Before we dive into today’s memory, there is something important that you should know about me: I tend to get lost a lot. But not to the extent that you shouldn’t let me wander off or else I’ll never find my way home again. Let me put it this way: if you tell me to “walk between the trees” in order to reach my destination, I might think you meant other trees and walk for fifteen minutes in the wrong direction, when all I really had to do was turn right immediately. And yes, this very specific scenario I provided is something that actually happened to me; you could even see where I was supposed to go, so seriously, how did I even get lost?
Anyway, bottom line: please keep my directional insanity in mind when reading about this memory. Trust me, this bit of context will make the whole thing sound even funnier!
The year was 2007, back in the days of yore when the Internet was something that not everyone had yet. My birthday came early, in January, and that year I received a wonderful gift: a copy of Twilight Princess for the Wii, along with a cherished printed guide that I loved reading and needed for finding out the secrets the game held. After all, I was one of those who didn’t have access to the Internet at the time, and none of my friends had yet played this game, so they couldn’t help me either.
But there was one big problem with this: I did not yet own a Wii.
See, at the time, the craze surrounding the release of the Wii was intense. I had waited in line three times, once overnight and twice for several hours each, yet still hadn’t managed to track down the system. I didn’t manage to actually acquire one until September 2007, and even then it came used. So now I had a game, but no way to play it!
Fortunately, there was a solution. Thanks to the kindness of whoever bought me a gift card for that same birthday, I was able to buy a copy of Twilight Princess for the GameCube, a system I already owned. And hey, I already had a guide for it, so I was all set! The guide even had very simple compass directions on the maps, so there was no way I could get lost!
Of course, if you know the secret about the two initial versions of Twilight Princess, then you probably already know what was about to happen to me. Link, our favorite green-clad swordsman, traditionally wields his blade with his left hand. But since the majority of people are right-handed, Nintendo decided that the Wii’s motion controls would work better if Link suddenly pulled an Inigo Montoya/Man in Black and revealed he had been right-handed all along. So, for reasons I’m sure someone out there can explain, the solution to this was to flip the game and have the Wii version be a complete mirror image of the GameCube entry.
Now, I did not know this at the time. As far as I’m aware, not many people did, since most players just had one version of the game. And again, the Internet at the time was not nearly as all-encompassing as it has since become. Ultimately, this meant that I would be playing the GameCube version while following a guide for the Wii version. Need I say more?
Remember how I mentioned that I frequently get lost in real life? Well, even on a good day, the situation is even worse when it comes to video games, since aimlessly wandering around usually just leads to the discovery of interesting things. I also tend to trust video game guides in general, which meant that when the guide said to turn east, I blindly followed its directions, even when the item or landmark was immediately behind me.
Now, you may be asking: why didn’t I ever notice that I was going the wrong way or that the guide was very clearly mirrored to the game I was playing? Well, like I said, I get lost a lot. So I just figured it was business as usual, never thinking that my valuable tool might be the source of my confusion. I mean, I always found everything eventually, so I must have just turned the wrong way, or it simply took me a little longer to figure things out!
It was not until years later that I learned the truth, and boy, did the penny drop hard. I laughed for what had to be a solid minute, then attempted to explain to the people I was sitting with what exactly was so funny. I then left to take a look at the Wii version (which I still haven’t played to this day) to discover that, yes, the game had been mirrored the entire time.
Of course, I then proceeded to head in the opposite direction of where the GPS was telling me to go on the way home. You know, just in case. (Took me forever, silly thing must have been broken.)
