Five years ago Euclid and I unleashed a hack of Zelda 3 to everyone’s own pleasure and enjoyment. Perceived by few as a masterpiece, the hack also received plenty of harsh critics ranging from having a too much hard learning curve for newbie players along with some things like the failure to include the dungeon maps and the fact that there were two big keys was too much for some. A very small fraction of the population of this good ol’ planet Earth still seem to have liked the harder challenging gameplay which in part forced players to use all the tricks and exploits they knew from Zelda 3 along the inclusion of bomb jumping (getting damaged in order to ”jump” small gaps of holes).
To ease with the multiple complaints received, in 2007 I originally planned out to recreate Euclid’s dungeons to comply with the majority of people who didn’t progressed through the hack due to not being able to even finish the guardhouse (the very first mini dungeon that takes place during the rainy sequence…). After a few months of creative and constructive work, all hopes of ever releasing a Parallel Worlds version 2.0 vanished when my life turned upside down and many life related issues arose at the same time at which point it was too much for my own sanity… sunk into depression, made some bad life choices and even went along and deleted my old ”Parallel Worlds 2.0 updates” blog in which I deeply regret ever since since I really liked the progress that was being done… 2008 goes by relatively quiet with life going back on track as slowly as it can possibly get with some minor recurrent depression symptoms.
During a relatively quiet and lonely day in January 2009 with nothing else to do, out of boredom, my life once again had a pivotal role (in a good way this time I suppose… I had these backups cds laying around… went through several of them until I found my old Zelda 3 hacking folders of 2004-2006.. I looked back at all the fun I had hacking the game back then that and triggered a one time concept which went into full developement, this very hack or so to say!
With another vision in mind then the one to barely recreate Euclid’s dungeons, I set myself a broader and proper role for someone who spent the third of his life romhacking the same game over and over until proper satisfaction: to create a brand new hack with the words ”Zelda” and ”Modern worlds” in it. I haven’t shown any work or announce anything officially until August of that same year at which point I created this blog (which I won’t delete this time!! depression or not!!), shown a few pics/info in various message boards and spread the word that SePH was back, alive and still kickin’! … You can pretty much sum up what happened next (minor life related concerns which I’m usually silent about) by going back to my very first diary entry!
Looking back at the progress made between December of last year and now, I can safely say that despite four months of inactivity, the progress made this year was very good, in part due to the dungeon graphics which received a nice overhaul. Finally managed to have the same visual perspective as seen in the overworlds preserved in-tact in it’s underworld counterparts …Euclid had his money right on focusing my work on ”Parallel Universes: Part one” instead of going along and start work on part two… It’s really easy to lost track/focus with these kind of never-ending projects…
So for everyone that was wondering where the hell SePH spends his precious limited hacking time these days?! Well… playing games, DAMN you World of Warcraft for stealing all my time and money ever since I returned to your worlds since January 2011! *GOD-ONLY KNOWS* when Ill have more time for romhacking… and whose idea was it anyway to suck more life force juice out of me already by buying me Star Wars: The Old Republic for christmas! …it’s not like I have a very fundamental hack to finish, do extensive beta testing, release… then create a second parter to it.. no no nothing like that!/SARCASM
I also know finishing this new hack, provided I’d have 120% motivation and confidence in it (since more work done then there actually remains) could be finished in overall a year or so minor the tweaks, ASM work and the *EXTENSIVE* beta testing phase that will be done much more seriously then what happened with Parallel Worlds..
The year following the release of the hack, I stumbled onto ”Let’s Play: Zelda Parallel Worlds”-by Zomodok and Diabetus. While most romhackers would be in furious rage after hearing some of their comments/thoughts on the hack, I still think to this day it’s the funniest ”Let’s Play Parallel Worlds” I’ve come by! Let’s end today’s entry with some *fanwork* the hack got on the ”let’s play” link above!
by Kszchroink
by Mr.Swoon
by Chuuurls
by Prime92
by Kyrosiris
by CherryDoom
You can pretty much tell how people felt when they played the game… One can but wonder what people will come up next should I release a sequel!
December 31st, 2011 at 3:51 am
Wow. 5 years gone. I might dig the rom out of my external HD for the nostalgia.
January 1st, 2012 at 1:20 am
You still have my support, keep posting updates and I’ll be willing to contribute ideas/criticism wherever any are called for.
January 1st, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Glad to see some sign of life, Happy New Year, SePH.
BTW, Parallel Worlds was the shit! I played the hell out of it… twice!
January 3rd, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Has it been this long?
Happy new year SePH.
I have watched the lets play PW as well and I thought it was pretty funny too (even with all those insults and stuff, directed at me lol)
I’m still around so shoot me an email whenever if you need something.
January 18th, 2012 at 4:09 am
Glad you’re still wandering around from time to time, sorry it’s like I never get the chance to even visit my inbox anymore, I’ll try and at least send you a copy of my recent work along with some detailed documents which details where you get which item and where you use them… similar to what you did with parallel worlds back then. I do believe I might a a few ASM requests aswell I documented somewhere which I’ll check out when I’ve got time this coming weekend. Keep in touch!
January 5th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Happy New Year and Happ Birthday!
You know, Parallel Worlds was a great hack and until now I consider it my most favorite Zelda hack by far.
Great visuals, nice and fresh ideas and areas like Kakariko felt even better than in the original. The replacement of the dark world was great, the story could very well have been by Nintendo themselves… nothing much to add – simply amazing!
What I disliked was the forced use of glitch abusing at times… I didn’t mind said backtracking *that* much, but the difficulty felt way too hard at times. That said, PW couldn’t be enjoyable for mediocre Zelda players, who don’t like/aren’t able to freeze-save like every 30 secs.
(For example, I was the only one here being able to play through this at all with only a decent amount of freeze saves and it was never started again thereafter. My family and friends rather enjoyed surviving in the original game – despite admitting the great visual improvements and ideas in Parallel Worlds).
So yeah, it’s a ~7.5/10 for me. If it had been only a tad more difficult than the original game instead, it’d have been a perfect 10/10 IMHO
Hopefully, the “sequel” will be better in this regard.
Unrelated question: Would a visual upgrade of the original ALttP a possible project or is it too much effort (and thus not worth it compared to a totally new hack)? Lately played a SMW hack that changed GFX and it felt surprisingly refreshing xD
January 18th, 2012 at 4:01 am
”Would a visual upgrade of the original ALttP a possible project or is it too much effort (and thus not worth it compared to a totally new hack)?”
A visual only upgrade of Lttp would be possible with little knowledge of yy-chr and figuring how zcompress works… but then if you change the graphics… well, anything from palettes to objects properties have to be changed… while it can look like a quite tedious task especially for, newbies.. it’s manageable, I mean, I’ve done it and I pretty much considered myself the noobiest noob romhacker alive back then. I guess it’s up to everyone to push their limits and see how far they can go!
January 6th, 2012 at 11:05 am
It better be not so damn unneccessarily difficult than the last one. A decent challenge paired with some interesting ideas. That would be truly awesome.
February 13th, 2012 at 11:02 pm
5 years already? I remember trying this game out a few months after it was released. At the time I was fairly new to hacks, and while playing I pretty much felt the exact same way the people playing in those videos did. The game was designed very well, but unless you had a lot of time, save states or cheat codes you are definitely better off leaving it be.
Also, I was perusing Ebay today and found somebody selling a synthetic box for this game. Just thought you’d be interested in it.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zelda-Parallel-Worlds-Box-Manual-Super-Nintendo-PAL-SNES-/160719705468?pt=UK_PC_Video_Games_Video_Games_JS&hash=item256ba4157c