A Glitch In The Original Legend Of Zelda Lets You Beat The Game In 4 Minutes

We're used to glitches popping up in modern games, but that wasn't usually the case back in the day. Or so we thought. There's actually a pretty rad glitch in the original The Legend of Zelda that lets you beat the game in just a handful of minutes.

It's hard to classify this as a glitch, as it takes some pretty hefty finagling on the part of the player to get it to work. Also, this is only for the Famicom version of The Legend of Zelda, not the NES so, unless you've got an imported console and copy of the cartridge, the only way you can experience this bit of nostalgic tomfoolery is to watch a recent video uploaded by Youtube user MagicScrumpy.

The folks over at Kotaku were the ones who stumbled upon this old-school trick that took "glitch hunter" Sockfolder quite a bit of time to unravel. I mean, The Legend of Zelda has been around for 30 years at this point, so it's kind of cool to see it still making headlines alongside its most recent decedent, Breath of the Wild.

The glitch is a bit on the complex side, as it takes advantage of the limitations of 30-year-old technology like the Famicom. As it is explained in the video, The Legend of Zelda loads 11 sprites on the screen at a time but, using the magic flute, the game tries to load one more than it is supposed to. In that moment, the game gets a bit confused and, using the glitch, can teleport the player to the very end of the game.

Even with all of those conditions met, you have to do quite a bit of in-game finagling that we wouldn't exactly call "normal gameplay." Again, this all is classified as a "glitch," but it's not like you can trigger it by accident.

That might sound pretty straightforward at first, but there's a whole bunch of other conditions that must be met first, otherwise it won't work. Not only do you have to be sporting the appropriate amount of heart power, but the game's soundtrack needs to reach a specific point before the magic flute glitch can be utilized. Also, since it's teleporting you straight to the end of The Legend of Zelda from about four minutes into the game, we're not sure why anyone would really want to do this other than to see something unique unfold. Of course, that's also what Youtube is for.

Which has us wondering: Where do folks like Sockfolder find their saint-like patience? I barely have enough sanity to deal with actual glitches that pop up unexpectedly in modern games, so what does it take for a person to not only seek them out but go this far overboard to discover little tricks within old games?