A long time ago back when I could play video games whenever I wanted, I bought a Gameshark for the N64. I was starry eyed over being able to do whatever I wanted in any game, essentially making every game into a brand new sandbox game featuring the previous content. It would be great. In retrospect it kind of sucked. The only game I had that I could actually load cheats in with any amount of success was Super Mario 64 which for some reason is labeled “Super Mario Land 64” in the Gameshark game list.
Back then, there was more or less just one cheat that I really wanted: “press L to levitate” for the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I like glitches and unused beta content and discovering how stuff works and breaking games. I wanted to be able to fly around and go beyond the boundaries that the game sets and peek behind the curtain to see the inner workings and other stuff that you’re otherwise not supposed to see. Ocarina of Time is like the perfect game for this. It’s made in the 32 bit era which is interesting in that it was new territory in gameplay with many hurdles and limitations that had to be circumvented somehow. It’s got a decent sized world full of secrets and places that are supposed to be off limits for one reason or another. It’s also the video game that I’ve beaten the most and am quite familiar with.
I recently got my N64 and Gameshark Pro 3.0 out of their box to try and revisit this aspiration of yore. After several trials of fiddling around with the Gameshark and OoT, I found that even as an intelligent adult, I still can't make it work. It either won't load or just fucking freezes the game every time, just like every other game in my N64 library that isn’t SM64. The closest I got to a working trial was successfully loading the game with one cheat, (not the levitation one,) and starting in my house. But the second I walk out the door, The game crashes. What a crock of shit. Gameshark is a con. How does anyone do anything with these?
Then It occurred to me: why don’t I just try it on an emulator? Emulators didn’t exist the last time I thought about trying this, at least not for the N64 they didn’t. So, long story short, I tried it and got exactly what I’ve wanted for over a decade. And now since I was playing on a PC, I could take screenshots of all the weird shit I see and do. Despite wanting to see this stuff for a long time, I’ve avoided looking at any beta or glitch videos for this game because I wanted to have my own self-guided adventure like in all video games I play. So this is a pictorial documentation of my flying adventure across Hyrule, breaking the game wide open.
The courtyard where you meet Princess Zelda for the first time is one of the most interesting and detailed parts of the game. You have these three windows that you can look in and see actual interiors of the castle as opposed to just a flat picture of a window or shutters. Of course the interiors are only modeled to the necessary degree. Only the parts that you can see through the window exist. If you fly straight up and go through the sky textured ceiling, you can go over the courtyard walls and get a closer look at the interiors
This is the hallway that Zelda is looking into through a window. The first really weird thing, besides the hall being just an interior fragment floating over an abyss, is that you can actually stand on the floor in here and run around. The second really weird thing is that those two guards aren’t just motionless models of the NPC castle guards. The designers took just the front panels of the guard models’ polygons and set them there like a suit of armor on display or a cardboard cutout. But in terms of the actual game, they cut in half or ripped the face off of two guys and then mounted them there.
One of the areas that I really wondered about in the game was the small stealth section area and courtyard within Hyrule castle. Specifically, I wanted to get in there when it was night. As an adult, this area doesn’t exist so I don’t need to wonder about that. But as young Link, if you crawl in through the drain at night, the area is inaccessible because it is blocked by two posted guards who throw you out if they detect you. You can’t walk past them. You can’t even fly over them. If levitating wasn’t going to work, I’d need to try another cheat. I tried the time of day modifier but it didn’t do anything. Then I tried the “show up in strange places” cheat which typically takes you to a non playable area upon activating it as you enter a new area. I went outside the castle and made sure it was night before activating it on my way back in. I appeared past the guards and out in the abyss but I was able to float back on the stage.
Well I did it. I got into the castle at night. Also the camera has broken out of the fixed camera for sneaking through the area and gone to the default in game camera.
Unfortunately this seems to be all there is. The rest of the place simply doesn’t need to exist when it’s night. What I really wanted to see was the Zelda courtyard at night but that area doesn’t have a dynamic skybox. In fact it doesn’t have a skybox at all. It has basically a ceiling colored with sky texture. Oh well...
Gerudo Fortress is one of the places you’re not supposed to be able to go when you’re young Link so I paid it a visit by flying straight over the assholes blocking the bridge. The place looks abandoned. There is literally no one in the town on the outside but if you go inside the buildings you’ll find that the carpenters that you’re supposed to rescue as adult Link are all already locked up there, (I guess this has been a habitual problem for them for years or maybe they just like being locked up in a village of exotic desert women.) They even beckon you over to their cells. There are also patrolling Gerudo guards inside. Everything is the same. It’s just the outside that’s different.
The funny thing is that if you get caught anywhere on Gerudo territory, you are not thrown in jail as you would be as an adult. You are instead promptly escorted off the premises and chucked into the frickin ravine to the water below. Damn.
On the top of the fortress is a chest with a heart piece in it. As an adult, you have to play the scarecrow song to get the scarecrow to appear on the roof and then use the hookshot on him to get up there. Since you’re not supposed to be able to get to any part of this area as young link, there’s no reason for this chest to exist but it does. If you look over to the left on the platform in the background, you’ll see a heartpiece sitting there. That’s not there when you’re an adult and it’s certainly not available as young Link so I can only assume it’s the heartpiece that’s supposed to go in the chest. But if it’s over there, then what’s in the chest now?
It’s an odd mushroom. A perishable trade quest item that you can only get as adult link and is never in a chest or even geographically anywhere near this area. This is just really weird. I went into a lot of places as young Link that I wasn’t supposed to be able go and everything still worked just the way it should which is why I’m suspicious of this instance. It looks more deliberate. It could be beta activity that the designers never even bothered to cover up because it’s in an area that’s already impossible to get to. This could have been an early idea and then they decided to put the heartpiece in the chest instead. Maybe you actually were supposed to get the mushroom here or maybe it was a placeholder for something. I guess it doesn’t really make much sense to get a perishable item from a chest.
Update: I went and looked up some beta and early concept stuff for OoT after my adventure and found evidence that young Link was originally supposed to be able to access Gerudo Fortress and the heartpiece there is apparently leftover from that idea. Likely the odd mushroom chest was too. So yay for me. I found and identified some beta content.
