Weird LOZ: OOT video someone linked to...

[Sharpshooter]

Time to head back to 1998, when political turmoil was brewing, the 64-bit age was coming to an end, and every self-respecting gamer was creaming himself at the thought of an event which some considered on the level of the Second Coming. That's right - the release of the Legend of Zelda: Orcarina of Time.

I was browsing along on Gaia Online a few minutes ago, generally doing my best to crush the Fanboy Hordes, berating people for idiocy, bad writing skills, and whatnot, and taking part in the general banter when someone started up a thread on the much-worn conspiricy of the Triforce being in the game somwhere. As it always does, the thread got derailed within ten posts to discussing general OOT myths and such, and a few posts later on the second page, someone brought this into the discussion. For those not interested in watching, it's a video someone made where they were able to unlock a hidden cameo in-game by the use of a Gameshark in which a Star Fox Arwing had somehow been put into the game, but surpressed.

(Be advised: the audio is pretty mangled, as the video maker decided for some reason to merge the game audio with that of another which displays the capture of the notorious Hylian Loach, so just ignore the jabbering)

Now naturally, I was skeptical of this - but after watching it several times, I actually sort of find it hard to accept that this is a hoax. Everything seems to be in order, asides from the thing's entry through the side of a building - weapon impact times seem spot-on, the target tracking seems right, the Arwing model seems to match up perfectly with the rest of the game environment, et al. And it's also not completily inconceivable, especially since the programmers had included cameos for other Nintendo characters.

I just found that rather interesting, and was wondering if anyone else had seen it and/or if there's any kind of official concensus on the thing's legitimacy.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I read about it on Zelda Legends sometime back and recall seeing screenshots of it.

[Praxis]

Wow

[Datana]

I just found that rather interesting, and was wondering if anyone else had seen it and/or if there's any kind of official concensus on the thing's legitimacy.

The most efficient way to find out would be to plug in the Gameshark codes that are supposed to do this and try it for yourself. The original site that released the info is here, and includes the code (as well as means of spawning nearly any object in the game). Looking over it, this looks legit enough, though.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

This is actually the first time I've actually seen it. That was pretty cool.

[Sharpshooter]

I'll load up the roms in Project64 and see if I can get the codes to work on there.

(Relax, mods - I own the system and the games, nothing illegal, at least with these two.)

[Praxis]

It's actually technically still illegal if you didn't rip the game yourself. One of those extremely stupid laws

[darthdavid]

I cant picture any court convicting someone of a crime for that or even that part of the law standing up, but the problem is getting it to that point would probably cost more than anything short of about a million fucking roms so there's never been a point in anyone doing it.

[Instant Sunrise]

I just tried this myself, it does work, and I have screens.



Higher res:

[Erik von Nein]

That's actually really damned cool. They really need more of that kind of thing in Zelda. Heh.

[Archaic`]

It begs the question though....how the fuck are you supposed to unlock it withouta gameshark? What's the point of an easter egg that shouldn't be possible to find in normal gameplay?

[Bounty]

It begs the question though....how the fuck are you supposed to unlock it withouta gameshark? What's the point of an easter egg that shouldn't be possible to find in normal gameplay?

It probably wasn't meant to be found. Most likely it was originally supposed to be an unlockable easter egg, but time constraints and/or technical difficulties caused it to be scrapped. It's occasionally easier to just hide code then to remove it from the game.

Like Banjo-Kazooie's aborted linkup function, parts of which were still accesible.

[Dooey Jo]

Apart from the crashing and shooting, it moves much like those flying things in Lord Jabu-Jabu. They can enter walls, too...

Maybe they used it for testing purposes, like fpr the Z-targeting function or something, at an early stage and then just sort of didn't bother removing it. Like that whole beta-quest thing.

Personal anecdote: One of my games have an inaccessible extra dogfighting level (replaced with a blow shit up with a cruiser level) because bypassing it was so much quicker than removing it. There's also an invisible flying egg used for testing the camera...