VIDEO GAMES OF THE HEART

Those shots of Link on Gamecube really made me think of how truly epic Zelda could become, eclipsing even Squaresoft's unlimited capacity to take us to worlds of fantasy. With the capabilities of the GameCube, Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto have the chance to bring the Hyrule world as large as Zelda II's land into reality. Imagine looking across the horizon and in the morning mist as the sun rises the land of Hyrule spreads enlessly before Link's eyes. Hyrule Castle towers amidst the countryside with spires and turrets pinnacled with bright flags waving in the breeze. Upon an upper balcony Zelda opens a window and stands looking toward the distant ocean, her hair flowing in the breeze. The camera pans to the surface of her blue eyes, and then the her eye fades into a flying scene, with the ground speeding below coupled with epic music, across a rolling prairie as the camera catches up to Link galloping upon a white horse. The music crecendos. He stops, and unsheaths the master sword, and yells triumphantly, "I shall be the one chosen by the Triforce! By the goddesses above I shall avenge the evil that hath forsaken my homeland! Ganon shall fall!"

As technology advances it brings with it the ability to turn games into forms of artwork like movies, the expression of the artist's vision and even a window to our own inner childlike fascination with adventure. I have sought all my life for the time when I could literally take command of my own destiny upon the wings of eagles and soar above the clouds of this world and bring my imagination into the manifest world. The industry of video games has been progressively building toward the ultimate destiny of replacing film media as the most exhilarating entertainment source to be found upon a screen. The capabilities of Video Games and computer generated cinema of tomorrow will undoubtedly show us new realities only dreamed about by people just a decade ago.

We're only one technological video game generation away from total photorealistic visual representation. The consoles of the Next Gen console debut after this one in 2005 and 2006 will undoubtedly be a manifest achievement of historic proportions. Hollywood may someday be relegated to the annals of history when entire movies are cast and filmed within the machinations of a computer mind. Long ago, when I first wielded the Master Sword and took it upon myself to battle the evil that was Ganon, I someday knew that the game would just as I saw it in my mind, a world with characters and filled with the breath of life. The sands of time poured and continue to pass away, yet many great things will be coming to this planet, and to my life. I can say that I feel almost blessed to be born in this time, the dawn of mankind's true birth...when he reached for the stars and touched them.

Dreamcast, GameCube, Playstation 2, and X-Box are more than just another release of Video Game Machines, they are windows to our enevidable future. With the ascendance of the RPG, and the desire of gamers to escape from this mundane world and time, we have been given the tools to have distant places that only twinkle silently in the unending night appear within our homes. We have been made witness to truth of the universe, and the infinite diversity of life and time. I can only look forward with bated breath at the changes that will take place.

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