Game State

The game state is the overall state that the game's world is in, and it proceeds through four different phases as the player progresses through the game. Changes to the state have significant impact on the overworld and gameplay.

Technical Details

The game state is stored at address $FC35. This address can have values:

• 00 - Opening of the game
• 01 - Uncle reached in passage where he gives Link the fighter sword
• 02 - Zelda rescued by bringing her to the Sanctuary
• 03 - Agahnim1 defeated

The player need not progress through them in linear order. For example, if the player uses glitches, they can rescue Zelda before talking to Uncle. This will advance the game state to 02.

States

Opening

In this game state, the Light World is in the midst of a stormy night. There are few sprites on the overworld save for the gold guards who prevent players from exploring any areas outside of Link's House and Hyrule Castle. This is something the community commonly calls the rain state, although this technically isn't a unique state of the game to itself as it encompasses both this opening state and the next one.

In addition to being a rain state, the opening state has two unique features:

1. The inability to save the game
2. The invisible Zelda telepathy follower

No saving

The player can't save the game at all in this state. If the player quits using the S&Q menu, nothing will be saved. On file select, Link will be back in bed in the opening cutscene.

If Link is indoors, the player can't even open the S&Q menu, and pressing Select will have no effect.

Zelda telepathy

This state features an invisible follower: Zelda. As soon as Link's Uncle leaves their house after the game's opening cutscene, she will begin a 3,571 frame (59 seconds and 31 frames) timer. It ticks down towards 0 every frame of normal gameplay (ie. Link not in pause menu or screen transition etc.). When it reaches 0, the invisible Zelda follower will activate a cutscene where Zelda telepathically contacts Link to give him hints about the secret passage. After she speaks to him, the timer will start over and the process will loop. She will leave Link after he reaches another state.

Due to how most categories want to talk to Uncle immediately, the cutscene is typically not a factor. But some categories don't immediately visit Uncle, and in those runs, the Zelda telepathy cutscene is something that can impact the player or the route. The cutscene costs the player roughly 7 seconds each time it happens.

Uncle Sword

This state begins after Link speaks with his dying Uncle and receives the fighter sword in the secret passage to the castle. Players gain the ability to Save & Quit, and the Zelda telepathy follower leaves. However, the overworld remains in the rain state.

Very often this state is immediately advanced to even in major glitch categories that can bypass the gold guards on the rainy overworld and go exploring. This is partially because of the sword, but also because the Zelda telepathy cutscene is very slow, and time lost to it quickly accumulates the longer it takes the player to move off the opening state.

Zelda rescued

After the player brings Zelda to the Sanctuary, this game state will begin. This ends the stormy night, and Hyrule will be sunny. The overworlds in the Light and Dark Worlds will be populated with their usual sprites (NPCs, enemies, heart pieces).

The player gains the ability to Save & Quit and choose Link's spawn point on the overworld. Be default, the Sanctuary and Link's house locations will be unlocked. If the player has used glitches to rescue the Lost Old Man on Death Mountain before this, then that spawn point will be unlocked as well.

Agahnim1 defeated

After Link defeats Agahnim1, a few changes come to the Light World overworld.

• On many screens in the Light World, more and more powerful enemies will be present.
• The tree that the Lumberjacks were working on can be bonked to reveal a secret passage to the Lumberjack heart piece.
• The snitches in Kakariko Village will no longer be there.
• Many interactable overworld elements will change. This includes things like Tree Pull spawns and bonk prizes.

Players will also unlock the Pyramid spawn when they die or Save & Quit while in the Dark World.

Rain State

The "rain state" is the community's umbrella term for the phase of the overworld during the first two states: the opening and Uncle sword. The dominant aesthetic feature of this state is the stormy overworld, but there are several mechanical aspects to this state that are important for speedrunners:

• Impassable gold guards prevent Link from exploring areas outside of Link's house and Hyrule Castle. Without the use of major glitches, there's nothing meaningful to do besides proceed through the game's linear path until Zelda is rescued and the rain is cleared.
• If the player does use glitches to leave Hyrule Castle before completing it, they'll find the Light World very empty. There will be no enemies, NPCs, or heart pieces outdoors on the overworld. Entrances to the underworld can still be used normally, and indoors there will be enemies, NPCs, etc. This is only an outdoor overworld effect.
• If the player goes to the Dark World while in the rain, they will encounter the sprites that exist in the Light World during the Zelda Rescued state. The sprites will typically have broken/glitchy graphics because they'll have access to incorrect graphical data by being rendered in the Dark World. An example is that on Dark Death Mountain, boulders will rain from the sky. But because Link is in the Dark World, and the boulders aren't normally there, the game is unprepared to draw them. So the sprite that spawns will look like a pair of Lynels but will behave exactly like the boulders on Light World's Death Mountain. Again, things are all normal on the underworld, and this is an outdoors-only effect.

Clearing the rain state is frequently an early goal even in categories that allow the full use of glitches. This is because save warps save a lot of time, and the player won't have them until they reach the Zelda Rescued or Agahnim Defeated states.