Link's Crossbow Training
Post nostalgie #6
Change of life, praise be the Wii
Type of Game
Sometimes, the most effective and accessible simplicity trumps unnecessary complexity that can ruin an entire game. Basically, a spin-off that’s better than the original. Yes, really!
Release date on our machines
In December 2007, Tecktonik was all the craze in our homes, but I managed to avoid getting swept up in it.
Developer
Nintendo EAD, formerly Nintendo R&D4, now Nintendo EPD. Well, if that’s what you want, lads.
Publisher
Nintendo Co. Ltd. At least this name hasn't changed since 1963.
Link’s Crossbow Training: available on the Ninten… oh no, wait, on the Swit… oh no, not that either. What on earth? Nowhere except the original Wii? Come on, you bunch of cheapskates! I hate you.
At my dad’s place, too, the Wii was a fixture for a while. And it arrived just when I was ‘between girlfriends’; completely on my own, basically. At my mom’s, I drowned my sorrows over my unwanted single life by having a blast with Randall Geyser playing Rogue Trip, or Gauntlet IV, Mario Kart 64 and Golden Axe 3 on an emulator. During the school holidays, I’d go and spend a few days at my dad’s place in Brittany, as I’d always done since I was a child. But there, apart from Wii Sports and Wii Fit, I didn’t see anything else running on the new, super-trendy console of the moment. This terrible oversight had to be rectified. So Dad and I decided to buy a ‘proper’ Wii game that we could have a great time playing. And my father chose a title worthy of his aspirations: a shooter. No frills, no fuss, no time for messing about, in fact. That’s the sort of experience Dad’s after in life! Blasting anything that moves without thinking, just like in the glory days of the Master System and his beloved Bomber Raid! It had been nearly ten years since we’d last sat down to play a console together; the last time was with R-Type Delta, which gave us a proper run for our money.
The old-fashioned way
It was time to get back into it – with a shooter, sure, but not the usual sort! We’re ditching the planes and spaceships and focusing on something more straightforward, more down-to-earth. I don’t know how we ended up with a copy of Link’s Crossbow Training in our hands, but we felt we’d made the right choice. So brothers, put FIFA aside, switch off that posh machine called the Xbox, and make way for the grown-ups!
The Twilight Success
Link’s Crossbow Training was sold with this “magnificent” accessory called the Wii Zapper – essentially a simple piece of plastic vaguely resembling a rifle, into which you inserted the Wiimote. Surprisingly, despite its virtually zero added value and its extremely high potential for fleecing customers, it was actually quite cool to hold. It allowed you to really get a good grip on the crossbow modelled on screen. Yes, a crossbow, not a bow. I reckon we lost a few die-hard Zelda fans following this update. How are you doing, you narrow-minded dinosaurs who never want anything to change? Have you got over it yet? Don’t worry, I know exactly how you feel; I share your views on loads of things. But not the Zelda franchise – I couldn’t care less about that. Oops, I’ve annoyed even more of you – well, too bad. Shigeru Miyamoto himself explained that he had to use this weapon to stay true to the shooter genre – what do you want me to say?
True to the principles we’d picked up during SEGA’s 8-bit era, my dad and I would switch on the console and dive straight into a round, without reading the instructions, without looking at the manual, or anything. As a result, it took us a while to realise that to rack up big scores, you had to shoot sparingly without missing a single shot, rather than spamming the button like idiots. Let’s say… yeah, at least three days, more like five. Not all gamers are created equal, eh. So, the aim of the game: destroy the targets that appear on screen to accumulate points, in order to reach a certain level and unlock the best trophies: simple medals that bring nothing, apart from the satisfaction of having accomplished a perfectly useless, and therefore essential, feat. Link’s Crossbow Training is set in the world of Twilight Princess, the flagship title of the Zelda franchise at the time.
I’d bought Twilight Princess a few weeks earlier, and I played it at my mom’s house. Well, ‘played’… I tried in vain to get into it, but couldn’t. It bored me to death, it drove me up the wall; I found it absolutely tedious. I really wanted to like it, though. The first Zelda I’d really played since Link’s Awakening!! But no. I had to admit that this franchise simply left me cold. Despite everything, I found it quite exciting to dive into it via a ‘simple’ shooter. This spin-off proved perfectly suited to showcasing the settings of its predecessor. Each level has its own identity and atmosphere, which you have time to appreciate despite the constant sense of urgency inherent in this type of game, with its Time Crisis-esque feel. You really feel like you’re travelling, and doing something other than just shooting at wooden discs with red circles in the middle – which is actually quite a pleasure.
Well, the feeling that you’re doing something other than just shooting targets also comes from the fact that you aren’t just shooting targets. To break up the monotony that I thought would start to set in after two or three levels, Crossbow Training alternates between static screens, levels where you can move around fairly freely, and levels with pre-defined scrolling. The targets are sometimes replaced by moving animals, or enemies who attack you too, which deducts points and stops your score multiplier. Added to this are a multitude of destructible decorative objects, some of which contain secrets to score even more points! And the bosses really do act like bosses, sometimes proving a real pain to take down. Ultimately, those first few games played casually gave way to frenzied gaming sessions, where earning the platinum trophy on every level felt almost like a major life achievement.
I ended up completely hooked on the concept. And whilst I’d almost been making fun of my dad for falling for this unassuming piece of software, I couldn’t have imagined a better choice for having a proper old-school blast. Not bad for a little game far less ambitious than any of the franchise’s mammoth instalments! Better than just not bad, actually. I preferred this title to any Zelda released after 1993. Even Ocarina of Time! YES! Hate me, you fanatics of the crystal-addicted elf, I couldn’t give a damn! I revel in your rage, I savour your hatred and… It might not be worth getting so worked up about, mind you.
404 Not Sound
Well, I had a right struggle finding the game files uploaded online! I mean, does nobody care or what? Hasn’t anyone bothered to share any of this? What do you mean, I should just do it myself? For a start, I don’t know how to extract sound files from a Wii game, and then… yeah, I suppose I could learn. But who still has that console in their living room these days? Not me. No idea what’s become of them, either at my mum’s or my dad’s. But you can hardly find anything, perhaps because the tracks are just SIMPLE REMIXES of the sound design from Twilight Princess. EXCUSE ME? Sorry, but this “simple” spin-off deserves far better than four new little tracks confined to the menus. Except that… I’m up in arms, I’m up in arms, but I didn’t notice at all that I was being served recycled compositions. I can’t recall a single piece of music from my eight or ten hours spent on Twilight Princess. Even more awkwardly, when I listen to this soundtrack today, I can’t even tell which track has been repackaged to end up in Link’s Crossbow Training. Well, I can now say that I admire the work of Kenta Nagata, who has managed to make tracks that weren’t new sound fresh. I already appreciated him for his cheerful, catchy melodies that accompanied my fits of laughter in Mario Kart 64, and I like him even more now that Link knows how to use a crossbow. Consequently, not being able to find anything online strikes me as even more implausible, and so here I am posting the music from the level-selection menu. It’s not a bad track, mind you, but I would have liked to have had a choice, even if, in the end, I would have gone for that one anyway. It’s a matter of principle, as that philosopher of perversity – embodied in the person of my father-in-law – used to say.
Last shooting session
The girl I went out with thanks to WarioWare Smooth Moves (and only thanks to WarioWare Smooth Moves, obviously) ended up coming along on my trips to my dad’s. She was nice, but I soon realised that going at it like a madman on Link’s Crossbow Training every evening wasn’t really part of her plans when she came off to get lost in Brittany. We played a few more rounds with the old man, but that wasn’t really the priority anymore either, was it? Spending our time shooting at things seemed increasingly outdated to me, compared to spending time with my girlfriend under… er, no, nothing.
In the end, I reckon we’d gone platinum on a good half of the training sessions; that lack of determination on my part sometimes gives me a slight twinge of guilt. My girlfriend would surely have understood if I’d introduced her to my family a few months later, just so I’d have time to complete 100% of Link’s Crossbow Training, wouldn’t she? I’m sure she would have, come on. What’s more, my brothers, who weren’t the least bit impressed by this game, were pushing to reclaim their place on the dark side of gaming, with their bloody Xbox 360. To play what? Call of Duty Zombies! Come on! One mindless shooter replacing another… what about respect for the elders? Well, when I saw Forza Motorsport 2 running, er, I’m not going to lie, I got just as hooked on it as they did; it almost made me forget about Gran Turismo, the darn thing.
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