More Links to the Past?

Fi may be annoying when she badgers you about getting more hearts because you're nearly dead, but the pre-Ocarina of Time Zelda games are far more ruthless. The insistent digital beeping that plays the second you drop below two or three hearts has the urgency of a wide open bleeding wound - and far before such things could be depicted graphically.

So, dropping those four columns in Eagle's Tower actually destroys a whole floor. Who knew? It's a good thing there wasn't anything secret up there, though the miniboss you face there is curious.

He calls bats to attack you which is reminiscent of the fight with Ganon in A Link to the Past. The miniboss himself is a stalfos, from the look of him, who plays a flute to summon these bats, just as the skull kid in most 3D Zelda games plays a flute either for fun or to summon dread marionettes.

Zelda bosses across the series may be repetitive, but at least their being so makes it a bit easier to speculate and suss out just where certain ideas surfaced and where, possibly, the remnants of original ideas remain.

After all, Link's Awakening was originally going to be a port of A Link to the Past (as briefly mentioned here), so maybe the sprite is a recycle of the flute boy, and the bats are a recycle from the Ganon fight. They don't look like your regular keese, after all.