I began playing this game June 19th 2010. That evening during a family bbq my dad collapsed in the bathroom. He was taken to the hospital unconscious in an ambulance. I didn't know it that day, but his iliac artery had ruptured. That night he went through over 100 units of blood while doctors operated and tried to figure out what was wrong. The next morning I went to the hospital. In a waiting room with my mom and many aunts, uncles, and grandparents the doctor came in and said that he was stable. We all cried in relief.

He was in a coma for a few weeks, and in the hospital for more after that. I played this game while he was in the hospital. I had just gotten my driver's license, so for lunch I would go buy 3 $1 Arby's roast beef sandwiches—one each for me and my siblings—and play Zelda. Kind neighbors and church members brought food for my siblings and I while my parents were at the hospital. I played Zelda. I beat the game and it was good. I didn't like it as much as Majora's Mask. Maybe this was circumstantial.

I played this game every day after Kindergarten with my mom. We played for 30 minutes passing the controller back and forth every time we died. At one point after beating the game a neighbor from down the street deleted our save data. I was devastated. That neighbor later borrowed my copy of Zombies at My Neighbors before he and his family moved.

I bought and played the game again on my Wii as a teenager. I wouldn't play the game again until 2016, after my video game sabbatical from 2013-2016. I played it on my 3ds, then on the Super Nintendo Mini, and again on my Switch.

I love this game. I will play it until I die.

I accidentally took a class with my least favorite professor for a second time Spring 2018. I had taken rhetorical studies with him Spring 2017 and it was the worst class of my entire college career. When I arrived in class January 2018 and saw this professor my heart sunk. His classes were boring and unfocused. I played Butterfly Soup during this second class, and it was infinitely better than listening to this professor drone on. I didn't play it with sound on because I was in class, but the game was so good without sound that I didn't feel like I needed it.

I played Rondo of Blood because Professional Video Game Expert Tim Rogers will review it for his Action Button Reviews Series. I'm treating his reviews like a little book club: if he announces he will do a review and I'm interested in the game, I want to play it to for my own opinion and be better informed for his analysis.

Wow! Rondo of Blood is cool! This is the kind of game that feels like it's from 1993—hard as nails and rewards players for learning the levels. It's designed for multiple playthroughs where levels become laughably easy runs to the bosses. Getting to that point is rough. My little brother watched my play the first few levels dozens of times while I died again and again because I am bad at games. However, I could confidently turn it on and rush through quite a few levels since I played them so many times (because, again, I'm bad at games). That's a cool feeling! I can really see the DNA of this game in Bloodborne, because I had to do the run to Father Gascoigne so many times that the level design is burned into my memory.

The sprite work and graphics in this game still hold up really well, and I love the music. It's like cool guy butt rock in the best way possible.

At the end of the day, this game was never quite fun to play, although I can appreciate just about all of it. Movement is stiff and deliberate (once again, this is like Bloodborne!), and takes a pretty steep learning curve to even feel competent.

I didn't realize how impactful Breath of the Wild was on me until watching a speedrun of Ocarina of Time. At one point the runner needs to jump off of a moving platform onto a pillar. I thought "easy, jump off now, glide, then climb!" In that exact moment I realized that Breath of the Wild changed how I thought about traversal and exploration of open worlds.

I don't love open world games. In fact, I love one open world game, Morrowind, and dislike most others. Morrowind is so good it made every other open world game seem awful. Breath of the Wild is close to that calibre of formative game experience for me.