Submission #6994: crazyjesse's NES The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods in 28:59.27

Game objectives

• Emulator used: FCEUX 2.3.0
• Aims for fastest time
• Takes damage to save time
• Features heavy RNG manipulation

Oddities of interest

• Link is yellow, Zelda is blue, Ganon is pure red.
• Link has a HP bar rather than hearts and there are no HP upgrades.
• There are two engines that make up the game; overworld and dungeon.
• There are coins instead of rupees.
• Coin drops on the overworld give 10, whereas they give 267 in dungeons.
• To get flippers from King Zora you need at least 500 coins but he doesn't actually take any from you.
• Enemies on the overworld do one damage (except projectiles which give two), whereas all enemies in dungeons deal two.
• There are no i-frames on the overworld, but there are in dungeons. Due to the lack of i-frames birds deal the highest DPS in the game.
• There are 9 tracks, none of which are Zelda tracks. Some are Chinese folk songs and classical music. They appear in multiple bootlegs by Waixing.
• It takes 20 frames to dash on the overworld, but 48 in dungeons.
• Sword animations are different on overworld/dungeon.
• When fighting Moldorm, if the player uses anything other than a dash attack, the game crashes. This doesn't occur on emulator, but dashing has been used in this movie for consistency with reality.
• In the manual Link is green and there are several items that didn't make it into the game such as Roc's cape.
• The last two dungeons are cut from the game, perhaps due to time constraints as it appears that their areas were begun but not finished.
• The game over screen is spelt Gome Over (or game aver if you like) and its art is taken from "World of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck".
• The end game "Congratulation !!" screen is taken from the Mega Drive/Genesis game Sword of Vermilion opening cutscene.
• You can use the mirror on both light and dark world. It does not return you to the entrance of dungeons.
• Small keys are shared amongst dungeons, Boss keys are not. (A small key from dungeon 2 will work on dungeon 3 for instance)
• The fire rod is used to unlock Kholdstare's spawn but is not actually necessary for fighting it.
• You don't need to take the maiden to fight Blind, but it is faster to take her as it allows for Maiden dashing.
• Turtles don't have a walk down animation, so they just barrel around upside-down when they walk the other direction.
• You have to hit Helmasaur 100 times with the hammer, this is unaffected by sword level, which would otherwise also increase the power of items (they all share the same damage value).
• In the final dungeon there is a room that for no clear reason jitters and crashes regularly. Amusingly, this room is the "fast" path and saves something like 10 seconds RTA. This kills many RTA speedruns.
• Ganon takes 50 arrows to beat, you are only given 10 and cannot buy them, though there are a few random chests containing arrows throughout the game. Thankfully, the game gives you 100 when you start the fight.
• The "light arrow" chest at the end of the final dungeon is actually just a single arrow and does nothing, so it's skipped.
• Spike pits remove all your MP, perhaps this was meant to be HP and the wrong address was used by mistake.

Glitches of interest

• Talking to the Priest again after his long dialogue sets the trigger for fighting Agahnim, which should normally only be accessible after collecting the three pendants. Amusingly if the player fights Agahnim straight away they'll get forced into the dark world as bunny and be softlocked, this actually happened to me on my first playthrough.
• Invisible chests/items: many chests and items that would appear after solving puzzles are actually there all the time, they're just invisible, so we just remember where they are and use them while invisible.
• Superspeed part 1: due to the mechanics of dungeons/overworlds, dashing into a dungeon, saving and resetting the console will have Link going dash speed when he exits the dungeon.
• Superspeed part 2: if Link starts this dash from a slow tile, he will go double dash speed when he exits the dungeon.
• Superspeed part 3: If Link walks onto a slow tile, then walks sideways, then onto a tile that would be normal speed, his speed will double again. This stacks but unfortunately is not useful beyond one use due to game mechanics.
• HP underflow: On the overworld, if your HP would drop below one, you die. In dungeons, it is if your HP would drop below zero. If you get to zero in a dungeon, then exit and take a hit of damage, you will underflow your HP to 255, note Link's normal max HP is 48.
• Pot/Maiden dash: Normally when holding A, the dash counter increments by one. When another object, such as pot, maiden or arrow, the dash counter increases at a considerable but fluctuant pace of around 17--20 frames per frame.
• Infinite keys: At the beginning of Tower of Hera, a key can be found between switchable blocks. This key is somehow made from miraculous stuff as you can pick up an extra one every frame you hold A. We do this for 40 odd frames to charge our dash and give us more than double the amount of keys we'll need for the run.

Special mentions