Last night, I spent a truly obscene amount of time reading through Action Button’s incredibly good reviews of games, old-school and new. The Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros 3 reviews in particular struck me in particular, because it was clear that the reviewers love these games even more than I do, which didn’t think was possible. These are deep waters indeed, I reflected — love of games can be far more intense and complex than I thought. And here I wake up this morning and find that two gamers have worked together to accomplish nothing short of a life-changing event for both of them.
Roy Williams, an enthusiastic gamer from Camden, South Carolina, put together a moment-by-moment guide to completing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, so that a blind Zelda lover in Ontario could beat it on his own. Seriously, this is some made-for-TV movie stuff, but it really happened, and it really worked.
Jordan Verner, who is blind, had been playing little bits of the game (OoT to true fans) but of course was frustrated by the fact that it’s not exactly accessible to a blind person. I mean, hell, that game’s difficult enough for a sighted guy of moderate skill like me to beat. He asked for help online, little thinking that he’d get it. But over the next two years, Roy and a couple friends put together a literal move-by-move guide to beating the game, relying on audio cues and plain old dead reckoning. And Jordan freaking did it!
Well, you can see how it is in the video above. These human interest stories usually leave me cold, but the fact that something as misunderstood and reviled (in mainstream media at least) as gaming could be the unquestionable source of joy and improvement for a couple people like this really makes me happy.
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