It has been one hell of a week and while I normally try to pace these out a bit, I’m actually both tired AND sad today, so I’m dipping back into a familiar well in order to either try to get my mind out of the negative spiral I can feel it running in or to just distract myself long enough that it is time for bed. While I am definitely still on the fence about my current short-term bedding solution, my mood has sunk perhaps even further than my physical well-being as the week has gone on for reasons that are only partly the result of work being on the rough side of things. A large part, sure, but not so large that writing about collecting Gold Skulltulas in The Legends of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask couldn’t at least help. I mean, I absolutely loved collecting those little guys. What isn’t to love about them? There’s the distinctive noise the creatures make, their incredibly unexplained appearance in your first dungeon in Ocarina of Time, the way you sometimes need to really think in order to not just kill them but collect the token they drop, and how they were a fun way to push you to really explore the land of Hyrule in OoT when you otherwise might not. Plus, having them be a part of mini-dungeons in Majora’s Mask rather than world-wide collectibles was pretty inspired given that the world of that game is fairly small, time is constantly repeating itself in way that would have made non-respawning enemies feel incredibly strange, and there’s already tons of stuff to collect so adding one more thing would turn the game into an overstuffed mess of things to pick up. Sure, they’re the cliche world-exploration-reward collectibles, but they were also some of the first versions of that type of gameplay that I encountered and they left such a mark on me that I’ve been chasing that high ever since.

As you play through The Great Deku Tree in Ocarina of Time, you meet your first Skulltulas. They’re large spider-looking creatures that have massive boney skulls on their backs that not only prevent you from damaging them with all the weapons you have available at the time, but cause them to swing around as they bounce on the webs holding them in place. You’re told by your knowledgeable fairy companion to strike at their unprotected underbellies when they spin around (ostensibly to make sure nothing is sneaking up on said unprotected underbellies), but even that can be a dangerous proposition because, if you get too close, they’ll spin around, lashing out with their legs, and knock you flying backwards. They’re dangerous and a difficult foe for a child playing one of their first games (or an over-confident older person unfamiliar with just how far-reaching that spin attack is), but you quickly learn their patterns and start taking them down with ease. Once you’ve got them handled, you jump down from the top of the dungeon to break a web beneath you, land in some water, and suddenly hear a variation on the same scratching noise the massive Skulltula’s made. You know, by then, to look up for one hanging from the ceiling, but there’s nothing there. As you look around, though, you see a weird, gold, metallic spidery-thing sitting on a grate, just out of your reach, as it spins around in a circle. You kill it, since you got the slingshot as this dungeon’s primary reward, and then have to work through how you can make yourself jump further to get it since nothing you do, not even the rolling-leap trick you figured out, will launch you far enough into the air to get it it.

You eventually get it, either by advancing further through the dungeon and moving a box around or by mashing buttons as you jump and discovering that swinging your sword in mid-air launches you extra far at the cost of making your landing less safe. You don’t forget this strange encounter, though, and now actively listen for the particular noise of a Gold Skulltula as you wander through the dungeon, out into the larger world, and then through time. It becomes a favorite activity as you play–advancing time to night so they will emerge and you can take a stab at capturing them, something that doesn’t always work out because some of them clearly need weapons or gear you won’t have until later. Only once you’ve gotten over thirty of them do you discover that there’s rewards for collecting them. Later on, you learn that they also pop out of places you could plant magic beans by accidentally dumping bugs, rather than water, on one such a spot. You find that some of them require time travel to truly acquire and others are just out of reach until you discover that there’s a second, longer hookshot. All throughout the game, as you learn, grow, travel through time, and eventually slay the big bad evil guy, you’re constantly on the lookout for these little golden guys. You know there’s one hundred of them, but you never find more than fifty, despite eventually finding a guide online and trying to go through it. Not because you don’t care or aren’t having fun, of course, but because there’s new games and you only get an hour of video game time a day.

I enjoyed finding them so much. So much of my current love for exploration and attunement to not only the visual signs but the auditory signs of video games comes from this little side-adventure in Ocarina of Time. Sure, doing the Skulltula Houses in Majora’s Mask was a much more plausible adventure and one I didn’t need a guide to complete (though I did occasionally look up a couple of Gold Skulltula locations just to save my sanity), but knowing they were all contained in a specific area took a little bit of the fun out of it for me. I liked needing to keep my eyes and ears open as I played, to look out for things I might not see but only ever hear. I mean, I still use the skills I began to develop then, now more than almost ever (I’m just gonna set aside all the traumatic stuff from my childhood and my related hypervigilance for obvious reasons) because I’ve got surround sound headphones and can use the audio cues from most games to locate stuff or react to enemies I can’t see. All of which is great, but what really made me want to hunt them in OoT and MM, and thereby actively hone the skills I used, was just how happy the people were when you freed them from the curse. They event stayed happy, too, waving their warms and cheering you on with a big goofy smile on their faces. It felt nice to be able to help people. Sure, the rewards were great and eventually getting unlimited money when I finally played all the way through Master Quest in college was cool, but it really just felt nice to help those poor cursed people. It still does. Helping people in video games feels great, as does helping people in real life. It’s just easier in video games because I don’t need to worry about my boundaries as much. I can just relax, help people, and let my empathy lead me on fun little side adventures that are almost never as fun as collecting all those Gold Skulltulas.