Thrill Digger: My New Obsession

Mole Mitts by ShadowBoyRyu

It's like this, but different.

Thrill Digger is a minigame included in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It is a minesweeper-esque game in that there are hazards scattered around a grid and the spots in the grid that don't contain a hazard give a clue as to how many hazards surround that spot on the grid. In minesweeper, there are bombs and numbers. A number tells you how many bombs are in the eight squares around the number. The board starts off with none of the squares revealed. Each click reveals a square's contents. Clicking on a bomb ends the game with a loss. To win the game you must reveal every non-bomb square. Versions of the game allow you to plant a flag on spots to mark them as containing a bomb so you don't make a mistake later.

Thrill Digger operates slightly differently. There are a couple different classifications of object:

• Hazards
• Bombs - When you dig up a bomb, the game ends and you take a heart of damage
• Rupoors - A black rupee. You lose 20 rupees. These do not end the game.
• Rupees - These indicate how many bombs surround that square and give you rupees.
• Green - Indicates there are zero hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 1 rupee.
• Blue -  Indicates there are one or two hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 5 rupees.
• Red -  Indicates there are three or four hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 20 rupees.
• Silver -  Indicates there are five or six hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 100 rupees.
• Gold -  Indicates there are seven or eight hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 300 rupees.

The goal is to collect as many rupees before you hit a bomb. In this game it is very hard to complete a board, and you aren't necessarily supposed to. The reason that it's so hard is because the rupees don't tell you exactly how many hazards surround them. That uncertainty greatly increases the difficulty. If you do manage to complete a board, you're rewarded with a high-quality crafting material. 

There are three difficulties. Beginner costs 30 rupees to play. It is a 4x5 grid with 4 bombs and no rupoors. Intermediate costs 50 rupees and is 6x5 with 4 bombs and 4 rupoors. Expert costs 70 rupees is 8x5 with 8 bombs and 8 rupoors. So a particular play is a win if you dig up more rupees than you put into the game. I personally find intermediate to be the easiest to complete. There's a very good reason for this. Consider this chart.

Summary information for the difficulties

Difficulty	Width	Height	#Squares	#Bombs	#Rupoors	%Bombs	%Hazards
Beginner	5	4	20	4	0	20%	20%
Intermediate	6	5	30	4	4	13.3%	26.7%
Expert	8	5	40	8	8	20%	40%

Intermediate is the easiest to complete for me because it has the lowest percentage of bombs. There are more hazards overall, but they're less likely to end the game.

I'm completely in love with this game, even though I really don't like how the game doesn't keep a reminder what was dug up in a particular spot. I can't play intermediate or expert for very long without needing graph paper on which to chart my progress. Despite that, I've played it incessantly.

Oh, and by the way, if you think this is all that I have to say about this super awesome minigame, you're wrong. I have much more to come, including strategies and much much more.

Rant: Skyward Sword's Right-Handed Bias

Oh god her elbow!

When Twilight Princess came out for the Wii, I was disappointed that they changed Link to be right-handed for the game. I understood the decision, more people are right-handed, and I understood that since Twilight Princess was a late-game addition to the Wii's lineup that left-handed support (in the form of a left-handed Link) would probably have been a difficult addition. Quite frankly, many other people felt the same way.

You'd think that since Skyward Sword was built from the ground up as a Wii game, and because of the knowledge that many people wanted a left-handed mode for Twilight Princess that such a mode would have been included for Skyward Sword. This is unfortunately not the case. I'm really disappointed by this.

Why am I so disappointed by this? It reflects a lack of caring on Nintendo's part. I know that it's not a big deal for to include left-handed support because left-handed people can still play the game just fine. It would have been a really nice gesture toward left-handed players, however.

Link had, until Twilight Princess, been left-handed. It had actually been an error, at first, but Nintendo rolled with it and kept him left-handed for all subsequent releases. I have always loved Zelda games and when I realized that Link was left-handed like me I only felt more attached to him. Then I realized that we were born at nearly the same time, so to speak.

I was born at 6:00 AM on February 20, 1986. When you account for the time difference between America and Japan, it was 8:00 PM on February 20, 1986. The Legend of Zelda was released four hours later in Japan, in February 21. This proximity of births made me feel even closer to Link.

What's funny is that normally, languages have a built in bias against leftness. 'Right' implies correctness, freedom, moral goodness, and immediacy. 'Left' is also the past tense of 'to leave'. In other languages it's worse. In French, 'adroit' means right and skillful whereas 'gauche' means left and clumsy. In Latin, 'dexter' means right and skillful whereas 'sinister' means left and unskillful or even harmful. In English, 'sinister' means evil.

When I played Twilight Princess, I stubbornly played it with the remote in my left hand. The hardest part was actually learning how to use an analog stick to move with my right hand. I will continue this tradition forward into Skyward Sword. Quite frankly, if I'm impaired by this in some way, such as a left-to-right swing functioning differently from a right-to-left swing, I might just stop playing.

In German, 'links' means left. If only he would have stayed that way.