Turns Out You CAN Get The Triforce in ‘Ocarina of Time’… Sort Of
Legend of Zelda fans performed some high level technomancy to achieve what we all thought impossible: getting the Triforce in Ocarina of Time.
Summer Games Done Quick 2022 has concluded and raised over $3 million for Doctors Without Borders. SGDQ is a speedrunning event where gamers attempt to beat games as quickly as possible. Most will use a multitude of hacks, tricks, glitches, and more in order to push their completion time as low as possible. Sometimes with devastatingly upsetting results.
During this SGDQ, we got to see what has been one of the longest-running rumors in gaming finally come to fruition. They were able to collect the Triforce in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
With the help of a computer entering the button presses, speedrunner, Savestate was able to perform something called Arbitrary Code Execution. They performed this run on an “original, unmodified US 1.0 release cartridge of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on a real, original N64″
Legend of Zelda: Triforce%
The exact details are somewhat technical to explain. So I will let someone someone much more qualified than I to explain it.
But, here’s what is going on, in a very overly-simplified explanation.
- Every time you press a button on the controller, the console stores that as data within its memory.
- Every time the game has to do anything it must read it from somewhere in its memory as game instructions.
- By using a robot to perform extremely precise button presses, it can store the exact set of data points within memory.
- Then, by using the high level technomancy I mentioned earlier, the game is tricked into reading the button presses as something to be interpreted as game instructions.
And voila! It just takes a lot of time and tells the robot how to input everything. But, you can now program the game to perform basically anything you want.
This is one of the coolest and most insane uses of Arbitrary Code Execution that I’ve ever seen. Most often it is used to warp to the credits of the game for a super quick speedrun. But every once in a while, a team goes above and beyond anyone’s expectations. And they do something that will go down in gaming history.
The rumors of being able to get the Triforce in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time have been circulating since the game’s initial release. And now, it’s finally happened. It only took a team of experts, the dedication of fans, and decades of wanting the impossible.
I genuinely teared up watching it.
