Well, we haven't heard from Blitzag in ages, this run of mine has been sitting around gathering dust, so I guess it's only fair that I submit it.
  • Created using Phil's Patched FCEU with U+D/L+R enabled
    • (You can use the normal FCEU emulator to watch it)
  • Abuses luck
    • Mostly on the overworld
  • Abuses glitches
    • L+R to move fast horizontally
    • U+D to move up fast on elevators
    • Healer Glitch to break the game physics
    • Super speed to exit Thunderbird's room before he's loaded
    • Starts the game with no data present (no apparent effect)
  • Uses death as a shortcut
  • Beats the game as fast as possible using known glitches
Although the ROM is apparently a bad dump, I can still watch other Zelda 2 US movies and other people have been able to watch my movie in the past without problem. I hope it will be a non-issue.
Basically, after Blitzag's & Genisto's last submitted version was not accepted, I began playing around with it on my own. After I finally made a complete video, I then played around a lot with improving it, hex-editting the file many many many times. Eventually, the only remaining ideas would only knock a few frames off that part but would cause an overworld desync later that caused more than 20 frames of delay. I then tried to combine improvements and redo the overworld, but once again it did not improve the time. This is what resulted in this final video.
A big thanks goes to Blitzag for all of his original work putting the first few versions of the run together. More thanks to Genisto for his specific parts in Blitzag's run; I had to study him executing the healer glitch quite a bit to duplicate it, and I studied his Dark Link fight as well. Also, thanks go to Arc as well since I also studied his Zelda 2j run (mostly for the Dark Link battle).
Now, about the Healer Glitch, I made updated maps of Death Mountain and the Great Palace to take into account the glitch. Mostly it causes the game to behave weird when you exit screens to the left. If you scroll the screen to the right a bit, exitting to the left will either send you to an unexpected place, otherwise you'll enter the room to the left pretty much in the middle of the room. It's rather difficult to explain beyond that.
The Healer Glitch is what gives most of the Overworld and Palace warps. The other glitch, holding U+D on an elevator, is another which causes you to go off the top of screen and come off the bottom of the screen below you.
The one death in the game is not necessary, but it's 256 frames faster. If you exit that screen as it is, you get sent deeper into Death Mountain and it's quite a backtrack to get to the rock (which is what warps you across the world). Dying allows you to exit the room normally without activating the glitch.
About the possibility of skipping jump and still getting downward thrust, I don't believe it's possible because you need to be able to have your feet at the same level as the blocks in order to teleport Link on top of the block.
Why didn't I publish this run sooner? I was really hoping Blitzag would be able to finish his run and submit it, but ah well.

Phil: Processing...


Former player
Joined: 8/15/2004
Posts: 422
Location: Minnesota
D'oh. Thanks. It's under "L" because it's .fds?
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 3
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Wasn't there an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode called that?
<--- avatar Yes there was :)
Joined: 5/6/2004
Posts: 8
Location: Québec
I'd like to see a complete run (all items and bosses) using the L+R glitch... The FDS version's correct name should be Link no Bouken (transliteration of the japanese title), that would be my explanation as why it's listed under "L"... Imagine the team that made the game looking at this video. I wish I could see their faces of awe... I remember playing this game like crazy around 1990 (I was 7 at that time), and when I think about the time taken by GigaFrost, it's frightening. Hours and hours spent trying to get through the game... Sniff... Yet, I had a strange feeling because in that time, my brother had inadvertently discovered the L+R trick and we found it very amusing, and tried to reproduce it like crazy, not realizing that someday, a crazy guy would finish the game in under 7 minutes using this glitch...
Former player
Joined: 6/4/2006
Posts: 97
Location: Everywhere including nowhere
Of course you have to remember that since this was a TAS, he probably spent longer on this 7 minute run than you did when you originally played the game... Anyway good work. I'd vote yes if I could.
...?
Former player
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 366
Actually, I can admit to spending a week or two. Didn't take more than a day or two to get through the whole game the first time using this route, but the testing and optimizing afterwards... brainstorming sessions... desyncs... hexeditting... Ah, feeling nostolgia because I can't work on my MMZ run atm...
Joined: 8/9/2004
Posts: 139
Location: Washington State
It's creative, but I just don't feel this does the average gamer justice. a non-glitched run is what I like to see. Don't get me wrong this is an incredible movie none-the-less