Clever glitch for 'The Legend of Zelda' warps you to the end

[Shawn Knight]

The Legend of Zelda is one of those games that’ll forever hold a special place in my heart. Thanks to the Internet, I know I’m not alone in this feeling as evident by the fact that people are still playing and researching the game more than 30 years after its release.

The latest bit of fascinating Zelda news comes from a glitch hunter by the name of Sockfolder. Simply put, the glitch hunter figured out that if you put certain characters into the save slots, travel to dungeon two, get the whistle, go to the graveyard, spawn 10 ghosts, wait until the conditions are right, pause until the overworld music reaches a certain part, unpause, then press A and B at the same time, you’ll be teleported to the end room where Zelda is held.

The video above from YouTube user MagicScrumpy does an excellent job at explaining exactly what’s going on and how to replicate it. It’s way over my head in terms of coding but if live for this kind of stuff or really love this game, this will be right up your alley.

Found is a TechSpot feature where we share clever, funny or otherwise interesting stuff from around the web.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/66380-clever-glitch-legend-zelda-warps-you-end.html

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

About 25 years too late, buddy!

I would have totally spent hours trying to make this work back when I played this. Of course it would have been published in Nintendo Power, as even the word 'internet' hadn't been invented yet.

 

[Kibaruk]

How in heaven's name do they come up with this???

Is there really someone pressing randomly at their pads and entering random characters logging all their actions for countless hours until something out of all that randomly happens?

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

How in heaven's name do they come up with this???

Is there really someone pressing randomly at their pads and entering random characters logging all their actions for countless hours until something out of all that randomly happens?

No - I would guess someone figured out how to look at the code for the game and found the part where there's a teleport to the end. Then they looked at all the criteria that had to be met - which would be a bunch of stuff no player would ever do by accident. Then they went down the checklist and gave it a try.

It's not unusual for stuff like this to exist in programs. Often testers need to test things and don't want to go through the normal means of setup to do it so they put in work-arounds. The most famous one I can think of was for Microsoft Windows 95 (or 98?) installation. When they tested the install they didnt' want to have to type in the super long serial number each time, so they made 1111-1111-1111-11111 a valid number. I've tried this and have actually installed old versions of windows this way. I think it worked for Office way back then too.

 

[Deshra]

This is so awesome.... I've played LoZ nice it first came out, Mom rented it for me launch weekend because I had chicken pox and I stayed up all night playing before it got so bad I had to be hospitalized (chicken pox in throat and lungs=not fun). I even bought it on 3DS and own both original gold carts. Odd thing. I've never once beaten it.

 

[Techtree101]

This is one of my favorite games of all-time. Nice retro trick! !

 

[Puiu]

How in heaven's name do they come up with this???

Is there really someone pressing randomly at their pads and entering random characters logging all their actions for countless hours until something out of all that randomly happens?

many of these old games can be "hacked" by manipulating machine code. all they have to do is look for a bug in the code that allows them manipulate the memory in places where they should not have permission. in this case they found out that you can have more than 10 sprites on the screen. the rest is up tot the hacker to find out which parts of the memory are "broken" by the glitch.

another great example of memory manipulation using machine code by way of ingame inputs is pokemon. you should watch an GDQ speedrun of it.

 

[J spot]

How in heaven's name do they come up with this???

Is there really someone pressing randomly at their pads and entering random characters logging all their actions for countless hours until something out of all that randomly happens?

From what I've read many years ago, it's not that complicated. As simply as I can explain it, with the use of specific emulators, they are able to read current memory states, and then it's just a matter of figuring a way of forcing the game to get into that state. For example this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNPisyK43Lc and many others manipulate the memory.

I'm not an expert, and I'm sure only people who do these kinds of things and understand the assembly code of the game can explain it.

 

[Kibaruk]

Let's see how many people can reply the same thing before they realize it's been replied already.

Thanks everyone though I think I got the idea =)