This Is Why You Should Watch A Link to the Past At This Year’s Marathon

We’re going to have two races this year!

At the ZDi Marathon this year we’re going to be mixing things up yet again for A Link to the Past. In previous years of the marathon we have raced A Link to the Past with six or more players which created an incredibly fun and hectic competition. The wrinkle to the race was throwing a ton of players together and doling out punishments for the amount of money we raised during the race. This led to some hysterical antics like sending Mases out to McDonalds for a fast food trip, and having to do pushups, or having Blake play with his feet! The wild card was how much the chat favored a certain player, or how much they wanted to punish a player that gained the ire of the viewers.

That’s not going away this year, but there will be some changes. To make the race closer we will be having some of the not as experienced Link to the Past players competing in the ‘Mario Kart’ style complete with punishments and the like. To supplement this, we will be having another race which will be a 100% completion race between the Link to the Past veterans; Bomby, Blake and Mases. The pros will be completing the game with incredible efficiency and clear the game incredibly fast. For a glimpse at what to expect, take a look at Bomby’s recent run of the game that was broadcasted on the Zelda Dungeon Twitch channel.

Watch live video from ZeldaDungeon on Twitch

100% Run

Players to expect:
-Mases
-Blake
-Bomby

100% Run in a nutshell: Every racer will be competing to see who can beat A Link to the Past on the Wii U virtual console in the quickest time while getting 100% of the items and heart pieces. Every player is on the same playing field and has no handicaps or outside involvement.

Mario Kart Style Run

Players to expect:
-Vic
-Michelle
-Kevin
-Kara
-Josh
-Jason
-Erica

Mario Kart Style Run in a nutshell: Every racer will be playing against each other and the Twitch chat as well! Every racer will be competing to see who can beat A Link to the Past on the Wii U virtual console in the quickest time. Viewers can donate during the race to see players go out of their way to get extra heart pieces, save and quit, fight bosses with limits, and a lot more! Punishments will be doled out in tiers based on how impairing or how helpful they are to the players. Every player is familiar with Link to the Past but not on the level of the pros.

This is a great way to see a casual run of the game and a hardcore completion of the game in two separate settings. Naturally the Mario Kart style of A Link to the Past run of the game will wrap up the marathon whereas the 100% run will be on one of the earlier days. A Link to the Past is the ‘gold standard’ of 2D Zelda games and we think that playing it twice is something that the game definitely deserves. This will mark the first time in our marathon’s history where we will be playing a game twice in one marathon.

We’ll also be doing a few other firsts this year so be sure the check out the reason why you should make time to watch our run of Tri Force Heroes, Twilight Princess HD and Phantom Hourglass.