Interesting bit of factoid

[kjpepper]

Totally bellarisa's fault for bringing up handedness this morning in blackfolk:

In video games, the Nintendo character Link is often left-handed. In some 2-D releases, such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, he alternates hands when facing left and right, but this is due to sprite mirroring. Various other references are made to his handedness in media other than games; at the beginning of the Four Swords Plus (Four Swords Adventures in North America) manga, Link is referred to as the “left-handed hero” after defeating pirates that were raiding a Hylian town. However, in the animated TV series, Link is right-handed. In games, Link is nearly always portrayed as left-handed. Link's figurine description in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker lists his "manual preference" as left. The GameCube version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess preserves Link's left-handedness; however, in the Wii version, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto observed at E3 that most people used their right hand to swing the Wii remote, which swings Link's sword. Thus, it was decided to flip the game, causing all game maps to become mirror images of their GameCube counterparts, and resulting in Link being right-handed to more naturally fit the tendencies of most Wii players.

Okay, from a practical game marketing standpoint I get this, but on some level I'm going Aw AW!!! Fuck you! Not that I ever played Legend of Zelda (not big on the "figure this puzzle out and die 40 times in the process" sort of game) but it would have been sorta cool to have a major game like that give the edge to a left-handed player for once.

Who here is left-handed also? Curious.

Comments

[denonymous.livejournal.com]

I'm not, but my gal and my dad both are.

[bellarisa.livejournal.com]

You know I'm here :)

[sixswordsamurai.livejournal.com]

I am.

Carla's a right handed freak.

~~Me.

[sydneycat.livejournal.com]

Aw yeah, Left Handed Army of Doom!

[peacockdress.livejournal.com]

*raises left hand*

[jade-eyes13.livejournal.com]

i am!

and let me say that it's always annoying when I'm playing Wii and i had to take the extra time to switch the handedness of my character. but, considering the bias in the rest of the world, i'm glad to have that option!

[athene.livejournal.com]

I am.

So is my father and my father's mother and my mother's brother.

I really wish that the Guitar Hero people would come out with a left-handed guitar. Having the whammy bar on the top doesn't work so well for me.

[kittikattie.livejournal.com]

I'm lefty, and my grandfather was a lefty artist too.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I'm the only right-handed person in my family--my dad's ambidextrous and everyone else is a lefty. My brother says that he's so used to compensating for right-handed electronics (though our first computer had the mouse on the left, and we now have an optical mouse that switches sides on the computer depending on who's on it) that he thinks it'd be hard to play it the other way, though.

My problem was that I've played both versions, and I kept getting LOST in Bizarro Hyrule--but I'm famous for my spatial idiocy. The game flip is weird--I'm used to Link being left-handed, and since the map is supposed to be similar to the map used in Ocarina of Time, the mirror-image game is a bit confusing.

For the record, Shigeru Miyamoto himself is ambidextrous. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!

[extrajoker.livejournal.com]

I'm a southpaw, but there are some things I do right-handed.