For those of you blissfully unaware what (or who) the ZUBC is, they are the folks who create our [kind-of] monthly community podcast, ZUCast. In addition, they’re working on a brand new project called ZUBCTV - what could that be? Hmm…

For everything ZUBC, you can now simply visit ZUBC Headquarters. It’s got information about ZUCast, ZUBCTV, who works at ZUBC and more. You can even contact the ZUBC team through the Headquarters as well, so why not send them some feedback on ZU’s last podcast?

We’ve got a brand new staffer on board who goes by the name of Steve. Steve hails initially from Zelda Wiki.org, where he does a good load of image editing there. It was a no-brainer that with Steve on our side, ZU would slowly gather the greatest Zelda images on the ‘net. And so we are. Right now we’re in the process of filling up the Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask sections of ZU with high-quality images.

Think of the SSBB Characters page like a taste test ;)… with any luck, the other sections will be just as good. We’re looking to gather high-resolution official art as well as 3D models.

In addition, I will be recreating ZU’s Image Gallery with the new, better imagery, and tailor-make the structure of each game’s gallery. It will become much more organized and useful, and we’re not resting until it’s better than any other image gallery out there. This isn’t going to be an instant or quick process. There’s a lot of work going on in our Cave of Solitude to get this all done, so we really hope you all enjoy the fruits of our labor!

I’ll be back with more about this later, when the first OoT page has been completed with shiny new images.

If you’ve found some Zelda merchandise we don’t have pictures of, make sure to send them to us!

You can check it out by clicking on this link.

You can also send me more emails by clicking on this link.

And I also wish everyone a Happy New Year as well.  Hopefully we hear some new news on a Zelda game this year.

That’s all I have for now.

On December 17th, 2008, Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance issued a lawsuit against Nintendo of America. The company asserts that a fire that destroyed a Kentucky house was caused by a faulty Nintendo DS AC Adapter.  The lawsuit demands $236,304 USD be payed in damages to a Mr. French Harmon.

One of the many charges against Nintendo in this lawsuit is that Nintendo failed to “adequately, properly and safely design, manufacture, assemble, inspect, and test” the Nintendo DS AC Adapter.

Nintendo has recalled DS Adapters in the past. The reason being the apparent risk of overheating and fire.  However, these chargers were only recalled in Japan. The lawsuit is against Nintendo of America only.

Source: Nintendo World Report (Thanks to Bradley for the tip!)

I, personally, just returned from an amazingly fun New Years get-together with old friends. What have you guys done for the new year?

The Wii Food Delivery Channel

Ah, the fruits of our new Submit News button are paying off. Apparently another interesting channel will be coming to Japanese Wii owners soon. Set for launch next Spring, the Food Delivery Channel will work in concert with demae-can.com to bring the hungry their sustenance. The channel will also have the ability to randomly select a meal for you, for the indecisive among us.

No word on a US release, but I’m sure if one were to be released it wouldn’t be filled with the Chinese and Japanese food of this Japanese incarnation. Though I can say I do have a soft spot for campusfood.com…

Source: MyWii News (Thanks Cereal, our first news tipster!)

Submit News is a page with a special contact form with special fields that allow you to, well, send out an email containing information about news we haven’t reported on yet. The form automatically sends out an email to all of our news staff. We hope and pray that one of us is going to see it and post the news! The more news people submit through that form, the more stuff that appears on the front page - so long as the stories you’re submitting aren’t old as heck or completely irrelevant to Zelda Universe.

Submit an Article is, you guessed it, another page with a specialized contact form. I’ve been contacted quite a bit recently with a few articles people want to get published on ZU, and I think that’s awesome - I wish I could see more of that! If you’ve written a piece of higher-level Zelda literature that you’d like to get published and archived forever on ZU, wrap it up neat in a doc or docx file (or anything that holds text, really), and use the Submit an Article form to send it over. This form actually goes straight to me! Once I get it, I’ll post it for all of staff to look at and review - if we like it, you’ll get an email back and we’ll work together to peer review and make the article great so we can post it on the front page.

This is all a move to make ZU just that much more interactive. Social networking buttons can now be found beneath the “Similar News” box on each post, so even if you’re not submitting news or articles to us, you can share our news and articles with your friends on a bajillion social newtworks. Hopefully, in the end, it’ll all lead to a much more active and higher quality Zelda Universe for all of us.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on some new features and such that will make ZU slightly more interactive. You can see I’ve already added some social networking buttons underneath the now-prettied up Similar News parts of newsposts. Use the buttons to share ZU’s articles and news with your friends! If there’s a service you want to share a ZU article on that I don’t have a button for, just say so and I’ll see if I can get one up.

Next on my list is to add two new pages to site: Submit News and Submit Article. The titles are as straightforward as the concepts, so with any luck I’ll have these two features implemented today with some more details about each.

I deeply apologize for the downtime. But we’re back and we haven’t lost a thing (we hope), so it’s back to Zelda-ing… or whatever it is we do.

Nintendo will be handling the channel, but will partner up with the Japanese media firm Dentsu. According to Nintendo there should be a lot of content for the channel, and they say to expect a wide genre of titles, with no specific target, but knowing them it will probably be more family oriented. They’ve also stated that they’re looking into overseas developments, but there’s no guarantee that this channel will make its way to US and European shores.

Hey ZUers, lets watch TV on my Wii…

Source: IGN

Heyyy yah there, one and all, Anime_Queen/Asia, your ZUCast producer here ^_____^

We apologize for disappearing off the face of the internets, but yes, you heard right, we’re back and relaunching with a Community Christmas Cast special! Gogo! Click “Read the rest”to have a wee glimpse at the contents for the cast and a bit more info, or start streaming the podcast right away from the bottom of this post. If you’re subscribed via iTunes, you should already be getting it.

Contents

• Kicking off with all the latest Community news with Rosco Rhodes
• Power Shot’s  Real ZUsers of Interest + ZU Christmas-Carol
• ZU Gender War Roundup Discussion (who won? find out :> )
  
• Casual gamer interviewing special guest: Cody’s mum!
  
• Interview with the Serious Discussion Board’s most fearsome respected moderator: GDwarf (and what’s this? a RAP challenge?! :O )
• Unveiling of 1st Carol Contest results ^______^

Please keep in mind that this is a CCast - a community podcast and NOT a ZCast (a Zelda Podcast), and so it’s community centered on purpose! And talking of which, I’d like to announce that I’m looking to compile another separate podcast team for The Zelda Cast. So, if you love Zelda, have a working mic, plenty of ideas for segments (or just one! ^___^ ) and want to contribute to the upcoming Zelda Cast - please PM me or send in your applications to ZUCast [at] zeldauniverse.net.

And finally, my best wishes to each and every one of you, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

The search bar has gotten a serious upgrade: it now searches everything, even highlights keywords and sorts by relevance. You can find pretty much anything that you want to know about Zelda now by using that search bar, and hopefully your results will be pretty good! I’ve run a bunch of searches, and I must say, compared to the old search system it’s quite an improvement. It isn’t perfect, and it isn’t Google, but it’s a great tool for navigating ZU if you know exactly what you want to find.

If you’ve never used ZU’s search abilities, now’s a great time to start if you’re looking for some good Zelda information. Once again, the search bar is right underneath the scrolling game selection menu - give it a try, why dontcha?

Can’t get enough of it? Then you can download the full Mp3, right over here.

Subscribe via iTunes to get all ZUCast updates in the future, or stream it using the player below. Happy listening!

As a side note, when we come back our super-editor Margar of ZUCast fame has finished fixing up that interview with Anton Wiklund, ZU’s designer, at long last. That’ll be made available on the 26th - I’ll make a nice post about it then.