I. Introduction

It is difficult, after studying the manual and map, and using someone else’s guide to beat the game (no offense to CyberPredator; his is awesome and helped me a lot!), to write my own, using not just my own words, but trying not to be too redundant. After all, most of the guides you find online are plain text; don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about that, but I'd like to do something a little different.

The manual and map (that, in my case, came with the 1996 Player's Choice reissue of the game) are basically the equivalent of the first half of one of those hint/strategy books you can buy in a video game store. Since I didn't want to do a text-based guide, with no graphics, just like everyone else, and since I don’t have the time or drawing skills needed to go all-out like a book (my drawing skills are okay, and on the computer I can do gradients and things, like in the pictures in this guide… but it is rather time-consuming), I settled on an HTML guide.

About the Guide

This guide is mostly HTML text, with hand-drawn graphics. (When I say hand-drawn, I mean on the computer; and I mean little stuff like the picture of the Master Sword, above left.) It is divided into eleven sections:

I. Introduction	What you're reading right now.
II. Story	My interpretation of the background story. (I didn't really want to quote the game.)
III. Controls	A brief summary of the controls and moves used in the game.
IV. Items and Equipment	A brief description of the common items in the game, the items and hazards in the dungeons, and the location of every item and piece of equipment in both Hyrule and the Dark World.
V. Pieces of Heart	The location of all 24 Pieces of Heart in Hyrule and the Dark World.
VI. Shop Locations and Faerie Fountains	The location of every shop and Faerie Fountain in Hyrule and the Dark World.
VII. Hyrule	Brief descriptions of the different locations in Hyrule.
VIII. Hyrule Walkthrough	Walkthroughs for Hyrule Castle, Eastern Palace, Desert Palace, Tower of Hera, and Hyrule Castle Tower.
IX. The Dark World.	Brief descriptions of the different locations in the Dark World.
X. DW Walkthrough	Walkthroughs for Palace of Darkness, Flooded Palace, Skeleton Forest, Blind's Hideout, Ice Lake Cavern, Misery Mire, Turtle Rock, Tower of Ganon, and Pyramid of Power.
XI. Sources	A bibliography, of sorts.

As this guide is a work in progress, some pages will undoubtedly be blank for a long time. You can check to see which pages are completed by looking at the icon next to the link on the index page (the page before this one). If it's a red X, like this one , then the page is blank. If it's a miniature construction sign , then the page is partially completed. If it's a green check mark , then the page is complete. (That's not to say that I won't be making any changes to the page after it's completed.)

Printing the Guide

You'll probably notice that the walkthroughs use a smaller font than the rest of the guide; this is merely to save paper for those of you who wish to print them out. (I always attempt to be conservative when it comes to printing long documents.) I also decided to make this guide black-on-white, like my newer two guides (it used to be white-on-green). This should make it less complicated to print. In addition, due to the length of some of the walkthroughs, you may wish to duplex-print (print on both sides of the paper; this can be done manually if your printer doesn't have that function built-in).

–