The Chris Houlihan room appears in The Legend of Zelda A Link To The Past. Many Zelda players found this by accident, some try to find it specifically through speedrunning or glitches. But what is the story beind the Chris Houlihan Room, what is it, who is Chris Houlihan, and is Chris Houlihan a real person? Today I’m going to look into this subject and we’ll try to answer the question of ‘Is Chris Houlihan real or not?’.

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What is the Chris Houlihan Room?

Chris Houlihan is referenced in the original Super Nintendo version of The Legend of Zelda A Link To The Past. Link gets sent to the top secret Chris Houlihan room when an error condition occurs due to corrupt location data. The room contains 225 rupees, plus a telepathy tile saying ‘My name is Chris Houlihan, this is my top secret room, let’s keep it between us OK?’.

How to get into the Chris Houlihan room

Over time a variety of methods emerged for entering the Chris Houlihan Room; most centered around quickly dashing from a saved point to the secret bush entrance outside Hyrule Castle. Follow along on screen for how to get to the room. It’s worth noting there are various ways to get there, this is just the way I found easiest, and it only takes a few minutes to learn.

Who is Chris Houlihan?

In the early 1990s Chris Houlihan won a competition in Nintendo Power. The winner would have his name added to a Nintendo game. Contestants had to take a photo of them with a rare Final Fantasy boss called Warmech. At the time of the contest, it wasn’t known which game Chris’ name would appear in, that was announced at a later date.

In the North American version of A Link To The Past the Chris Houlihan room was added, however, in all subsequent ports of the game Chris’ name was removed and replaced with simply the ‘Top Secret Room’. Why Chris’ name was removed remains a mystery.

Is Chris Houlihan real?

We believe that Chris Houlihan was the winner of a Nintendo Power contest held during September and October of 1990, where the winner would have their name programmed into a future NES game. The competition reads:

“Haver you ever imagined yourself in a NES game? Well, this is your chance. If you meet Warmech then snap a photo of him and send it to the address below by October 15 1990. One winner will be renadomly selected and his or her name will be programmed into a future Nintendo game!”

Chris was first acknowledged as the winner in the December 1994 issue of Club Nintendo, the official Nintendo magazine for Latin America.

“We spent a long time searching and did not get to see this secret room. We thought that it could have been a type of bug, but when we received another letter mentioning this room somewhere else and we were still unable to find it, we decided to talk directly to whom created the game, so we asked our friends at Nintendo and they informed us that it is a room that appears randomly and there are cartridges where it will never appear. Chris Houlihan is the name of the boy that won a Nintendo Power contest and with it he also won the right to have his name programmed in the Zelda A Link to the Past”

Nintendo then waited 8 years to comment on the competition, finally mentioned it in Nintendo Power in February 1998 by saying:

“In 1992, NP contest winner Chris Houlihansecured his place in gaming history by having his name featured in a hidden area in The Legend of Zelda A Link To The Past.”

While this was official confirmed in Nintendo Power in 1998, it is strange that Nintendo waited 8 years to mention it in Nintendo Power, and why they never made a big deal, or did a feature on Chris Houlihan as winner of the competition. Could you imagine a competition like that today? Being immortalised forever in a Legend of Zelda game? That would be incredible.

This all happened in the early 90s, before the widespread adoption of the interet and before everything was digitised. Today it’s very hard to find any information related to Chris Houlihan. There are a few forum entries, but they look like people pretending to be Chris Houlihan for a laugh. Given the lack of information, many Zelda fans have tried to track down the real Chris Houlihan, although no concrete information has surfaced.

I think there’s a couple of outcomes here. Either Chris Houlihan is real and won the competition or Nintendo made up his name and he doesn’t exist. Normally the simplest answer is the correct one wehn it comes to mysteries, so it’s highly likely that Chris Houlihan did win the Warmech Final Fantasy competition in 1990’s Nintendo Power, then most likely moved on with his life.

If Chris Houlihan was entering a competition in 1990, then he’s probably going to be in the region of 10-15 years old (massive assumption here). He won the competition, got immortalised in A Link To The Past, and then moved on with his life. Probably grew up, got a job, left home and moved on with his life. I would love to know if Chris Houlihan still plays Zelda games. If you played The Legend of Zelda as a kid, then that usually sticks with you. I wonder what Chris Houlihan thinks of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom?

Another outcome could be that Nintendo made up the name. Perhaps no one wrote into Nintendo Power, or they couldn’t find the Warmech in Final Fantasy. The competition was released in September or October 1990, and they only had until 15 October to find the Warmech, which isn’t very long. Given Nintendo removed Chris Houlihan’s name from the game after the SNES version, perhaps they were covering their tracks and wanted to remove this from the game.

Personally, I think Chris won this competition, and then simply moved on. I would love to hear from Chris Houlihan, so if you’re watching Chris, let us know what you’re doing today and how you felt about winning that competition. If it were me I would be shouting about it from the hilltops.

Let me know what you think in the comments.