Henrik Carlsson's Blog

All things me.

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Utan att veta om det har jag passerat 10 000 tweets. Nummer 10k var oplanerat retweet men känns ändå helt rätt.

http://twitter.com/empiremagazine/status/645035349006159872

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Då är frågan om jag känner två andra som också kommer köpa ”Tri Force Heroes” och vill spela co-op eller om det är single player som gäller.

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Bilder från Bella och Jonas bröllop (#bellaochjonas)

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Förra helgen gifte sig mina vänner Bella och Jonas. Ceremonin och bröllopsmiddagen hölls på Sätra Brunn i närheten av Sala. Det var ett vackert bröllop och en väldigt trevlig fest. Jag tog många bilder under festen och lade upp två stycken på Instagram och som ”Snapshots” här på bloggen.

Här är ytterligare några av bilderna som jag tog. Det här är de som jag tycker var de allra bästa från själva ceremonin.

Tack Bella och Jonas för att vi fick komma på ert fina bröllop och lycka till med ert liv som gift par.

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Första dagen som föräldraledig

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Idag har varit min första dag som föräldraledig. Under september och oktober kommer Linn och jag vara hemma tillsammans och ta hand om Iris. Det ska bli väldigt roligt och jag har sett fram emot det länge.

Idag har Iris sovit väldigt mycket, troligen för att hon har en andra tand på gång. Vi får se vad morgondagen för med sig.

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Progress on the ”Perfect Round” of Majora’s Mask

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Today I’ve extended my checklist for a ”Perfect Round” from an earlier post. The checkmarks mark the things I’ve done in this, my current play-through.

People to help

Things to do

I’ve also started working on a ”schedule” of sort to help me keep track of what to do and when. (The arrow marks where I’m currently at.)

Schedule

  1. Get the Moon Tear and trade it for a Town Title Deed.
  2. Soar to the Southern Swamp and trade the title deed for a Swamp Title Deed instead.
  3. Soar to Woodfall and beat the temple boss.
  4. Deliver the Deku Princess to her father. (I forgot to do this in this round.)
  5. 2:20 pm – Wear the Kafei-mask and speak to Anju after the mailman has given her Kafei’s mail.
  6. Soar to Snowhead and beat the temple boss.
  7. Soar to Zora Cape, find the Business Scrub and trade Land Title Deeds with him.
  8. Head for the Great Bay Temple and beat the boss. (Done around 10 pm.)
  9. 11:30 pm – Speak to Anju in the kitchen of the Stockpot Inn. ⃪
  10. Run toward the north part of Clocktown and mail Anju’s letter on the way.
  11. 00:00 – Help the old lady in north of Clocktown as she’s getting robbed.
  12. 02:00 am – Soar to Milk Road, call for Epona and ride to Romani Ranch to help Romani.

More to be added.

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Creating ”The Perfect Day(s)” in Majora’s Mask

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This post contains spoilers for the game Zelda: Majora’s Mask (3D) and the movie Groundhog Day. If you haven’t played the game or watched the movie, you really should.

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays an a**hole tv weather man stuck in a time-loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. He eventually breaks free, basically by realizing that since he repeats the same day time and time again, and thus has the ability to know everything there is to know about anyone in the small town in which is he is forced to roam, he has the ability to learn all that’s needed for him to help everyone have an as good day as possible. In the end he tries to create ”the perfect day”.

In Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (and the old N64 version) Link is forced to relive the same three days over and over again. As I play the game I help a lot of people with different things and I am rewarded in various ways, mostly with ”pieces of hearts” or masks. (Most of the helping of these people is done in ”side quests”. Not essential to the completion of the game.) The people I help are happy but once time resets their perils are back. I don’t need to help them again since I’ve already got what I need, but as I immerse myself in the game I have a hard time not feeling sorry for them as their problems come back.

As I think I’m getting closer to the end of the game I’ve gotten the idea to try and create a ”Perfect Day”, or more like three perfect days, for the inhabitants of Thermina. It will likely not change anything about the ending of the game but I will feel accomplished and happy if I managed to do it. The idea is to help as many people as possible with whatever I’ve helped them with in past run-throughs, before I finally head into the Clock Tower and whack Skull Kid.1 I know I will not be able to help every single person in the game in need of help, in a single run-through of the three days. I’ll have to make some prioritization.2

I’m currently in the middle of a trial run for this. In previous rounds I have finished all four temples so technically I could head for Skull Kid right now and finish the game. Still, I’d like to help some more people first and hopefully add them to my list of participants in the ”Perfect Round”. This round I’m trying to help the star-crossed lovers Anju and Kafei by retrieving the Sun Mask that the thief stole from Kafei. This is a quest that I have not completed before.

For this round I’ve made the following list of things to do and people to help. (Checkmarks indicate what’s already done this far in this round, around midday of the first day.)

People to help

Things to do

  1. I think facing Skull Kid is the way I’ll take the game to an end, but I don’t know for sure. ↩
  2. Perhaps a more skilled player than me could actually help every single person in need of help in one run-through. Perhaps not. ↩
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When atp (atp.fm) talks about audio equipment I realize how car professionals must’ve felt about Neutral.

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Men varför i helvete sitter jag och läser en text från Aftonbladet Kultur, om Niklas Svensson?

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Playing through Majora’s Mask 3D, first three-day cycle

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This is not to be considered a walkthrough of Majora’s Mask 3D. There are plenty of other great resources for that online. Instead it’s a ”journal” of sort for me while I play through the game. I wanted to document it for myself and figured, ”why not put it on the blog? It helps keep the lights on here”.

In the first three-day cycle of Majora’s Mask there’s really not that much you can do. I’m stuck as a Deku Scrub, so therefore I’m stuck inside Clock Town. I found the one Stray Fairy that was missing from the fairy in Clock Town. It was located down by the water in southeast of Town. She gave me magic powers.

I also collected some rupees, bought a map for Clock Town and completed the search for the ”Bomber boys” so I could join the ”Bomber’s Secret Society”.

Finally I went to the Observatory, found a Moon tear that I traded with the Deku Scrub infront of the Clocktower in order to get his Deku Flower. Then, once I where in possession of the flower I just waited for the final night when the door in the Clocktower would open.

When the door opened I used the flower to fly up to it. There I collected a piece of heart and entered the roof where I faced Skull Kid. I took back the Ocarina of Time from him, player Song of Time and returned to the dawn of the first day.

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First impressions of ”Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D”

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Last week Nintendo released ”The Legend of Zelda – Majora’s Mask 3D”, a remake of the Nintendo 64-game ”Majora’s Mask” for the Nintendo 3DS. Some time ago1 I bought the N64-version and I still haven’t played it through to the end. It seems my current lifestyle just doesn’t allow me to occupy the tv for hours on end. It does however allow me to play short bursts of handheld games here and there. So when I heard about the 3DS-remake I went giddy with anticipation.

I’ve now played Majora’s Mask 3D for a couple of hours and I’ve got some early opinions about it. If you’ve never played it, neither for the N64 nor the 3DS, you can still read most of this post without having anything important spoiled.

The look and feel

The story and gameplay of these old N64 Zelda games remain very engaging to this day, but the look of them does not transcend time as well as one would want. The 3DS version fixes most of this. Where a lot of details in the original (rocks, patches of grass etc.) looks like a single boxy polygon, the 3DS version really gives you a whole lot more depth to the experience. Details are sharp and the world seems a whole lot more realistic and believable, without losing any of its wonderful fantasy setting.

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Playing the game

Majora’s Mask is a great game! Wether you play it on an N64 or the 3DS it is a really fun experience. The story is compelling, the puzzles just hard enough to make you slightly frustrated at times, the characters are well known to you if you, like me, has spent way too much time playing The Ocarina of Time.

Everything about the controls that was good about the original is equally good on the 3DS and some things feel better.

Important changes

The concept of time is very important in Majora’s Mask. This is just as true in the 3DS version. The way time is used in the game led to a very odd and confusing saving mechanism in the original version. This has been smoothed out a lot in the 3DS remake. This does not make the 3DS-version ”dumbed down”, it just makes it less confusing.

Want to know more? See the following footnotes for details that might contain spoilers.2

Do I think you should by it?

Of course that depends on so many things about you that I know nothing about. But if you are like me, a grown-up geek with a well-paying job and disposable income, a love of Zelda-games and some time to kill, the answer is YES GOD DAMNIT, YES!!!!!

But I don’t own a 3DS

I bought my 3DS for The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Even if that had been the only game I played on it, it would totally have been worth its price. I’m sure the same is true for Majora’s Mask3.

So how far have I’ve come

I’ve just finished the first real dungeon. On my never-finished run on the N64 I made it through three out of four dungeons, so I have a pretty good idea about what to do next. I’ll likely blog a lot more about the game as I make my way forward.

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  1. Turns out it was quite a long time ago. I thought it was in the recent year but when I looked up the old blog post I realized it was in 2013. More than a year and a half ago! ↩

  2. In the original version there are two ways to save:
    1. You play the ”Song of Time” and return to the dawn of the first day. You’ll lose you’re inventory and the state of the land will return to the way it was at the beginning of the game. Collected masks and treasures will remain in your possession.
    2. You find an owl status and tell it to save and quit. When you start playing again you will be back at that very place, that very time. However if you quit the game now, everything since the last time you played ”Song of Time” will be discarded, unless you once again quit by talking to an owl statue.

    This is needlessly complicated for something that should just work. In the 3DS version you can still reset the time by playing ”Song of Time”. However when you encounter an owl statue you can save, but without being forced to quit the game. There are also more saving points placed here and there in the game. These are not owl statues so you can’t ”soar” to them, but they are fully functioning save points. ↩

  3. Again, if you have disposable income. Don’t buy things you can’t really afford! ↩
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