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Get in Chris Houlihan's room constantly!; 100% reproductible! Yay!
Topic Started: Feb 16 2009, 07:59 AM (2,691 Views)
SmashManiac
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I tried it and it works!

I also checked if it was possible in AST, but they replaced the hole by stairs.


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Conn
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what do you mean by stairs? Another room?

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Duke Serkol
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Where'd that Princess go?
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Uh... I'm afraid this has been known for a long time. But thanks anyway ^_^

Con he means the hole next to the castle is now a set of stairs.
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MadHatter
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Still, it's one of the coolest eeggs out there. No question about it.
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*The Thread Necromancer*!!!! :stalfos:
*SIGHS!!*

If only I had the original SNES version as well as the GBA version... -_- :...:

EDIT: I doubt I'll be able to get my hands on the SNES original, unless I play the Japanese version on the PC, which I'll have to download... :(

And that will take a while...
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"Nothing you can say will ever convince me that the Zelda, Link & Impa of OOTURA, ALTTPGBA, SC2, BSLOZ, & OOX are different characters, or that Link isn't part Kokiri, FOR SOME Zelda Universes and that the mangas aren't canon FOR SOME alternate realities."

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Conn
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Quote:
 
Con he means the hole next to the castle is now a set of stairs.

Cool, 'd like to see a pic :)

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Duke Serkol
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What, you mean you've necer seen it? O_o
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MadHatter
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I remember as a kid thinking that Chris Houlihan was the luckiest guy in the universe. I'm still pretty convinced about that fact.
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Conn
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What, you mean you've necer seen it?

Not the AST version of it...

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MadHatter
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I've always been pretty interested in the whole Chris Houlihan thing ever since I discovered it in high school. The whole thing seems so uncharacteristically difficult to access that I assumed it was just a rumor all the way until I actually fell into the room on my own and witnessed it with my own eyes. I always thought it particularly strange that Nintendo Power (specifically the American Nintendo Power) had enough influence to affect the actual programming - the guts - of a game as high-profile as a new Zelda title. In the last few years I've also found it strange that Mr. Houlihan (who must be in his 30s now) hadn't emerged online yet as a mini celebrity of sorts. There certainly seems to be enough interest about him to warrant a brief blurb in some game magazine about who he is and what he is up to today.

This seeming silence from Houlihan has prompted numerous suggestions online that perhaps Nintendo never even informed him that he'd won or at least never informed him of what he'd won. Surely it wouldn't have taken some 5 years to enter the collective conscious if Houlihan had been told how to access "his" room, would it? Perhaps Nintendo told him that his name was in there somewhere but simply never told him how to access the room. I can imagine that the room would be impossible to find without the online guides. Heck, even with the guides it's still damn hard to access. I can't help but wonder if Nintendo Power still has his address on file. I'd love to read a quick interview with the guy or learn a little of the back story involved.

Well anyway I started to do a little deep digging into the matter a few days ago. I was determined to find out at least the nature of the contest he had been involved in. According to rumors, the inclusion of Chris Houlihan in A Link to the Past was the prize granted him for his victorious completion of a Nintendo Power based contest of some sort. With this in mind, there aren't too many volumes of Nintendo Power to search through. A Link to the Past came out the same month as Nintendo Power Volume 30, so within the first 30 issues must lie the details of the competition. As it turns out, the magazine that contains the contest details is Nintendo Power Vol. 16 (Sept/Oct 1990) at page 13. The contest was called "The WarMECH Challenge," and it was offered as a special bonus contest along with a series of contests collectively known as the "Final Fantasy Treasure Quest." According to the details of the contest, the participants were supposed to encounter the strongest regular enemy (or first superboss) of the original Final Fantasy, WarMECH (the guardian of the Flying Fortress), and photograph themselves beside the TV set displaying this encounter. Photographs would get the participant's name written on the back and would be mailed to Nintendo Power's contest mailbox in Redmond, WA before Oct. 15, 1990. From all successful participants, Nintendo Power would select one lucky player to get his name inserted into a future game.

Although the contest details described the future game as an NES game, due to the timing of the contest (just about exactly 12 months before the release of A Link to the Past) it seems pretty likely that this was the very contest Chris Houlihan entered back in 1990 to end up being selected as the winner on November 1, 1990, and to get his name immortalized in A Link to the Past. The contest page mentions that the winners of the Sept/Oct 1990 Final Fantasy Treasure Quest competition will get their names printed in the Nov/Dec 1990 magazine (Nintendo Power Vol. 18). On a hunch I examined this issue as well to see if there was any mention of Chris Houlihan. Unfortunately it looks as though the winner of the WarMECH Challenge like the winners of the Final Fantasy Treasure Quest were left out of the volume. At page 104 of this volume one can find a list of all Player's Poll Contest winners, however this seems to be a completely different contest.

Because the contest details for the WarMECH Challenge doesn't suggest that the WarMECH Challenge winner will have his name listed, I am not particularly hopeful that it will appear listed with the other Final Fantasy Treasure Quest competition winners, however I would be interested in finding this list of winners. I'm posting here a scan of the WarMECH Challenge from the Sept/Oct 1990 Nintendo Power Vol. 16 page 13. I believe this is the contest that led to the Chris Houlihan room. If I find any more information on this subject I'll post it here. I hope this was as interesting for any of you as it was for me as I was doing the research.

EDIT: Sadly I can't seem to attach this scan because it is 100k and apparently that's too big. If anyone would like to see it, feel free to PM me.
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SmashManiac
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Click on my sig, upload the scan and post the link. ;)


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MadHatter
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Nintendo Power Vol. 16 (Sept/Oct 1990) page 11 - First mention of the contest as a "special bonus contest" under the Final Fantasy Treasure Quest series of contests (yellow box in the upper right).

Nintendo Power Vol. 16 (Sept/Oct 1990) page 13 - Announcement of The WarMECH Challenge, including the "WarMECH Challenge Rules" and further notes under the "Both Contests" section at the bottom.

I've searched volumes 16 through 20 now to find the list of Final Fantasy Treasure Quest winners. The list does not seem to appear in the Nov/Dec 1990 issue (Vol. 18), although a list of Player's Poll Contest winners does appear in Vol. 18. It doesn't mention Chris Houlihan, and I've found no trace of Houlihan's name in any of the volumes 16-20. My next plan is to examine Volumes 32 and 34 (both of which cover A Link to the Past in depth). I doubt I'll find anything about Houlihan but you never know...

PS- Thanks, SM. :)

PPS - Another thing that bothered me is the fact that I can't find a single place online that discusses the differences between this room in the Japanese and the NA versions. If it was the American Nintendo Power that ran the contest, wouldn't it be strange if Chris Houlihan appeared in the Japanese version as well? Well I just did a play-though of the Japanese version to find out what it says, and as far as I can make out it says:
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ここは、秘密の部屋だよ~ん。
みんなにはないしょだよ~ん。
So it seems this room is called the Himiutsu no Heya (Chamber of Secrets) in the Japanese version instead of the Chris Houlihan room. I'll attach the screenshot here (Note: I already picked up all the blue 5-Rupie pieces in the screenshot, but all 45 of them were there to begin with).
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MadHatter
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MadHatter,Jan 30 2010
07:23 AM
enough influence to affect the actual programming
Effect... oops. I'm an idiot.

MadHatter,Jan 31 2010
06:19 AM
it seems this room is called the Himiutsu no Heya (Chamber of Secrets) in the Japanese version instead of the Chris Houlihan room.
This was just a typo: It should be Himitsu no Heya.

And finally, I've checked NP Magazine Vol.s 32 and 34. As expected, no luck.

Do any of our resident hackers know if the "Chris Houlihan Room"/"Himiutsu no Heya"/"Chamber of Secrets" room exists in BSZ:AST? There's a pretty good rumor online that the Chris Houlihan room is actually a failsafe default in case the game glitches out when you fall into a hole. Apparently there's a way to get into the same room by falling into the hole at the top of the pyramid in the dark world and other holes as well. If this is a failsafe, presumably something similar might exist in BSZ:AST,... that is unless they had a different failsafe or unless they actually fixed the original bug...
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Duke Serkol
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Seeing as I was in charge of rebuilding AST's indoors, I can tell you for certain that there's no room with rupees that is not normally accessible, like that one.

The only way AST could have its own Chamber of Secrets (what is this now, Harry Potter?) is if it was an empty room, and even that I think is rather unlikely.
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*The Thread Necromancer*!!!! :stalfos:
Duke Serkol,Feb 1 2010
01:58 PM
Seeing as I was in charge of rebuilding AST's indoors, I can tell you for certain that there's no room with rupees that is not normally accessible, like that one.

The only way AST could have its own Chamber of Secrets (what is this now, Harry Potter?) is if it was an empty room, and even that I think is rather unlikely.



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"Nothing you can say will ever convince me that the Zelda, Link & Impa of OOTURA, ALTTPGBA, SC2, BSLOZ, & OOX are different characters, or that Link isn't part Kokiri, FOR SOME Zelda Universes and that the mangas aren't canon FOR SOME alternate realities."

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