Released on the launch day of the Wii in November 2006, and in December for the GameCube, Twilight Princess satiated every Zelda fan's desire for hot and sweaty Goron wrestling. Notable differences between the Wii and Gamecube versions include the controllers and the east/west flip of the game world. In the Wii version you can also perform actions never before seen in a Zelda game such as swinging your sword and throwing a boomerang.
Runs done on the Gamecube version:
Runs done on the Wii version:
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Gamecube version single-segment: 4:47 by Daniel Hart.
Author's comments:
It took about 4 or 5 months of attempts to finally get this run done. I'm not entirely happy with the run so I'll probably be beating this time sometime in the future, but for now I need a break from TP.
In a run this long you have to go with consistency over speed, since screw ups can end up costing a lot of time. In a lot of tricks and in general I took the extra second to make sure I didn't screw up.
This section went really well. I got the blue rupee at the begining which is about a 1/40 chance. My goat herding was pretty quick as well. I pull off the gate glitch first try, which isn't too hard. Breaking open the cage could have went better, but it wasn't too bad. My 2nd goat herding came in at 24 seconds, which is definitely a keeper, I would start over if I got over 30 seconds.
I had a minor screw up when trying to jump to the last lever, I fell into the water but it only cost me a second. I don't do the midna text skip because it only saves 1 or 2 seconds and I can easily mess it up which costs quite a few seconds. Everything went pretty good here.
I don't do the trick to jump onto the roof because it's such a small time saver and is pretty hard to pull off. Inside the first house there is a glitch where you won't make the midna jump and I don't know what causes it. It doesn't happen very often but of course it happened here.
Had a few minor mistakes on the tears, but nothing too bad. I make a pretty big mistake on the North Faron twilight messengers. Sometimes messengers do not cooperate and will just stand around. As soon as I locked on I knew I was going to hit the wall, but by then it was too late. It cost me a decent amount of time so I was considering restarting, but since I was doing so well otherwise I kept on going.
Not very many mistakes for most of the Forest Temple, even got a pretty quick Ook fight. Had my first major facepalm moment when I messed up the LJA to the boss door. Apparently if the boomerang is over the tree branch you don't get a LJA, too bad I can't see if it's over it or not. I suck it up and keep going only to make another pretty big mistake on Diababa. For some reason bombs randomly don't hit his face. So it missed and I freak out and make a couple more dumb mistakes. I finally beat him and still have a decent time going, so I decide I'll proceed onwards.
More boring tears. I really hate collection quests in games, and tears are no exception. Had some minor mistakes of course, tears can be a pain sometimes.
A lot of boring horse back riding, hard to screw that up. The King Bulbin battle is quite random, but I happened to get lucky on him and got a quick fight. I probably shouldn't have done the Epona slide at the base of Death Mountain but I couldn't resist. Sumoing with the Goron was a little sloppy but it's also pretty random. Random events in a SS suck.
Small mistake at the begining when I miss the jump to the platform you have to lower, only cost a few seconds though. Major screw up in the 2nd room, bam right into the lava. Needless to say I was pretty upset at this point. In the 3rd room I mess up glitching through the wall, which angered me even further. I use a LJA to get over to the blue switch rather than jump slashing, since the jump slash is inconsistent and I've never messed up the LJA. I miss the railing when setting up the last LJA, but that was pretty minor. I was going to restart my run after GM, but luckily Paraxade convinced me to keep going, so I did.
Ouch, pretty big mistake on the Kargaroc, I missed the first jump onto him. It's funny because that has never happened in any of my other SS attempts. I accidently go to my item menu when trying to open the map because the Gamecube D-pad sucks something fierce and does that sometimes. I always hesitate on twilight messengers because if I screw up it costs quite a bit of time. Tears went surpsingly well, which is weird since almost all of my attempts had major mistakes during Lanayru tears.
Lakebed is really easy to screw up, since it has so many tricks you have to do. Fortunately I kept the mistakes to a minimum. I forgot to turn the stairs before I raised the water, but that's not a big deal. I almost fell off doing the LJA to the switch but managed to grab the ledge, only costing me a second or two. I don't LJA through the big room before the boss key since it's extremely risky and I always screw it up when I'm doing a SS. Right before the boss key I accidently let go of the grapple point, which would have been a mistake, but apparently it just let me go through the grating, which saved me time. I don't even know if my route back to the boss is optimal, but it's the only way I know of. Only had a small mistake on Morpheels second phase, nothing too bad. Overall Lakebed went pretty well.
This is probably my least favorite part of the game. All you do is run around as a wolf, what fun. I absoultely hate the part with the torch, if your head is turned even slightly it won't let you jump on the ledges. So what happened is I killed the bats so I could climb up, but my torch ran out right as I got up to the web. Awesome.
This part's really easy. Didn't make any noticeable mistakes.
I accidently paused right before shooting to the desert, this always happens at least once per attempt, so I've learned to accept it. I had minimal mistakes besides the pause though, since this part isn't hard.
Had a little trouble with the 2nd poe. I was trying to hold B to do the dark energy attack but I kept doing normal attacks, pretty frustrating. The fier bubble hit me out of the lag when I was turning the wall, which actually helped and saved a second or two. I always screw up the room with the invisible rats and this run was no exception. I was supposed to grab the arrows right before Death Sword but I forgot to, which is why I run out later in the run. I really hate the big spinner room, I accidently went the wrong way at the start and it ended up costing me a decent amount of time. I got knocked off spinner tracks a few times which looks bad but it's hard to tell when you're supposed to go. Stallords first phase is very random. The stallos were not nice on this day and sent me all the wrong ways. I easily single cycled the 2nd phase, though.
When I jump off of Zora's Domain it somehow gets counted as a void and respawns me. That has NEVER happened to me before, and I've played a lot of TP. Very lame. Other than that the journey to Snowpeak Ruins went well.
This is why I need so many heart containers for this run. Between the bomb boost and the freezard skip, I can lose a lot of health, depending on how many tries they take. I also have to keep this health through CitS since I don't get any heals between Snowpeak and CitS. I got the bomb boost in 3 tries and the freezard skip only took one. However, after I did the freezard skip I had trouble opening the door, costing me a few seconds and some health. Single cycling the armored lizard is incredibly easy on the GC version, so I had no problems with that.
CitS early took 2 tries, which isn't too bad. I'm so glad this quest is skipped now, since it was a really annoying collection quest.
This is probably the hardest temple in the game, since it has a lot of voids you can fall into easily, which I do a few times. I really suck at aiming on the GC version, which should be fairly obvious seeing me try to hit the crystal at the start of CitS. When trying to jump down to the mini boss room, I screw up and accidently jump into the void, woops. So much for being careful and screwing up anyway. The mini boss fight was probably my biggest mistake of the run. Not only is it a huge mistake, but it was a hilarious one. I didn't realize I knocked the blue platform down and also didn't know I was running right at it. I was laughing at myself pretty badly after that one. You get to see my incredibly bad aim with the double claw shots throughout the rest of the temple. The rest of the temple goes pretty well, even the annoyingly long Argarok battle.
The first Hologram Zant fight wasn't very good, I screwed up and missed a slash, so he took an extra cycle to kill. The second Hologram Zant fight went much better than the first. Pretty major screw up on the room after 2nd Hologram Zant. I mess up the throw a couple times and the hand gets to the sol. I have to kill the hand so it won't pick it up, then the twilight messenger knocks the sol out of the groove so I go back down and somehow get turned into a wolf. I manage to get out of the bad situation thankfully. I take a lot of hits for some reason and come near death, but I make it to Zant without dying. The Zant fight went ok, the last phase definitely could have been better, but it's hard to get those jump slashes to land on him.
As soon as I equip my bomb arrows I notice I don't have enough arrows for the rest of HC, but I decide I'll just find some in a pot or something. One of the stupid goblins wouldn't come after me and just stood behind the gate wasting my time, argh I hate it when they do that. I break some pots and find some arrows, thankfully. I screw up on the spinner tracks and get knocked off, which sucks. Puppet Zelda and Beast Ganon both went good, un fortunately the last 2 phases weren't so good. What a great way to end the run, a crappy horseback fight and a crappy final Ganon.
Thanks to Paraxade and Tpfox for any questions I had and just general support. I was constantly pestering them throughout all of my practice runs. Thanks to all the contributers in the TP thread, there's too many to name. Thanks to DJGrenola, Radix, Nate, and Mike for all the work they do on this site.
Wii version with save warping: 5:39 by Daniel Hart, done in 43 segments.
Author's comments:
This run, like most any run, especially the first, has mistakes. I'd say 5-7 minutes could be cut off with a lot of improvements, but I couldn't see more than that without some new breaks. The biggest improvement would come from Segment 31, using the clawshot to jump slash to get over the first couple rooms. I'm too dumb to be able to do it, so hopefully the next person will be able to pull it off.
Some Highlights of the run:
There are 2 versions of Twilight Princess: The Gamecube version and the Wii version. The Wii version loads faster which makes a pretty huge difference in the long run. So much that I don't think the few neat tricks on the GC can make up for.
I'd just like to say that the remote and the nun chuk will cause a lot of frustration in a speed run for the Wii. I've failed many, many attempts at segments due to unresponsiveness of the controller. Sometimes I wish I would have done the speed run on the GC version, but I've grown used to the remote failing on me.
Thanks to SDA for the amazing site. Without SDA I would have never even thought about speed running Twilight Princess.