The Quest to Solve Zelda's 30+ Year Long Mystery
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- čas přidán 1. 09. 2023
- Join me as I take on the challenge to uncover the truth of the Chris Houlihan room in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo (1991, 1992). Who is Chris Houlihan? How did Chris Houlihan get his name into the secret room? Why did it take Nintendo so long to announce Chris Houlihan's existence in A Link to the Past? Let's find out!
Let me know your Chris Houlihan theories/facts/knowledge in the comments!
I accidentally discovered the room within the first 2 years of release. I was Pegasus booting around and then "bombed" (was chucking bombs into the opening then messed up) myself into the opening at the top of the pyramid. Didn't know what I did to get there, and never got in there again.
Wrote a letter to Nintendo Power and never received a response.
"If Nintendo put the room into the game, how did Nintendo not know how to enter the room?"
Well, there's also the possibility that, you know, the game was made by a team in Japan and the people at Nintendo NA who didn't know how to access it are most likely not the same Japanese people who worked on the game.
Sometimes people need to remember that "Nintendo" is not some kind of hive-mind that has access to the same collective knowledge ready at the go at any point in time.
NIntendo of Japan didn't know how to access it either. If they did, they would have fixed the bug that lets you get there!
All they knew was that SOMEHOW, it was occasionally happening to people testing the game, so they purposefully made that "default room" look like an intended secret.
That's like the Metroid theory about Justin Bailey, and weather he existed or not.
One thing to consider in the weirdness of the timing of all of this is the year offset in the release of Japan and N American games. If Nintendo Power had their contest winner in November 1990, by that time Super Mario World and F Zero would have been out in Japan, with SimCity being the only probable near-future choice. Miyamoto's team would probably be starting to chip away at "Zelda 3", and let's say you're coordinating to put a contest winner in a game and it's December 1990; do you choose SimCity or Zelda 3? Obvious choice IMO.
There were only a handful of first party Nintendo games released between the contest and the end of 1992; Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings, SimCity, Zelda 3 and Mario Paint. I don't think the delay is reticence on Nintendo's part; they got it into the first game they could. Zelda 3 was out in late 1991 in Japan, and was heavily advertised as a forthcoming game in N America (I got my SNES Christmas '91). From there we can speculate as to whether the room was programmed in for the Nintendo Power magazine or not... my personal feeling is no, but there's no evidence either way. Given how old news the contest was by the release of the game in N America, I think it's understandable that they didn't make a bigger deal out of it.
Back in the cart days, they did sometimes stealth patch games, so you'd wind up with different software versions, but zero note of it on the carts or packaging. This would explain the possibility of "some don't have the room"
Funny enough one of the most famous instances is the Fire Temple theme being stealth changed in Ocarina of Time
Ken at GTV knows his stuff I've known him for years. If he says he can't locate Chris, it can't be done. I've got more faith in his video truths than anyone else
Hey great video. We’re you the one asking me for Club Nintendo issues last month or was that a coincidence? 😅
Shhh, it's a secret ;)
I was so sure I'd heard him being found, yet i must admit it seems i must've imagined it
Plot twist, Chis is short for Christine. ;)
So many gamers are trans
I wanted to be Zelda or Lana from Captain N as a kid
I must've seen hundreds of videos on this topic by now, seen many posts online about it, etc. I never really looked into it myself, but based on all the research that has been presented in all those sources, my theory is that Nintendo probably had some kind of internal conflict over it. Like maybe the contest was run before everyone was on board with it after some internal power struggles and maybe some turnover they were going to drop the matter and pretend it never happened. It wasn't unheard of for Nintendo of Japan to be overly strict over what they wanted Nintendo of America to be doing.
Then when Chris won and got the silent treatment, either him or his parents went after Nintendo and the situation was going to be made public at some point (like with a lawsuit) they decided to settle and put the announcement out to make it go away. In the meantime, Chris's name was already added to the English translation of the game and to this day, Nintendo doesn't want to talk about it. It probably didn't help that the contest was in America and the game in question was a Squaresoft game, not a 1st party title too.
I don't follow the big N very closely anymore, but I remember that back in the NES/SNES days, it was very much a Japan first company. Japan got the consoles and games first. Japan got many games, that were not sent over seas. Japan got services that the rest of the world didn't (like the Broadcast Satellite system and the games that were released on that). Projects that were done in the US were not often brought up in Japan like look at how long forgotten the Star Tropics games are. They still have not yet been given a Japanese release. Putting an American name in a Zelda game (which is very near and dear to the hearts of the big names of Nintendo in Japan) would've probably been seen as a big no no.
Thank you for your excellent insights!
Nice video. I remember when I looked up Chris way way back years ago, it was so fascinating to find out who or why his name was in the game. I encountered the room a couple times on my snes but never accidently on a emulator, i did play for hours so it might have to do something with the memory of the game/console too, and not just with links position, but I can't say for sure.
Just to add the In later numbers of club Nintendo they published a way to reliably access to Chriss Room. I did it many times in my young years
A few theories
A) there would've been a special version of the cart just for Chris and they just added a door in links house on this one special dev cart that he was sent in a retail shell, or at least they were supposed to do that but who knows maybe they sent the "yay you won" letter but Chris had already moved home before it arrived or the letter was dumped in a bin
B) next up is maybe they had sent over a contract to sign by Chris's parents, but they didn't get it, refused to sign it as they didn't know anything about games and he had sent the entry without there permission or simply didn't send it back leaving Nintendo Power and Nintendo in a bit of a pickle in terms of publishing the announcement of the winners name and leaving the secret entrance to that cave somewhere actually accessible without a glitch so it was quickly deleted the entrance they intended to use for the Chris houlihan before publishing leaving the room as inaccessible without someone glitching the game and being dumped into the failsafe room.
I would like to think it was more likely the latter and they had intended to make the cave entrance hidden in a really obscure place and only tell chris, "oh yeah you just need to bomb this Wall here 10 times and it will open to reveal your secret room", would've been so cool for a kid to be able to show their mates their own secret hidden room without some random "oh you need to dart around with pegasus buts and bombs and sometimes it will dump you there
The room was made as an easter egg for a Nintendo Power contest winner. You can only get into it when the game loses track of where you're supposed to be.
11:08 I'll counter with: the room was just a part of the game. When it came time to add the contest winners name to a game it provided a convenient out of the way place to do so.
So, it being a contest for the NA version of Nintendo Power, the name was added there for the NA version of the game.
It doesn't necessarily have to been removed from all other versions of the game, it could have just been added for one specific version.
I was about to reply with the same thing. It wasn't included in any other versions because the NA translators put it there.
This is fascinating, and it seems that like as in all good mysteries, as more information surfaces, we are left with more questions than answers. Also if it’s true that the room does not appear on all instances of the game, would that make some link to the past carts more collectible than others? 🤔
My theory is that the contest was a fraud. I think they received lots of submissions that SHOULD have won, but their lawyers (or someone else) vetoed the whole idea. So they just made up a fake name to maintain the illusion that somebody had won.
(Of course, it's still possible that he prefers anonymity.)
Has no reporter ever asked miyamoto about this? You watch it was his childhood friend
By entering u must give a photograph which is the same as printing your info. They must say who's in the photo. If not get out your checkbook Nintendo
If it was Todd Rodgers or billy Mitchell oh damn
he's probably dead, or enjoying TotK
I found it as a kid by accident, twice. It's easy to underestimate how much time we wasted just running around trying to find things, there not being any WWW to consult.
As Homer one said it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened (with no moral). Nintendo is just screwing with us to get us talking about them.
His name would have to had been published. That was the rules. I bet it was supposed to be in another game but it's got stuck overnighted into a major game. Either that or a lawsuit. Could be a typo, could be fake, could be like u said a relative of a employee, he could be deceased, there's no way when Nintendo said ok we need to port it to another console the last things theyd kbow about was a contest from 1990
Avgn had the ad in his video
.
I also went looking for the power of the tri force and look what happened to me
🥦
Thanks for making this! Very interesting. Feels like a game sleuth video from easy allies
I’ve been really enjoying the new video style
Very interesting 🧐
My dad works at Nintendo and he can verify that this is all true.
As Homer one said it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened (with no moral). Nintendo is just screwing with us to get us talking about them.