The Ghost and the Last Seashells
With the flippers, there are few things Link can do before getting far from the water. First, to the west of the dungeon, is a cave with Manbo, child of the Sun Fish. Manbo offers to teach Link a song for his ocarina, and the dancing fish and eye rolls make for an entertaining sequence. (OH!) This is quite a useful song, as playing it will warp Link to Manbo’s Pond, just outside of Crazy Tracy’s, or if in a dungeon, back to the dungeon entrance. To the east of the last dungeon is a cave with a heart piece hidden underwater, and there’s another one in the castle moat.
By time Link finishes rounding up all that stuff, he’s probably being stalked by a ghost. The ghost is rather insistent, demanding every so often to be taken to its home, and making a noise every time the screen changes so Link will remember he’s there. The noise gets old, fast. So Link takes the ghost to its home, where it looks around for a while and becomes even sadder than it was before, asking Link to take it to is grave. The grave is the one that’s apart from the cemetery, and once the ghost is there, it tells Link to look under a jar in its home. Link returns to the home and finds an eighteenth seashell. While in the area, Link gets another seashell, hidden on a small island near the ghost’s house. The Mad Batter makes another appearance in a flooded cave in the area, this time doubling Link’s bomb capacity.
The next stop is Animal Village, where Marin’s still entertaining everyone with her song. Inside one of the houses is a goat who expected Link to bring her a hibiscus, which he now has thanks to Papahl. She takes the flower and asks Link to deliver a letter to Mr. Write near the forest. Write gladly receives the letter and shows Link a picture of his lovely pen pal… Princess Peach. Link is too kind to tell him the truth, and takes a broom as a reward for his service. The broom goes to Mrs. Ulrira in Mabe Village, who gives Link a fishing hook.
While in Mabe Village, now is the time to buy the bow if Link hasn’t already bought or stolen it. He can also wrap up another goal now: on a previously-inaccessible island in the waters leading to Key Cavern, there’s a seashell hiding under a bush. With that last seashell grabbed, Link can go to Seashell Mansion and get the level 2 sword, which doubles his attack strength and can shoot sword beams while he’s at full health1.
We can’t quite wrap up the trading sequence yet, but it’s getting closer. In the bay around the dungeon, there’s a mermaid who’s lost her swimsuit or necklace, depending on the game version. The official English version is necklace, so we’ll go with that. Anyway, under the bridge the owl statue earlier alluded to, there’s a fisherman, who takes the fishing hook and catches the necklace for Link, which he returns to the mermaid and gets a mermaid scale.
Catfish’s Maw
I don’t know. If this is supposed to be a catfish, it’s a pretty abstract one. Actually, it looks kind of like the Anerus from Adventure of Link. Bloopers join the list of Mario characters who make an appearance in the game, attacking Link during the side-scrolling segments.
This dungeon has two minibosses. Link has to fight Master Stalfos four times because he flees the first three before Link can finish him off. He also steals the dungeon’s treasure before Link can get it, so it’s not until the fourth battle – which is annoyingly well-hidden – that Link gets the hookshot. The second miniboss is a pair of Gohmas, whose attacks have simplified; they can only shoot beams when their eyes are open, and sometimes they charge instead of shooting beams. Either way, their weakness remains the same: shoot the eye.
The final boss is Slime Eel, which punches a bunch of holes in the room, sticks its tail up through the hole in the floor, and pokes its head out of the ones on the wall. Link has to drag the head out of the wall holes to be able to attack its weak spot. Slime Eel seems almost gleeful upon defeat, taunting Link that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, hinting at some secret about the island. An island secret is further hinted at by the guiding voice when Link picks up the Wind Marimba, pointing him to a shrine.
Next: The truth.