I purchased this game for Wii Virtual Console first, but only logged a couple hours of gameplay on it. As our winter Florida trip approached, I decided to pick it up for GBA as well so I could play it on the DS on vacation. I found a reasonable copy on eBay and received it the day before we left.
This was a road trip, and Wisconsin to Florida is a solid 24 hours in the car, so I logged quite a few hours before arriving in Florida. I think I probably cleared the first two dungeones by the time we arrived at our house in Florida.
Over the next few days, I cleared another two or three dungeons before getting stumped. I didn’t want to resort to walkthroughs, so I started mapping the entire game to help me find the entrance to the next dungeons. During this process, a friend helped me out by putting together a large JPG of screenshots from his emulator on the XBOX.
With map in hand, I was able to find the next dungeon or two easily. This left only the hidden dungeons. Those took a little more work, but I had beaten the game as a kid, so I kinda remembered where to look. I had cleared the seventh dungeon and found the 8th within 8 or 9 days of being down in Florida. Now, all I had to do was clear the final dungeon. This is no small task.
As our return date approached, I lost patience and used a walkthrough to help me find the path through the final dungeon. Even with this knowledge, it took many tries to work my way through the entire level. Sure, I slightly tainted my victory by using the walkthrough, but I was able to complete the game in the span of 2 weeks of semi-casual play (an hour or two a day).
At some point, I want to go back and complete the second quest (without any assistance), but I probably won’t consider it until I complete all the Zelda games first.
Time to beat: about 35 – 40 hours
Time played: Dec 14 – Dec 30, 2007
