You know what this room needs?
A lava pit, that’s what.

    I’ve been playing Nintendo’s latest Legend of Zelda game, lately. And, while my online presence has been pretty nearly nonexistent of late, at least the land of Hyrule is safe and sound. I’m sure everyone can appreciate my efforts in this regards, as a safe, stable and democratized Hyrule is in everyone’s interest. Cut-and-run isn’t in my vocabulary, which makes its presence at the beginning of this sentence mysterious and magical.
    Anyway, I’ve had video games on my mind the past couple of weeks and therefore my first post to break my blogger hiatus is about… video games. My apologies to non-gamers; but you have to read it anyway. Its a rule.

    In the universe of The Legend of Zelda there exists a race of mountain-dwelling, rock-eating creatures called, “Gorons.” In the latest game they inhabit a dungeon in need of a good spelunking. Technically, they don’t call it a dungeon or temple as per the usual Zelda parlance. These are actually the Goron mines, where Gorons… I don’t know… mine shit.
    In grand Asian tradition you must first best them in a contest of strength before gaining access to their fabled mines. This tradition carries through to all walks of life in the far East, which makes admittance into emergency rooms along the Pacific rim far more challenging and, frequently, much more tragic than in our Western counterparts. The Gorons are big, and much stronger than a trauma center orderly, so of course there’s a trick to defeating them; you must get advice from someone who once beat a Goron.
    It turns out that the big secret is to wear a pair of big, damn, heavy, iron boots. Because, see, the heavy boots keep the Gorons from tossing your ass out of the ring during their little wrestling matches. The human in question is fairly embarrassed by his little podiatric secret and begs the player not to spill the proverbial beans.
    So, I head on up the mountain to meet me some Gorons. I strap on my iron boots–right in front of them, I might add. They don’t seem to notice. Nor do they seem suspicious about the giant metal blocks on my feet or the fact that a puny, little elfin boy is able to overpower an eight-foot-tall mountain monster. This all fits perfectly within acceptable tolerances for suspension of disbelief; at least, it does if you’re the sort of person who spends their days playing The Legend of Zelda.
    But… what struck me, personally, was that the Goron mines following my boot-assisted rasslin’ victory were largely navigable only by using those same iron boots in conjunction with a bunch of giant magnets. Together they allowed me to walk around on walls and ceilings like Lionel Richie. Which is great fun from a gameplay standpoint, but I mean… logically? Come on! The whole mine level is entirely impassable without the use of the repeatedly aforementioned set of freaky iron boots–which the Gorons don’t even know I have! So how the hell is it that this race of mountain folk came to completely base the design of their mining system around the existence of an item they presumably don’t even know exists!? Sheer madness!
    But this kind of thing is pretty much par for the course in the video game world, where an important item, rather than being locked away in a safe with the key cleverly concealed in the villain’s wallet, is typically protected by an elaborate series of pulleys and levers comprising an intricate logic puzzle whereby one transports a certain amount of water from a bucket on one side of the room to a bucket on the other side of the room in the most elaborate way possible.
    All of which sent me back to my days of playing Super Mario Brothers in my youth. Back then I always tried to think up reasonable explanations for the layouts of King Koopa’s castles, through which Mario wends his way by jumping over lava pits, dodging giant bullets, and hopping along series of floating platforms. Honestly, this is actually the kind of stuff I thought about when I was a kid¹.
    Okay, and still kind of do, obviously …
    Certainly, an evil villain such as His Royal Majesty King Koopa would want to keep meddling plumbers from foiling his rotten plans, but … Koopa does have to live in that castle, after all. All those deadly traps must get pretty tough to live with.
    Really, just imagine it. When I, Arthbard, get up at night to use the restroom I have to carefully feel my way through the dark to get there. Throw spinning blades into that equation, not to mention giant spiky blocks that rise and fall at regular intervals and, one way or another, you’re generally going to be left with a mess that someone’s got to clean up–and Koopa may no longer be in a position to help out at that point.
    Just imagine the mind-set King Koopa must have. Always sitting around obsessing over the possibility of a mustachioed Italian putting an end to his nefarious plans yet again. I mean, I’m all for home security and all, but it takes a particularly paranoid state of mind to mandate the installation of lava pits in your living room.
    Hmmm… I suspect Axl Rose may be considering the possibility. I don’t know. He just strikes me as the sort to sit in a corner, arms wrapped around knees, rocking back and forth and mumbling to himself that Slash is plotting to sneak in one day and steal away his precious music royalties.
    I’m convinced that there exists some company in the video game universe that sells, installs and maintains these elaborate security precautions. When you call them up, they probably send over someone to give you an estimate and say things like,
    ”You see over here where you’ve got your door? Yeah, well a hero could just walk right through there. What you really need there is a flaming pendulum. That’s gonna run ya’ about 3,000 rupees. And, right here? We can put an obscure logic puzzle in for you… Oh, and this big, open area over here? That’s not gonna do. For that we usually put in a ceiling that comes down on a timer to crush anybody standing under it. We’ve actually got a special on crush ceilings this week. Two-for-one deal. Get one in the kitchen, we’ll do the bathroom for free.”
    All these security precautions and video game villains still can’t ever seem to foil do-gooding protagonists.
    … Maybe Koopa should have just gone with an ADT system, instead.

1 – Which goes a long way toward explaining things. -Ed.