RETROspective – Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – Pt 1

The boss is a group of tunneling, flying armor worms that randomly borrow into the ground the fly out and over around a bit before going back under. The first time fighting them isn’t a breeze like the last boss but once you find the sweet spot on there heads it becomes routine. You take all three of them out and you’ve got yourself the next pendant and another heart.

After that boss fight I spent a lot of time wandering around. Now equiped with the power glove whole new areas were open to you. The best place though had to be Zora’s domain. Here you got to aquire the flippers which finally allow you to swim, and thus allow you to get a couple cool things. Zora’s domain was in the top right of the map and unless you went looking could have probably overlooked it completely. I’d been up that way a few times before when I was lost and so when I got the glove that’s one of the first places I headed.

The Zora’s aren’t really the nicest group of fish in this game. You have to make your way through the shallow water and try not to die eventually though you reach the King Zora who offers to sell you some flippers, and really who’s going to say no?

At this point I’d like to take a short break and point out something that concerns me. Anyone has has seen the recently released Zelda Timeline will know that the people behind the games have finally given us a kind of idea of when each game falls. A Link to the Past happens before the original Legend of Zelda, but many generations after Ocarina of Time in a parallel universe where Link didn’t beat Ganon and become the hero of time. So anyone who played Ocarina of Time will remember the Zora’s and mostly helpful fish people with a very large but fairly generous King. So what happened to this race between Orcarina of Time and A Link to the Past? Did Ganon pollute the rivers so bad that they all mutated? Here’s a visual for those that don’t remember:

King Zora from Ocarina of Time	King Zora from Link to the Past

Lets get back on track though, so slippers are purchased and now we can do even more. It’s hard to remember a time when you couldn’t jump online and look up where to go next in a game, or find out a secret. I remember hearing from a friend who had a friend that learned from his uncle that if you went to a certain place you’d get something awesome. And that place was the wishing waterfall. You go in there and throw stuff in and a fairy pops out and as long as you tell the truth you’ll get your item back. Two special items came back better though! The Shield and the Boomerang get upgraded by doing this. And who doesn’t want things upgraded. After exploring for a while you find all kinds of things, a couple empty bottles you can fill with stuff, a bug catching net, lots of heart pieces. If I’m not mistaken you can even get your hands on the Fire Rod at this point in the game if you happened to find it. But all good things do come to an end and you’ll quickly run out of things to find and realize you’ve forgotten what’s going on so you default by going to talk to the old sage, I’m not certain but I’m guessing he gave me some vague idea of what to do and I eventually end up on Death Mountain heading for the third and final Pendent.

Along the way through the mountain there’s an old man who if you help him, which you have to do anyway, he gives you a magic mirror because what young man doesn’t want a mirror? Luckily it’s useful to bring you back from the Dark World. I loved the dark world the first time I got there everything was kind of twisted and Link was a god damn pink bunny. It was great, but after a few minutes of exploring you realize you really can’t do anything else here and use the magic mirror to get back to the real world, and then you try and figure out how to get up the cliff into the dungeon. After a little while of aggravation you realize you just have to go into the dark world and use the mirror where the cliff is in the light world and you warp back next to the dungeon. Simple right?

I really hated this dungeon. The monsters weren’t hard just annoying and all the jumping and falling through the floor was a pain in the ass, the item though really important in the game, sucked. And the boss was a huge jump in aggravation. This dungeon plays like all the rest, but they have spike walls, and bumpers and other stupid crap that make it annoying. in retrospect it was a really good dungeon it was challenging and you really had to think and plan your way through it. As a kid though you just wanted to find the items kill the boss and go get your sword! And the item in this dungeon is the Moon Pearl who’s sole purpose is to make sure you stay human in the dark world. This is really important and all but come on I couldn’t get that from our old sage friend? or Zelda? or that jerk that runs away from you in town? Anyway to save myself from getting to angry at this dungeon lets move on to the boss. It’s giant metal worm with a big head and a body that grows smaller till you get to the tail. it’s only weak spot of course is the tail. And lucky for us this guy has tourettes or something cause the whole fight he’s bouncing off the walls spazzing out. Oh and one last middle finger to the player, the whole edges of the room are all pits that lead to the floor below, plus a big hole in the middle that does the same. And if you’re unlucky enough you’ll fall, land below get hit by a enemy who will push you into another hole and send you down more floors. But like the two previous dungeons, once the boss dies you get a heart container and the final pendant. Now finally it’s time to get that damn sword.

I mentioned earlier that one of the first things I did was get lost in the forest, so lucky me I already knew where the sword was and I booked it over. The master sword was awesome. Not only did it mean you did your quest but it also shot a ring of stars at your enemies whenever your hearts were full! Prior to the master sword I didn’t really care if I was missing a heart, or whatever afterwards though god damn I had to be full health all the time or I panicked. It’s like I just beat three dungeons with my Uncles bitch sword and now that I have a magic sword I only want the magic part to do damage. So I get the sword, and had I been a few years older and wiser I would have probably ran around and killed shit with it and gotten a few cool toys, like the medallion on the mountain. Unfortunately I thought this was the end of the game so I booked it to the church and found out Zelda got kidnapped, no big surprise it was bound to happen.

So I headed to the castle and found the door that was locked with magic and ran into it and got my ass zapped. Then I went and found a heart container and went back to that door and hit it with my sword. Because when all else fails you hit shit with swords. Lucky for me it worked and I was in. I can honestly say I didn’t expect another dungeon at this point but here I was fighting through one. Really this isn’t a bad dungeon at all it takes like 10 minutes to get through and doesn’t have all the crazy puzzles. So you finally get to the boss and it’s this douchey wizard guy. Who is either trying to sleep with or sacrifice Zelda, I’m not sure. Either way it’s screwed up and Link ain’t standing for it! Anyway he casts a spell and Zelda disappears and then he bitches out and runs away. So what does a hero do? Chase him down and fight. This guy isn’t to hard to beat he has a couple attacks and a disappearing act he likes to do but all you need to do is stay out of his line of site until you see him charging a ball and hit that ball back in his face. This was way easier then that stupid worm from Dungeon 3.

Here you are fighting the wizard using the awesome master sword to bitch slap him with his own attacks and finally he goes down. And the bastard takes you with him into the dark world. lucky for that Moon Pearl because Link is still a real boy! The old sage contacts you, but I really don’t remember why probably to tell you that shit went wrong which obviously is the case. Unfortunately getting those 3 pendants isn’t the end of the quest. But it is the end of part 1!

So that’s the end of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in What Were We Thinking? Expect Part 2 coming soon!

Do you have your own memory of Link to the Past from childhood? Go ahead and post them in the comments! That’s why we have them.

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Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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