The defeat of Ganon, the return of Ganon

This entry is unprecedented, but why not make an exception for an exceptional game?

After yesterday's A Link to the Past session, and the entry that followed, I picked the game up again. Little did I know that the final three dungeons and the game's boss would tumble just so quickly.

The Ice Palace, Turtle Rock, and Ganon's Tower, each took about thirty minutes to finish. Prep for the final fight added about the same, since I wandered about a bit and made sure to get the game's best sword along with the necessary silver arrows. The final fight with Ganon (both of them) took about three minutes a piece. And in the end - not a single death.

"Wait, wait, wait - both fights with Ganon?" (You maybe ask.)

For the first time, I was knocked off of the platform on which you fight Ganon. At first I figured - ah, well, that's just a few hearts gone and I'll be right back in the King of Evil's face. But no. I actually fell to a lower area of the Pyramid in the middle of the Dark World. There wasn't anything special there, a psychic block whence Sahasrahla tells you you need silver arrows, but that's it. Yet, this new part of the game got me thinking.

So I wondered. I beat the snot out of Ganon. Then I tested my hypothesis. After beating Ganon I dove into the pyramid's depths.

"There's no way that the game will forget I beat Ganon because of this," I thought.

"You defeated the game's final boss?" the game asked as I jumped through the pyramid's roof once more. "That doesn't sound quite right."

And so I had to beat Ganon for the second time.

It's a small tick in the game's programming, but a curious one. There's no switch or variable or subroutine that tells the game you beat Ganon after you beat Ganon. The King of Evil is revived when the hero falls.

Although I'm entirely reading this into it, such a fantastic game in such a grand series could not have a better end-game exploit.

Wizzrobes must've given Misery Mire its name

I've been dogged by a foe since The Legend of Zelda on the NES. A mysterious, vanishing wizard in form obscuring garb: the wizzrobe. These guys have ended more of my adventures as Link than Ganon could ever hope to.

At the least, Misery Mire lived up to its name.

Within that dungeon's depths are some three Link corpses. One fell at the gaze of the dungeon's boss, the other two at the hands of wizzrobes. Each prone, green-tunicked body was swept aside with a quick reset, though.

I am going to finish this game with zero deaths. Even if it means playing parts of it four times over.

Besides, this ought to be the llast time I get careless and is definitely the last time I'll leave such a gap between saves. Nothing teaches you to save often like having to replay sections of a game over again.

Though this little boondoggle got me thinking. Saving in Zelda games was a roundabout process up  until the franchise went 3D.

In Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask you're asked if you want to save each time you exit your menu. In the HD remake of The Wind Waker, though, the save button is once more tucked aside.

Is this shift a reflection of Nintendo's broadening the Zelda franchise's approachability?

Most people who've picked up The Wind Waker probably have experience with the series if not that entry specifically. So the need to save frequently isn't really present, and putting the save button amidst your menus makes sense.

Whatever the case, my liason with A Link to the Past is just about over. The Ice Palace and Turtle Rock loom before Ganon's Tower, but each is about to take its own quick tumble.

Exploiting a Link-sized loophole

Like the Helmasaur King's mask after the final hammer blow, A Link to the Past's linearity is now broken.

Armed with the Magic Hammer, I figured I'd see what new areas of the Dark World could be broken into. A vague memory pulled me to the Lost Woods, where, at one of the exits to Kakariko Village, I found a portal. After jumping through, I was primed to storm Theives' Town (so called), and quickly retrieved the Titan Mitts. With those great gloves on Link's hot hands, the entire structure of the game came crashing down.

The duck that was trapped in the village weather vane is now free. Link's sword was tempered by the dwarf smiths. The final bottle was retrieved. And, the cape that turns Link invisible was pulled from the Light World's graveyard.

This freedom of movement is what makes A Link to the Past great. If you know the game well, you're not just rewarded with cool stuff, but with the freedom to play its latter two thirds in just about any order you wish. That freedom is a true reward for skill because it puts so much power into a player's hands.

Though, this reward comes at the cost of story. A Link to the Past has one, of course. It's also an important part of the Zelda timeline, but so much of the game's story is in its atmosphere and NPCs, rather than in dialogues or exposition dumps. Or even cutscenes, for that matter. I think you can count the number of cutscenes in A Link to the Past on one hand.

The question is, though, has there ever been a story-heavy game that plays non-linearly if the player knows a trick or two?

When Link got Helmasaur'd

The Helmasaur King and I have never gotten along. Every time that I've faced him I've fallen at least once before vanquishing him, the first of the Dark World's fiends. Tonight's session was no exception. I admit it, I struck the reset button on my old Gamecube as soon as the "Game Over" screen appeared. As I pulled out the first satisfying syllable of a favourite four letter word.

On that first part of tonight's session with A Link to the Past, I spent 15 minutes gathering a heart container and the Bombos Medallion, as well as probing my limits in the Dark World. Before the Hookshot, it's a very small world. And it's even smaller before you get the Magic Hammer. Then, a good twenty minutes went into the first dungeon, The Palace of Darkness, before a five minute fight with old H.K. The fight that saw Link getting brained on the business end of that boss' flail of a tail. Well, that's how you've got to imagine a dramatic end to a dramatic fight, anyway.

On my second run through I gathered everything I'd gathered before in a about five minutes, navigated the labyrinthine dungeon in about 14 minutes, and then smashed and slashed Helmasaur King into an explosive end in about three. I also saved at every step of the way, unlike my impulsive first session.

The first dungeon of the Dark World is a big shift from the Light World's three. It's about as tightly designed as the Tower of Hera, but is more puzzling. From figuring out that Link can push statues onto switches, to needing the patience to navigate through mazes infested with fire-breathing Green Kodongos, The Palace of Darkness is definitely a steep step upwards in terms of difficulty. So much so, in fact, that the rest of the Dark World's dungeons are easy in comparison. Really, the only thing that most of the others have on the Palace of Darkness is length. That includes the Swamp Palace, though it too will be made short work of and its Hookshot will come in handy.

After a trip to the woods

Another dungeon done. The Tower of Agahnim took a cool 15 minutes to get through, including the fight with the man himself. A fight in which the bug net featured prominently. This one took a little longer since so many of the rooms are dark. Not to mention, getting by mostly unscathed required more strategy than just barrelling through enemy ranks.

One of the best parts of A Link to the Past is the satisfaction you feel when you stride forth from the Lost Woods with the freshly retrieved Master Sword. Slicing through enemies and shooting an energy beam from your blade when at full hearts always makes you feel like a real bad ass. Doubling the damage you do with a single equipment upgrade never felt so good!

Unfortunately, though, the version of the game on the GBA has been doctored in a few ways. The witch Syrup's assistant is now another witch (who is supposed to be Maple from the Oracles games) instead of the generic enrobed apprentice. Link's uncle doesn't die saying "Zelda is your..." And, most devastatingly of all, the Death Mountain glitch seems to have been fixed. And here I was thinking I could break the game wide open, getting the Titan Mitt well ahead of schedule.

I suppose the first two dungeons will have to be done first after all.

Triumph in the Tower of Hera

I'm not sure why the final dungeon in the Light World is called the Tower of Hera.

Perhaps it's because in Greek mythology Hera is a scorned woman, the jealous wife of the very polyamorous Zeus. Just as there would be few true hearts in her eyes, there are very few hearts available in this tower, despite enemies taking generous bites out of Link relative to what we've seen so far.

Or, maybe it's because she was the queen of the gods and was simply the one to deal with to gain admittance into dark, occult secrets. Not that she was the goddess of the occult (that was Hecate's domain), but simply by virtue of being a powerful woman in mythology she has an air of mystery and intrigue about her.

Or, perhaps more mundanely, the Moon Pearl is essentially a piece of jewellery, and Hera is a woman. Though, the fact that the Moon Pearl helps people to keep their real shape in the Dark World does suggest that it has some sort of truth-holding power. Or at least reality maintaining power. Wouldn't it be neat if the Moon Pearl were actually a hold-over from A Link to the Past's original futuristic, sci-fi setting? An item that created some sort of field around Link that made him appear as he wanted/needed to appear to others?

And maybe the old man who gives you the Magic Mirror was originally some old servant robot. That would at least explain his line: "If you wander into a magical transporter, gaze into this mirror." It's a line that sounds just a little too much like a wrecking ball against the fourth wall, even for a 16-bit era adventure game.

Speculation about the Tower of Hera and its treasure aside, it's a tiny dungeon. It claims to be a tower but Link must take an elevator when the screen goes dark between floors because this thing takes minutes to breeze through. The final boss notwithstanding. Though, I was only knocked off of the platform that you're forced to share with the frantic Moldorm three times, and knocked out not once.

At a guess, ten minutes of my thirty minute session went into this dungeon. The other twenty being spent grabbing the mushroom, visiting the Master Sword, and collecting a few stray heart pieces. Along with just jogging from the desert to Death Mountain.

Everything will get so much faster once I free that duck.

Organic anticipation

Tonight's time with A Link to the Past ran a couple over the usual 20 minutes. Not that a lot was done, rather just that the game doesn't offer a quick way to get from major place to major place until its final third. True, once you get the flippers you can use the "magic waterways of the sea folk," but those sea folk don't have any business on land, and that's just where Link is busiest.

So running over to get those flippers, finishing a heart container and briefly looking for a mushroom used up quite a bit of time. In fact, the run back to the Desert Palace and subsequent whooping handed out to the three sandworms that are the dungeon's boss took little time in comparison.

In no way does the game's lack of a quick way to get around so early in the game work against it, though. Because it's not easy to run from one side of the world map to the other, the game effectively railroads you.

You could go and explore between dungeons, yes, but if you get all of the Light World's goodies (and some of the Dark World's, too) first, then you'll run into fewer insurmountable obstacles. Running into fewer insurmountable obstacles means making fewer return trips to places, which means a more efficient experience. Though there's something to be said for wandering around an area, bumping into some gap or immoveable rock and realizing that there must be something that can help you out further into the game. It's actually an ingenious way to create organic anticipation.

Power Gloves get!

Well, A Link to the Past just got easier. At the end of my last 20 minute session I grabbed the Ice Rod, bought the second bottle, and got the Power Gloves. The Ice Rod is kind of incidental (like the two pieces of heart I picked up), but the bottle will be incredibly useful for my "no death" goal. Then there're the Power Gloves.

Ah, the Power Gloves. They aren't as devastating to the order of the game as the Titan Mitts are in the Dark World, but these bad boys let me get the Flippers and general potions. And, with the flippers, I can visit the fairy behind the waterfall to get some item upgrades and the fairy in Lake Hylia to boost my item capacities. Plus, I'll be able to swim out to the hobo living under the bridge at Lake Hylia, the very one who gives me bottle number three.

Actually, when I go there, I'll be addressed by name and everything. This has already come up quite a bit in Kakariko Village - but it doesn't happen anywhere else really. The thief-type characters you meet in caves don't use your name, neither does the sage-looking guy in the cave near the Desert Palace. Which leads me to believe that Link is some sort of regular around Kakariko Village.

Of course, Kakariko being the only real town on the world map, this makes sense from a realistic sort of perspective. Link and his uncle don't look like they farm around their house on the hill, so they must deal with the villagers for food and clothing. Perhaps that sort of familiarity is all it is. Link is just another face that the villagers frequently see. Yet, as cool as it would be for Link to have already distinguished himself in some way, that's probably just what it is. Such familiarity would explain why you get people saying that they still trust you in spite of rumours and that you look like a decent enough guy.

Still. It leaves me wondering just what life was like for Link and his uncle before the game begins.

Eastern Palaces and currency declines

One dungeon down, 10 to go. There's really nothing else to say.

I've played through the first dungeon of A Link to the Past (the Eastern Palace) so often that it's become rote. The image that kept popping up in my mind while playing through it: a straight line.

That's not to say that the Eastern Palace is a direct sort of dungeon. But it's definitely designed to get you to collect all three of the major dungeon items: the map, the compass, and the item. Though, part of that is just statistics, since more people are likely to turn right when given the choice (if I'm properly remembering my signs from the Dungeon Man dungeon in Earthbound). Not that getting everything in this dungeon really tacks on that much extra time. From start to finish, it must've taken just a little over 10 minutes to get through.

What I don't understand, though, is why you're given so many rupees. There's a cache in a room behind Sahasrala, there's a room full of blue rupees in the dungeon, and chests give you fifties and hundreds like the rupee's as valuable as all the sand in Hyrule. Actually, considering the fact that an empty bottle is going for 100 rupees in the Kakariko Village marketplace, maybe that's not far from the truth.

Link eludes capture

One of the reasons why video games entries have been spotty lately is because I was waiting.

Waiting for a good time to test out my video capture set up.

Unfortunately, it looks like there are a few bugs that need working out, particularly my program's telling me that there is no capture device attached in the middle of displaying what's being fed through my capture device. That device by the way is the Diamond VC500. The software I'm running is Ulead VideoStudio 10. And yes, I'm running it all on an old version of Windows (XP).

Another of the reasons for the scarcity of entries about video games is that I was waiting for an opportune time to marathon A Link to the Past, my favourite entry in the Zelda series. Since I don't currently own a 3DS (or a 2DS, for that matter), I can't play A Link Between Worlds just yet and so I figured that its predecessor is the next best thing. That time's not come up, but more important than marathoning it, I want to get through the game without dying a single time.

Unfortunately, all I have with me (aside from an emulated copy, either on the Virtual Console (VC) or through less legitimate means) is the GBA port. Since I've already played through it on the GBA, I figured why not put the old Gamecube Game Boy Player to use and play it on the TV (or computer monitor, as the case may be). The trouble with the game's GBA port, though, is that Nintendo either forgot or neglected to port over Link's grunts from the original game. Instead Link's cries and struggles call up the Nintendo 64 entries in the series thanks to the use of child Link's sound effects.

Not only does this ruin the charm of the original game, but it assumes that this game's Link is the same age as child Link. But what in the game itself even suggests that?

Is it that he's living with his uncle? That he isn't in the middle of military training?

Everyone in Kakariko seems to know Link - unless he's some sort of Dennis the Menace-type character before the game begins, it seems like he'd need to have been active around town before people would be able to know him. To do that, he'd have to be at least a little older than the Link of Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask. I'd like to peg his age as that of the main character of a fun Zelda-esque Genesis game called Crusader of Centy: 14.

So, why am I playing this version when there's a perfectly good port on the VC? Because controlling it with the Gamecube controller's analog stick almost simulates walking on ice. It's just a little bit too sensitive. Considering I know the game well from playing through it several times, I welcome the extra challenge.