Fake Flippers

Fake flippers is a glitch that makes it possible to swim in deep water without having the flippers in Link's inventory.

The speedrun community categorizes it as a minor glitch, and its function is exclusive to the Japanese 1.0 version of the game.

Technical Details

When Link jumps into deep water, the game spawns a "splash" ancilla. At the end of the splash's animation, the game will check to see if Link has the flippers in his inventory. If he doesn't, the game will kick him back out to where he jumped in from, and if he does, it will continue allowing him to swim. But what if there were ways to interrupt the splash animation or prevent it from happening entirely? In that case, the game won't end up checking for flippers, and Link will be able to continue swimming. And that's exactly how fake flippers works.

The glitch is only possible on the Japanese 1.0 version. In subsequent revisions, the game checks for flippers on every single frame of Link swimming and will stop him from moving at all if it detects that he's in deep water without them.

Using a Screen Transition

If Link jumps into deep water near the edge of a screen transition and then immediately takes the transition after landing in the water, the splash ancilla won't reach its check for flippers. This will allow Link to swim.

If Link is jumping into the water and taking a transition to his right, Link will need to jump in the water while being 1 pixel from the screen transition. If the transition is to his left, Link can be either 1 or 2 pixels from the screen transition.

Octoballoon whirlpool fake flippers

On the octoballoon screen, there's a whirlpool that will take Link to the pond west of the Sanctuary. In most NMG speedruns, this forms part of the fastest known route to get from Desert Palace to Death Mountain's entrance.

To perform it, Link must jump in the water on the Lake Hylia screen with an X position of 0DE7. If Link moves onto 0DE8 (1 pixel to the right of 0DE7), the screen transition right to the octoballoon screen will be triggered. If Link is on 0DE6 (1 pixel to the left of 0DE7), then the trick will fail.

Fortunately there's a setup to land on ODE7 using the nearby bush:

1. First align Link on Y position 0F98. This is done using the overworld wall below the two buzzblobs. This usually happens naturally as Link is dashing to the right, but there are a couple of factors that can disrupt this (more on this below).
2. If Link is dashing, cancel his dash by pressing before his sword would cut the bush. Using left prevents him from walking up or down any, maintaining his Y position of 0F98, and we need to bush there for the next steps.
3. Walk right until Link is flush with the bush. His position should be X: 0DC0, Y: 0F98.
4. Slash and hold B. During the sword slash animation, begin holding . It's critical that you begin holding both up and right before the slash animation has completed.
5. Walk to the ledge, holding B and the whole way. After Link reaches the ledge hop, press A to do a quickhop.
6. While Link is in the air and before he hits the water, transition to holding . If successful, Link will land in the water and transition right to the octoballoon screen.
7. On the octoballoon screen, swim to the whirlpool. Be wary of the zora, as getting hit on this screen will end your run.

Figuring out potential problems

Buzzblob blues

Sometimes one of the buzzblobs will wonder down into your path on your dash to the right. If you have the boomerang or bow equipped, the fastest way to handle this is to use your weapon on the buzzblob and start another dash to the right towards the fake flipper bush after realigning with the wall below.

If you can't do that (don't have a weapon equipped or don't have enough arrows), you'll have to walk around it. This can occasionally be made even more annoying by the upper buzzblob. Once again, make sure to realign with the lower wall after you've gotten around the buzzblob.

Imperfect wall alignment

Sometimes slope dash funkiness will push Link a pixel or two off the lower wall that sets him up on Y position 0F98. It's important to keep an eye out for this, and it's also important to practice the screen and develop a feel for which dash starting positions are susceptible to this issue.

Glithy hop

If you get a glitchy hop where Link hops and splashes on land, then you're missing the quickhop. You must either:

1. Quickhop the ledge jump (this is fastest)
2. When Link touches the ledge, shift to holding until he jumps. The next step where you need to shift to holding right before Link lands in the water is the same.

Small optimizations

Instead of holding sword for the entire diagonal walk to the ledge, you can make sure Link walks with his sword held for at least 1 frame after cutting the bush and then stop holding B so Link drops his sword. Because Link walks more slowly with his sword held, this can save up to 9 frames on the walk to the ledge.

One word of caution: letting go of B on certain frames during Link's walk will throw the trick out of alignment. These frames happen on every 16th frame of Link's diagonal sword-out walking pattern. So to be safe and optimal with this strat, you want to walk for at least 1 frame with Link's sword out and walk no more than 15 frames before dropping it.

Splash Delete

TODO

Infinite Scroll

If Link is fake flipper swimming and is damaged by an enemy, the game will spawn another splash effect, and you'll be unlikely to have an available setup for avoiding the game's flipper check. This will result in one of two things:

1. If Link jumped into deep water on the screen he's currently on, he'll be kicked out of the deep water and sent back to the position he jumped from.
2. If Link jumped into deep water on a different screen from the one he's currently on, the game still tries to send him back to the position he jumped from, but there's a problem: that position doesn't exist on the current screen. This results in a situation where the player can't move without triggering an infinite scroll glitch. This is effectively a hard lock.

This can be a common pain point in NMG speedruns with the octoballoon fake flippers. Link jumps into water on the Lake Hylia screen, but he may take damage from the zora near the whirlpool on the octoballoon screen. If he's damaged by that zora, the run will be lost as there's no way to escape besides using a Save and Quit (which is banned in most NMG categories).