Approaching a final boss battle in any game is nerve-wracking. You’ve worked so hard to get here, putting in any number of hours to approach this final door/entryway/random patch of grass. And if said boss is an icon, a titan of video game lore, then your excitement is through the roof. This is it. This is your moment. The only question is: Are you ready?
Well, for my first encounter with Ganon the King of Evil, wielder of the Triforce of Power, I was more than ready. I was eager and could not wait to beat him, no matter what he threw at me. See, I had something of an interesting history with the Zelda franchise up to that point. Here I was, playing my fifth title, and I had yet to ever complete a game.
I had started out, as many from my generation had, with Ocarina of Time. But I was young and new to video games altogether, and after many struggles, I completed the Child Era only to find myself forever lost in the Forest Temple (I get lost really easily). Then in Majora’s Mask, I made my way through most of the sidequests, but was stymied by Great Bay Temple. I tried Link’s Awakening and had my worst performance, never even finding the first dungeon. (No, really, I am bad at directions, never make me your navigator.) I finally managed to get pretty far in The Wind Waker, only to be frustrated by sea charts while finding Triforce pieces.
So by the time Twilight Princess arrived, I had eight years of experience playing Zelda games without successful completion. But this time, I was no longer a child who could simply play with friends and make them beat the game. Now I was a teenager, determined and with time on my hands. I had a guide (Remember those? Ahh, good times), I had a copy of the GameCube version of the game (I had not yet waited in line for six hours on a Saturday morning to purchase a Wii), and I had learned that, by carefully studying maps and carrying multiple Fairies in my bottles, completing the game was possible.
After a tremendous amount of effort, I finally reached the end of the game, and I knew exactly who awaited me: Ganon.
For him, I was beyond ready. I had left Hyrule Castle to prepare, maxing out my health at 20 hearts, stocking up on bombs and arrows, filling up all my bottles with Fairies, and stuffing my wallet with Rupees that I could use to abuse my Magic Armor. There would be no stopping me, for there was no challenge I could not face.
I was super worried I was going to lose. See, I’m not so good at Zelda games, and on this particular playthrough I had died many times, even against bossess so “ridiculously easy” that other people/official sources were recommending different methods to make them more challenging. While my stubborn nature and the tremendous amount of time I invested in the game had gotten me this far, I still expected Ganondorf to throttle me. Reading in the player’s guide that the fight had four phases, one of them on horseback, did NOT calm my nerves.
Thus prepared yet still terrified, I headed to the final battle. And, after my long struggle… I absolutely demolished him on the first attempt. I never ran out of Rupees for my armor, and I even got to taunt him with the fishing rod.
To this day, I’m not sure why it was so easy for me. Maybe I was just playing really well that day. Maybe I had just studied the fight so well it was like a well-rehearsed scene in a play. Or maybe there was just no way to get lost during the fight as I had done in other boss battles. I will never be completely sure.
What I do know is that even though the fight was a cakewalk, I was, and still am, supremely proud of my accomplishment. I had finally beaten a Zelda game, after so many years of trying. And since I had the guide for the Wii port, which is a mirrored version of the GameCube edition, I had done so with what was essentially a backwards map. Which, as it turns out, does not work in real life.
