I resently discovered a piece of ALTTP related media that I did not know about until now: Prima's Secrets of the Games The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Game Secrets for the Super NES The Unauthorized Edition by Zach Meston. The title is quite a mouthful, which is why I will be calling it "ALTTP Game Secrets" from now on. So, after learning of this books existance I did the only reasonable thing and immediately bought it.

Documentation of this book is very few and far between. The version I received has a copyright of 1993, however the Amazon listing, and several other sources lists an October 19, 1992 publishing date. I cannot find the cover of this 1992 addition, unless it is the same as the version I have. I have come to suspect that the copyright info in my book only shows the year this specific book was printed, which is highly unusual. The book appears to have been rereleased in 1997. This addition has a different cover, which Amazon and many other sites incorrectly show when referring to the 1992 version. You can tell it's inaccurate because the new cover says it "includes Game Boy Zelda", and Link's Awakening was not released when the first version was published.

Either way, this book was release just a few months after ALTTP was released in the west, which gives a fanistating view into the thoughts of people at the time. I want to use this opportunity to document the interesting things I've found as I read through this book.

The game's title is abbrivated LTP (Link To the Past) which really bugs me. This really was the wild wild west of Zelda games.

There were apparantly rumors that Nintendo would release a third 8-bit Zelda game for the NES.

This book has the shittiest (pardon my French) image quality possible. It's obvious that someone took pictures of a CRT tv, since emulation and crisp screenshots didn't exist at the time, but it's still impressive just how low quality these images are. They're also in black and white and darker area just become a barely visible dark mess. I love it.

Zach Meston makes liberal use of the midsentence (!) exclamation point.

Beamos are called "statue sentries" which is just delightful. I wouldn't be surprised if the beamos didn't get an offical name until OoT.

It says to "Pull on the gargoryle staute's pitchfork until it blows up." which is a dramatic, but not inaccurate way of putting it.

He calls the man in the death mountain cave a "middle aged man".

He calls... the weathervain... a "weathercock". Which is a word I've never heard before.

The tablets where you get the medallions are called "Mudorian monoliths". I love it.

Misery Mire is called Misery Maze.

The third dungeon is called the skull palace.

The fifith dungeon is called the ice island.

The palace of darkness is called the dark castle.

I find it interesting that all of these dungeon names are close to the actual names. Close enough that it can't be coincidence, but I've also never seen these names before so I don't know where he got them from.

The section about Goriyas was accidentally put in the Eastern Palace section.

Zach claims that the secret room in the Eastern Palace contains two anti-faeries (which he calls fire faeries), when it actually contains regular faeries.

Pentagors can be one shot by the hookshot. I always just used bombos.

The Great Faerie text has a typo. It says "sooth" instead of "soothe". The last time I played the SNES version I was too young to realize this.

The area were you get the quake medalion is called the "lake of ill omen". I don't recall seeing a name for this place anywhere before.

If you throw bombs or other items into a body of water there's a chance for fish to jump out.

The fish from when you drain the water at the field can be sold to the the merchant in Kakoriko village.

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