Zelda Marathon in 24 Hours Results!

So I finally tried it. I tried to complete Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess all in 24 hours! How'd it go? Well...

Link's foreshadowing dream of entering Hyrule Castle

I started Ocarina at 10:30am after a great Tim Hortons run. Most of my play through went quite well, actually. I severely messed up on Ghoma at the beginning, it's not very difficult to kill her in about 30 seconds, but I stumbled. From there on, it went great. The Forest Temple gave me a little bit of trouble and I had lost to Phantom Ganon a few too many times. Morpha also took me a little longer than expected. The Spirit Temple is where I lost the most time, however. As a child I was severely lacking in Deku Stick and Magic drops, so I was frantically warping to the Lost Woods to try and find some Deku sticks and magic, wasting a good extra half hour. Eventually I made my way to Ganon, skipped Ganon's Castle Trials with great ease on the first try. It's an awesome glitch where I can skip through the barrier blocking Ganon's final room by clipping through a wall into the next room, but the graphics are loaded (including the barrier) and I can simply walk into the room. I make it to Ganondorf, and it takes me 3 tries to beat him. It takes me another 2 tries to beat Ganon, and when you die to Ganon, you have to run down the castle again. It total I lost about 15-20 minutes on the final boss battles.

It took me roughly 10 hours to beat Ocarina, which was the absolute most time I had planned on spending on this game. At this point, I had to make nearly perfect runs on Wind Waker and Twilight Princess to make my 24 hour limit.

Link playing the Wind's Requiem on his Wind Waker

I begin Wind Waker at about 8:30pm, and for the most part, I do quite well. I make pretty good time on most of the game. I stumble a little on the first time at Forsaken Fortress by not using the 100% ideal route, and lose about 5 minutes. I complete the next 3 dungeons in very good time, and underneath the sea in Hyrule Castle, I have a little trouble finding and defeating all the enemies after pulling the Master Sword. My second time at the Forsaken Fortress also goes a little wrong, when I miss the ladder on my timesaving skip. I end up walking around trying to find a magic drop so I can use the Deku Leaf and float around the fortress. Eventually, after about 5-10 minutes of wasted time, I get to the Helmaroc King. The run goes extremely smoothly after that, both the Earth Temple and Wind Temple go without too many hitches. A few minor fumbles here and there probably loses me a total of 10 more minutes. Getting the triforce shards went well, I skipped used the Bait Bag skip trick with no problems at all, but I had to spend about 10 minutes too long getting my rupees up to 3,182 to pay for Tingle to decipher all my charts. Ganon's castle went pretty well, the trials were all easy, but I lost to Puppet Ganon once, which costed me about 15 minutes since it's such a long boss battle. I take out Ganondorf at the end in my fastest time to date.

I immidiately switch disks to Twilight Princess after I stab Ganondorf in the head. I finish Wind Waker at about 6:00am, which does not leave me with very much time. I had hoped to beat it in about 8-9 hours, but it's okay.

Link against the Forest Temple mini-boss

I was quite prepared for Twilight Princess to go well and fast. I can skip every cutscene (unlike the other two games) and I had found two glitches to skip almost all of the first dungeon, and another glitch to skip another dungeon and a half later on, which cuts down my playtime by about a total of 2 hours. I begin promptly and am doing very well, until I hit the first dungeon, the Forest Temple. I miss the Wind Bridge skip a few times, costing me about 5 minutes, and It takes me a good 10 minutes more to Long Jump Glitch over the large chasm to the boss room. Eventually I make it and take down the boss very fast. The problem for me here, is that I am starting to feel really, really tired. I had been up for over 20 hours playing Zelda and as I was going to Kakariko Village to collect twilght bugs, I was feeling in that half dream/half awake state, and I was collecting bugs at an atrociously slow pace. My girlfriend Emilie was trying to stay awake with me as well, but it was really difficult. Reading my notes I had written became a huge problem as words started to blend on the page. Apparently drinking 2 cans of Red Bull does not actually keep me awake.

At 8:30am, I have still not collected all the bugs in the Eldin province and I decide to just go to sleep. I am starting to not feel well, and a video game is not as important as my sanity, not my body functioning at all the next day.

With all the glitches I would have used, I was roughly 1/4 through Twilight Princess when I decided to call it quits. I am almost certain, had I been awake and aware for the entire run, I could have probably beaten, or come very close to beating, Twilight Princess before the 24 hours were up. I am very familiar with the quickest route, and I have become good at combat to beat enemies and bosses quickly.

Overall, still an extremely fun marathon! Lots of friends showed up, Nachos and Candy apples and potatoes and sausages were made, Tim Horton breakfast was awesome! I think I will do another Zelda Marathon, however, I don't really want to do the tedious tasks in Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, such as collecting bugs, or collecting triforce shards. I may do A Link to the Past, or Majora's Mask, or some other game!