Lost at the Bottom of the Well

A Little Bit of Info
Do you know what Ocarina of Time is? I'm sure you do. This 3D Nintendo 64 Zelda game is a classic among the gaming community. Another well-known thing about Ocarina of Time is the sheer terror that lies within it's cartridge.

With such horrors such as ReDeads, Wallmasters, Bongo-Bongo, and other dark undead monstrosities, the game has some disturbing enemies. Mix that with eerie music, dark atmospheres, and the feeling of isolation in each dungeon, the game gets just plain horrifying. But one thing that seems to truly stand out as the game's most terrifying object is the dreaded Dead Hand.

How I Got OoT
I have Ocarina of Time and it's "cousin", Majora's Mask. I didn't get them from some shady flea market or some old creep who mysteriously disappeared, in fact, Majora's Mask is just on my Wii as part of Virtual Console. But I do physically own Ocarina of Time.

At was a few years back, when GameStop still had Gamecube games. I noticed they had Ocarina of Time/Master Quest for Gamecube, and I was mystified by it. I never knew that OoT was re-released for Gamecube, much less that it had Master Quest, and even much MORE less that Master Quest existed. But I figured it out then.

I remember playing OoT on my brother's Wii as a Virtual Console game when I was younger, and the game was amazing to me. There was no way I'd miss the chance to have it again. There was no way I could get a N64, and I didn't have wireless internet at the time to get it on Virtual Console. So, I bought the game.

Into the Well
Just last week I decided to go back to it. Since my purchase of the game, I had learned a lot more about it and I really wanted to face the so-called "Dead Hand". I sent Link from an adult back to a child, and then went straight to Kakiriko Village, where Dead Hand secretly resided.

I entered the well and I was spontaneously greeted with it's horror, as the first room had some poor soul's remains and a giant Skulltula, a spider with an enormous skull for a body. After a while of exploring the torture chamber...I mean the "well", I made it to Dead Hand's lair. Then things started getting creepier.

As Link opened the door, the first thing I realized was that there weren't any of Dead Hand's weird arms protruding from the ground. I couldn't use the Lens of Truth to find him because you get that from beating him. So, I just decided to play around a bit. Dead Hand's lair seemed to be made of countless corpses, and I investigated it. As I was walking around the little room, I accidentally slashed the wall.

To my surprise, it played the sound of when you damage an enemy, and a few drops of blood came forth from the wall. My curiosity got the better of my and I continued to hack away with the Kokiri Sword, and then I...I guess I "defeated" the wall. It broke away and revealed a tunnel that wasn't on the map. As it opened up, it played the sound of when you find secrets ( you know the little jingle ever since Zelda 1 on the NES) and it was followed by the sound of a ReDead's scream.

I was always terrified of that damned sound.

The Secret Tunnel
The game crashed when I walked into the tunnel, so I decided to take a break from the game. I tried to find out about this secret tunnel, but I didn't find a thing. I checked the Zelda Wiki, Walkthroughs, even official guides, but the tunnel was not there. "It must be a glitch," I told myself. That would explain why the game crashed. So that's what I deemed it: a glitch.

After that, I realized that I still hadn't beaten the Bottom of the Well. Dead Hand still roamed and I still didn't have the Lens of Truth. So, I went back and rebooted the game. Now, in OoT/Master Quest, it gives you a choice to play OoT or the Master Quest version when you start the game. This time it didn't. It immediately sent me to the original OoT. Since that was what I was going to play, I just ignored it.

I was back at the Bottom of the Well, and I went back to where Dead Hand was. Unfortunately, the game glitched again, so he still wasn't there. But the tunnel was back, and this time already opened. With the door to Dead Hand's lair locked, all I could do was reboot the game once more or try entering the tunnel again. So I rebooted the game.

This time it immediately sent me to Dead Hand's room, and this time he was there. He had already emerged from the ground, there weren't any hands, and he didn't even try to attack me. He tunnel was open again. I approached Dead Hand to attack him, but a text box appeared. It was Dead Hand speaking.

"Enter the tunnel, hero of time,"he said. Then, he buried himself under the ground again. I was getting confused now. Was this something that Nintendo put in the game as a secret? Did it have a slim chance of happening and by my luck, it happened? Well, I didn't care. I just followed what Dead Hand said. I found a secret new dungeon. That's right, a whole dungeon, not just more to the Bottom of the Well.

The temple's name was "Lost". That's it. Not "Temple of the Lost" or anything like that. Well, actually no, there was some more, but it was just jumbled, unintelligible pixels. I was going to get through "Lost".

The first thing I noticed was that Link seemed shocked as he entered this place. Also, instead of the dark atmosphere of the Bottom of the Well, everything here was clouded in a crimson tint. Right as I took my first steps, I was bombarded by a barrage of Wallmasters. There were five, and they each grabbed Link. What happened next was just awful.

Each Wallmaster didn't just grab Link, they each grabbed one of his limbs. Two grabbed his arms, two grabbed his legs, and the last one grabbed his head. I knew what was going to happen next, and sure enough, it happened.

Link screamed like he does when he falls from a great height. The Wallmasters all went in different directions, and Link's screaming was halted. I saw his torso just lying on the ground, as blood trickled from where his other limbs once were.

"The fuck?!" I asked myself. It was just sick! How could Nintendo do something like this? I began thinking other unanswerable questions like this when I saw something else. There was a Poe, a ghost enemy, over what was left of Link. The Poe was clad in green, and it...was Link. Then, a cutscene began playing.

The three goddesses of the Zelda universe, Farore, Din, and Nayru appeared around Poe Link. Link seemed to plead and beg to them. A text box appeared, and the conversation went like this:

"Hero of Time, you have failed and we can not help you."

"You have entered the realm of lost souls, from which we cannot revive you."

"You must remain here for eternity. Goodbye."

The three goddesses disappeared, and Poe Link was alone again. He floated there, hanging his head and crying. The camera panned out slowly from him, then faded to black. The only sound left was Link sobbing quietly, and then that faded away too. The screen read "Game Over. There is no continuing this time."

It sent me back to the main menu, and I tried getting back into my file,but...

It had been deleted.

I tried to put things together. What did the game mean by "realm of lost souls"? I realized what it meant. I realized why there was no retrying, and no rescuing by the goddesses. I knew that he really was lost this time.

Link was in hell.

Epilogue
But why? How? Why would the game have something like that in it? It fit the game so well, there was no way a hacker could've done it. But, it was also so edgy that Nintendo never could've done it.

Later, I decided it would just be best to put the game back in it's box, return it to GameStop, and get it out of my mind. I did just that, and as I gave the game back to the clerk at the store ( even though it took a lot of arguing since they didn't sell Gamecube games anymore), he said something I'd never forget.

"Why are you returning this great game? Did you lose or something?"

Yes. I had lost, and I was lost.