Proofreading a legend

Today I bought the Classic NES Series version of Legend of Zelda, and I am welcoming the almost impossible challenge. If you needed any proof that gamers in the 80s are more skilled than we are today, just insert this cartridge into your Game Boy Advance.

I did notice something, though, that was different. If you refrain from pressing the Start button at the title screen, the game proceeds to tell you about the "Legend of Zelda". It's a short legend whose gist is as follows: the prince of darkness steals the Triforce of Power; Princess Zelda, hoping to keep him from getting the other Triforce (of Wisdom), shatters it into 8 pieces, and is herself captured; and Link, the controllable character, must reassemble the Triforce and defeat the prince to save the princess. Sounds easy, right?

Well, when I first saw this game played (on an NES emulator), the text went like this:

MANY  YEARS  AGO  PRINCE
DARKNESS " GANNON" STOLE
ONE OF THE TRIFORCE WITH
POWER.    PRINCESS ZELDA
HAD  ONE OF THE TRIFORCE
WITH WISDOM. SHE DIVIDED
IT INTO" 8"UNITS TO HIDE
IT FROM " GANNON" BEFORE
SHE WAS CAPTURED.
  GO FIND THE" 8"UNITS
  " LINK" TO SAVE HER.

When I fired up my Classic NES Series GBA cart and looked at the same text, this is what I saw:

LONG AGO,  GANON, PRINCE
OF DARKNESS, STOLE THE
TRIFORCE OF POWER.
PRINCESS ZELDA OF HYRULE
BROKE THE TRIFORCE OF
WISDOM INTO EIGHT PIECES
AND HID THEM FROM GANON
BEFORE SHE WAS KIDNAPPED
BY GANON'S MINIONS.
LINK, YOU MUST FIND THE
PIECES AND SAVE ZELDA.

Here are images of the Original Legend, and afterwards the Classic (Revised) Legend.

Different! Obviously, there were obvious flaws in the original text--the name of the prince of darkness has changed from "Gannon" (a spelling that never caught on) to "Ganon", the grammar was much improved, and the idiosyncratic quote marks were removed.

However, upon some reflection, I decided that the "revision" was not perfect. The most radical change in the new revision is the loss of urgency of the message. The original message says to "Go find" the 8 units, Link, to save her, but the revision just says that we "must find" the pieces. Also, I think the revision changed things that really didn't need changing. For example, it adds the detail that it was Ganon's minions who kidnapped Princess Zelda. This may or may not have been the intent of the original version (perhaps Ganon did it himself).

So, I decided what anyone with some proofreading experience and a couple of minutes of time would do: I created my own proofreads of the Legend. They are shown below.

LONG AGO,  THE PRINCE OF
DARKNESS,  GANON,  STOLE
THE  TRIFORCE  OF POWER.
PRINCESS  ZELDA  DIVIDED
THE  TRIFORCE  OF WISDOM
INTO 8  UNITS TO HIDE IT
FROM GANON,  BEFORE  SHE
WAS CAPTURED.
 LINK! FIND THE 8 UNITS
 TO SAVE PRINCESS ZELDA

The above was my first attempt. In this I tried to veer not too far off from the wording of the original legend, for example, keeping the words "units" and "divided" the same. I also sought to retain (and maybe even amp up a bit) the urgency by saying "Link! Find the 8 units" in this version.

MANY YEARS AGO GANON THE
PRINCE OF DARKNESS STOLE
THE TRIFORCE  OF  POWER.
PRINCESS  ZELDA  HAD THE
TRIFORCE OF WISDOM.  SHE
HID IT BY BREAKING IT IN
8 PIECES,  BUT  SHE  WAS
TAKEN BY GANON'S FORCES.
 FIND THE PIECES, LINK,
    AND SAVE ZELDA.

This second proofread, instead of trying to keep the words of the original, tried to keep the spoken cadence, or rhythm, of the original. The pauses occur more naturally on this one, but I had to sacrifice absolute correctness to keep it in the 24-character line limit. For example, I had to say "breaking it in/8 pieces" instead of "into/8 pieces" which would have been more correct. I also commit the act that led me to denigrate the Classic rewording--I attributed the capturing (here Zelda was "taken") to Ganon's "forces". However, where my first attempt had lots of "holes"--unnecessarily large spaces in order to justify the text, the second attempt was more pleasantly dense.

What do you think? Could you do better? Hermeneutics on a short video game text--hey, so what? How else would you have spent your half an hour? ^_^ The rules are: 1) Don't change the story! 2) You have 10 24-character lines to work with (a total of 240 characters, or roughly one and a half SMS text messages), 3) it should look good with all caps. Submit your answers as comments.

Thanks for reading.

Song in my head: Augustana, "Sweet and Low".