Chris Houlihan's Ticket to Immortality

This article is about a real guy, metaphorical ticket, and figurative Immortality. I bet I know the first question that pops into your heads: Who is Chris Houlihan?

That is not Chris Houlihan. That is somebody from Bellevue Community College. His eyes have been blacked out to hide his identity. You can click on the pic to see the source from whence I snatched this photo.

Here's the skinny dope on the real Chris Houlihan.

Back around 1990 the Nintendo Power magazine ran a contest. Nobody on teh intarnets seems to know in which issue the contest ran, or what the details of the contest were, but the winner would get to have his name featured in a secret room in the next Legend of Zelda game. Seeing that A Link to the Past came out in 1991, I guess that would make it the next Zelda game, huh?

So this person named Chris Houlihan entered and won the contest. And a secret room was created in his honor. A secret room that would be his first-class, one-way ticket to immortality. A secret room dubbed:

The Chris Houlihan Room

Problem was, the secret room was a little bit too secret. There are no known cases of anyone finding the room before teh intarnets and classic console emulation became as commonplace as such new-fangled devices as ovens that cook with microwave radiation instead of heat, and pots that brew coffee automatically. Once in the hands of emulation enthusiasts, the secret was no longer A Secret to Everybody™

It was A Secret to Nobody

Except that I hadn't heard about it until just a while ago.

And if I haven't heard of something, it's a pretty-darn-shure-good bet that you haven't either, seeing as how everyone is more ignant than I be. Yee-haw!

So let me once again be the light that shines into the cave in the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy. You all, of course, would be the people chained up in said cave. Allow me to illuminate you*.

The Chris Houlihan Room is a one-room chamber that is not readily accessible during normal gameplay of A Link to the Past. In order to reach it, you must use the "Pegasis Boots" special item to dash to a specific hole in the ground (several screens away) in what most people agree has to be under twelve seconds. Consensus seems to be that you also can't sustain any damage along the way. I don't wanna bother giving you directions, so just click here if you really, really want to know the specifics.

If you reach the entrance in the allotted time, instead of dropping down to the normal area (the sewers), you'll drop down into The Chris Houlihan Room. This is a wondrous room filled to the brim with valuable Rupees. And on the north wall is a plaque. Read it and it will say:

Oh, my bony god! Isn't that the most a-fucking-mazing thing ever!? Think of it, man! Your name, a part of the Legend of Zelda series of games… forever! No one would ever be able to take that away from you!

Oh, except when they re-released A Link to the Past for the GameBoy Advance, they took Chris Houlihan's name out of the room and removed any way to reach it except through the use of devices such as the deplorable Game Genie or by hacking through the emulation.

Sorry, Chris! Better luck with that immortality next time, huh?

*In The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, the light does not directly illuminate the chained people. Rather, it shines on the wall in front of them, and the people think that the shifting shadows thrown on that wall by the light are actually reality, not just shadows. -ed