Bugs:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

This page details bugs of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Forest Stage Deku Nut Upgrade

Due to a programming mistake, the Deku Nut upgrade gained from showing the Mask of Truth in the Forest Stage corresponds to the same flag as the Poacher's Saw during the Biggoron's Sword trading sequence. As such, the Deku Nut upgrade becomes permanently unobtainable once you've acquired the Poacher's Saw.

This was fixed in Ocarina of Time 3D.

Dampé Piece of Heart Glitch

If Dampé manages to dig up the Piece of Heart during his Grave Digging Mini-Game, but instead of collecting the Piece of Heart you leave the area in any way, that Piece of Heart disappears forever, locking you out of 100% completion.

Ocarina of Time 3D, in a very Grezzo move, has the opposite problem - Dampé can dig up the Piece of Heart over and over again, allowing you to obtain more than 20 hearts.

Dodongo Crash

The game can crash if you try to feed a Dodongo a Bombchu. This happens due to the function that handles the animation for a Dodongo eating a bomb altering a value near the instance of the explosive used. Because instances of the Bombchu actor are shorter than those of Bombs, the function modifies a value beyond the instance of the Bombchu actor. This can cause a number of effects, the most common being crashing the game or preventing actors from spawning. The only place Dodongos are encountered is in one specific room of Dodongo's Cavern which the player would be pretty unlikely to return to after getting Bombchus, which may explain why this was not properly tested.

Source

White Bubble crash

Attacking a White Bubble with Din's Fire crashes the game. This is caused by a classic "uninitialized variable" bug: The White Bubble tries to render the "burning" flames on itself, but Din's Fire kills the White Bubble instantly, so the actor jumps to its death routine without ever initializing the proper variables for the flames. Since Din's Fire delays killing enemies until the cutscene is over, the game crashes as the actor tries to render the flames and encounters the uninitialized variables.

Master Quest does not have any White Bubbles, so the bug doesn't occur in that version.

Twinrova bug

The Twinrova actor has an odd bug where the object is not properly unloaded if she is killed while the beam is still shooting out of Link's Mirror Shield.

Triggering this bug basically entails getting Twinrova's health down to the point where the next sword slash will kill her, then accumulating three of her attacks to trigger the Mirror Shield beam, stunning her and slashing her while the beam is still shooting.

This causes the death animation to play (with some massive lag), but she won't actually despawn. Twinrova's death script runs on a timer that expires after 10,000 frames (which is around 8 minutes), and afterwards she will be revived and battle again. Twinrova will be invisible in this state and move around like she normally would, but her attacks will always spawn from the platform where she first died. Because her health is not refilled, she will die in a single slash, though finding her can be rather difficult. Killing her again spawns a second Heart Container and a second blue warp.

The bug can be repeated ad infinitum to get a lot of Heart Containers and blue warps. Because each blue warp applies a rotation to Link for the warping animation, having a lot of blue warps around causes Link to rotate like in a washing machine (looks hilarious).

Duplicating Actors

An actor in the Graveyard that controls the rain and lightning intensity during the Royal Family Gravestone cutscene fails to unload when loading the room with the Shadow Temple door. Alternating between these two rooms by going up and down the stairs to the Shadow Temple will eventually result in various gravestones unloading.

Similarly, the actor behind the six energy beams in the central room of Ganon's Castle remains loaded even when the player leaves the room. As such, a new copy of the beams actor is loaded each time the player subsequently re-enters the center room. The effect only becomes apparent after several repetitions. Once the beam count reaches high enough, other objects will fail to load due to lack of memory. Falling out of bounds or watching a Sage-related Castle cutscene will reload the scene, removing the copies.

Gold Skulltula Glitch

Gold Skulltulas have a weird property - if their model isn't loaded due to being too far away, their hitbox is kept at coordinates (0,0,0). As such, you can easily kill all Gold Skulltulas in any given overworld area by dropping a bomb so the explosion hits coordinates (0,0,0).

A handful of maps have coordinates (0,0,0) easily accessible, such as Lon Lon Ranch (in the middle of the ranch), Gerudo Valley (above the bridge), and Kokiri Forest (inside the pillar Fado is standing on).

Infinite Sword Glitch

Equip any combination of sword and shield (you must equip the Deku Shield when playing as child Link), find any object that can be interacted with by pressing A and go near it so the A icon changes to show the given interaction. Now press R to crouch, B to do a stab attack, and while stabbing press A to perform the indicated action.

If done correctly, Link will stop mid-stab and a white trail should follow his sword, and the focusing bars on the screen will still be there even though you're not holding Z anymore. This glitch allows Link to keep damaging enemies and striking objects with his sword out, and he will also not be able to fall off of any ledges. The camera will also slowly drag behind Link as he moves, taking a moment to get to a normal positioning when he stops.

This glitch also opens up several other glitches that can be useful with speedruns and exploration of the game's world, and will persist in gameplay until Link swings his sword, gets damaged, or leaves the area.

Source

Infinite Gold Skulltulas

Go to the tree near the moat in the Castle Courtyard (near where Talon slept before you woke him up) and play the Song of Storms to make a grotto appear. Inside, bomb the wall to the left of your starting view and kill both the regular Skulltula and Gold Skulltula behind it. Target the token and throw your Boomerang at it, and as the Boomerang hits the token walk back into the warp that sends you back to the surface. If done correctly, you'll hear the "got token" fanfare during the fade to white. Check your Quest Status subscreen, and you should have one more token than you had before.

Now, entering the grotto will reveal that despite your having gotten the token, the Gold Skulltula is still there and will leave another token if killed. You can repeat this process as many times as you like, though the gold hue will disappear from the Gold Skulltula count if you have more than 100 tokens.

Ocarina Items (Invisible Ocarina)

This glitch makes Link play an invisible Ocarina, therefore making it unnecessary to have one in your inventory beforehand.

Bottle Method

Catch something in a Bottle (bugs or fish are commonly used as they can be caught again if you fail) and make sure you have the Bottle in your hand. Now backflip or jump off a ledge and while you're in the air, press the button with the filled Bottle on, followed by another item that can be pulled out in mid-air (sword, Hookshot, Boomerang, etc.). Once you land, you should be playing the Ocarina, but instead of having the Ocarina in your hand you should have the item that you pulled out. This happens because the game can't play the Bottle-dumping animation, and therefore defaults to the Ocarina animation instead.

The Ocarina will work as intended, so this is just a cool or convenient way to play the Ocarina.

Put Away Method

This method only works in v1.0.

If you put a Bottle away then empty it on the next frame, you will begin to play an invisible Ocarina.

Bomb Method

This method only works in v1.1 and later, including Master Quest and 3D.

Pull out a bomb and begin to run around with it in your hands. Let the bomb explode and you should see that your hands will still be up. On the frame that your hands begin to lower, use a cutscene item (Magic Beans, spells, bottled items, etc.) and you will see that you pull out an invisible Ocarina. This method isn't preferred as it's frame-perfect, but can still save time.

Hover Boots Bag

If you become Adult Link without obtaining the Slingshot, you will have the Hover Boots where the Bullet Bag would be on the Equipment Subscreen in the Pause Menu.

This is impossible to see in normal gameplay since you need the Slingshot to do quite a few things as Child Link prior to pulling the Master Sword.

Deku Stick Texture Bug

In-game, the Deku Stick model is rendered with a brown-black pattern. However, this is not the intended appearance, it's actually the result of a bug! The game tries to load a 16x16 texture for the Deku Stick model, but the texture itself is only 8x8, so the game ends up loading garbage data corresponding to the data stored after the Deku Stick texture, which is (part of) the texture for Link's hair.

This bug was carried over into Majora's Mask as well, with slightly more interesting results.

(Source: darkeye)

Rarely-Seen Dialogue

In Zora's Domain, one of the Zoras in the water near the small island has a rarely-seen message due to an incorrectly-set flag. Its second message, "If you find any clues to Princess Ruto's whereabouts, will you show them to King Zora?" is triggered once you've already shown the letter to the king.

Gerudo Warrior's Changing Dress

The Japanese and US versions feature a programming bug involving the clothes worn by the Gerudo Warrior, who issues you the Gerudo Membership Card after you have freed all four carpenters. If Link is to enter first person view, the Gerudo Warrior's dress will also render in the color of his tunic, due to the dress not being properly set to render in a single color in that view. A goofy effect can also be achieved by using a Bomb, in which the Gerudo Warrior's dress will flash alongside the bomb until it explodes.

This was fixed in PAL versions 1.1 onwards, as well as Collector's Edition and Ocarina of Time 3D.

(Source: EonAegis)

Death Mountain Trail's Bomb Flower Goron

The Goron at Death Mountain, who tells you everything there's to know about Bomb Flowers, isn't working as intended. It was supposed to stand in the way of the Bomb Flower, but because of sloppy programming, it isn't doing so.

(Source: Skawo)

Door of Time Skip

A small gap exists on the left side of Door of Time. This gap allows a skilled player to get past it, and there are many methods discovered.