymore, it’s not serving its purpose.)
• Be sure to use “Zeldathon” as a tag when you tumbl or tweet. I’ll do a weekly or biweekly search of the tag on Tumblr and Twitter to pull together Storify threads or link to reviews here.
• Let me know if you’ve written a review so I can link to it here. I’ll do a weekly or biweekly post of your tweets, tumbls, and reviews here (quite probably with commentary). I really want this to be a community effort. I love playing video games with people, and since most of my friends are online (and Zelda is typically a one-player game) this is the closest we can get to all playing together.
• This is something that can go on for as long as we want it to. Starting with Ocarina of Time onward, these games take a lot of time. (I think I sank 50 hours into Twilight Princess.) I’ll probably revisit this idea again in a year and see how we’re doing and decide whether to continue to facilitate things.