-I didn't think the game stood a chance of making me lose my love for it, and it didn't, so it's probably locked in third or fourth all time on my favorites list after Yoshi's Island and Super Mario Bros. 3, but possibly it could change places around with Ocarina Of Time. ALTTP is a little closer to my heart (being a Super NES cartridge and all, the memories are more precious), but it's possible that OOT is a slightly better *game*. Possible. I'd have to replay OOT to be entirely sure. I may do that, but I've been far more eager to replay ALTTP over the years.
-I blew threw the whole thing in, I think, approximately nine days of gameplay. This is remarkably on-pace for me, considering that last year for my 40th birthday I decided to play my all-time favorite game Yoshi's Island all the way through (typically I do a ritual thing where I play Worlds 1 and 2 every fall, but then stop) and ended up taking over four or five months to complete it, not due to any difficulty (though "Kamek's Revenge" is still a horseb*tch) but because I kept putting it aside. That didn't happen at all this time, which is nice. Also because I'm going to replay the first two Resident Evil games for the PS1 as a little anniversary thing.
-I know you don't need the Cane of Byrna (though it does come in handy in a few dungeon rooms with those annoying fire bars), the Bombos Medallion (good for torching rooms with too many enemies in them, admittedly), or the Magic Cape (worthless except for helping you find one measly heart piece) to complete the game, but I'm also convinced now you don't need the golden (level 4) Master Sword, or the Red Mail to complete the game either. I wonder if I could get through the game with just 10 bombs and 30 arrows, without going to the Lake Hylia pond to blow money on pushing up to 50 bombs and 70 arrows. The arrows I probably don't need, but you use LOTS of bombs in Ganon's Tower so probably I'd have to do that one.
-The main takeaway from this playthrough is the realization that the meat of the game is now and always was the Dark World, particularly the dungeons. Not the Light World. Playing through the Light World brought back a lot of memories and I overturned every single stone in it to be sure, but it's friggin' PUD. A cake walk. The only times I was in danger of dying in the Light World was when Link (I'm sorry, the "HERO of HYRULE"--the game's liner notes and actual in-game text never calls him "Link" once, probably due to the infamously nonsensical chronology/back story behind the series), anyway, when Link has only three Heart Containers and when you run a slight risk of danger getting killed by those big disgusting pea-like boulders falling all over the lower part of Death Mountain. The three major dungeons in the Light World collectively took me approximately one hour total to play through and I wasn't speed-running or anything like that. By contrast, I timed myself and Ganon's Tower (Level 8) took me 59 minutes, and would have taken about 45 if I hadn't retraced my steps on the first floor to find this one dumb treasure room that I kept missing.
-All eight dungeons in the Dark World are masterfully designed and I did not easily remember how to get through any of them, requiring actual thought for all of the puzzles. I'm not sure which of these I had the fondest memories of as a kid--possibly the Ice Lake dungeon (Level 5)--but now I'd have to list Misery Mire (Level 6) as probably my favorite, a really awesomely well put together maze (with a cool green color scheme to boot), though Ganon's Tower's first floor is still probably the most challenging part of the game (and of course, it's still significantly easier than the final dungeons of the two NES Zelda games). I really appreciated the Palace of Darkness (Level 1) a lot too, not only because I hadn't remembered my way through it but because it's immediately apparent upon playing through it again that the game has stepped up its, er, game, in terms of difficulty and dungeon design by the time you get there. For some reason though, the first images that popped into my head when I actually think about ALTTP's dungeons are either the first room of the Eastern Palace (due to the omninous, amusingly desperate-sounding music) or, I don't know why this is, the Hook Shot room in the Swamp Palace (Level 2).
-Aside from the dungeons, I think the part of the game that excited me most as the kid was when the Dark World opens up to you after you get the Magic Hammer in the Palace of Darkness and can hammer those stupid lavender stakes down and start exploring the rest of the Dark World for real, I think you can do Village of Outcasts (Level 4) before the Swamp Palace (Level 2) and Skull Woods (Level 3) if you want. I didn't, but it's cool that you can. I still found this aspect/section of the game very fun. It's also wonderful when you get the Titan's Mitt in Level 4 and can finally get that poor dumb dwarf guy back to his partner to get the red level 3 Master Sword, and that fourth bottle that's in the locked chest in the Village of Outcasts, among other things.
-My favorite special item in the game is (always was) the Fire Rod, though visually the actual "fireball" that you shoot looks like a blot of red diarrhea and you don't actually have to use it that much (and hell, I don't remember using the Magic Wand much in the first NES Zelda either.) I didn't use it or any other special weapon that much anyway. I remember as a kid using it arbitrarily all the time just because I love fire/lightning/ice type weapons (or spells) in any kind of old game. If the whole fire/thunder/ice thing is a holdover from Dungeons & Dragons, then I'm genuinely sorry that I laughed at all the "he ran out of hit points" and "he was found dead in a poorly lit basement next to ramen noodles and Mountain Dew" jokes that went around when E. Gary Gygax died all those years ago. Thanks, Gygax. Has anyone ever considered naming a game "Gygax"? That name sounds like an NES game!
-You know what the hardest dungeon rooms are in the game, for me? No, not the infamous Ice Lake switch debacle (more on this in a second); no, not the Ganon's Tower first-floor room with the invisible floor; nope, it's going to have to be the silly room with the four torches, or the poorly lit room with the platform maze, in Turtle Rock (Level 7). This is because I kept screwing up the control of the moving block-platform thingy and going the wrong damned way!!! It's my own damn fault!
-On a more negative note, I found myself hardly using the Bow & Arrow at all, which you'd think of being kind of weird, but it's so slow and clunky!! Watch that arrow slow as molasses go across the screen! So many "projectile" weapons aren't as useful once you have the Master Sword and can shoot beams, and you don't use the Boomerang as much either. I used the Boomerang zillions of times as a kid.
-There's also the matter of the Cane of Somaria, which I thought was cool as hell as a kid, making those orange blocks and tricking enemies with them, but which now I only used to solve some puzzles, though there's one puzzle I can't imagine solving without it--the Ice Lake dungeon switch thing towards the end that most gamers consider the most obnoxious puzzle in the game, and which I have only solved properly the first time as a 10 year old kid. That's amazing that I was able to do that as a 10 year old and I don't even remember the proper sequence of rooms you're supposed to pass through in order to do it, I'm sure it's something I could commit to memory, but I didn't--I just did Level 6 before Level 5 and used the Cane of Somaria in all subsequent playthroughs after my first time. Eff that!!!
-The closest any boss came to killing me was that moth guy at the end of the Skull Woods, because there are moving spike balls all over his room and it causes massive 16-bit slowdown on the screen. I didn't actually die at any point during the game and I always have potions and stuff, but I'd love to know if anyone has bothered to make any "zero hits" tutorial videos for that boss. By contrast, Agahnim at the top of Ganon's Tower is perversely easier when there's three of him; you just use the spin-blade thing and whatever the three of him fire at you will hit the real Agahnim. (BTW, I thought Agahnim's diamond on his headgear was his nose or his mouth or something as a kid, and was pleased to find out with the advent of the Internet that I'm not the only one to make that mistake.) I also had to laugh at the eyeball boss at the end of Level 6, bouncing all over the screen like a moron.
-Nitpick time: if I had to whine about anything in A Link To The Past, aside from the Light World being a bit "pud," it's that some parts of the game are a little spare or empty. I like the layout of Skull Woods (dungeon with multiple above-ground entrances, very nice integration there) but there's nothing in it aside from those entrances. Similarly, I can remember as a kid being HUGELY excited to finally get to the blocked-off Misery Mire through that one southwestern warp tile, and finding the rain all over the swamp being really evocative, but nowadays actually exploring the area and checking/finding everything in it probably took me all of eight minutes. By contrast, I blew probably an hour exploring all those caves in the Light World Death Mountain, and a lot of those annoyingly repetitive roads to nowhere, or just lame treasure. I do like how creepy both Skull Woods and the Dark World Death Mountain are, though, even if both are very empty. That's a cool holdover from when I was a kid. I recall how when you first accidentally visit the Dark World and find that one guy kicking the ball-person around Spectacle Rock, you can only see the tip of the front of Ganon's Tower and it's flashing like that at you It's eerie! So is the lack of a bridge from the lower west to the lower east Dark World Death Mountain, as are the weird flashing pink lightning clouds and centaur enemies on the top part of the Dark World Death Mountain. (Those guys almost killed me too!)
-The funniest thing in the game, although I'm probably the only one that feels this way, is that there are two houses in the Village of Outcasts that have 300-Rupee treasure chests in them, and they're just yours for the taking, they're not even hidden. Hilarious, considering that there are thieves running around all over the place aboveground. I also find it amusing that there are like four "hints" from various characters as to where to find the Ice Rod, something that you shouldn't really need help to do.
-The ending sequence ranks third on my list of the most heartwarming SNES ending sequences, right after Super Castlevania IV and Super Mario World. Such feel-good vibes.
-Final tally was 21 games in the "quest history," which I guess is making note of how many times you Save and Quit. This means that a little "21" is plastered over my red-mailed Link on the "Select a Game" screen, whereas slots 1 and 2 (I chose slot 3 for this playthrough) say only 8 and 9 plays, respectively. This was because at one point my SNES randomly glitched and reset itself, causing me to lose progress (had to replay Hyrule Castle Tower and the first parts of the Dark World again) so I got paranoid and did far more Save & Quits than usual. That being said, I don't think I'd ever knocked out the whole game in little over a week before. My first playthrough as a 10 year old probably took me over a year, now that I think about it!!