Did you finish Link's Awakening without help?

[Jorpho]

I feel like I've asked this question before, but I couldn't find it in a search. Needless to say, if you haven't finished Link's Awakening, you should probably stop reading NOW.

I let the official Nintendo Player's Guide to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening spoil me utterly and completely for the game, and if I had to do it over, I would refrain from doing so. But there are a couple of points that are just obscure enough I have to wonder if anyone here completed the game without any hints.

Namely, there's a statue in Turtle Rock that you're supposed to fire an arrow at to get a small key. Except there's hundreds of statues in the game that look just like it, none of which respond to you in the slightest, nor is there any suggestion that this statue is different. And of course the bow is actually optional before that point.

Somewhat less obscure is the whole deal of finishing the trading quest and going to the library and applying the path from the book to when you get to the Egg, though the book does at least suggest what you're supposed to do with it, and once you get the Magnifying Glass, you can probably figure out that you need it for the book.

So did you finish the game independently without any help when you played it?

[SparTonberry]

The first time, yes I did.
It took me months but I did it.

I ended up ordering the official guide book (I ordered it from the NP catalog, and I think that was the only place I actually saw it). But at the point, I think the only help it gave me was finding a heart piece or two I missed. (I remember getting the game September 1993, a few weeks after launch. I don't think the NP catalog that offered the guide was published until winter '94 (side note, it was probably the same catalog where Super StarFox Weekend was originally sold ). As an elementary school kid with nothing else to do, that was plenty of time to play the crap out of the game on my own.)

Some of the puzzles I recall stopping me were figuring out how to beat Master Stalfos (though ALttP pretty much just told you how to do it, LA was the first Zelda game I finished), and the Face Shrine hint confused me (turned out to be another puzzle reused from the original LoZ, but I actually didn't play the original game until several years later).

[Aussie2B]

Nope. Link's Awakening was the first Zelda I played to completion myself, and I had a hell of a time with many of the puzzles as a kid. I called the Nintendo counselors to find all of the golden leaves, and I abused the glitch that warps Link to the opposite side of the screen (not sure where I learned that, maybe I stumbled across it myself). In retrospect, I was probably just making things more difficult for myself, breaking the normal sequence of events. I remember having a hugely difficult time with the whole carrying around a ball to break down the pillars part, and I was also stuck a very long time in that one dungeon where you get the ability to lift the really big statues. There's that one room where there are some darker floor tiles that go up from the door, take a right turn, and meet the wall. I had assumed it was just decorative, so I had no idea that the tiles were a clue to bomb that other end.

A few years ago, I replayed the game, playing the color version for the first time, and it had been so long since I last played the game, most of it had left my memory. It was pretty amazing how easily I progressed through the game, even with all of the puzzles that I didn't remember. And it's not like I was an old Zelda veteran at that point. Even now I've only played five of the games to completion, and two of those were within the last year or so. I guess it's all just a matter of the adult brain vs. the child brain.

[Bloodreign]

Finished it on my own, trial and error till I got things right. In the end a week or so later, I finished the game (pretty much gotten when it first came out, last copy I ever saw for sale in a store again, Dillard's of all places back when they sold games. It was their final copy) .

[frogofdeath]

Received Link's Awakening when it was originally released and was stuck at the very beginning. Don't recall exactly where, but don't think I had even made it to the first dungeon yet. A friend told me what simple task I had overlooked. Wish I could remember exactly what I was stuck on, because even as a wee little lad I thought, "how did I NOT figure that out!?" From that point on, the game was completed on my own.

Link's Awakening is still my favorite of the Zelda games and I now have an urge to go back and play it for the umpteenth time.

[Jorpho]

So if you finished it on your own, how the heck did you find that key in Turtle Rock?

[NE146]

Namely, there's a statue in Turtle Rock that you're supposed to fire an arrow at to get a small key. Except there's hundreds of statues in the game that look just like it, none of which respond to you in the slightest, nor is there any suggestion that this statue is different. And of course the bow is actually optional before that point.

It's at 9:12 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXKetQj9oQQ . (I guess it at least looks vaguely conspicuous?)

haha you got it man.. now you see, it DOES look suspicous. You always can tell when Nintendo is trying to make something conspicuous like that.. it's all by it's lonesome, framed right in the top middle of the screen, with a path leading up to it. etc etc. it's literally screaming out that it's a secret.

[Lady Jaye]

Well, that's definitely better than in Wonder Boy in Monster World, where there are secret doors that you can't find unless you stumble upon them and there's no on-screen hint to let you know that there might be something there!

[Jorpho]

Oh, I didn't notice that they put an owl statue next to it in the DX version. Does it give a hint regarding the key?

In the original version, the only owl hint was about moving the dungeon's magic tiles with the control pad.