Tricks of Zelda

There are multiple tricks in the Legend of Zelda to explore, and each have their own usefulness.  These tricks are listed below.

To Play a Second Quest without playing the First One

In the "Name a Character" screen, register the name "ZELDA".

Go to the Subscreen menu, take Controller 2 and press the A and B buttons together.  This trick does not work every time.  Best bet is to avoid the places where Link is going have to pay for the damages.  In that way, you'll never pay for damages.

Go to the Subscreen menu, take controller 2 and press the A button and the control pad.  You get an option to Continue, Save, or Reset from last saved.  This trick also works in Zelda 2, The Adventure of Link.

Playing without a sword until the final level is very challenging, but the experienced player should find this interesting.  Anyone but Gannon and Gleelok can be beaten without a sword.  If your Game Genie is set to infinite bombs and never take any damage, you won't be needing those extra bombs or the rings of protection.  The most important items Link will be needing in the early going are arrows, bombs (only need one set if you got your game genie set up correctly), and probably the most important weapon of all, the Magic Wand.  When Link obtains the Magic Wand, he should always be equipped with that weapon (like the image above) unless going against Darknuts, Wizzrobes, and Dodongo (use bombs), Pols Voice and Gohmas (use arrows), Digdogger (whistle and weapon of choice), and of course Gannon.  When going against Gannon, Link needs a White or Magical Sword plus the Silver Arrow -- the Magical Sword is near Death Mountain and is very easy to obtain as long as Link has at least 12 container hearts on his life gauge.  Gleelok and Parta must be defeated with the wand without the book of magic (I tried every other option and none of it worked), so save that boss for last if at all possible.  This will mean that you will have to finish Level 4 and Level 8 after you cleared all other levels and gotten all the needed items.

If you don't use a Game Genie, then getting the Blue Ring early is very important, as is the Blue Candle.  Grab the extra bombs as you go in the quest.  (Unless that you are so good that you never get hit, like in this movie on FilePlanet.  This movie is 350MB, so you better have broadband connection in order to download it.)

I'm working on a swordless walkthrough that should be up in the near future.

How the Labyrinths are somehow connected

While this is not much noticeable betweens level 1-6, it is very noticeable in Level 7-8, especially in the second quest.  I have hand-drawn the maps of Level 7 and 8 of the second quest on graph paper, keeping in mind of the 8 x 8 square block that the game uses.

Level 7 is in green, Level 8 is in yellow.  It seems like the game programmers wanted to compress everything and recycle screens throughout the game, with the only noticeable change being the color schemes and the monsters.  This will also explain why just seven unique bosses were used instead of nine:  Aquametrus, Dodongo, Manhandla, Gohma, Gleelok, Digdogger, and Gannon.  In addition, only a few monsters were introduced in both the overworld and underworld, and just a handful of allies were given.

For more on the game programming, check out Col. G. L. Sherman's site about Legend of Zelda Oddities .