Remember Oracle of Ages? It was so cool! You could travel back and forth through time with a harp, which is cooler than an ocarina and you know it. You got cool animal companions which includes a kangaroo with boxing gloves, because this is a bonkers universe where anything can happen. You could link up your game with a completed version of Oracle of Seasons and get the true ending. It was groundbreaking stuff. Too bad the games were incredibly difficult for nine year old me to figure out.
There are tons of awesome locations in the Oracle games and I plan on covering more of them. However, I wanted to start my coverage with the place that left me bamboozled for literal years. It was a place so difficult for me to figure out, I set the game aside and didn’t play it again for over 15 years. I’m talking about Crescent Island from Oracle of Ages.
Look, on paper, this is a pretty straightforward place. You crash land after a storm and a bunch of lizards, the Tokay, take your items. You have to trade, play minigames, and travel through time to get them all back. I hate those stupid lizards. This plot has been done several times in the Zelda series, but I don’t think it’s been this frustrating.
I’m not going to get too deep into the sequence of events that get you your items back. It’s long, it’s complicated, and you have to backtrack SO MUCH. What I really want to talk about is the lore of the island. Since you have to travel to the past and present here, you get to see how the Tokay have changed.
The island is pretty small, full of hills and caves. This seemingly created two different kinds of Tokay, the Tokay and the Wild Tokay. Now, these lizards may seem cute and harmless, however, the only time you see the Wild Tokay are when you are trying to get your items back. You have to play the Wild Tokay minigame. Yes, the Tokay have kidnapped the Wild Tokay and are using them to turn a profit.
In the game, Link is placed in a room and Wild Tokay run in from either side while meat drops from the ceiling. Link has to throw the meat to these poor lizards and they have to catch it or he loses. What happens to this meat afterward? Is it reused? Are the Wild Tokay forced to eat it? Is the real reason that we only see a few Wild Tokay is because the Tokay force them to eat until they explode? Is the meat that they are dropping actually…Wild Tokay meat?
Of course, this is all wild speculation on my part. In the present, though, it seems that the Tokay have changed their ways. At the location of the Wild Tokay Minigame, a new place has been erected, the Wild Tokay Museum. It’s a place to honor those who were a part of the game years ago. It signifies a fresh start for the Tokay. They can help alleviate the sins of the past by honoring the dead and move forward to a more humane future.
Who am I kidding? These creatures are evil. It’s heavily implied that the Wild Tokay in the museum are the actual bodies of Wild Tokay, not statues. They stuffed them and put them on display for the world to see. Their own brethren. Not only that, but in a linked game, if you give a password to the proprietor, he will take you down to the basement where he continues to allow and profit from this barbaric practice.
So, what did we learn today? The Tokay are a race of evil reptiles who will steal from marooned voyagers, kidnap the local inhabitants, force them to eat each other until they explode, and will do anything to make a profit. Absolutely vile.
Oh, and Crescent Island is just not a fun location in this game. In both the gameplay and the lore, it’s probably the darkest location in any Zelda game.
