I'm sure all of you are familiar with the super secret room in Zelda: Link to the Past called the Chris Houlihan room, right?  And all of you know that Mr. Houlihan got that secret room named after him for winning a Nintendo Power contest to have his name put into a future Nintendo game.  At the time of the contest it didn't say which game, so I bet Mr. Houlihan figured he'd just be in some minor game or something.  Little did he realize his name would be forever immortalized in what many consider the best Zelda game of all time (even over Ocarina of Time).

That being said, does anyone know whatever happened to Chris Houlihan?  I'm curious.  Does he have a MySpace or Facebook page or something?

did you google him?

There are 80+ "Chris Houlihan"s on Facebook, so I'm assuming he's there somewhere. Did you watch the Pop Fiction clip on GT about the room? xD

I just did a search and I found out that the Wii version renamed the room the top secret room. Thats pretty queer.

I don't know about this room. Explain please.

It was a contest that nintendo ran in the early 90's and it was for whoever won, they would put their name in an upcoming game. Low and behold, it was zelda for the SNES.

So how do we know which one's THE Chris Houlihan???  And I wonder how many are claiming to be him?

I just did in the original post.

I just did a search and I found out that the Wii version renamed the room the top secret room. Thats pretty queer.

although that is queer the contest wasn't for the wii version.

Why would someone pretend to be THE Chris Houlihan?

So he could get laid, duh.

edit: who can think of the best Chris Houlihan pickup line?

Wow, seriously? Lame.

Hi I'm Chris Houlihan, want to see my purple gannon?

God damn I hate the 2D sprite obsession on this site.  If you changed "many" to "some", I'd have no qualms, but much more people believe OoT is a better game.

Quick google of "Best Zelda Game Ever"

http://top100.ign.com/2005/001-01...

IGN's top 100 games all time, Zelda OoT is #2, LttP is #11.

http://www.filibustercartoons.com...

A comprehensive analysis of 38 "top 10" lists found that Zelda OoT was #1 appearing on 28 lists while LttP is #4 appearing on 20 lists.

And finally...

Super Nintendo sold 49.1 Million units, N64 only sold 32.9M units.  Yet LttP sold 4.6M units and OoT sold 7.6M units.

If you like LttP more, or if anyone else likes it more, that's fine and dandy.  But as a consensus opinion among most gamers and reviewers, OoT is by far the better game, end of story.

^^^ "Many" is accurate. He didn't say "most"...he said "many".

Why rename somthing that insignificant? lol

While those facts are very impressive why complain about it, he didn't say census shows that LttP is the most loved zelda game or whatever then there would be reason for debate.

edit: Maybe chris asked the name to be renamed because he couldn't handle the stardom. 

Could be some sort of legal reason. Perhaps they would've had to have him sign off on the rights to use his name again. Rather than going through the hassle of tracking him down and wasting the money on legal stuff, they just renamed it.

I have the virtual console version and it does say Chris Houlihan when i tried to do this glitch, this was when it was first put up for download though, maybe they revised it later?

Zelda is the best game.

Y'know, up until now, I totally forgot that I had LttP downloaded on my Wii lol, thanks for reminding me guys, now I have something to do with my day off

I'm being nitpicky here, but it's not a glitch. It's something that was hidden in the game on purpose. More of an Easter Egg.

Actually I believe it is a glitch. In the original japanese version it just says "secret room" nothing about c.h. The room appears if something didnt load fast enough or some crap like that. To prevent the game from crashing they put that room there to be activated in situations like this.

take an informal poll, few people actually had the patience to play OoT all the way through.  i personally do not know anyone that finished it.  it was a 'look at what the n64 can do' type game, released a few months after final fantasy vii did the same thing on the playstation.  people were wowed by the cinematics of OoT, but did not find the game part very fun.  OoT was the point where nintendo focused its energy on cinematics and puzzles in zelda games rather than the arcade/action that was the main feature of the original zelda games. 

now link rides trains and turns into a werewolf and few people give a damn.  the wow factor is gone, everything a system can do cinematic wise is old hat now.

 just like there was a pent up demand for 2D super mario bros, nintendo needs to see the light and realize the fun of zelda was killing octorocks with a sword, not figuring out obtuse puzzles.  journalists and 'hardcore' gamers overthink things and do not consider the basics like fun.  so spare us the polls and fluff ink spilled on OoT

Wow, what a small world, I stumble on this ancient thread hoping to see if anyone ever found out who the actual Chris Houlihan is, and the final poster on this thread was Chris Bidwell. I used to chat with Chrisbid all the time back on the old Earthbound board on IGN some 13-14 years ago, back when I was only about 13-14 years old (looking up his IGN join date, it was 9/11/2000!). Too bad it looks like he no longer posts here or any of the other sites he's registered to. It's funny who you might bump into all these years later though. For about a solid year around the turn of the millenium the Earthbound board on IGN was definitely the online community I considered my home. We had a nice tight knit community and Earthbound itself still felt like it was "our little secret" back then.