I captured this myself, which would be why the quality's not what you might be used to, and why there's no HQ. But this is the black & white version, so it doesn't really matter anyways. And give even more thanks to Radix than you would normally - the audio was out of sync when I captured it, he resynched it. Besides uploading/verifying the run, you seeing this is a direct result of his work.

I must give major credit to three people who helped me out loads. Those would be Lucid Faia and TSA, who did the previous two runs and allowed me to mooch off what they used, and Tompa, who showed me a couple neat tricks. Major thanks to all three of you.

As many of the tricks I used in this run will generate lots of questions, I think it's best that I start off with the most commonly asked ones. The main attention-grabber, as I see it, is my liberal use of the start/select/a/b screen (hereafter christened s/s/a/b), despite never actually saving. It's actually a hugely powerful text skip tool, for skipping what hitting B won't.

Hitting s/s/a/b at certain times skips lots of the text screens that come up. Namely, those that spontaneously generate out of thin air. Chests, stuff bosses say, whatnot. You can also skip conversations you initiate, and if you jam A when the save/quit screen goes down, you can also automatically answer 'yes' to any questions they may ask, without even seeing the text. See: the trading sequence.

Two notes: I don't really bother skipping text that doesn't even require scrolling, because this can be messed up and because I don't think it saves any time anyways. Also, this works differently on the DX version. You can still skip chests with s/s/a/b, but you can't automatically answer yes or skip anything else with this iirc. TSA skips dungeon entry text in his DX run with the start screen, however - check that out.

And no, this can't skip the owl or the last golden leaf, or anything I don't even try it on that requires scrolling. To my knowledge, at least.

So, anyways, with that out of the way, to the actual run. It's pretty good, it's improveable easily if you have the skill (and I will come back to this someday), but it still shatters the existing records by about 15 minutes, and I don't really feel like taking that much more time on this (I've been playing nonstop for like 2 weeks to get this record - I probably would have broken 1:30 several times, but I got hit by several absolutely stupid mistakes and just bad luck, and that dolt Hinox in level 7). That, and I think I'm slowly breaking my control pad - I'm playing this with my actual gba, using the gb to gc cable. I have to put heavy force on the pad to get it to register the force at all now. I want a new SP and a hori pad. :/

Anyways, up through the first dungeon is played really well. It should be, I've played it like 50 times over the past 2 weeks. >_> Not much to say, except for a couple cool tricks in the cave with the rupee chest, the room with the roc's feather, and the trendy game. Yes, the crane is moving the powder in the background when I get the yoshi doll. The only real mistakes on this segment, iirc, was falling into a hole in the room with the first chest in level 1, and spawning the chest in the wrong position. The spinies were just bad luck. Note that I didn't torture myself by getting 10 rupees from enemies at the start - I went to the rupee cave and got them there. And note that how, despite getting the bananas early, I still beat the dungeon in less than 10 minutes. :P

Level 2 is played well aswell, although the hinox knocks a few secs off. I accidentally stabbed him instead of spinattacking him, and he took a few extra seconds as a result.. Anyways, the genie was finally pwned via s/s/a/b, and there's a version difference I bet most of you don't know: he throws fireballs more slowly in the DX version.

I'm very sure this is the best rupee collection route, dispite lucid using a different one. Also, you sometimes see me picking up bushes with the power bracelet instead of switching to the sword - I'm relatively sure that just picking them up instead of switching to the sword is faster, or at least not slower, in most cases. Haven't ever gotten around to timing it, however.

Kanelet Castle went well, but if any of you know how to get the golden leaf the ball-&-chain trooper drops without going down, out, and into the right of the screen, drop me a line. >_> You can get richard to move in one s/s/a/b, I just messed it up. I've done worse on the pothole field jumps, and then there's level 3.

Level 3 went really well, mainly thanks to a nice Piece of Power drop at the beginning of the dungeon, which shaved some time off. Then there's the glitch on the miniboss where you just exit the screen after killing one, and then a small route change that may or may not be faster at all - I just wanted it to look as if I put thought into the dungeon. Bite me. :P My performance on the boss was sloppy - after splitting the eye, I tried to hit both eyes at once, and failed. Then I made a couple of other mistakes, but since I had the PoP, I didn't have to take more than a couple extra seconds to finish it.

You have to trade the honeycomb for the pineapple so Marin appears at the beach. Otherwise, she won't show up. That's why I trade past the bananas -> stick. When I fight the lanmolas for the angler key, I s/s/a/b twice to halt Link's movement towards the center, in order to not fall down and have to take the long way around. That was actually intentional. Lastly, in the trip to level 4, it's ironic how I skip marin saying 'always remember me.' >_> S/s/a/b the stuff after you get the ballad of the wind fish song and marin doesn't say her piece after the 'item collected' text either. You can't B skip that stuff, so it's vital that you get the skip.

I do my best not to dash w/ the pegasus boots when you have to take a diagonal path later on. The weird dash routes in the screen after the cave that leads to animal village are there to avoid the electric gel.

Level 4 is weird. It's the most sequence-break-able dungeon in the game, with level 8 running a distant second. Sadly, the main jump used to do this is something I cannot pull off consistently. I have to use a slower method to have a real chance of doing so - I'm incapable of doing the dash-jump for some reason. Also, I don't bombarrow the blocks because I'm trying to save arrows for dethyl. I've ran out of arrows on him before... The mess in the flipper room was me not spinattacking in time yet again. :/

Then there's a really major timesaver. I leave level 4 early, after collecting the flippers, to save myself from having to bring the ghost to his house and the cemetary. It's about 1:50 to 2 minutes.

Level 5 is uneventful. I pull off the nightmare key jump on my first try and the boss is nice to me for once. I don't manage to kill it in two turns, but it didn't abuse me like it's fond of doing. >_>

Level 6 is actually somewhat different. It's the worst dungeon in the game in terms of linearity - I only manged to find a 1 second break. But a couple of the strategies I use to get rid of wizzrobes are different, if not faster, and they save arrows. The first time I try this, the mini moldorm got in the way - both wizzrobes were supposed to die at once. Still, you could skip over dungeon part and not miss anything. And no, you can't skip the dodongo snake miniboss battle here like you can in level 3.

This is also the part where you finally see how much I fail at using the item screen without having previously memorized the item locations from many playthroughs. :/

Incase you haven't realized it yet, the gameboy player fails at transparencies, shadows, and special effects of any type. Instead of actually making something transparent, it just displays a completely opaque version for half the frames and nothing at all for the other half - or at least, that's what it seems like. So, Mamu and his band will basically give you a seizure from flashing lights when you play it yourself, but since these vids are only at 29.97 fps, you guys get off. :P It doesn't help that his music is crap either...

On the way to level 8, that jump past the flamethrower has finally been refined to an exact science. In the screen before, round the corner as close as you can, then hold up-right without link actually pushing into the wall. Then just dash up, and he'll get through 100% of the time. And yes, falling down the hole after the eagle key is faster (by like 1 sec, but hey...). Then you get to the turtle, which conveniently loses it's collision detection for a fraction of a second. >_>

The level 8 route in this run is FAR faster than lucid's and still much faster than TSAs. It turns out that none of us, out of all 3 (me, lucid, tsa), knew the locations of all the bombable walls, so it was only after TSAs/Lucids runs that the fastest route was developed. There *is* one addition I could make to it, but it would require an emulator w/ slowdown to pull off 100% of the time, so I left it out. It only saves like 3-4 secs anyways. I only have one other comment about this level: those two 2d ice caves hate me.

Two things about level 7: First, the hinox there hates me. He alone ended 2 of my runs just by moving right asap and knocking me into a pit. Second, I hadn't tried the 'bomb the blombable wall while knocking the pillar down' thing before - it was a spur of the moment try to save some arrows for dethyl. The bomb explosion disappearing without doing anything was a surprise. >_>

Back to finish level 4, where the biggest mistake of the run occurs: the arrangement of the flashing tiles changed on me for no apparent reason. If I am correct in that they are randomly determined when you hit 'New Game', then how did they change when I kept restarting from the same save?... This only cost me 30 secs tho, if it had been a few more I would have mothballed the run from this alone. :/

There's not really much to say about the rest of the run and the wind fish's egg, except that the path is fixed until you read the secret book (the path is LLURRULU, for the curious), and I missed the shadow moldorm quickkill. If you spam the sword quickly enough as he forms, he will never actually start running around, and you can keep racking up hits. Just know how many he takes (16, iirc), because he won't actually die and progress to shadow ganon until you stop. There's a semi-easy way to do this, charge your sword and release it after the right time... I actually get him at the beginning, but then I mess up and break it.

I hope you enjoyed the run. It's worth it just for seeing the gbplayer cut out half of the letters in the credits, at least imo. :P

Welcome to my first run captured on my new video card and computer. Sadly, I wasn't very wise and skipped reading the vDub FAQ, so this speed run's quality isn't as good as it could have been (hence no true HQ version). Anyway, I know how to use it now, so future runs will be higher quality.

Anyway, onto the thanks. Thanks go out to Maur, who helped plan a very nice route, and to Lucid Faia, for some nice strategies here and there. The idea for speed running this game was brought about by the fact a World Record time already existed at Twin Galaxies, which is over 2 hours and 7 minutes long. After seeing how much faster I did on Ocarina of Time in comparison to this speed runner, I felt I could produce a quicker run.

Basically, the delay for doing this run was the result of several factors. There are two versions of Link's Awakening, the standard GameBoy monochrome version, and the GameBoy Color version. Most of the speed runs I do I take into consideration the rules for SDA and TG, since I want to submit to both. For this game, there were conflicting issues on the LA standard version. SDA does not allow S/Qs to teleport. TG did. However, the simple solution was to do a LA DX run because TG had no settings for this game, and I could do a run that met SDA's requirements, and then get TG to make the settings for the DX version in my favor.

The problem was, I needed a ruling on a crucial trick. The Thief Trick. This trick allows you to steal an item from the shop without paying. You would think this is a glitch or something, but it was planned for. Should you try to return to the shop, the Shop Keeper will kill you. In addition, the game changes your name to THIEF. Thus, the trick is part of the coding of the game, and does not violate the "spirit of the game" nor is it a bug. Thus, the trick was allowed.

So, before getting into the run, I want to explain the differences in the two versions, as I probably won't do a LA run just because there is only one true factor separating the two. This factor is the text boxes. In LA for GameBoy, you can press B in non-crucial dialogues to exit out of the box. In the DX version, this is removed. Thus, a good deal of time (I would say several minutes) separates the best LA run from the best LA DX run. I firmly believe a sub 1:40 LA run is possible for the GameBoy version.

Of all the Zelda games in existence, the portable ones are my weakest. I don't like the portable systems, and I don't have a Super GameBoy. When the GameBoy Player came out, I took a liking to GB games once again. However, my hopes were dashed when I realized how poor the GCN controller handles GB games, even on that crappy small d-pad. Even worse, the GBA has a small d-pad as well. The solution only came recently, a Hori Pad. It's a replica SNES controller that I feel is superb for 2D games on GCN.

With everything set, I began to tackle this game. Link's Awakening is not a hard game. In fact, it is relatively easy. The hardest part of the game is pulling off tricks and shortcuts you want on the first time. However, failing on a shortcut or trick is not as time consuming as say, falling off the circular room with the Megaton Hammer in Ocarina of Time. Anyway, I spend about two weeks practicing at this game, loosely following Maur's route.

After some play throughs, I made a few amendments to Maur's route and strategies. Lucid, after the time of completion of this run, revealed two more trick I could have used. One is getting passed the flame thrower blocking the way to Turtle Rock without the need of the potion, and the other is a faster route on Level 8 - Turtle Rock which involves getting a different key from the one I got at the start. I'm not sure how much faster each is over my time, but It can't be more than a minute. Either way, the fact is I beat the WR on the GB version, which has quick skipping of text, by over 22 minutes. And the run used save/quits to warp to dungeon entrances.

I think the biggest exploitations in this game are the bomb-arrows and the spin attack. Bomb-arrows can inflict massive damage from distances, and spin attacks, if executed properly, do the max damage possible, and with two blows per spin. I don't always execute the spin attacks nicely, but I do sometimes. Additionally, there is a lot of sequence breaking of the dungeons in this game. In particular Level 4 - Angler's Tunnel. At one cross section gap, you can dash-jump sideways and up to bypass an enormous amount of key collection and dungeon rooms. You basically just need two keys and you're home free. Other dungeons have jump tricks as such. Others I use the Manbo's Song to warp back to the dungeon entrance to bypass some traveling.

By far, the worst dungeon to play in this game is the Face Shrine. It's so long and boring. Beyond everything seen in this run, there is one more thing I didn't do that could have saved some time. On the Moldorm Nightmare, you can attack his head as he forms and do infinite damage without him moving. If you stop swinging after enough hits, he will die when you stop. I wish I pulled it off, it's a pretty cool trick.

Other than that, I do mess up here and there. Of my three latest speed runs, this is probably the one with the most minor mistakes. No major ones, though. I just hope you are impressed with the time. It would have been nice to see what I could have done if I played this game as much as the others in the series. Now I worry whenever I will do my Oracles runs that I may be too far behind to ever catch up to the level of somebody who plays them routinely.

Well, that is all. Unless a major breakthrough is found in this game, I probably won't speed run it again. I'm looking forward to Lucid's Link's Awakening run for GameBoy, though. The Minish Cap beckons to me, though! So, see you in about a month with my speed run of The Minish Cap.

For questions or comments, contact me at SolidTSASnake on AIM.