A Link to the Past: The Final Battle

Round 3 – FIGHT!

With his Agahnim disguise [1] destroyed, Ganon now confronts Link in his true form, the familiar pig-demon thing from The Legend of Zelda. The first three phases of the fight really aren’t all that hard; the second phase, where he surrounds himself with a ring of fireballs that turn into blazing bats and shoot at Link is the worst of the three. In the third phase, he destroys the outer ring of the floor, and the battle resets if Link falls through [2]. This gives Link a way to escape if he’s losing; jump out, go to the Light World, restock on potions, and come back. Not very like the Hero, though.

For the fourth and final phase, he turns out the lights. The lights blind him when Link uses the fire rod (or lamp) to turn them back on, and he’s weakened enough that being hit further stuns him. While stunned, he’s susceptible to silver arrows. It takes four shots to finish him off, and a door opens to the north.

The End

“Welcome, Link. I am the Essence of the Triforce. The Triforce will grant the wishes in the heart and mind of the person who touches it. If a person with a good heart touches it, it will make his good wishes come true. If an evil-hearted person touches it, it grants his evil wishes. The stronger the wish, the more powerful the Triforce’s expression of that wish.
“Ganon’s wish was to conquer the world. That wish changed the Golden Land to the Dark World. Ganon was building up his power here so he could conquer the Light World and make his wish come completely true. But now, you have completely destroyed Ganon. His Dark World will vanish.
“The Triforce is waiting for a new owner. Its Golden Power is in your hands. Now, touch it with a wish in your heart.” [3]

Link takes the Triforce, and we’re treated to a montage of Hyrule now that it’s passed from evil hands to good ones. In short: Zelda and the other maidens are free of the crystals; people who were trapped in the Dark World are brought back to Hyrule; everyone recovers, even people who died, like the King, Link’s uncle, and the Sanctuary sage; life goes on as usual for people like the lumberjacks, smiths, Zoras, and faeries; Sahasrahla returns to Kakariko Village; and Link returns the Master Sword to its pedestal where it’s said to sleep again forever.

The endings of the games keep getting better and better. This one has a great sense of accomplishment, along with some beautiful music that may well be my favorite music from any video game. The credits end with a majestic version of the main/overworld theme playing [4], and then a death count that’s oh so satisfying to see at 000.

Final Thoughts

At this point, I am way too familiar with the game to have much chance of changing my opinion of it. The difficulty’s a step down from the first game and a leap from the second, and while I find it quite easy now, that’s again because I know it so well. I don’t remember my initial “games played” count – certainly in the double digits, and I used a lot more potions that time, making numerous trips to the rupee room near the Desert to be able to afford restocking.

So that’s my favorite of the four games I’ve played. It’ll be interesting to see if anything can overcome the nostalgia filter to displace it as my favorite. I’ve heard good things about numerous later entries in the series, so there’s a chance.

Next: Koholint Island.

[1] I’m not sure whether Agahnim was a real person Ganon possessed and used to weaken the seal, or just an alternate form he created that was somehow able to pass through the barrier. Given that there’s a body left behind when Ganon’s spirit flees, I’d assume there was something real there.
[2] Annoyingly, he goes through his whole introduction again on a rematch.
[3] As with the intro text, this is lightly edited.
[4] That kicks in just as composer Koji Kondo’s name appears in the credits.

Ocarina of Time: Shadow Temple

The wall that blocked the way into the Shadow Temple turns out to be fake, just like in the well. The first puzzle is a maze of fake walls, which hint that the Shadow Temple is a symbol of Hyrule’s dark past. It’s not clear what it was used for historically, but given the location and the decor and the number of undead enemies throughout and the fact that it’s walled off from the rest of the cemetery, it probably wasn’t anything good. There’s another dead hand miniboss here, still creepy but easier to kill with Biggoron's Sword. It was guarding the dungeon’s treasure: hover boots, which allow Link to walk on air for a short time. Walking while wearing them is like walking on ice, but while they don’t have limitless range, they let Link go far enough to cross some gaps too far to jump across when there’s nothing for the hookshot to latch onto.

In sharp contrast to the Water Temple, the Shadow Temple is mostly a straight path through. There’s one potential shortcut, a false floor that drops Link down a few floors; doing that means missing out on skulltulas and seeing the dungeon, of course. The tricks are mostly reserved for puzzles and Lens of Truth tricks, and sometimes both at once (having to figure out to equip hover boots and let a giant fan blow Link through a false wall). The most memorable part of the dungeon is a giant boat that Link can activate with Zelda’s Lullaby. During the short ride, a couple stalfos drop on to fight him, then the boat reaches its destination and begins falling and Link has to jump off before going down with the boat.

The boss is the phantom shadow beast that escaped from the well, and it bears the unfortunately silly-sounding name Bongo Bongo. It’s a little less silly in context, because it’s fought on a giant drumhead, which its two disembodied hands tap constantly throughout the battle. The beats send Link flying into the air as the hands strike at him, so Link has to stun the hands to get the main body to fly over the drum and become vulnerable to having its eye poked. I got a good rhythm going with dodging the hands’ attack, hitting the hand that didn’t attack (not counting the clap attack, obviously), then the other hand when it got back in place, and hitting the eye with the hookshot. I even managed to hit the eye with a desperation shot when I didn’t have time to turn on the Lens of Truth. Then I noticed the battle was taking an inordinately long time, and I remembered bosses aren’t just hit the weak point, they’re hit the weak point to stun them and then whale on them with the sword. Silly name or no, Bongo Bongo is probably my favorite Zelda boss to date, so I don’t mind that the battle lasted far longer than it should have; it’s too much fun to wrap up too quickly.

Link is transported to the Chamber of Sages, where he meets with Impa. Impa expresses admiration for the hero that Link has grown into and reassures him that Princess Zelda is safe and that they’ll meet again soon enough. She gives him her medallion, and now there’s only one sage left to find, the one in the desert temple.

Gerudo Valley

The situation in Gerudo Valley is more or less the same as when Link and Epona hopped over and got Biggoron’s Sword: the bridge is out and the head carpenter can’t fix it by himself so he asks Link for help. The Gerudo aren’t really any more welcoming of Link as an adult: as soon as he’s spotted, he’s thrown in their prison. They leave him his longshot, however, so he sneaks out of the cell and then around the Gerudo Fortress, stunning the guards with the longshot and rescuing the carpenters. This means the bridge will get fixed, not that it being broken was a significant obstacle. Anyway, after the last carpenter is safe, a Gerudo woman comes to Link and congratulates him on the skill he displayed and makes him a member of the tribe, saying that Nabooru has gone on to the Spirit Temple.

Next: Crossing the desert.

A Link to the Past: Ganon's Tower and Turtle Rock

Turtle Rock

Upon entering Turtle Rock, Link is warned not to proceed without a way to restore his magic, but there are plenty of magic decanters in the dungeon so he really doesn’t have to worry unless he’s careless. There are rails through several rooms but nothing to ride on them, requiring the second function of the cane of Somaria to create platforms. Many rooms in the dungeon are mazes requiring the use of these rails to navigate through; one room is dark with no torches, so there’s just the little bit of illumination around Link to navigate by. One other room has Link required to make like that other Nintendo hero and go tumbling through green pipes to his destination.

The new enemies in this dungeon are segmented hopping creatures called hokkubokkus, whose segments go flying around the room for a moment after Link hits them. They’re actually quite dangerous, even with the blue mail. Also, chain chomps from Super Mario Bros. 3 make a cameo appearance.

The treasure is strictly optional but neutralizes the laser eyes so it’s so worth it. Getting the mirror shield requires stepping out of the dungeon, crossing a platform, and re-entering. Before going back in, warping back to the Light World leaves Link in front of a cave with the 24th and final heart piece, which he can probably use after having to run a laser eye gauntlet to get out of the dungeon.

The dungeon’s boss is Trinexx, a snake creature with a turtle shell that projects two extra heads. The two extra heads shoot fire and ice, and are thus vulnerable to the opposite rods. The ice head is more dangerous because if it shoots ice, an icy patch will remain on the dungeon floor for the rest of the battle, and that’s no good, so it has to go first. Once the two elemental heads are destroyed, the shell explodes and the snake comes after Link. A few shots to its weak spot and Trinexx is dead.

Zelda thanks Link for rescuing her, and says that her initial impression, that he would become the legendary Hero, was correct. Now it’s time to go to Ganon’s Tower to the west, where the maidens will break the barrier and allow Link to enter.

Ganon’s Tower

Much like its Light World counterpart, the Tower of Hera, Link enters Ganon’s Tower on the second floor. This floor is completely empty aside from some statues and three staircases on the northern wall, two leading down, one leading up.

The first floor of the tower is a completionist explorer’s bane. The path splits from the staircases, one leading east, the other west. The eastern path gives the compass, the western path the map. Neither item is really useful as once Link starts ascending the tower it’s very linear with only one secret room. The two paths converge near the bottom of the map, with Link forced walk over a large section of hidden floor tiles to the correct exit. Then he falls through to the basement and fights another group of armos knights. They may be on an icy floor now, but silver arrows make it only require one shot to kill them, so the fight really is much easier than before. Link can get the big key and find a group of faeries here before returning to the first floor and finding the dungeon’s treasure, the red mail, which further protects him from damage. There’s no real reason to take the path not taken before, unless you’re like me and can’t help yourself.

Heading up the tower, the first major threat is the return of beamos. The mirror shield does nothing against them, sadly. There’s often more than one in a room, and on the 4th floor, some evil genius had the bright idea to put them on moving waterways so they don’t stay in a fixed position and dodging became even harder. Once finally through that gauntlet, Link finds another group of lanmolas, now with a fireball-spitting medusa in the corner. Still not that much harder than before, and the journey up the tower continues.

The fifth floor contains one of my favorite rooms in the whole game. There’s a crumbling bridge, and on either side of the bridge is a moving waterway, one going in each direction. I’ve been known to sit around after the bridge crumbled riding the waterways back and forth for minutes. But we can’t delay the inevitable forever, so eventually Link comes across the return of the moldorm. Of the returning bosses, this is the one they most succeeded in making harder: the one that didn’t need it to begin with. The platform is narrower north-south, so there’s less room to maneuver to avoid its attacks. Should Link fall off, he lands in a spike-filled room [1] with wizzrobes and a fire faerie, which can of course be turned into a normal faerie if needed for health.

After the moldorm, there’s one last room with ice, moving water, bumpers, and traps to navigate before it’s time for the second confrontation with Agahnim. He spawns a couple illusory dopplegängers, which should make him harder but is tactically unsound. If your only weakness is having your fireballs reflected back on you, why create doubles that always shoot fireballs that can be reflected and hurt you? Hitting him three times in a single casting rotation is tricky – it depends where they all cast from, and whether the real Agahnim uses a fireball or his blue shot – but glorious when pulled off. Oh, and he doesn’t have his lightning attack, which was the worst of the three he had before.

With no way to escape this time, Agahnim dies after taking enough hits. Ganon’s spirit rises from Agahnim’s body and flees. Link somehow calls his loyal bird to the Dark World to follow him to the Pyramid of Power, where Ganon has crashed through the top, creating a large hole.

Next: The End

[1] I’ve never actually landed on the spikes, and don’t know if it’s possible.

Ocarina of Time: The Well

There’s not just a whole lot to do right now, nor a whole lot of guidance about where to go next. Navi suggests finding someone who knows about the Sages, which turns out to mean “go back to Kakariko Village.” Link arrives to find the village on fire, and Sheik fighting some invisible force from the well. He doesn’t have any luck, so Link steps up, and quickly gets knocked out. When he comes to, Sheik tells him that Impa had sealed an evil spirit at the bottom of the well, but it’s broken free. Impa, the next of the sages, has gone to the Shadow Temple in the Kakariko Graveyard. Sheik teaches Link the Nocturne of Shadow that will teleport him to the dungeon entrance, then leaves to deal with the village.

At the entrance to the Shadow Temple are a bunch of torches. Link can light them all by standing in the middle and casting Din’s fire. He enters the Shadow Temple, only there’s not a whole lot there. A message on a wall, or possibly a disembodied voice, mentions the eye of truth in Kakariko Village. That sounds like the thing the one guy was talking about, so Link heads back to the village to check out the well. In the present, the bottom of the well is blocked off, so it’s time for Link to go back to the past to become the ocarina kid who annoyed the organ guy in the windmill, play the Song of Storms, and drain the well.

The Bottom of the Well is a mini-dungeon that can be quick and easy. There are a lot of false walls that can be tricky to find, and false floors that are sometimes too easy to find, but if all Link wants is the eye of truth and knows where to go, it’s a short run and a tough fight against a thing that should not exist, then out. I’m not even sure how to begin to describe Dead Hand, the miniboss. It’s some kind of undead abomination that burrows underground and slithers when it surfaces and controls a bunch of disembodied hands that poke up from the ground and grab Link. I didn’t really understand this fight, just kind of hacked my way through it and lost a bunch of health in the process. The reward for beating it is satisfaction that there’s one less of these things in the world. Oh, and the Lens of Truth, which will let Link see through illusions and invisibility.

Exploring the rest of the well isn’t strictly necessary, but there are three skulltulas hidden throughout, and some chests if you care to get them. Otherwise, Link's ready to go back to the Spirit Temple. I’ll save the temple for the next post, and fill the rest of this one with musings/questions about sages.

• Impa being a sage kills the theory of the sages being named for the Zelda II towns. It wasn’t a bad guess, even with the Mido red herring, and there might still be a Nabooru or Kasuto in the Desert Temple. I can only guess that the ones that are missing were earlier sages, perhaps from the group that included Rauru.
• What exactly does becoming a sage mean? Ruto seems to indicate that becoming a sage means she can’t marry Link, and Saria apparently can’t go back to the forest. Darunia, before becoming a sage, was last seen going after Volvagia on his own. He doesn’t seem the type to retreat from that battle, especially with the fate of his people in the balance. And yet he’s not in the room when Link makes his own charge; it’s not a stretch to think he died fighting Volvagia and being a sage is some kind of afterlife.
• Are these sages supposed to be the wise men from the backstory of A Link to the Past? They clearly seem inspired by that group, but there are some glaring differences. First of all, there were seven wise men, but only six sages, although given that the maidens of A Link to the Past were descended from the wise men, there might be a sage among the Hyrule royal bloodline, which would likely be Zelda. Speaking of the maidens, not only would their existence mean being a sage isn’t an afterlife [1], but they all looked human, and while a Kokiri girl could pass as human, there are no gorons or zoras among them.

Next: Down in the dark where the dead men go.

[1] Darunia has a son, but Ruto almost certainly doesn’t have children. I’m less sure about Impa, but given that she was said to be the last of the Sheikah (before Sheik showed up), probably not.

A Link to the Past: Misery Mire

Misery Mire

The transporter for the sixth dungeon is only accessible by flute, and takes Link to the dark equivalent of the Desert of Mystery, the Swamp of Evil. One heart piece is hidden in a building next to the dungeon entrance, and another requires warping back to the Light World in the northeast corner of the swamp. Then it’s stand on the tile that looks like the ether medallion, use the medallion, and into dungeon #6.

It’s a Zelda game, so of course there are wizzrobes. Unlike the ones future Link will encounter, these guys spawn in fixed positions, either absolute or relative to Link’s position, so they’re easier to deal with than in previous games. The beamos make their return and are only slightly less terrible because Link has the blue mail to protect him now. There’s a new kind of laser-emitting enemy, laser eyes, which are mounted on walls and fire when Link enters their line of sight. For the time being, they’re more of a nuisance than a threat, but they can be deadly, at least until Link gets the proper countermeasure. Finally in the new enemy department, we have sluggulas, bomb-laying slugs that are just… kind of funny.

Getting the big key requires solving a “light the four torches” puzzle with the torches in two separate rooms. With the big key, Link can get the dungeon’s treasure: the cane of Somaria, which is the weirdest item in the game. The game even punts on the description, but the primary function becomes clear: to create mobile magical blocks. This ability is required to pass a button that needs something on it to stay active puzzle when there’s no statues or blocks around to push onto it. Finally, Link’s inventory is complete.

Armed with the cane, Link heads for the boss: Vitreous, another eye monster, bathing in a toxic bath with a bunch of little eyeballs. Vitreous is the easiest boss in the game. Just stand in the corner, spam sword attacks until all the little eyeballs are done, and Vitreous will come out to play. Vitreous continually hops toward Link, and despite being a giant eye, apparently can’t see that Link’s holding out his sword. Vitreous dies after hopping onto the sword enough times, and Link recovers the sixth maiden’s crystal. The maiden tells Link to hurry after Zelda to Turtle Rock, but there’s something to do first.

The Cursed Faerie

At the Dark World equivalent of his home, Link finds a bomb shop, with a super bomb for sale. The super bomb is capable of blowing a hole in the Great Pyramid where it’s cracked, and Link finds a pond like at the Waterfall of Wishing. This time the items that can be upgraded are the Master Sword, which is replaced with/turned into the Golden Sword, and the bow and arrows, which are upgraded to silver arrows to defeat Ganon.

The final two objectives, Turtle Rock and Ganon’s Tower, are on Dark Death Mountain, so it’s time to make one last trip up. Turtle Rock is the only Dark World dungeon whose Light World counterpart is only interesting in connection with it. Reaching the top of the Light World version requires lifting a rock with the Titan’s Mitt. Then to open the portal needed to the Dark World, Link has to hit the three pegs on top in the correct order. Then, after returning to the Dark World, before jumping off the rock, the quake medallion is needed to open the entrance.

Before going inside, there’s another heart piece to get. After going west from Turtle Rock, Link lifts a rock and passes through a cave, ending up on the disconnected mountain top, and then he warps to the Light World to pick up the heart piece. Now it’s time to go back to the Dark World and enter Turtle Rock.

Next: Zelda and Agahnim, one last time.

Ocarina of Time: Water Temple

The Water Temple is more or less exactly what I expected: a giant drum filled with water that can be raised or lowered to explore the various rooms with and without water filling them. Unfortunately, the designer made some questionable, at best, design decisions that make the whole dungeon a frustrating experience:

• Let’s start with the mechanism for changing the water level. Something sensible, like the Swamp Palace in A Link to the Past where it’s regulated with gates and drains? No, of course not. It’s magic, and can only be changed in specific locations that are not always easy to find and/or get to, which makes changing the water level – the dungeon’s signature mechanic – a chore.
• The iron boots get used a lot here to walk around on underwater floors, and it quickly becomes tedious having to go to the menu, put on the iron boots, wait to sink to the floor, take the ten steps to get to the area where the boots come off and Link returns to the surface, go back to the menu, take the boots off, and wait for Link to rise again.
• The large main chamber’s central column has a couple tektites on the uppermost walkway, only they don’t stay there. Even when Link’s on the bottom of the chamber, it’s just a matter of time before they come raining down on his head. The enemies respawning in dungeons every time Link leaves a room is an odd decision, and here it becomes really unfortunate.

Now, while I didn’t like this dungeon overall very much and I think it shows, I have to praise one specific room: the miniboss fight. In the middle of the dungeon is a room with water seeming to stretch off endlessly in every direction, with a small island in the middle. And on the island, the miniboss: Dark Link [1]. He can match Link move for move, and I didn’t have much hope of the fight not lasting an hour while I was Z-targeting him. Once I turned that off, it was a much easier fight; Dark Link didn’t run all over Hyrule delivering MacGuffins in order to get Biggoron to make him a greatsword, which gives Link a range and damage per hit advantage.

Once Dark Link’s down, Link can claim the dungeon’s treasure: the longshot, an extra-long hookshot. And this feels like a letdown. Don’t get me wrong, the extra range is tremendously useful; even if it weren’t certain to be required going forward, there have been lots of times I could just barely reach something with the regular hookshot already. But it seems like a strange item to throw out there now.

The end boss is Morpha, giant aquatic amoeba, and it’s definitely less memorable than Dark Link. Morpha attacks by forming tentacles that grab at Link and try to crush him to death if they catch him, and Link fights back by pulling Morpha’s nucleus out of its water shell and hacking the hell out of it while it’s vulnerable. The death animation is pretty cool, as the evil water in the boss room dries up.

Ruto has grown up in the seven years since Link saw her last, and tries to be much more helpful during her short appearance in the dungeon before she disappears. She still remembers the marriage promise, and brings it up when Link runs across her, but after it comes time for her to step up as a sage, she does her duty, while assuring Link that Zelda is alive. I have more to say on sages, but my next post is going to be on the short side, so I’ll bring it up then.

Link returns to Lake Hylia, where he meets with Sheik on an island. Sheik talks about how Link’s efforts have brought Lake Hylia back to its natural state before slipping off while Link’s distracted, no Deku nut needed this time. A plaque on the island reads, “When water fills the lake, shoot for the morning light.” Reading the plaque gives Link a lovely view of the sunrise, so it’s plain he needs to fire an arrow in that direction as dawn breaks. The arrow catches fire, and on a nearby island, Link… I’m not sure of the in-universe mechanics here, because firing special arrows needs magic, but Link gains the ability to shoot fire arrows. Back on the first island, there’s a skulltula atop the tree at night, which in addition to the five in the Water Temple have the quest over 75% complete.

Sorry to be so negative this time, but at least that’s behind me.

Next: There’s a fire, so we go back in time and make sure the well’s empty. Makes sense.

[1] I named my character Link, so I didn’t get to find out if Navi calls him Dark Hero or Dark Zelda or Dark Gumball or Dark THIEF or whatever.

A Link to the Past: Ice Palace

The Smith Comes Home

The Titan’s Mitt is the final world-opening item in the game. There are surprisingly few things still left to get, and three of the four heart pieces Link can get now are close to dungeons six and seven and don’t increase the heart total so it’s kind of pointless to go after them immediately. So that leaves three items, centered on the blacksmiths’ shop east of Kakariko Village. First, where the Library is in the Light World, Link finds the blacksmith’s missing partner. Somehow, he can follow Link through the Magic Mirror, and the two go to the shop. As the smith promised, now that they’re both there they can temper the Master Sword.

Once that’s done, it’s time to visit the Dark World version of the shop. On the grounds outside are a pancaketon of pegs just asking to be hit by a hammer. Link obliges and opens a passageway to the 20th heart piece. Inside the ruined building where the shop stands, there’s a chest with its key locked inside. Since this isn’t the randomizer where that only happens if the key’s not important, Link takes the chest, which follows him around rather than going to inventory, and finds a man capable of picking locks – the “average middle-aged man” near the entrance to the desert. The man opens the chest in exchange for Link’s keeping his identity as a thief secret, and Link’s rewarded with a fourth bottle, just in time to tackle the hardest dungeon in the game.

Ice Palace

What makes the Ice Palace so frustrating is that there’s no avoiding doubling back, twice. The first time there’s no indication it’s time to turn back, so it’s possible to go further on than needed before Link runs into a dead end (no big key) and needs to start working his way back up the dungeon. Then the second time involves one of the most infuriating puzzles in the game. Link needs to trigger a switch block to be able to push a block down a floor, but hitting that switch means going up and around to be able to push the block. Plus if he goes too far, he’s got to hit a switch on his way back down [1], rendering the whole trip moot.

I understand this puzzle has been changed in the Game Boy Advance remake. I’m going to play that at some point, so I can see the dialogue changes and experience the bonus dungeon [2]. I’m curious to see how they fixed it. Also, sequence breaking and getting the treasure from Misery Mire makes this puzzle really easy. Speaking of treasure, this dungeon’s treasure is the blue mail, which makes the Dark World foes a lot less deadly.

There are a bunch of new enemies here; despite Sahasrahla’s advice that magical fire would be essential, the hookshot is even more useful. Oh, the fire rod and/or bombos are indispensible, no doubt, and the dungeon makes sure Link has one or the other before the first door opens. But the hookshot’s the best way to deal with pengators, kills babasus in a single shot, and lets Link deal with baris without a chance for being electrocuted, all without consuming magic. Sahasrahla also says that stalfos knights can’t be killed with just the sword, which is patently untrue; sure, it’s so much easier to use a bomb when they’re down, but keep beating on them with the sword and they end up just as dead.

Compared with the rest of the dungeon, the boss, Kholdstare, is almost a joke. His first phase can be beaten with a few shots from the fire rod or one from bombos, and then he splits into three worm-like creatures who are also vulnerable to the fire rod or just getting hacked at. The maiden tells Link that time is growing short, but he can take the Triforce from Ganon.

Next: More swamps, yay.

[1] I just realized that’s why this switch, which is initially set to the color needed to proceed through the next room, is there at all. Bloody sadistic design.
[2] Even if I can’t manage to play Four Swords, I have a save with it completed so I can access the bonus content in A Link to the Past.

Ocarina of Time: Ice Cavern

Going by the order of the temples Sheik mentioned, the Water Temple in Lake Hylia is next, and Navi now talks about a cold wind blowing from Zora’s Domain, so that’s the next destination. The cucco Link used to help jump over the river is gone, but he can make the jump by himself as an adult. Alternately, the magic bean has sprouted into an elevator plant that’ll carry him most of the way upriver. There are two new skulltulas available en route, and a fairy pond by one of the skulltulas, although Link’s going to need empty bottles very soon, so there’s no point in catching them.

Zora’s Domain is completely frozen over, and the zoras are nowhere to be seen. The shop is encased in red ice, as is the king. Fortunately, he’s not blocking the way into the fountain; as long as he took to move over when he wasn’t frozen, I’d hate to see how much worse they could make it. He won’t be helping Link get Biggoron’s eye drops until he can get out of the ice, though, so onward to find a way to save him. There’s a skulltula to get here, near the diving waterfall, and then it’s time to see how time’s treated Lord Jabu-Jabu. As it turns out, it can’t be good. Jabu-Jabu is missing from Zora’s Fountain, but the Fountain is just colder than it was with some ice floating on the top. There’s a heart piece to be grabbed here, and then it’s time to visit a cavern along the wall, the first mini-dungeon and the key to rescuing King Zora.

The Ice Cavern is, as one might expect, filled with ice-themed enemies. The keese turn into ice keese that freeze Link on contact. There are freezards, evil blocks of ice that try to freeze Link with their cold breath. And the end boss of the dungeon is a white wolfos variant. There are also traps and hazards. The most common of these are frozen stalactites that try to fall on Link’s head; distractingly, the sound they make as they’re about to fall sounds a lot like the gold skulltula proximity scratching, so I’d stop when I hear it and look around only to have Link take a stalactite to the head for being diligent. And there are three skulltulas in the place, so it’s not like I can just ignore the sound.

The Ice Cavern features torches of blue fire, which can be scooped into a bottle and used to melt red ice. Fairies don’t like sharing bottles with blue fire, though, so Link has to let them go before he can start grabbing fires. Filling all the bottles with blue fire isn’t necessary, but any that doesn’t get used can be sold to the guy who buys bottle contents in the village, so may as well. After defeating the white wolfos that serves as the final boss, Link gets a pair of boots that limit his running speed but stabilize him on underwater surfaces, which he gets a chance to use leaving the cavern.

Sheik shows up when Link gets the iron boots, and confirms that the Water Temple is the source of the zoras’ misfortune and that it should be Link’s next destination. Ruto, whom he rescued from the ice, has already headed there to break the curse, and so she’s definitely going to be the next sage. After speaking poetically of Ruto’s feelings regarding Link, he teaches Link the song to teleport to the Water Temple, then ninjaports out before Link can get too close and figure out who’s hiding behind the mask.

With the blue fire, Link defrosts King Zora, who rewards him with a zora’s tunic that’ll allow him to breath underwater. Link takes this for a spin in Zora’s Fountain, where he discovers a heart piece on the floor. Then it’s back to King Zora to continue the delivery quest line; the zoras don’t have the eyedrops themselves, but they provide the eyeball frogs that the man at the Lakeside Laboratory uses to make the drops. They don’t stay good very long, and apparently warping is cheating, so Link and Epona have to hoof it to the other side of the map in three minutes. The scientist was hoping to eat the frog, but complies to make the medicine, which also has a short shelf life and has to be delivered to the top of Death Mountain. Fortunately, destroying Volvagia stopped the rockfalls, and the elevator plant provides a shortcut, but it still requires making good time. With his eyes cleared, Biggoron gets to work repairing the sword, and after three days gives the completed sword to Link, replacing the giant’s knife, which was rather useless as it broke if someone looked at it funny. Biggoron’s Sword, on the other hand, is a solid, powerful weapon, but can’t be used with a shield.

Now that that’s done, it’s time to go back to Lake Hylia. There’s a skulltula at the bottom of the Laboratory’s well that Link can reach now that he can walk on the bottom and roll into the crate, and then it’s time to head into the Water Temple.

Next: The boots were made for walking, and that’s just what they do. But first you have to put them on, and then remove them, too.

A Link to the Past: More Dark World

It’s really tempting to sequence break at this point, knowing what’s in store in the next three dungeons. Dungeon #4 has a very high reward to difficulty ratio, and doing it first makes #2 and #3 easier. But, since I’m doing story, I should do them in order.

Swamp Palace

So we start with the Swamp Palace. This palace has several sections where Link needs to flood a hallway to progress, including one at the beginning where he has to go to the Light World and open the gate there to even get started. There’s one near the end where he needs to open a drain to proceed, too. New enemies are mostly aquatic creatures, including balls of water that go flying all over the place trying to hit Link. The treasure is the hookshot, which is a useful tool – it does just about everything the boomerang does and more – but also incredibly fun to use. (BOING!) And it’s a key part of defeating the boss, Arrghus, which kind of resembles a patra. The maiden tells Link more about Ganon and the Triforce [1], and that there are other warp points in the world, which I’ve been using, so, well, thanks.

Now that Link has the hookshot, he can easily get the one near the cave where the path to Death Mountain is in the Light World. He has to hookshot over a gap, then use the cape to bypass a bumper, and then he’s through to the heart piece.

Skull Woods

With that heart piece, it’s on to the dungeon in Skull Woods, the counterpart of the Lost Woods. This dungeon is in three distinct sections, and if it weren’t for my completionist tendencies, the first two can be mostly skipped. Section two has the big key, which is used in section one to open the chest and get the fire rod. Then pass back through section two, use the fire rod to burn the long thing sticking out of the final section’s mouth, and go in. There are three new enemies here: First, gibdos make their return to the series, and die in a single shot from the fire rod. (If there’s two or more on screen, bombos comes in very handy.) Second, we have rabbit beams, which temporarily cancel out the Moon Pearl if they hit Link. And finally, there’s… well, they’re still called wallmasters, but they drop from the ceiling instead of coming out of the walls. Still annoying. The boss is Mothula, a giant moth, the moldorm’s main competition for my least favorite boss in the game. The floor is constantly moving and traps try to hit Link, all while Mothula’s doing its thing. The fire rod is the easiest weapon to use here. The maiden tells Link more about the Hero prophecy: since Ganon, an evil person, got the Triforce, a Hero was destined to appear with the power to stop him.

Thieves’ Town

There’s nothing to do in the overworld, so it’s on to dungeon #4, Thieves’ Town, found under a gargoyle statue where the weathercock is/was in the Light World. The dungeon opens with four huge rooms which contain all the map, compass, and big key. After that, if you know what to do, the dungeon is very linear, but someone who doesn’t know what’s going on would likely be confused, especially with the sequence where Link goes to the upper floor, bombs a certain patch of floor, then backtracks. The dungeon has another signature moment: the maiden appears to be held in a jail cell rather than a crystal, but it’s the boss, Blind, in disguise. If he’s dragged to the boss room, which should have a brightly lit floor patch by now, he’ll drop the disguise and fight Link [2]. The fight is somewhat reminiscent of gleeoks: heads fly off and continue to attack while the fight continues. Once recovered, the real maiden tells Link that the Knights were nearly wiped out by the Imprisoning War, and he may be the last of the Knights’ bloodline.

The prize in Thieves’ Town was the Titan’s Mitt, which opens up the rest of the dungeons. But first, there’s questing to do.

Next: The hardest dungeon in the game.

[1] A good name for a rock band, if you’re looking to get a trademark infringement notice from Nintendo.
[2] Honestly, I can’t figure out his endgame plan here. He won’t follow Link out of the dungeon, which is hella suspicious. So… the best I can come up with is to keep Link fighting monsters until he drops from exhaustion.

Ocarina of Time: Fire Temple

Returning to Death Mountain Crater as an adult, Link finds the bean has flourished into one of those elevator plants that’ll take Link up to a heart piece for another full heart. The elevator plant will also take him to the top of the crater where he can go out and meet Biggoron, the creator of the broken sword. He’d fix the sword, but he’s got dust in his eyes and needs medicine from King Zora before he can work again. I’ll go visit the Zoras after the Fire Temple, so let’s put this quest on hold till then. Getting back down requires the Bolero of Fire again (or going the long way, down Death Mountain Trail to Goron City, but let’s do it smart), and then it’s down a long ladder and into the Fire Temple to rescue the gorons.

Shortly after entering the Fire Temple, Link finds Darunia. Darunia’s about to make a doomed charge against Volvagia, and asks Link to rescue his people. The gorons are spread throughout the dungeon, locked in cells, and each cell has a small key in a chest. They also give hints when Link springs them. There are five skulltulas in the dungeon: two easily spotted on the main path, one hidden behind a bombable wall, and two on a side path that’s really only of interest to dedicated completionists (or skulltula hunters, although I would guess there’s a lot of overlap between completionists and people who continue actively hunting skulltulas after getting the heart piece reward).

There’s not a whole lot of combat in this dungeon, and most of the enemies that do show up are fairly simplistic: fire keeses (whom I’ve finally got a hang of now with the hookshot), torch slugs, and the reintroduction of like likes that now eat tunics in addition to shields. Speaking of shields, the spinning floor tile rooms are back, and once I realized that’s what was going on, as easy to deal with as in Link’s Awakening. The most involved combat, aside from the boss, is the flare dancer minibosses, which are quite fun: use the hookshot to pull them out of the flames, then whack them with the sword until they jump back in and light back on fire. The dancers’ fire turns different colors as they take damage, and eventually they just explode.

If the Forest Temple was about puzzles, the Fire Temple’s about mazes and platforming. There are lots of sequences of hopping over lava pits, a room that Link explores both from the ground as a maze with boulders rolling through it and then on top of the pillars that defined the maze, a maze where the “walls” are fires that are only visible from up close, another room where Link’s pursued by a wall of fire. There are two treasure chests protected by flames which can be temporarily dispelled by stepping on switches, and then Link needs to hurry to get the chest before the flames come back. The first of these is unimportant, just a gold rupee.

The second fire-protected chest holds the dungeon’s treasure, the Megaton Hammer. Getting it requires running along a narrow curving walkway, which I have trouble with even without the added pressure of having to do it quickly. Farore’s wind is incredibly useful here, because if Link falls off the inside of the curving path, it’s a long way down and a long way back up without magic. Screw that. But the feeling when Link finally navigates the path and reaches the chest and gets the hammer is great, and the hammer is a wonderful toy. It smashes tiles to open up ways down through the dungeon, can press switches that have rusted shut, flip torch slugs onto their backs where they’re helpless, and it’s just fun to swing around and break stuff.

When Link arrives to confront Volvagia, the subterranean lava dragon, Darunia’s nowhere to be seen. A quick survey of the battlefield: There are nine holes arranged in a 3×3 grid. The dragon pops out of one of these holes at random to attack. Link has a hammer. Yep, I’m pretty sure this is a game of Whac-A-Dragon. I say that flippantly, but it’s really quite fun [1]. Between chances to whack the dragon, the dragon completely flies out of a hole and either chases Link around breathing fire or flies up to the ceiling and starts raining rocks on everything. Finally, after taking enough hits, the dragon rises up one last time and crumbles to ash, and the sky over Death Mountain clears up.

Link meets Darunia again in the Chamber of Sages. Darunia thanks Link for everything he’s done for the gorons, and says that he’s happy to help Link save Hyrule by acting as the Sage of Fire. He gives Link the Fire Medallion, and as Link returns to Death Mountain, confirms that they’re brothers.

With the hammer, Link can exit the crater normally by smashing rocks and creating a path. Along the way there’s a Great Fairy of Magic, who doubles Link’s magic meter, so I’m guessing magic’s going to be a lot more useful in recruiting the rest of the sages. On the way down from Death Mountain, Link can discover two more skulltulas hiding behind rocks. There’s nothing new at the House of Skulltula, though, so breaking the curse on the last one’s probably going to require killing all 100 of them.

Next: Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

[1] More fun than I’ve ever found Whac-A-Mole, really. Tontie is pretty fun, though.

A Link to the Past: The Dark World

Palace of Darkness

The Palace of Darkness introduces four new enemies: baris, which sometimes surge with electricity and shock Link if he hits them; helmasaurs, whose defining feature is the protective mask they wear on their face, making them immune to some attacks from the front; goriyas, who no longer throw boomerangs but mimic Link’s movement; and turtle enemies called terrorpins [1], who are immune to any damage as long as they’re upright. Once Link gets the hammer from the dungeon, he can flip them over, and it’s generally easiest to freeze them with the ice rod or ether so they won’t flip back, then smash them with the hammer again to refill the magic spent freezing them.

The dungeon itself is a maze, and I know how to do it with minimal backtracking now, but man I must have gotten lost so many times. The end boss is the Helmasaur King. I don’t know why I insist on chipping away at the mask with the hammer instead of using bombs like a normal person; I guess I like the extra challenge of constantly having to walk up to a giant monster whose movements are erratic and takes off two hearts if it hits Link [2]. Once it’s finally dead, Link recovers a crystal with one of the seven maidens. She tells Link where the other six are, and the Dark World quest has begun.

Exploring the Dark World

Getting the hammer opens up most of the Dark World, so it’s time to go exploring. The first stop is the Dark World version of the Haunted Grove, where Link finds Flute Boy alive, but transformed into a… I don’t know, looks like some kind of fox, and clinging to the Dark World equivalent of his favorite place. He asks Link to find his flute, which he buried in the grove with some flower seeds. It’s tempting to warp back to the Light World right there, but if Link does it where Flute Boy Apparition can see him, he’ll immediately poof and Link can’t move until he’s done, at which point he’s lost the protection from the Mirror’s portal and he goes right back to the Dark World. Anyway, the flute’s buried under a patch of flowers, but when Link takes it back to the Flute Boy, Flute Boy says he can’t use it anymore and asks Link to play it for him one last time. After the song finishes, Flute Boy turns into a tree [3].

Continuing on, there are four pieces of heart available now. The first is just southwest of the Haunted Grove, and is a simple mirror to the Light World, enter the cave, and grab piece. The second is buried with a bunch of other treasures in a field that costs 80 rupees to get to dig up for 30 seconds. This one can take forever, and a lot of rupees, although there are plenty buried in the field so Link probably won’t lose too many. The third requires going back to the Light World and finding a warp point between Kakariko Village and the Lost Woods and exploring the Village of Outcasts. While in Kakariko, Link takes the flute back to Flute Boy’s father, who asks Link to keep it and play it for the weathercock, which shatters and frees a bird which can now take Link to eight convenient locations around the Light World. Also, jumping in a well by the blacksmiths’ house leads Link to find a strange contraption. Sprinkling magic powder on the contraption awakens the Mad Batter, who… honestly, I don’t know what to make of him. He “curses” Link so he uses half as much magic as usual; not so important for the next dungeon, but after that, much more.

The Village of Outcasts piece is hidden in a chest game: open two of sixteen chests for 30 rupees. Like the treasure field, this can go very badly, but there are 600 rupees hidden around the village, so some quick math says there’s only a 6.92% chance of using all those rupees and not getting the heart piece; plus the game’s chests have rupees of their own. Still, random heart pieces are annoying. The final heart piece for now is in a cave on a small cliff overlooking the Light World graveyard, and it’s like the first one. While in the area, Link can access the Dark version of the area that has a blocked-off tomb in the Light World, warp back, open the tomb, and get the magic cape. There’s one more heart piece Link can get now, but it’s so much easier with the hookshot, so I’m going to wait on that.

There are two more items to get right now. First is the Cane of Byrna. It’s up on Dark Death Mountain, and requires a tough journey walking over spikes to get. The easiest way to do it is to wear the cape on the way in, grab the cane, drink a green potion, and use the cane on the way back out. For the second item, Link takes a hidden portal in the Great Swamp and goes to where the entrance to the Desert of Mystery was, warps back, and gets the bombos medallion.

Tomorrow: Swamps, skulls, and thieves.

[1] I cannot take the name seriously. All I can think is that Walking Dead meme: “TERRORpins, Carl!” “Dad…”
[2] This one falls into the “one false move and you’re dead” category mentioned earlier.
[3] No, I don’t know why the smith can follow Link home through the mirror but Flute Boy can’t.

Ocarina of Time: Death Mountain Revisited

With 50 skulltulas killed, Link returns to the skulltula house in Kakariko Village, where the last of the kids is freed of the curse and awards him a heart piece. The father is happy that all the kids are saved, but is resigned to remaining a skulltula himself. The egg Link got from the cucco lady has now hatched, and the cucco can be used to wake up Talon, who’s happy to hear that he can go back to the ranch. The cucco’s happy it got to wake Talon up, so Link returns it to the cucco lady, who gives him a blue cucco that belonged to her brother. Her brother’s hanging out in the Lost Woods, and takes the cucco and gives Link a mushroom that needs to be delivered to the village within three minutes. It’s a fairly easy task, especially with Epona on call to make riding over Hyrule Field faster. The mushroom’s recipient takes it and makes a potion, but by time Link returns to the forest, the guy’s gone. The Kokiri girl who’s there instead says that he’ll probably become a stalfos, and demands the potion that was created with the forest mushroom. In return, she gives him the saw the guy left behind. Checking around the various places in Hyrule, Link discovers that the saw belongs to the head carpenter, who’s now repairing the broken bridge into Gerudo Valley; Link can jump across the gap on Epona. The head carpenter takes the saw and gives Link a broken sword made by a goron. I’ll see him later, so let’s put this aside for now.

Back at the ranch, Talon’s determined to turn over a new leaf now that he’s running things again. Link takes the opportunity to visit Malon again and run her obstacle course. It’s tough, but Malon’s encouraging, and when Link finally gets his time down she gives him his reward. Well, she doesn’t give it to him directly, because it’s a cow and what’s Link going to do carrying a cow around, but she has it delivered to his old house in the forest.

With Epona and the bow, there’s one more thing Link can do now. When he rides over certain spots in Hyrule Field, big poes come out of hiding and try to run away. Two arrows can defeat a big poe, but if they make it to a wall or get far enough away, they escape. The big challenge here is getting the poes to pop out of the ground headed in a direction that gives Link enough time to run them down; the other part is learning how to shoot from horseback, especially if Epona’s going in one direction and the poe another. Each defeated big poe can be bottled and sold to the guy at the ghost shop for 50 rupees, and if Link catches all ten he gets a fourth bottle as well. Which would have been useful before starting ghost hunting, but whatever.

Return to Death Mountain

Now it’s time to head up Death Mountain to see what the deal is up there. The magic bean Link planted outside Dodongo’s Cavern is now an elevator flower that will let Link grab a heart piece, and inside the cavern there’s a skulltula that Link can get by summoning the scarecrow. There’s another skulltula on the platform suspended over the middle of Goron City. Goron City is nearly abandoned: there’s a giant goron in a cave that sells Link a giant’s knife for 200 rupees, and a successor to the Hot Rodder Goron. When Link stops the rolling goron, he turns out to be Darunia’s son, whom Darunia named after Link. Goron Link tells Hylian Link that Ganon kidnapped most of the other gorons and took them to the Fire Temple on Death Mountain as a sacrifice to the dragon Volvagia and gives him a goron tunic, which will let him resist the heat in Death Mountain Crater.

There’s a secret passage to Death Mountain Crater through Darunia’s room in Goron City, and Link meets Sheik again. Sheik talks about the bond of friendship and teaches Link another teleporting song, the Bolero of Fire. Every time Sheik teaches Link a song, there’s a cool little cutscene where the two play an extended version of the song together. Sheik ninjaports out, and Link notices another magic bean patch near where the Bolero of Fire would dump him. Planting a bean as an adult is not productive, so Link teleports to the Temple of Time, uses the Master Sword to go back to being a kid, teleports back and uses a bug to lure a skulltula out of the hole before planting a bean.

Before going back to Adult Link, there’s a couple more things we can do. There’s a skulltula Link can get now in Hyrule Castle, in a hidden pit near the secret entrance to the courtyard. Also, in Zora’s River, there’s a group of frogs on a log. They reward Link for playing the Song of Storms with a heart piece, and the five melodies he knew before growing up each earn a purple rupee and make one of the frogs grow big. Once they’ve all grown, they invite Link to play the ocarina to accompany them catching flies; the sequence is long and unforgiving, but awards another heart piece once completed. And now it’s time to take up the Master Sword again and head back to Death Mountain.

Next: And it burns, burns, burns.

A Link to the Past: The Legendary Hero

The Tower of Hera introduces three new enemy types: little fire-breathing dinosaurs called kodongos, hardhat beetles which seem to exist to frustrate Link by not dying and pushing back when they’re hit with the sword, and mini-moldorms. It also introduces the switch blocks, which here seem to exist to trap Link in after his visit to the floor with the big key, forcing him to learn that the magic mirror can warp him back to the dungeon’s entrance. En route to the top, Sahasrahla encourages Link to remember the Moon Pearl, and although it makes for a rather funny moment later if you forget it, I decided to humor him and grab it before I left.

The boss of the Tower of Hera is a giant moldorm, and my least favorite boss from the four games I’ve played. The challenge it offers is not the one false move and you’re dead we’ll see later with a couple early Dark World bosses, but simply a challenge to not get knocked off the platform. And getting knocked off the platform only resets the boss and forces Link to climb back up to him and resets his health… but there’s a hole Link can fall down the floor below that leads to a pond with respawning faeries that’ll let him come back at full health, too.

They would get the “don’t get knocked off” mechanics right later in this game, and Link’s Awakening has a couple bosses with similar mechanics that aren’t as annoying – and one of those is even another moldorm.

The Master Sword and Agahnim

With the moldorm down, the third pendant is Link’s, and he can now claim the Master Sword. No sooner does he come out from the clearing where it was kept than Zelda contacts him for help again, saying the soldiers are coming for her. Now, owing to video game conventions that as far as I know are generally practiced to this very day, no matter what you do, the scenes at Sanctuary [1] and Hyrule Tower will play out the same way, but the only thing Link can get right now is the ether medallion and that requires going up Death Mountain and back down again, so screw that.

Anyway, Link arrives at Sanctuary moments too late. Zelda is gone and the sage is dying. This should be a sad and touching scene, but the sage’s death animation has him blinking out of existence, accompanied by a ridiculous sound effect. The last chance for the stopping Agahnim from breaking the seal is to rescue Zelda before Agahnim can zap her.

The charge up Hyrule Castle Tower is a fun dungeon. The soldiers don’t pose much threat, but they’re not supposed to, either. Link’s the Legendary Hero, the one who’s destined to save Hyrule, and this is his moment… except he arrives too late. Zelda is zapped into the Dark World before his eyes, and all he can do is take the fight to Agahnim. He reflects Agahnim’s fireballs back at him, and instead of fighting to the end, Agahnim shifts to the Dark World and draws Link with him.

The New Quest

All is not lost, however. Link still has the Moon Pearl, the magic mirror, and the Master Sword. Sahasrahla contacts him to tell him he can still rescue the maidens, recover the Triforce, and stop Ganon and gives him the first location: the Palace of Darkness that’s the Dark World counterpart to the Eastern Palace. There’s a heart piece on the Pyramid, which is another full heart for Link. He can also get one on an island in Lake Hylia, and another under the hollow tree the lumberjacks had been cutting. The ether medallion is useful for the next dungeon, so I got that. Finally, in the northeast corner of the Dark World (minus Dark Death Mountain), there’s a circle of stones with a sign saying don’t throw things in. So, the sign got thrown into the circle, and Link got the quake medallion too. Getting into the Palace of Darkness requires befriending a monkey named Kiki who asks for 10 rupees. Kiki then opens the door if Link gives him another 100.

Next: It’s hammer time.

[1] Technically, you can miss the scene at Sanctuary.

Ocarina of Time: Forest Temple

As Link walks into the main chamber of the Forest Temple, four poes steal fire from the torches in the middle and scatter throughout the dungeon. Navi puts on her Captain Obvious uniform and informs Link that the poes stole the fire. I watched the cutscene, too, thanks. This sets the stage for the first main goal of the dungeon: track down and defeat the four poes to get the fire back and open the way forward. Or downward, as the case may be.

In addition to the poes, this dungeon features a bunch of new old enemies. Wallmasters make their return (still falling from the ceiling), along with a new variant call floormasters that split in three which, if not killed quickly, will reform the defeated floormaster and require it to be done all over again. And the stalfos knights show up, behaving much like lizalfos from Dodongo’s Cavern: block their attacks, then return serve. They also do the thing where the one not targeted watches as the other duels Link, and there’s one pair where Link has a short time after defeating one to defeat the other or the downed one reforms [1].

Being in the Lost Woods, you might expect the dungeon to be full of puzzles, and you’d be right. In addition to the familiar block puzzles (direction helpfully indicated by arrows on the floor), the eye switches (one of which is frozen solid and needs an arrow shot through a torch!) twist/untwist hallways which results in viewing the next room from a different orientation. Then there’s a corridor with ceiling with a ceiling that constantly tries to crush Link so he has to run to the few safe squares, some of which are occupied by big skulltulas who aren’t keen on sharing their safe space and are tough to hookshot because of the fixed camera angle. The fire-stealing poes each present a puzzle of their own. Two require smashing mirrors without getting too close, and the hookshot’s range is within “too close,” so Link needs to find the dungeon’s treasure, the bow, to hit the mirrors. The third requires pushing a bunch of cubes together to form a picture of the poe. The fourth appears right out in the open, but splits into four copies, only one of which can actually be harmed.

With the fires restored, Link can access the bottom floor of the dungeon. The main room is a giant circular room that can be spun around, with small rooms that can only be accessed when the main room is aligned a certain way. There’s a skulltula, one of five available, hidden in one of the small rooms, but the main thing Link needs to do is hit a series of switches in order to open the way forward.

Such a puzzling dungeon needs a puzzle boss, and we get it with Phantom Ganon, an evil spirit from beyond. This fight comes in two phases. First, there are six pictures around the room, and Phantom Ganon leaps from one of them, electrifying the room as he passes through. Making it harder, there’s a fake double that rides up at the same time as the real one. I found the easiest way to deal with this is to find a corner where the electricity doesn’t reach, helpfully marked with the Triforce symbol, and shooting Ganon as he charges over the center of the room. Three hits and Ganon dismounts, and he throws spells at Link, and the only way to hit him is, like with Agahnim in the future, to reflect the spells right back at him. Only it’s harder now. The timing has to be precise, and Ganon can hit them back at Link, in which case Link has to send them back again. With three bottled fairies [2], I didn’t think I was in any danger of dying (permanently), but this battle took me about 30 minutes to get enough hits. By the end of it, I had the hang of the timing pretty well.

After the phantom is defeated, the real Ganon makes telepathic contact, praising Link’s skill and saying that he’ll be harder to beat than his phantom, which he calls useless and banishes to the void.

Wrapping up the story, Link and Saria are reunited, and Saria accepts her destiny as a sage. She gives Link her medallion and promises they’ll always be friends. If Link calls her on the ocarinaphone, she tells him she’s happy to be helping save Hyrule. An offshoot of the Deku Tree appears where the old Tree was, and reveals to Link that he’s not actually a Kokiri, but a Hylian who was left in the care of the Deku Tree as an infant. With the Deku Tree Sprout now around, the village is once again peaceful. Mido is sad that Saria won’t return, but understands, and (indirectly) tells Link that Saria never gave up on him and apologizes for being mean to him before.

Link returns to the Temple of Time, and Sheik’s there to tell him he can go back to being a kid by returning the Master Sword to its pedestal, and he teaches Link a new song that will teleport him to the Temple.

Next: When there’s hidden poes in Hyrule Field, who you gonna call?

[1] And I only now thought of landing a couple hits on one and switching targets so the one that’s left is only at half health and it’s easy. Bah.
[2] These seem to be overpowered now. Seriously, if fairies instantly revive you at full health, what’s the point of potions? (At least red potions; maybe there’ll be a point where Link needs to conserve magic so a green potion would be a wise investment.)

A Link to the Past: Desert Palace

There’s a heart piece near the sanctuary under a pile of rocks that can be smashed with the shoes, and some fun to be had in Kakariko village: the magic powder can turn a woman into a faerie, a cucco can be turned into a woman, and the guy who runs from Link can be caught. Once the fun’s over, time to get the Book of Mudora from the library and go to the Desert Palace.

This dungeon introduces two of my least favorite enemies/traps from this game: beamos and the floor tiles. The floor tiles are mostly just tedious; hide in the doorway, go get a drink, and when you come back the way will be clear. If hiding in the door’s not possible, it comes down to dodging and/or thwacking them with the sword. As for beamos… about the only defense is to circle around them, just out of their line of sight, or hide behind something. They still suck, but they’re more a nuisance than anything.

There are two unconnected parts to the dungeon, and the power glove from the first part is required to enter the second. There’s also a chance to get a piece of heart between the two, which gives a full heart and the corresponding life fill if Link’s got all of them so far. The boss is a trio of lanmolas, and the hard part is dodging the pellets they throw as they come out of the ground. The spin attack doesn’t seem to do extra damage, but with a little bit of luck and timing, Link can take two of them out at the same time and skip the final phase where there’s just one throwing pellets in eight directions instead of four.

Armed with the power glove, most of the rest of Hyrule has opened up. The first destination should be Zora’s Waterfall in the northeast, to get the flippers. Zora sells the flippers for 500 rupees, the highest price in the game [1]. That’s not quite enough to buy everything in the first game (540 for the first quest, 600 for the second, not counting potions), but rupees are more plentiful in this game and here’s one place it shows. While in the area, there’s a heart piece in Zora’s Waterfall, and then the Waterfall of Wishing can upgrade Link’s shield and boomerang.

Now to take Zora’s advice and whirlpool down to Lake Hylia. This drops Link off right in front of the Pond of Happiness, which will gleefully soak up any excess rupees Link has, at least until he’s maxed out his bomb and arrow capacity. In the river leading north from Lake Hylia, there’s a man living under a bridge who’ll give Link a bottle, and then it’s time to head to the third pendant’s dungeon.

Death Mountain

In the caves leading into Death Mountain, Link meets a lost old man. The man tells Link his granddaughter’s one of the maidens Agahnim’s zapped, and Link helps lead him to a cave on Death Mountain where he settles, setting up a third respawn point for the Light World. Before he goes, the man gives Link the Magic Mirror, which will immediately prove vital to the quest.

Spectacle Rock doesn’t house a hammer – we’ll get that later – but there’s a piece of heart for the taking. From that area, Link can see the Tower of Hera, but not get up there; the only way up for now is to step on a portal and enter the Dark World…

Where Ganon’s evil magic turns Link into a pink bunny.

There are a couple other cursed people here, an ogre kicking a ball. They tell Link that the Tower of Hera has an item called the Moon Pearl that lets its bearer keep their form in the Dark World, but since there’s no reason for Link to think he’s going to revisit the Dark World after this brief sojourn, he ignores their prattle. And the fact that his map a full world in the Dark World that he can only access a small portion of; surely all that excess is just some mapmaker showing off. Anyway, he uses the Mirror to warp back to the Light World atop Spectacle Rock, and jumps down to the level where the entrance to the Tower of Hera is and goes in.

Next: The Tower, the Master Sword, and Agahnim.

[1] Shared with red shields, in case Link runs afoul of a pikit and would rather just buy a replacement than buy a small shield and take it to the Waterfall of Wishing for the upgrade.

Ocarina of Time: Fun and Games With the Hookshot

The fun with the hookshot starts immediately in Kakariko Village. It can hook onto the buildings’ roofs. There’s a skulltula on the roof of Impa’s house, and the man on the potion shop looking out at Death Mountain gives Link a heart piece. The cucco lady says she’s bred a type of chicken she’s not allergic too, and gives Link an egg to hatch, and I assume he’ll eventually use the egg on Talon, who’s moved into the village since being kicked off his ranch. But I have to wait to do that, so let’s go explore the world some more.

Lake Hylia’s suffered some drainage too – surely this isn’t all from that one windmill! The scarecrows are still there, and when Link plays the song he’d played as a kid, they arrange for one of the scarecrows to show up when Link plays the song. So, Link goes over near the fishing pond – which due to the lowered water level, is seemingly inaccessible – and plays the song. The scarecrow shows up on the ledge, and Link hookshots over to him.

Time has not been kind to the fishing pond; as it’s become inaccessible, Link’s the only customer. Oh, and the proprietor’s apparently losing his hair, so he’s wearing a hat and has added a rule about casting at people. No one’s broken the record Link set back seven years ago, but the proprietor said that the fish would be bigger now, so Link tries his luck. I spent a good chunk of time on this, even after identifying a particularly promising target that just would not stay interested in the lure. Finally I got it to bite and reeled it in and it was almost double the weight of the one from when Link was a kid. The reward for such a big fish was a golden scale, further increasing Link’s diving ability.

Now’s where the Lakeside Laboratory comes in: with the extra 3 seconds, Link’s now able to grab one of the rupees on the bottom, and the “secret discovered” chime plays at the same time. The scientist awards Link for his diving prowess with a heart piece. Outside the laboratory, the mature magic bean can put Link on the roof, where if he can handle the crows, he can make it to a platform with yet another heart piece. And there’s one more heart piece out in Hyrule Field, underwater in a hidden hole north of Lon Lon Ranch. There’s one last thing to get, a skulltula on the grounds of Ganon’s Castle that needs the hookshot, and now Link can appease Navi and return to the forest.

Turns Out You Can Go Home Again, It’s Just Overrun With Monsters Now

Without the Deku Tree’s protection, even the Kokiri village has been overrun by monsters – octoroks and Deku scrubs and babas. The Kokiri themselves are hiding in their houses; unlike Link, they haven’t aged any. Some of them mention Link, but no one seems to recognize him. Saria and Mido are both nowhere to be found in the village. There’s a gold skulltula here near the House of Twins, and then it’s time to head into the Lost Woods. A few turns in, Link discovers that Mido’s taken up his old habits of blocking the path, although this time it seems to be on Saria’s request. Link plays Saria’s song, which convinces Mido that he’s Saria’s friend, and Mido lets him pass, noting that Link reminds him of Mr. No-Fairy.

There’s another skulltula in the Lost Woods that requires riding a magic bean, and then it’s into the Sacred Meadow. The scrubs that used to dot the path are gone, replaced by moblins, who have clearly been eating their Wheaties [1], because they’re tougher than any other version. If they spot Link, they bullrush him, and they’re apparently immune to Z-targeting. However, they’re apparently incapable of looking off their patrol route, and one hit from the hookshot takes them out. A big moblin with a club blocks the end of the path, and it continually smashes its club into the ground, sending shockwaves at Link that knock him over. So Link has to weave between the blasts to get close enough to fight the Club Moblin, and probably gets knocked back at least once or twice while dealing damage.

When Link arrives at the clearing where Saria used to hang out, he looks sadly at her old stump seat. Sheik shows up and notes his sadness, and teaches him a song that will let him teleport back to the clearing: the Minuet of Forest. Sheik promises to see Link again before doing the Deku nut smoke bomb thing, leaving Link on his own. Overhead, there’s a branch Link can hookshot to, which puts him at the entrance to the Forest Temple.

Next: Chasing stolen fire.

[1] Or, since this is a prequel, stopped between now and A Link to the Past.

A Link to the Past: The Quest Begins

The World Opens Up

So, for how much I said the first game’s open world felt weird, the world in this game is not that far behind in how much exploring you can do once exploring at all is allowed. There are chunks of the world that are blocked off, especially Death Mountain, and little areas that you can see but not get to, most of which require warping in from the Dark World, but most of the Light World is explorable at this point. Of course, that’s only half the total game world…

Having played the game so many times, at this point I have the list of everything to do and see memorized:

• Go to the Lost Woods and get the mushroom and heart piece.
• Go to Kakariko Village. Get bombs and the heart piece from the well. Get the treasure chests and heart piece in the thieves’ hideout. Blow open the mysterious hut and fill up on bombs. Get two bottles and the bug-catching net. Since I’m actually trying to follow the story this time, talk to the woman at Sahasrahla’s house, the kid who knows where Sahasrahla is, the smith who’s missing his partner, and everyone else.
• Go to the Quarreling Brothers’ house and perform an act of vandalism, then run through the maze to get a fourth heart piece.
• Go south from Link’s house to the Great Swamp, open the watergate, and get the heart piece there. Continue east and get the ice rod, one of the deadliest things to do right now because of the damned crabs that take off two hearts if they hit Link.
• I usually skip this next thing because it’s easier to do when going for the Desert Palace and there’s no benefit to doing it now, but: Go into the Desert of Mystery, talk with Aginah, and bomb the south wall of his cave to get a sixth piece of heart.
• Visit the magic shop, fill bottles with potions, and trade the mushroom for the magic powder.

Now it’s time to go to the Eastern Palace. Talking to Sahasrahla is optional at this point if you know where to go, but worth it for one of the few times these first three games show a sense of humor [1]: When Sahasrahla asks if Link really wants to find the Master Sword, the two dialogue options are “Yeah!” and “Of course!”

The First Pendant

Anyway, he sends Link off to the Eastern Palace, where the Pendant of Courage is hidden. The dungeons in this game, like pretty much everything else, are a return to the style of the first game, only now taking advantage of the Super NES’ abilities to have bigger rooms, 3D effects – there’s one point in this dungeon where Link passes over a walkway through a room he’d previously visited – and so forth. I don’t think the dungeons ever quite get as big as the ones in the first game did, and certainly never as maze-like. The dungeons’ treasure is now hidden in big chests, which require the new dungeon item, the big key, to open [2].

There’s not a whole lot of variety in the enemies in the Eastern Palace: stalfos, plant creatures called popos, one-eyed animated statues that I remember calling rocklops but now they’re eyegores, and bubbles/fire faeries. The eyegores are the hardest of the bunch until Link gets the bow, which makes them pretty easy. After two games of being tormented by bubbles, it’s really nice to be able to turn the fire faeries into normal helpful faeries with magic powder. It can be a drain on magic, especially if it takes a few tries, but usually the faerie restores more hearts than are lost in the attempt. A group of six armos knights is the boss and a pretty good test of Link’s skill with the bow, although it’s possible to kill them with the sword if arrows run out.

Now with the Pendant of Courage, Link can return to Sahasrahla and learn more about the legendary hero he’s aspiring to become. Sahasrahla says the Knights of Hyrule existed three or four generations ago, while the manual says the Imprisoning War that killed most of them was 500 years prior. But the real point here is that he gives Link the pegasus shoes, which means no more walking anywhere when I can run and, if I don’t stop, run right into monsters that want to eat Link or off cliffs or the like. But who cares? Run! Run! Wheeeee!

He also hints about the ice rod, but I already got that.

Next: Exploring most of the rest of the world.

[1] There was another earlier, with the bottle merchant encouraging Link’s Item Get! action.
[2] Technically, there was a big key in Hyrule Castle, dropped by the flail trooper and used to open Zelda’s cell.

Ocarina of Time: Welcome to the Future

Stepping out of the Temple of Time, it’s plain that since Ganon got the Triforce, the seven years since have not been kind to Hyrule. For one thing, Hyrule Castle is gone, and in its place, a giant fortress is suspended over a bed of lava. The marketplace, once so full of life, is now only occupied by ReDeads [1]. In the guardhouse that used to be a reliable place to fill up on rupees is a man who collects defeated poes and keeps them in a cage. This man is seriously unsettling, enjoying what Ganon’s turned the world into and hoping things get even worse. Oh, and he makes a really skeevy comment about Link’s looks and running a different kind of business. Right, then. Back away slowly, keeping an eye on the creepy guy.

Hyrule Field is both better and worse than in Link’s childhood. On the bright side, there are no more peahats, and the skeleton apocalypse no longer happens at night. On the other hand, there are now poes all over the place. And the sign pointing at Lon Lon Ranch now calls it “The Great Ingo’s Ingo Ranch.” That’s not right, so we’ll make it Link’s next destination.

Horsin’ Around

Talon’s nowhere to be found, and Malon’s working in the stable. She says Ingo’s trying to gain Ganon’s favor, Talon was kicked out, and she’s staying because she’s afraid of what Ingo will do to the horses without her to mind them. Ingo’s in the central corral, and lets Link ride a horse, ten rupees for a minute’s ride. It’s long enough to use Epona’s song to summon Epona and get up and get familiar with the controls. The second time, after calling Epona, Link goes to talk to Ingo, who challenges him to a race. Ingo cheats by jumping the gun, but Link’s able to overtake him and win the race. Ingo immediately challenges Link to a rematch, saying he can keep the horse if he wins. He works harder to keep Link from passing, but it doesn’t work. Ever the graceful loser, Ingo lets Link keep the horse – whom he’d been planning to give to Ganon as a present – but locks the gates to the ranch. Because it’s not like Link has spent the last few minutes learning to ride, including jumping fences.

When Link returns to the ranch, Malon’s back in her rightful place and Ingo’s just happy to still have a job. Malon remembers Link from earlier, and challenges him to beat her record on an obstacle course. I only tried once and failed miserably, but by the end I finally got the hang of the controls so maybe next time I’ll get it.

Kakariko Village

Kakariko Village doesn’t seem much changed over the years. The people who used to hang out in the Market have moved here instead, the carpenters finished their building and are gone, the cuccos aren’t there anymore, and something happened to the windmill to make the well go dry, but it’s not as drastic as the changes to the market or the giant ring of fire hanging over Death Mountain. There’s not much else here of interest, so once again, Link heads to the graveyard.

In the intervening seven years, Dampé has died. His diary promises a “stretching, shrinking keepsake” to someone who visits his grave. Next to his grave is one of the places where Link planted a magic bean seven years ago, and now there’s a flower elevator that will take Link to a heart piece! Inside the grave, Dampé challenges Link to keep up with him. If Link can make it through the final door before it closes, Dampé awards him the hookshot; since the boomerang is unavailable to adult Link (boo!), this will do. The passage ends at the Kakariko windmill, where Link can reach a heart piece. The man inside the windmill is furiously playing a catchy song on his organ, and blames the windmill’s current state on “that ocarina kid.” Well, I know enough time travel stories to know what’s up, so 1) apparently I’m not done with Link the kid yet [2], and 2) Link learns the Song of Storms from the organ player so he can use it in the past.

Link can go back to visit Dampé and run the course again, and if he can make it in under a minute – not an easy task – he gets another heart piece.

Next: Hooked on a feeling.

[1] I’d have left the happy dancing couple there, with them unaware of the wights surrounding them, and the wights looking at them, afraid to come any closer. But that element of farce would have completely undermined the horror of finding the marketplace like that, so I can understand why it wasn’t done.
[2] Another villager mentions a man who could “see the truth” whose house was where the well is. I’m guessing child Link turbocharged the windmill and drained the well to get whatever that man’s secret is [3].
[3] Or will do so eventually [4].
[4] I hate time travel linguistics.

A Link to the Past: Time of the Falling Rain

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…

“Help me… please help me… I am a prisoner in the dungeon of the castle. My name is Zelda.”

Zelda’s telepathic message reaches Link and his uncle in the middle of the night. I’m not sure who else heard it; possibly only descendants of the Knights of Hyrule. Link’s uncle takes the family sword and shield and tells Link to remain at home while he tries to rescue Zelda. Link, being a good boy, goes back to sleep (even though his uncle carelessly left the light on, and he has no way to put it back out). He never sees his uncle again, and is mostly a helpless observer as the wise men’s seal breaks and Ganon returns to Hyrule and, after Agahnim already softened it up, Ganon easily conquers it.

…

Or, because that would make for a terrible game, Link ignores his uncle’s advice, takes a lamp from the treasure chest, and sets out to help. It’s raining hard, and most of the pathways to explore the overworld are blocked by soldiers, so the only thing he can do is find an entrance hidden under a bush that leads to a secret passage.

In the secret passage, Link finds his uncle, who’s dying. He hands the shield and sword to Link and teaches him the spin attack, then dies with a few final words: “Save the Princess… Zelda is your… … …” I first played this game around the first time I watched the Star Wars trilogy, so I can’t help but fill in “sister” there. I know that’s almost certainly Not True, but looking online I’m also not the only one who thought that. (The Japanese version apparently had him say, “You are the princess’…,” which has a lot more ways to fill in that make sense, starting with (still thinking of Star Wars) “…only hope.” Anyway, regardless of possible relationships between the hero and the princess, we do have to rescue her.

Link takes the sword and shield and makes his way through the courtyard into the castle. The stairs to the dungeon are around the back; if Link stumbles out onto the ramparts, a soldier will tell him that Agahnim’s been taking control of the soldiers and he figures it’s just a matter of time for him, too. He’s standing where one of the bomb-throwing soldiers will later be, so he’s not wrong. The enemies inside the castle are all those possessed soldiers, but Link has little choice but to carve a path through them. Along the way, he picks up a boomerang. Guarding Zelda’s dungeon cell is a soldier with a flail, where the best strategy is to boomerang him, get in close, spin attack, get back out, and repeat until dead. It’s an easy fight, but they’ll get harder from here. (Also, because charging the spin attack leaves Link stuck facing one way but he can still throw the boomerang in any of eight directions, I was throwing the boomerang out of Link’s butt, which was an amusing visual.)

Zelda tells Link what we’ve already learned about the castle soldiers, and says she knows of a secret way out. Which means going back through what he’s already fought through, and a lot of those soldiers have respawned. The entrance to the tunnel is located behind the throne on the top floor of the castle, and gives Link the first real chance to play with the lamp. This is strictly optional; the little bit of default light when the lamp isn’t equipped is enough to deal with the keeses and ropes and rats (they couldn’t have come up with a smeerp name for them, too?) inside the passageway. After passing through the sewers, Link and Zelda come to sanctuary, where the sage tells Link he’ll need the Master Sword to defeat Ganon and refers him to Sahasrahla, who knows more about the sword and can help Link find it.

Next: "Tra la la, look for Sahasrahla…"

Ocarina of Time: Childhood's End

Fun With the Mask of Truth

One of the features of the mask of truth is that Link can get hints from the strange stones that dot the landscape. Some of these are things I’ve already figured out on my own (dropping bugs into small holes, the running man in Hyrule Field), some have been said elsewhere (Kokiri have companion fairies, Impa’s one of the Sheikah), and some should be bloody obvious (Ganon wants to rule the world), but there’s still some interesting things to learn here:

• The owl’s name is Kaepora Gaebora, and he’s the reincarnation of an ancient sage.
• Non-fairies who enter the Lost Woods become monsters.
• Zelda’s a tomboy, which I’m sure has no connection to a character I’m about to meet.
• There’s 100 of the gold skulltulas.

Expectations, History, and Timelines

At this point, I have a fairly good idea of how things are going to go, based on what I’ve played before and stuff in the manual. This is clearly set in the pivotal time before A Link to the Past, around the time that Ganon got the Triforce. So Link and Zelda’s efforts are going to be in vain and Ganon will enter the sacred realm, and then the rest of the game – the part with the adult Link – will be the Imprisoning War with Link fighting to keep Ganon from conquering Hyrule while the Wise Men seal him away in the Sacred Realm.

Except there’s that other thing, the fact that the games set after this one are split across three timelines, so that’s just one outcome. It’s not necessarily even the one we see here; it could be that this game is the story of Ganon getting the Triforce rewritten to allow Link to stop him more permanently – actually, the A Link to the Past manual seems to suggest there wasn’t a Hero to wield the Master Sword during the Imprisoning War [1], so this feels right.

At any rate, it’s obvious this isn’t quite the end of the story. There’s still a bunch of spots left to fill on the inventory, a lot more skulltulas to get, and an entire second row to the life bar to fill in. Plus there's a bunch of talk of things happening over the next years, Chekov’s magic beans, Link as an adult to play as, and an area he’s not allowed to properly explore as a child. No, this is clearly the “Link has the three pendants, gets the Master Sword, and goes to stop Agahnim only to get drawn into a bigger quest” moment.

The Door of Time

Well, in the time I spent running around between getting the Ocarina of Time and going to the Temple of Time, I’d forgotten what to do. So, naturally, I stood on the image of the Triforce on the ground and played Zelda’s Lullaby and was surprised/disappointed when nothing happened. Then I tried Song of Time, and still nothing. As it turns out, Link has to go up to the altar itself and play the Song of Time there. Anyway, the Spiritual Stones go in the altar, the door opens, and Link finds the Master Sword. Drawing it from the pedestal floods the room with light.

However, Ganon shows up and reveals he’d followed Link. Now he has access to the Sacred Realm, and Link is powerless to stop him. All Link and Zelda’s planning has massively backfired, and while there’s no denying Link helped the gorons and zoras in his efforts to round up the Spiritual Stones, it would have been better if he’d left them with their respective protectors afterward and done his best to protect the Kokiri Emerald.

Anyway, Link finds himself in a room with an old man, Rauru, one of the ancient sages. Link has aged seven years, and yet somehow his clothes still fit. Rauru explains that Link was too young to wield the Master Sword when he attempted to take it, so he was sealed away until he was old enough. Ganon has the Triforce, but if Link unites the sages, Ganon’s evil can be contained in the Sacred Realm.

As Link leaves the Chamber of Sages, he returns to the Temple of Time, where he meets a Sheikah named Sheik. He [2] tells Link where to find the other five sages: one in a forest (Kokiri Forest, or more likely, the Lost Woods), one on a mountain (Death Mountain), one under a vast lake (Lake Hylia), one within a house of the dead (Kakariko graveyard?), and one inside a goddess of the sand (Gerudo Valley, no doubt). The first one he says Link should awaken is in the Forest Temple, a girl Link knows – Saria, no doubt. But apparently, Link needs something to get to the Forest Temple, and like Impa before him, tells Link to start his new adventure at Kakariko Village.

Next: Racing horses and ghosts.

[1] Although it also says that the Master Sword was created as a response to Ganon getting the Triforce, when this game clearly depicts it existing before that happened.
[2] I know who he is, but I’ll play along.

A Link to the Past: Introduction and Story

This one I got as a “half-birthday” present (my sister and I were born 18 months apart, so we each got one present on the other’s birthday). I promptly got myself grounded and the game taken away because I was so engrossed I neglected to do things like cleaning my room when we had company coming to visit. Oops.

This is not only my favorite Zelda game I’ve played, but one of my all-time favorite games, period. I’ve played it so many times I know it really well, and have even done a few randomizer runs [1]. That said, I’m still learning new things about the game – this playthrough I learned there’s a cucco you can turn into a human.

The Epic Story

“Long ago, in the beautiful kingdom of Hyrule surrounded by mountains and forests, legends told of an omnipotent and omniscient Golden Power that resided in a hidden land. Many people aggressively sought to enter the hidden Golden Land, but no one ever returned. One day evil power began to flow from the Golden Land, so the King commanded seven wise men to seal the gate to the Land of the Golden Power. That seal should have remained for all time…
“But, when these events were obscured by the mists of time and became legend…
“A mysterious wizard known as Agahnim came to Hyrule to release the seal. He eliminated the good King of Hyrule…
“Through evil magic, he began to make descendants of the seven wise men vanish, one after another. And the time of destiny for Princess Zelda is drawing near.” [2]

Once again, there’s more in the manual. They talk more about the creation of the world, and about how Ganon found the Triforce and the effort to seal him in the Sacred Realm/Golden Land/Dark World. Agahnim apparently came to Hyrule as a friend, dispelling disasters that had ravaged the land. His evil sorcery is mostly the subject of whispers and rumors. But they did a good job of condensing the story for the people who didn’t read it, too.

Hashing Out the Timeline

So the biggest question here: how does this relate to the first two games? The story for Ganon is completely different, and he dies at the end of this game and the first game. I ultimately decided there wasn’t any continuity between the two – the differences were too much – and treated this game as a reboot.

A distant prequel, with Ganon being resurrected at some point, never crossed my mind. I suppose that’s what the A Link to the Past subtitle is supposed to mean [3].

So, here’s the timeline as we have it now:

• Creation of the world and Triforce.
• People search for the Triforce. Ganon eventually finds it.
• The Imprisoning War ends with Ganon sealed in the Triforce’s sacred realm, which Ganon’s evil influence turns into the cursed Dark World.
• Disasters sweep Hyrule. Agahnim shows up as a friend and stops the disasters, but he’s really looking to break the wise men’s seal.
• [Events of this game. The Triforce eventually passes into the possession of the Hyrule royal family.]
• A king, doubting his son’s ability to rule, hides a third of the Triforce. The prince, in an effort to locate the missing piece, allows a wizard to interrogate his sister, who knows where it is. When she refuses to tell, the wizard puts her under a sleeping curse.
• Ganon is resurrected at some point and steals half the remaining Triforce. The princess splits the one piece she still has into eight and hides them from him before she’s captured by him.
• A new hero reunites the split Triforce and uses it to challenge Ganon. Ganon is defeated and his third of the Triforce is recovered.
• On the hero’s sixteenth birthday, a previously unknown birthmark appears, identifying him as the one to find the hidden Triforce third. He locates it, awakening the long-sleeping Zelda, and in the process prevents Ganon’s minions from resurrecting him.

This is the first Zelda game where it feels like there’s a story beyond “Here’s why Link needs to go to all the dungeons, collect a full set of plot coupons, go to the final dungeon, and smash the boss.” Sure, after meeting Sahasrahla, it basically boils down to that, only smashing the boss doesn’t work so he gets to do it all over again, only with more plot coupons stored in harder dungeons. But the gradual revelation of the first chunk of the plot, along with the fact that there is that “Oh ho ho, surely you didn’t think we’d make that whole Dark World map and only use a tiny bit of it, did you?” twist, make the plot feel more alive.

Next: “Help me… please help me…”

[1] Turtle Rock without any armor upgrades or the mirror shield is brutal, especially the stretch with the four treasure chests guarded by laser eyes.
[2] Slightly edited to make it flow better in this form.
[3] Aside from Nintendo of America didn’t allow religious references like Triforce of the Gods.

Ocarina of Time: An Encounter Foretold

If Link calls Saria on the ocarinaphone at this point, she’ll say worried that something bad is happening at the castle. When Link goes to the castle to investigate, the scene from his nightmares plays out. Impa and Zelda flee the castle on horseback; when Zelda sees Link, she throws something that lands in the castle moat. And then Link finds himself face-to-face with Ganon, who demands to know where Zelda’s horse was going. Link characteristically says nothing and draws his sword to fight Ganon, who’s amused by his spirit but knocks him over with a magic blast. Proclaiming that he will soon rule the world, Ganon takes off to find Zelda.

Link jumps into the moat to get the item Zelda left for him, which turns out to be the Ocarina of Time. He immediately replaces the fairy ocarina with it, which is a little inconsiderate given that the fairy ocarina was a parting gift from a dear friend [1]. Saria even remarks that the ocarina sounds different if Link calls her. Anyway, as soon as Link picks up the Ocarina of Time, Zelda contacts him telepathically to let him know she had to flee but to pass on a fifth song, the Song of Time. Now Link has everything he needs to open the Sacred Realm and protect the Triforce, but there’s so much to do before that.

The Great Roundup

While Link can’t finish planting magic beans, gathering heart pieces, or killing gold skulltulas, there’s a lot of progress that can be made on that front now, plus another quest that can be wrapped up [2][3].

The first stop is to return to Kakariko Village. There was a skulltula in the graveyard that I noted earlier, and now with the boomerang it’s possible to get the token after killing it. Going up to Dodongo’s cavern, there’s another skulltula there that requires taking the elevator platform up to the second floor and running it backward – since the pillar hasn’t been brought down to create the stairway to the second floor, Link can access the skulltula and kill it with the boomerang. Back in the village, another kid in the skulltula house is freed of the curse and awards Link with another wallet upgrade.

There are two skulltulas in Lon Lon Ranch that were out of reach when Link last visited. Now it’s time to run all over Hyrule Field and visit locations where the Stone of Agony triggers. Each one hides an underground area with nice rewards. The first, near Kakariko Village, has a gold skulltula protected by a big skulltula. The second, near Lake Hylia, has a business scrub who’ll sell Link a heart piece for 10 rupees – given the usual extortionate rates these guys charge, this is a bargain and a half. The third, near Gerudo Valley, has a bunch of webbed-off areas, one of which has a cow and another gold skulltula.

While running around Hyrule Field, Link comes across a man running laps around Lon Lon Ranch. He stops running at night, giving Link a chance to talk to him. He apparently wishes he could be a rabbit, even if it’s just pretend – aha! The bunny hood has found its new owner, who fills Link’s wallet. Fifty of those rupees go to the mask owner, and this quest chain is now done. Link is given a new mask, the mask of truth. And he has enough rupees to go back to Zora’s River and pick up the last magic bean.

Back in Kokiri Forest, there’s another place to lure out a skulltula and plant a magic bean. There are two more of these patches in the Lost Woods, plus a Stone of Agony hole with a business scrub who’ll upgrade Link’s Deku nut capacity. Another Deku nut capacity upgrade can be earned by returning to the Forest Stage and wearing the mask of truth. Inside the dead Deku tree, there’s a skulltula in a previously-inaccessible room – getting in requires a bomb, and collecting the token requires the boomerang. Link’s now killed enough skulltulas to break another kid’s curse, and his reward is… bombchus.

Gerudo Valley is not welcoming to child Link, but there’s some stuff he can do without fully entering the area. There’s a skulltula near the entrance, and a couple heart pieces Link can reach with his cucco glider. There’s also a skulltula/bean patch of dirt, and we know what to do with that. The river in this area flows into Lake Hylia, where there’s one last skulltula hiding on the Lakeside Laboratory. There’s also a couple scarecrows, one of whom asks Link to make up a song for him. Link obliges, and the scarecrow promises to remember the song. The owl’s still hanging around the area and offering Link a ride to the castle, and now it’s time to go.

Next: Dread it… run from it… destiny still arrives.

[1] I’m sure he just stuffed it deeper in his backpack, to keep as a memento while he uses the Ocarina of Time for its added magical abilities. Right?
[2] This section doesn’t perfectly reflect how I played it. I’ve rewritten it to minimize how much extra running around and backtracking I did.
[3] Since the Stone of Agony is useless to me, I’m following a guide – without story/plot information – for locations where it would trigger if it weren’t.