The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past No Damage/Eff. Minimalist Run - Hyrule Castle Initial

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Master Knight DH

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Published on October 14, 2020 6:30:29 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYbTHXxNutg

Game:

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

Duration: 34:09

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1

Items needed in this part: Sword (Free) (Boomerang used for demonstration purposes)

In my neverending battle against problems caused by unpleasant characters from both California and the internet, I become lost on what I can do, even about issues like my parents' house considering how callous people can be to refuse to care even when they should. But I figure I may as well keep on truckin' like a little trooper. This brings me to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, a game recently done by the user dunderpatrullen on his TwitchTV stream for a sort of Ironman Nuzlocke Run. I of course have my own take for a Self Imposed Challenge.

I have a bit of history with Link to the Past. Picture yourself some kid in the 90s, born in the mid-80s, and adjusted to Super Mario World as a result. Mario, of course, is an acrobat, is in a more kid-friendly setting, and also gets Mercy Invincibility aplenty, which is how he could brute-force Bowser in the original SMB, which Nintendo had to figure out increasingly more creative ways to prevent winning the big battle simply by making it there with a powerup. (Say what you will about Bowser in SMB3 being the world's most inept tactician, but at least there you'd have to either make it through an entire active platforming stage with a non-platforming powerup you'd have had to come into the stage with, or actually think a bit about how to combat him.)

Link to the Past will readily call you out so quickly if you're too adjusted to Mario games. When you meet your first enemies, they will use their stabby things to hurt you. You can't bop their heads or jump out of their way with the greatest of ease, and soon, you find yourself dead. Link, unlike Mario, is not an acrobat, and although he can live through significantly more than 1 or 2 hits, it isn't long before he can be hurt further times. Mario gets 1-Up Mushrooms. Link straight up dies instead. Most likely, you will soon get scared off the game, not wanting to play it until maybe a few years later, at which point you'd be shocked when looking back later in life to remember when you'd spend entire weekend days trying to achieve the Triple Zero Run with 100% Completion, eventually achieving it sometimes, at a point in time when emulation wasn't a readily available thing to get around LttP not having come up with a later innovation in games of a Suspend feature.

Why would I point this out? Well, let's just say it's amazing that games like Secret of Evermore and Zelda: Majora's Mask, with the abundance of Nightmare Fuel and Adult Fear that those 2 games do actually have, would become games I could eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert.

Personal asides, I may as well get to business: this is the intro to the No Damage Run that's also effectively a Minimalist Run, but of course, No Damage is the more important rule. Effective Minimalist will mean no using unnecessary items for the purposes of this whole thing. I will also involve a further rule, more important than Minimalism in the event of contradiction: no unnecessary killing of Soldiers, since they are brainwashed. In general, the other enemies will be fair game due to them attacking of their own free will, and that will include a sprite swap version of the Soldiers. Soldiers themselves are only fine to kill for the purposes of Key obtaining or kill rooms. I will also extend this rule to another enemy type, you'll see which one in the part where that gets involved.

The first half, of course, has plenty of Soldiers and suffice to say that I do have to kill about 4, including the Ball And Chain Trooper holding the Big Key and guarding Zelda. The B&C Trooper just requires isolating him by baiting him away and then locking him into a pattern. Also worth noting for when Soldier dodging could become complicated is when Soldiers are right-handed in general, a technical detail that could be useful for obtaining leg room.

The secret passage has plenty of forced flashlight segments where the rats can ambush Link. Obviously, I could have lit the torches, but the Lamp isn't strictly needed...yet at least. Right now, yeah, I'm going with the challenge of hoofing it on the flashlight like I did when I played through the game back in the day. Of course, No Damage complicates things, and naturally, Ropes will be even happier to complicate things by deceptively taking multiple hits to bring down on regular strikes. But ultimately, I make it out to the Sanctuary. And yep, Sanctuary is the first location where you can start a save reload from that isn't Link's house or a dungeon. I'll be sure to make use of that.


By the way, I had actually recorded this a few days back, but I wanted to get recordings past a case of That One Boss first. I'll let vets guess which one.

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