Game:

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991)

Duration: 13:21

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5

For those who aren't familiar with Nintendo Power back in the 1990's there was a triple zero club where people who completed the game with dying would have a running total of 000 by the end of the game. This means that they played the whole game through in one go without dying once. I remember the first time I accomplished this feat when I was younger. It basically involved a day's worth of planning where you could have a good stretch of time during a day of decent weather, where the power would have little change of been disrupted. The good thing about this challenge was that beating the game froze your progress right before your fight with Ganon so you could lavish in the scrolling count of zeros in the ending credits over and over.

In this run, I pick up at the golden pyramid in the dark world, with a complete inventory. From here we just fall into the hole at the top of pyramid to encounter Ganon. I always enjoyed landing a single cheap shot right before he begins his pre battle speech. Since I have the golden sword this battle is pretty easy and straight forward. You basically just have to keep on slashing at Ganon as he changes up his tactics and dodge his projectiles. Once you have landed enough blows and he has cycled through his orbiting fireballs and fireballs that turn into flaming bats phases, he begins to break apart the floor around the parameter of the room.

At this point you will need to coat him into appearing. He will continuously vanish and teleport if you are too close. Once he appears you need to land a blow and then dodge the spiral path of the fire bat he unleashes. This will cause him to leap into the air and knock away tiles; otherwise he will just stand there and cast the fire bats.

Once the tiles on all four walls have been knocked away, the final phase of the battle will be ushered in where he can be hurt with the silver arrows. He will give you a speech taunting you with his technique of darkness, which causes the torches to extinguish after set intervals. At this point it is best to bring out the fire rod if you haven't already and keep track of which end of the battlefield Ganon is currently located on. He will fire a flaming bat and then teleport to the opposite side of the screen and repeat. Wait until he fires a flaming bat from the bottom of the screen and begins to teleport to the top of the screen. At this time light the two torches and dodge any bats coming your way and get away from the edge of the screen. One hit will send you to the floor below and restart the battle.

Ganon will now teleport to the bottom. You will be able to accurately guess where he will appear by following the angle he floats as he vanishes. Just as he appears, if you strike quickly, you will be able to stun him before he fires a flaming bat at you. Take the time to switch you your bow and hit him with a silver arrow. He will growl and then teleport to the opposite side of the screen. Follow him to stun and land a second arrow. At this point the torches will be going out again and you will have to revert to the tactics for lighting the torches outlined above. Four silver arrows will end this final phase of the battle and allow you to claim the triforce as your reward.

After the battle the credits play through concluding with the laundry list of dungeons along with the amount of tries each one took. The consecutive zeros scrolling by are a thing of beauty.

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