This is an any% TAS of the unlicensed demake of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past to the Famicom (NES) by the developer Mars Production under the publisher Waixing. Its full name in Mandarin is 塞尔达传说-三神之力 (Sài ěr dá chuánshuō-sān shén zhī lì). Some information can be found about the bootleg and bootlegs of its type on the Bootleg Wiki.
A commentated run can be found here, apologies for potato: [dead link removed]

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.3.0
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Features heavy RNG manipulation

Oddities of interest

  • Link is yellow, Zelda is blue, Ganon is pure red.
  • Link has a HP bar rather than hearts and there are no HP upgrades.
  • There are two engines that make up the game; overworld and dungeon.
  • There are coins instead of rupees.
  • Coin drops on the overworld give 10, whereas they give 267 in dungeons.
  • To get flippers from King Zora you need at least 500 coins but he doesn't actually take any from you.
  • Enemies on the overworld do one damage (except projectiles which give two), whereas all enemies in dungeons deal two.
  • There are no i-frames on the overworld, but there are in dungeons. Due to the lack of i-frames birds deal the highest DPS in the game.
  • There are 9 tracks, none of which are Zelda tracks. Some are Chinese folk songs and classical music. They appear in multiple bootlegs by Waixing.
  • It takes 20 frames to dash on the overworld, but 48 in dungeons.
  • Sword animations are different on overworld/dungeon.
  • When fighting Moldorm, if the player uses anything other than a dash attack, the game crashes. This doesn't occur on emulator, but dashing has been used in this movie for consistency with reality.
  • In the manual Link is green and there are several items that didn't make it into the game such as Roc's cape.
  • The last two dungeons are cut from the game, perhaps due to time constraints as it appears that their areas were begun but not finished.
  • The game over screen is spelt Gome Over (or game aver if you like) and its art is taken from "World of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck".
  • The end game "Congratulation !!" screen is taken from the Mega Drive/Genesis game Sword of Vermilion opening cutscene.
  • You can use the mirror on both light and dark world. It does not return you to the entrance of dungeons.
  • Small keys are shared amongst dungeons, Boss keys are not. (A small key from dungeon 2 will work on dungeon 3 for instance)
  • The fire rod is used to unlock Kholdstare's spawn but is not actually necessary for fighting it.
  • You don't need to take the maiden to fight Blind, but it is faster to take her as it allows for Maiden dashing.
  • Turtles don't have a walk down animation, so they just barrel around upside-down when they walk the other direction.
  • You have to hit Helmasaur 100 times with the hammer, this is unaffected by sword level, which would otherwise also increase the power of items (they all share the same damage value).
  • In the final dungeon there is a room that for no clear reason jitters and crashes regularly. Amusingly, this room is the "fast" path and saves something like 10 seconds RTA. This kills many RTA speedruns.
  • Ganon takes 50 arrows to beat, you are only given 10 and cannot buy them, though there are a few random chests containing arrows throughout the game. Thankfully, the game gives you 100 when you start the fight.
  • The "light arrow" chest at the end of the final dungeon is actually just a single arrow and does nothing, so it's skipped.
  • Spike pits remove all your MP, perhaps this was meant to be HP and the wrong address was used by mistake.

Glitches of interest

  • Talking to the Priest again after his long dialogue sets the trigger for fighting Agahnim, which should normally only be accessible after collecting the three pendants. Amusingly if the player fights Agahnim straight away they'll get forced into the dark world as bunny and be softlocked, this actually happened to me on my first playthrough.
  • Invisible chests/items: many chests and items that would appear after solving puzzles are actually there all the time, they're just invisible, so we just remember where they are and use them while invisible.
  • Superspeed part 1: due to the mechanics of dungeons/overworlds, dashing into a dungeon, saving and resetting the console will have Link going dash speed when he exits the dungeon.
  • Superspeed part 2: if Link starts this dash from a slow tile, he will go double dash speed when he exits the dungeon.
  • Superspeed part 3: If Link walks onto a slow tile, then walks sideways, then onto a tile that would be normal speed, his speed will double again. This stacks but unfortunately is not useful beyond one use due to game mechanics.
  • HP underflow: On the overworld, if your HP would drop below one, you die. In dungeons, it is if your HP would drop below zero. If you get to zero in a dungeon, then exit and take a hit of damage, you will underflow your HP to 255, note Link's normal max HP is 48.
  • Pot/Maiden dash: Normally when holding A, the dash counter increments by one. When another object, such as pot, maiden or arrow, the dash counter increases at a considerable but fluctuant pace of around 17--20 frames per frame.
  • Infinite keys: At the beginning of Tower of Hera, a key can be found between switchable blocks. This key is somehow made from miraculous stuff as you can pick up an extra one every frame you hold A. We do this for 40 odd frames to charge our dash and give us more than double the amount of keys we'll need for the run.

Special mentions

Acmlm made a TAS of this game way back when we didn't know most of these tricks or even how to get the sword upgrade from the blacksmith! Acmlm has done so much routing for this game over the years that has really helped get this game to where it is today. Thanks JF. We reenact Acmlm's boss fight strategy for the Armos Knights from his old TAS and the beginning of the Arrghus fight. He also provided a useful suggestion he had been thinking to collect the fourth sword upgrade after Agahnim, this hugely changed the routing for the better and greatly reduced backtracking.
Initially in the development of this run, I got a lot of assistance from ThunderAxe31 showing me small things I wasn't noticing while TASing, tightening up my movements and sending movies back to me. I think that his assistance was a big help and originally offered him joint authorship which he declined to give me all the credit. ThunderAxe31 found out how the RNG worked in the game, these savings cannot be understated, almost every screen I manipulate enemies to give me a better pattern, thanks a bunch friend.

Samsara: More like A Link to the Fast!!! Ha!!! Ha!!! Ha!!! Judging!!!
Samsara: I see the trend of LTTP being ridiculously broken applies to bootleg versions as well. Good to know!
Runs like these end up being some of my favorites on the site, innocuous games that come out of nowhere and defy your expectations with unexpected major glitches, and naturally this run is no exception. It's quite fast! It's incredibly fast! Even in the early part of the game before the dash glitch is activated, it still keeps a good overall pace, but naturally the dash glitches blow the whole thing wide open. Watching the commentated run proves that a lot of work and planning went into making this as fast as possible, even down to some hilariously unexpected things like manipulating the least laggy music tracks to play at any given time, lending further comedy to a run that was already making me laugh out loud quite a bit.
I do feel the need to re-address the Moldorm fight here just for an official, public statement on it: The game crashes on console whenever Moldorm is hit by anything other than a dash attack, however this behavior is not replicated on any emulator. In any situation like this, where the game behaves differently between console and emulator, it is always preferred to use the console behavior for submissions, assuming that both behaviors are known prior to submission and the choice can actually be made. The idea here is that, while something like console verification is not and will never be required for publication, runs should still be aiming for console accuracy at all times in order to prove that games are being beaten legitimately under the same constraints that a console runner would be held to. This is a founding principle of the site: It's about complete mastery of the game itself and not the emulation environment it's running in. The console behavior was used for this TAS, so... Hooray! Rule following!
All in all, this is a great run, the commentary is absolutely worth a watch, the optimization is solid, the entertainment level is very high and the audience agrees with that. I'm accepting this to Moons. Excellent work!
Zinfidel: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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xxezrabxxx
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I enjoyed the commentary. Not a bad run overall. I gotta admit, the bootleg is complete shit, but that's somewhat the point. Yes vote.
I like to comment on submissions and look around the site. You have probably seen me before (if you have been around for a while) either on the site, Discord, or any other social media. I recently took up making temporary encodes for new submissions. Also, I never forget to greet Tompa wherever I find him! "when resyncing stuff sucks it's called Resuccing" - EZGames69 “If an emulator stops being accepted to the site it should be called an emuLAMEr” - EZGames69 "oh no discord, everything I say will now be logged forever, sdfsdf, time to hide" - Masterjun "just had to give therapy to a taxi with daddy issues" - psx Current Projects: Mother 3 (75% complete)
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Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
I don't think I deserve to be included in the authors list, as my contribution was marginal. All I did was understand the music lag and apply some micro optimization on the first few minutes of the movie. I watched the commentary in live streaming and I was very entertained by the optimized gameplay and tricks! Yes vote from me as well.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
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Nice run, easy yes. Also, on the name, from what I'm seeing, "Triforce of the Gods" is just some unofficial translation? In this case, just the romanized name would be used (so instead of "The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods (塞尔达传说-三神之力)" it would just be "Sài ěr dá chuánshuō-sān shén zhī lì")
crazyjesse
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Posts: 13
CasualPokePlayer wrote:
on the name, from what I'm seeing, "Triforce of the Gods" is just some unofficial translation? In this case, just the romanized name would be used (so instead of "The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods (塞尔达传说-三神之力)" it would just be "Sài ěr dá chuánshuō-sān shén zhī lì")
Yeah, I wasn't sure what to put for the name. Sài ěr dá chuánshuō-sān shén zhī lì literally translates to Zelda: Triforce of the Gods which is the same name of the game in Japanese. As it's a demake of that game, I thought it'd make sense to use that name but I'm happy for the mods to change it to whatever they like. Most of the time I just call it bootleg alttp lol.
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1360)
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Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
crazyjesse wrote:
CasualPokePlayer wrote:
on the name, from what I'm seeing, "Triforce of the Gods" is just some unofficial translation? In this case, just the romanized name would be used (so instead of "The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods (塞尔达传说-三神之力)" it would just be "Sài ěr dá chuánshuō-sān shén zhī lì")
Yeah, I wasn't sure what to put for the name. Sài ěr dá chuánshuō-sān shén zhī lì literally translates to Zelda: Triforce of the Gods which is the same name of the game in Japanese. As it's a demake of that game, I thought it'd make sense to use that name but I'm happy for the mods to change it to whatever they like. Most of the time I just call it bootleg alttp lol.
Since this is a translation of the original Japanese name, it should be fine, similarly to how it has been done for [4160] NES Pocket Monsters: White Jade Version by ThunderAxe31 in 36:39.51
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
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Impressive hack! Also, nice run and good commentary.
crazyjesse
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Posts: 13
Radiant wrote:
Impressive hack! Also, nice run and good commentary.
Thanks! Though it's not a hack, it's an unlicensed port of the game, published by Waixing.
Zinfidel
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Joined: 11/21/2019
Posts: 247
Location: Washington
I'm late to vote on this but still wanted to throw my "yes" on the pile. An enjoyable run of a pretty decent demake. The Pegasus Boots glitch is a great find and is put to great use.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4374] NES The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods by crazyjesse in 28:59.27