(This article courtesy of Chris_A.) Zelda, then. When you're producing a series of games that constantly set the benchmark for action RPGs, and you're working long nights pushing the console to its limits in an attempt to create real-time lighting, swarms of monochrome chickens or large troll things that go "unrk", things are bound to start getting a bit... odd. That's not to suggest Nintendo don't have little beads of insanity dribbling down their faces already, of course, but there's a number of things in the Zelda series that make you wonder if the Super Happy Tree really DID come from Yoshi's Story, or out of that little greenhouse in Miyamoto's garden. Regardless, they're fun (and occasionally disturbing) to see, and what better way to pay tribute to the overstressed synapses of Shigsy and chums than with this page, detailing some of the very best cheats, bugs, easter eggs and just plain screwy goings-on ... The Legend of Zelda The Legend of Zelda II: Adventure of Link The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask The Legend of Zelda Don't beat up old men. They fight back. If you attack one of the sages hidden in every dungeon, the torches in his room will start to fire at you until you leave. You can't actually kill the old men, so presumably this is some wise Japanese lesson telling you not to insult the honour of venerable sages, lest ye get your arse kicked. A battering ram would also work... According to a very old Nintendo Power of mine, (back when we still had them in England) if you have a key from a dungeon, take it with you into another dungeon and you'll find that you now have an unlimited amount of keys. A save menu? As a cheat? Buh...wuh... If you pause the game, and then press Up and A on controller 2, you'll be presented with a continue / save / retry menu. This allows you to either start the dungeon again with 3 hearts, save and start the dungeon again with three hearts, or continue from your last save point. All very nice, but it begs the question - why didn't they put this on the main menu in the first place? The mysterious letter Link is asked to ferry a letter across Hyrule at one point in the game, but you never find out what it says. According to Nintendo, who were pestered about this point to the point of brick-eating rage, the letter says "Please give something to the bearer of this letter". So now you know. The second quest After giving Ganon a good thrashing and restoring the Triforce, you'll find that there's a second quest awaiting you with the items and dungeons moved around. You can also access it from the get-go by entering your name as "ZELDA" on a new file. Apparently, it was intended that there would be a infinite number of quests, with the locations of the dungeons and items changing for each one. All of this got a bit too much for the humble NES, however, and the idea was sadly dropped. The Legend of Zelda II: Adventure of Link Sage advice The names of the towns in this game - Ruto, Mido, etc - provide inspiration for many of the characters used in Ocarina of Time. How to bypass doors and influence people If you're facing a locked door, and you really, medically cannot be bothered to find the key, simply cast the Fairy Spell and float on right through said door. Although you might want to make sure you can get back again, you never know what might be on the other side. Best tip ever Don't go into dark caves without a candle... or you'll die... yeah. Sorry, there's precious little in the way of secrets (or, indeed, gameplay) in this one. So let's move on to... The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Turn women into fairies... Ah, now we're talking. Or typing. Or something. Anyway, before the guards storm Kakariko Village, go and sprinkle some magic powder on the old lady who stands sweeping in front of her house. She'll turn into a fairy and flitter around before you eat her, or whatever it is you do to them. Now, what have we learned so far? Old women are mystical beings of light and old men will attack you. Thank you, Ninty... ...and chickens into women In an empty house in Kakariko Village, you'll find a chicken in a pot. Sprinkle Magic Powder onto it, and it will turn into a girl, who will then complain bitterly at you. Her behaviour is fow... (No! No puns! - Kulock) Buzzblobs into ... other buzzblobs See those green wobbly things wandering around, the ones that electrocute you if you slash them with your sword? Those are buzzblobs. Whip out the magic powder, however, and they'll turn brown and you can speak to them. They don't say much of value, but it's interesting nevertheless. Isn't he supposed to jump INTO the pictures...? There's a picture of Mario in Kakariko Village, and pulling on it will give you a massive 20 rupees. Great. Aquatic Karma If you see a fish flopping around after you've drained the water from Hyrule Swamp, take it back to the nearby lake and it will thank you and give you money and a warm sense of well-being. If, however, you'd rather make more money from the hapless creature, take it to the bottle salesman in Kakariko Village for a cool 200 rupees. Be vewy, vewy qwiet Early on in the game, you'll find several blue rabbits hopping up and down in the long grass. If you chop the grass out from under them, they'll snap "Fine, take it, thief!" and then leave you a random item before vanishing in a puff of smoke. Bizarre... Bee good to yourself If you enter the cave north of lake Hylia, you'll find not only the ice rod but also a water-filled room with two fairies. In the centre of this room is a statue - dash at it with the Pegasus boots and a special "good bee" will fly out. When you release this bee, it will fly around and kill all the enemies onscreen before returning to you for collection with the bug-catching net. If you lose the bee, you can return to the cave for another one. Familiar Faces (1) Deep inside the Turtle Rock dungeon, you'll find two Chain Chomps. Yes, the same ones that made your life a misery in Super Mario Bros. 3. You don't have a Kuribo's shoe here, though, so just use your cape. Chris Houlihan's Room Right, now this is a long one, so pay attention at the back. Chris Houlihan managed to win a Nintendo Power contest to get his name as part of a special room in the upcoming Zelda III. Because Nintendo have a really great sense of humour, this secret room was made almost impossible to get to. There are several ways to go about getting to this fabled room, which was used as a "catcher" for testing (so if you ended up in Chris's room, you knew something had gone seriously wrong with the game) but the most reliable one is as follows. Make your way to Kakariko Village, and stand look at the dirt path that leads out of the northern archway. Power up your Pegasus boots and get ready to run. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make your way as quickly as possible to the secret entrance that you used to get into Hyrule Castle when you were rescuing Zelda. How long do you have? Not long at all, some say as little as 12 seconds. Needless to say, you'll need to be executing incredibly sharp turns and using the Pegasus Boots almost constantly to get to the required hole in time. If you can pull the trick off, though, you stand firm in the knowledge that you're seeing what only the most hardcore Nintendo fans have ever seen, and a secret so deep it would make even Rare cry into their collective beers. Or, if you find the room some other way, you've probably just bugged your game, really, really badly. Never mind, eh? The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Marin is fun! Or so the rumours say. When you recruit Marin to come and wake up the walrus, much fun can be had. She'll squash you if you fall down a hole, she'll get angry if you try and look in people's possessions, she'll kick arse at the Trendy Game and she'll insult your ocarina playing. She'll also refuse to enter certain areas. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why Link isn't married. Familiar Faces (2) This game features the most Nintendo character references I've ever seen outside of Smash Bros. We have: Dr Wright from Sim City, a picture of Princess Toadstool, Pirhana Plants, Goombas, Bloobers and Cheep-Cheeps from the Mario games, evil Kirbys that will attempt to eat you and a frog that looks like Wart from Super Mario Bros 2. On top of that, there's a Chain Chomp, a Yoshi doll, and some guy named Link from the Le..... nevermind. Chicken's Revenge Every Zelda fan knows this anyway, but if you repeatedly attack one of the chickens in the game, it will call a load of its friends to come and defend themselves. This also works in the Gameboy and N64 versions. Link the Thi...er, Treasure Hunter Low on funds? Down on your luck? Poorer than an N64 framerate? There is a solution. If you really, really want an item from the horribly-overpriced shop in Mabe Village, then it is possible to steal one. Pick up the item of your choice, and then run in circles around the shopkeeper. Eventually, he'll get dizzy, and while he's facing away from the door it's possible to race outside without him saying "Hey! Stop! You gotta pay!" Yes, you've got the item for free, congratulations! Ohh, right. I probably should have mentioned that the Yoda-lookalike shopkeeper will be none too pleased about you swiping his merchandise, and will force you to eat a scoop of death if you re-enter his shop. At this point, all is forgiven. There's another undesirable side effect, too - similar to Ultima Online, your name will be changed to THIEF as a sign to every other Gameboy owner that you are dirty lowlife scum who should be kicked and derided at every opportunity. But hey, at least you didn't have to pay 980 rupees for the blummin' bow. Screen-hopping In the earlier versions of the game, when it was first released, it was - and is - possible to "skip" the length of a screen by pressing SELECT just as Link is walking between two areas. As the screen flips over, if you press at just the right moment, Link will up on the right instead of left, top instead of bottom, etc. Note that you can get stuck quite horribly this way, but it can also be used for shortcuts to items, and so on. His bark is worse than his -- (I said NO! - Kulock) As well as being able to hurt chickens in this game, you can also take out your frustrations on the dogs - who will promptly bite you unless you move out of the way quickly. And then YOU will become a dog, and be forced to wander around aimlessly, never going off-screen, forever and ever and .... oh, wait, they took that out. Apparently you'll just lose health. Tsk. Explosive arrows Equip your bombs to one button and your arrows to another, then press B and A together to send an explosive arrow flying across screen and severely damaging anything that comes across it. Waterfowl Marination If you can complete the game without dying, Marin will soar past during the credits instead of seagulls. Even though she's not really supposed to exist. Or is she? Oh, I've started dribbling now. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Mario's nice, but we want our penguins! If you look through the right-hand windows in the courtyard where you first meet Princess Zelda, you can see pictures of Mario and his friends through them. Taunting, they are, taunting you that we never got a sequel to Mario 64... If you repeatedly fire your slingshot through the left-hand window, the castle staff will get very annoyed, and throw bombs at you. Yipes. Fall off the edge of the world Near Hyrule castle, there is a sign that says "dead end" past which you travel to get Din's Fire. Nearby, there is a fork in the road. If you look carefully at the steep cliff here, you'll see that the two edges come together in a "V". By moving very slowly, it is possible to walk Link up that "V" line, straddling the two cliffs, and onto the top. (It takes a few tries.) From there, you can see off into the black abyss of nothingness that surrounds the world of Hyrule, watch as night falls and the sun passes under the landscape, and realise the horrible metaphysical truth.... there IS no spoon. Fun with Gossip stones The little one-eyed Gossip stones scattered around the land will tell secrets when viewed with the Mask of Truth, but there's other ways to have fun with them. Hit them with your sword and they'll tell you the time, blow them up with bombs and they'll blast into orbit, shoot them with an arrow and they'll spin around frantically. All signs of a development team that's spent 5 years working on the same game and has now gone loopier than a Hot Wheels construction set. Musical taste Head up to fight Gannondorf in his tower, and you'll find him playing spooky organ music. It'll take a long-standing Zelda fan, though, to realise that he's playing HIS OWN THEME MUSIC. The swine. Zelda Tennis During the fireball-lobbing fight with Gannondorf, you can use empty bottles to reflect his shots back at him instead of his sword. I've no idea why you'd want to do this, or why it's even possible, but it works. Got any Mepsipax? If you capture the spirit of a Poe in a bottle, and then assign it to a C-Button and activate it... Link will drink the poe. Yes, he'll gulp it down like so much Mountain Dew, and like Mountain Dew, it will even make you lose a bit of health when you drink it. (You are SO going to get me sued. - Kulock) Swordless Link This mother of all glitches will only work on the gold version of the game, V1.0, but allows for some very interesting effects. When fighting Ganon, there's a time when he knocks the Master Sword away. Instead of going and retrieving it, immediately save and quit. When you restart the game, you'll find that Link is back in Ganon's Castle ... but has no sword. You've got a blank B-Button, now, and if you call Epona and experiment with C-Button items you'll find that you can use things like the hookshot, bottles and your ocarina while riding. Unfortunately, it's a trick not many people can actually use. Welcome to Warp Zone! Listen to the haunting flute melody on the title screen - it's the warp whistle melody from Super Mario Bros 3, which is in turn based on the whistle melody from Zelda 1. Possibly the longest ever running tribute to a 7-note tune... Skellingtons! At night, Link will be attacked by skeletal monsters known as Stalchilds. (Or Stalchildren. Or Stalkids. Or vicious little beggars that won't stop chasing you.) If you stick to the path, they won't appear, but if you keep provoking them and killing them, you'll notice that a slightly bigger one appears. Kill it for 5 rupees, and keep on going. Eventually, a bigger skeleton will appear. Kill it for 20 rupees, and if you keep going fast enough you'll eventually face a HUGE Stalkid who will, if you an vanquish him in time, leave you with 50 rupees to spend on a nice glass of Poe. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask You'll be hooked on the plumbers... In Mario's now seemingly ubiquitous Zelda appearence, you can find a mask of the portly plumber on the back of the Mask Salesman's bindle. Sadly, it's not for sale. Saddening conversation If you visit the Stock Pot Inn shortly after midday of the first day, you'll find that a Goron with your name has made a reservation. Swipe his room from Anju, and head upstairs. You'll notice that Tatl highlights a threadbare patch of wall if you look around the room, and says "You can hear what's going on next-door." Well, you can if you make sure to be in the room on the second day, at around 8:30pm. Z-Target and press A on the patch of wall to hear an argument with Anju and her overbearing mother, where the hapless innkeeper is told that her fiancé Kafei has probably eloped with Anju's best friend. Talk about a darker Zelda game... Ring in the apocalypse There's a large bell up on the roof of the Stock Pot Inn, which can be rung using your handy Goron punch. It does absolutely nothing except sound ominous, so you can't help but wonder why it's there. Link's "Reward" Link's habit of getting an unhealthy amount of attention from older women continues. Once you've received the Romani Mask by helping out Cremia and Romani, go back to the ranch and help them again. If you've got less than your maximum number of rupees, Cremia will give you some more. If, however, you're also maxed out on rupees, she'll give you what is probably most tastefully described as 'a hug'... "You feel all warm and fuzzy inside ... you could get used to this!" says the game. Suddenly, the idea of a more mature Gamecube is very, very frightening indeed. Chris_A Last Updated: 5/15/01