The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is probably one of the most popular games for speedrunning. One of the many well-known tricks in the game is that Ruto, the Zora princess you need to rescue from inside Lord Jabu-Jabu’s belly, has a hitbox if you throw her. As you can imagine, this can be used for many different things all the time you have her. But you don’t have her for very long — unless, of course, you hack her in.
That’s exactly what Vidya James, a member of Zeldathon, Randomizer runner, and occasional speedrunner, has done. James wanted to know if you could use the Zora princess to defeat Ganon at the end of the game just by throwing her at him. So he hacked her into the practice ROM of the game. The results, as you might expect, are pretty hilarious. You can watch the results above. Who needs the Master Sword when you can just, y’know, chuck a Zora at someone?
That’s not the end of James’ experiments, though. Taking on The Great King of Evil himself at the end of Ganon’s castle, James used Ruto once again to prevail against evil.
No need to reflect magic back at Ganondorf — just throw a Zora at him. And then make sure she glitches into the treasure chest mid-throw so when Ganondorf falls onto the floor, he takes continuous damage. Ruto has the same damage flags as a Deku nut and the Kokiri sword, so every hit she inflicts does 1 damage. Ganondorf has 40 health points, so that’s a lot of Ruto hits.
So… there could be a new speedrun category in this, right? Ocarina of Time w/ Ruto Any%? We’d like to see that. Not sure that Ruto would appreciate being thrown around all the time, though.
What do you think of this discovery? Would you use Ruto as a weapon in Ocarina of Time? Let us know in the comments!