Zelda: A Link to the Past Easter Egg - Chris Houlihan Room

Back in the early 1990s, Chris Houlihan was a reader of "Nintendo Power" (the official Nintendo magazine). Before the release of Zelda: A Link To The Past a.k.a. Zelda 3, Nintendo Power held a contest, where the winner would have his name in a secret room inside the game... and the room would be so well hidden that it would be nearly impossible to find. And indeed, it nearly is, unless you know where it's at. In fact, it seems we had to wait for the internet / Snes emulators era for the room to be found by anyone at all.

Here's what you have to do, there are different methods to enter the room:

FIRST (EASIEST) METHOD:

1. First of all, you need the Pegasus Boots! If you don't have them, go get them and come back here.

2. Start a saved game and start at the Sanctuary.

3. Now, you're going to have to go to the secret entrance to the Hyrule castle (the one behind the bush you go to at the very beginning of the game) AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. The trick will only work if you're fast, which is why you need the Pegasus Boots. Try to storm your way through the screens.

4. Here is the exact path [note that any path is theorically good as long as you reach your goal quickly enough, but this one works fine for me]: go down to leave the Sanctuary, down past the cemetary, then left. In the new screen, go down as soon as possible, and you will enter a difficult area with big trees, rocks, bushes, and enemies. Proceed with caution here, as it's easy to waste time if you're not careful enough. Go right of that screen. You are now at the Hyrule castle. Go down, then right, and go past the main entrance without entering. Keep going right until you're at the eastern side of the castle, then go up. You will find the bush leading to the secret entrance. Get rid of it and drop down the hole, and IF you were fast enough, you will enter the Chris Houlihan room.

It's a room filled with blue rupees and a plaque saying : "My name is Chris Houlihan. This is my top secret room. Keep it between us, OK?"

If you enter the normal underground castle passage, it means you were too slow.

SECOND METHOD:

It's the same principle, but instead of starting from a saved game at the Sanctuary, from anywhere in the game just go to the Kakariko village, taking as long as you wish. There, you have to place yourself at the top of the dirt path leading to the fortune teller screen. The race against the clock starts now: run up to the fortune teller screen and go to the secret passage behind the bush just as in the first method (go right and then it's all the same directions), always running as fast as possible. This method is more difficult for me than the first one as it requires you to be even faster, but I have tried both and they *both* work.

OTHER METHODS:

Other methods have been referenced on the net, and I won't reference them all here as they haven't all been verified and the methods mentioned above work fine. It seems you can also access the room by falling into a certain spot at the Pyramid in the Dark World (but the people who have done this don't know how to do it again), or by using a bomb to push you down a secret passage in the cemetary. Some also say the "time attack" methods won't work if you get hit by an enemy on the way. This might be true, but I wouldn't know because I usually started from scratch after getting hit, since it makes you lose precious time either way. There is a rumour the egg only appears when the game somehow malfunctions (instead of giving you an error message, it warps you to the Chris Houlihan room), which could explain why the ways to enter the room are so strange and different.


The "do it twice in a row without taking the rupees and next time you will get a chest with 500 rupees" thing, referred to in the comments for this egg, hasn't worked for me (I've done it but the room was identical) so until we see screenshots I'll assume it's a hoax.


-- Egg originally submitted by Anonymous, then rewritten by MrHappyHamster

User Rating:
7.2
  7.2/10 with 131 votes
Contributed By: Anonymous on 06-01-2001
Reviewed By: Webmaster
Special Requirements: Good Timing
Please correct this Egg if you see errors.

Pictures and Videos

None None the room as you enter it
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Comments

atx840 writes:
WOW I am 24 now but when i played zelda 3 i once found this room when I jumped in the pyramid to fight Ganon and instead I was in this small room with I think a sign saying Chris's room and that was it I walked out and out you come outside of link's house in the normal world. I have always wondered about it....actually I spent about a week re-trying to do it while taping the game...no luck But the room does exist.
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stinkinsac writes:
If you dont touch anything in the room, (i didnt even read the sign) and go out through the house and do it again you will get a chest. I have done this twice. The chest always gives yo 500 rupees. This egg was awsome!
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Meno writes:
I have done this egg numerous times and you dont have to start in kakariko, but you do have to go through the "partial forest" to the left of the castle and run the rest of the way. you must be running when you change screen areas from the forest to the castle. I can do this 99% of the time and found this when i was really little, Link to the Past was my very first video game. Nobody believed me the first time, and i had trouble doing it again, but i survived my traumatic childhood nonetheless. Me and My friends also had this obsession with finding this "golden bow" that to this day we havent found, as it probably doesnt exist. I dont even know how it came up in the first place. Am I rambling? anyway, i have never seen a chest or anything different in the Houlihan room after doing it twice without touching anything, and if you get the rupees, when go to the room again, they are gone. so you can only get the rupees once. Well, that about sums it up for my autobiography. Thank you for letting me waste your time with tales of my childhood. if anyone can send me a screenshot or info on the do-it-twice-and-get-a-chest thing, i'd be much obliged. -Meno (ive said enough, ill shut up now)
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dan writes:
Well i'm going to try it but it sounds difficult and I'll probably screw it up.
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WeeHoodedOne writes:
OK. Here is a glitch I just discovered. If you have Bow-Wow take go to the screen to the right of the screen with a cave with a lake next to it. Screen warp from that screen (to screen warp when the walk to the edge of the screen, when the screen starts moving press SELECT). You shouldn't be visible, only the Bow-Wow is. Walk around a little (you still should be invisible. Then you will get warped somewhere (I got warped to the swamp).
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Somebody writes:
This is, in my opinion, Nintendo's coolest egg, and I've heard about this for a while, however not when I actually had the game. :( Does anyone have, or know of, video of getting there?
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D-e-W writes:
Here's a video showing a person getting into the room. http://youtube.com/watch?v=mCas3bzruic&search=Chris%20Houlihan%20Room
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KeYYeK writes:
I have used the following to access this room consistently. It requires no speed, though to be honest I don't know how/why it works as compared to all of the others. You will need the pegasus boots (and power glove to go through the east entrance to the castle. I have not tried it going across the bridge in the front, and I don't know if it will do anything different if you use this.) 1. In the light world, head to the rocky field just east of Hyrule castle (with all of the round hills dotting the landscape). 2. Go one screen north 3. In order to "arm" the egg, you need to start running into the cliff side here (in front of the water) and bounce back such that you will move south back into the rock field. If you are successful, you should start running, hit the cliff and bounce back, and the screen will scroll south. Once you have done this, do not head north again or the egg will disarm. 4. Head west to the castle ground and fall into the hole for the castle basement (the one you fell in at the start of the game.) 5. Say hi to Chris for me!
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xcalibur writes:
Hi, I just came to this site because I was playing Link to the Past on emulator, and I managed to ACCIDENTALLY find the Chris Houlihan room. I know I started at sanctuary, and I have been using Pegasus boots (I'm early in the game so I recently got them), and I found the room by going to the screen just to the right of the graveyard (which is to the right of the sanctuary) and going down a hole in the ground covered by a bush. Normally this hole takes you to a fairy cave, but it led me to the easter egg. I've looked around on google and no one seems to mention my method of getting there. To be specific, I have only the green pendant, I got the book of mudora but haven't used it yet, I have the icerod, fairies in my 2 bottles, 6 hearts and 2 pieces of heart, I gave the mushroom to the witch but haven't gotten anything from her yet, I have 6 bombs and 19 arrows, I had either icerod or bow & arrow equipped, and I cleared the bush by Pegasus rushing it, then I walked into the hole (I did not immediately fall in). Also, I wandered around the map awhile before this happened. I don't know how useful all this is, but these are all the details I can think of now. And when I left Chris Houlihans room, I came out of links house. I haven't been able to do it a second time though. Good luck! Hopefully someone else can duplicate my stunt. By the way, this one of the best games ever, and one of my favorites. I used to play it alot as a kid, but this is the first time I've found the egg.
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daredevil writes:
Great egg and if you tilt your head to the left you can see that the little stones is it are in the shape of a C as in Chris another secret in the secret room.
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rubixxqube writes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbID8x4DlrA This You-Tube video pretty much sums up everything you need to know about the Chris Houlihan room. Apparently, the Chris Houlihan room is assigned to a Debug room. It's to prevent the game from crashing in the event that it can't determine which room to send Link into. In order to trigger the room, you need to do something that places link in the lowest two pixels of the screen (i.e. using a bomb to blast yourself south) then you need to use the Pegasus Boots to perform a dash south. Because of this, the game detects an error in the coordinates of Link's positioning, so when you do something like fall into a hole, which normally sends Link to a dungeon, the game can't determine exactly where to send you, so instead of just crashing, it drops you into the Chris Houlihan room. So although the Pegasus Boots are necessary to dash south after placing you in the lowest part of the screen, speed is not a factor in whether or not you end up in the Chris Houlihan room. The method used in the video has worked every time for me on an original Super Nintendo. To use this method, start at Hyrule Castle, and go one screen right by lifting the large rock, and then one screen up, past the hills and Octorocks. You should be facing north, towards a body of water. Place a bomb, and allow it to detonate and blast you back. Press A to start the dash with the pegasus boots, and quickly dash south and allow the screen to scroll down. Then, simply proceed back one screen to the left, back to Hyrule Castle, and go to the hole where you first went in the game to find your uncle. Lift the bush, and make sure you fall in from the south side. You should end up in the Chris Houlihan room. I Love this easter egg. It's one of my favorites.
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