Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past: Vitreous, You Know that Eyeball
I didn’t even know the giant eyeball I had so much fun fighting actually had a name. In fact to be honest I didn’t know that any of the bosses in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past had names. This was entirely due to laziness on my part; I didn’t care if they had names. They were giant monsters keeping poor, innocent girls in giant crystals, motivation established my dudes. It wasn’t until I watched a Dorkly video about Link’s death that I finally discovered this fact and decided to write an essay about it.
For the record it’s name is Vitreous.
Also for the record, that’s a pretty great name for a giant eyeball that shoots lasers.
There really isn’t a game that I would argue I’ve played more than Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Even when I’ve confirmed that I’m at 200+ hours of Breath of the Wild and 180 on Tears of the Kingdom, I know that I’ve spent more time playing Link to the Past. Part of this is because my childhood was uninterrupted by the drudgery of full-time employment, and the other reason is because Link to the Past was a jam dude. There were a number of games on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System(SNES) that I owned and played regularly, and being of a particular age and generation, I distinctly remember the joy of borrowing games from Hastings. I could lie and say that I found other games that were as fun to play, or that they entertained me enough to temporarily forget that the cartridge for the best game I had ever played at that point in my life was always in reach. But, by my own admission, that would be a lie. A Link to the Past was more than just a fun game, it was the first real Zelda game I ever played, establishing a pattern in terms of my videogame preferences. It also was a tremendously well crafted game that is, to my mind, one of the best examples of what can and should be considered in terms of interactive play, level design, musical score, and narrative execution.
I could write a lot about this game, and so I think it’s best to focus in this essay on Vitreous so that this doesn’t turn into a book.
That’s hyperbole.
I doubt I could write a whole book about a video game.
Some general information about the plot is necessary to understand how the player will eventually encounter and then fight Vitreous. I’ll try to keep it brief. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past follows the protagonist Link (or whatever you decided to name your character and we all know you chose the name “Ass-Butt” at least once for the lolz). Link rescues Princess Zelda from Hyrule Castle after a wizard by the name of Aghanim (Don’t ask me to pronounce it) has begun sealing the ancestors of the Seven Sages into Crystals and banishing them to the Dark World. Link explores Hyrule to find three pendants which will allow him to draw the Master Sword, the blade that can defeat the wizard. Princess Zelda is kidnapped again and Link, attempting to rescue her, fights the wizard Aghanim and, near victory, is cast into the Dark World where he must find the seven maidens. This will eventually allow Link to fight the wizard Aghanim and his master, the recurring malevolent antagonist Ganon.
Vitreous is the final boss in the Sixth Castle in the Dark World known as Misery Mire, and it is, as I noted before, an eyeball. To be specific it’s a giant eyeball, floating in a membrane of green acidic slime along with several smaller, human-sized eyeballs that will float forward and attack Link. When Link steps into the room the door behind him will lock, and the eyeballs will begin to shift within the green ooze. The eyeballs will immediately float towards Link, usually two or three at a time, and can be quickly dispatched with the Master Sword (or if you side-quests the Level 4 Master Sword that will drop these dudes in one swipe). The fight follows this pace typically for a few seconds, and as the player settles into the rhythm of this fight Vitreous will poke the top of its eyeball out of the slime and follow you with its pupil. This is, even today, a tad unnerving. But before I can really process this moment there is a familiar hiss, and from the center of the pupil Vitreous will shoot three large beams of electricity in my direction.
Not gonna lie, when I was a kid this made me jump.
Twenty years on, it’s easy enough now to dodge these energy blasts as long as I hug the walls. But I went through a lot of fairies trying to kill this fucker.
Vitreous will continue to fire these energy beams at the player while they fight the pursuing eyeballs, and once these are defeated the second phase of the fight becomes far more physical. Vitreous emerges from the acidic slime and begins to bounce towards the player, its colossal orb making a heavy thump against the ground. This was the SNES and the concept of making a gooey, sluicing noise was probably desired by the game developers but alas, we’re all at the mercy of the technology we have in the present moment. A few arrows will kill Vitreous easily, and more than a few sword swipes, and sure enough the beast is dead.
Ass-Butt is victorious.
Link. Link is victorious.
Believe it or not I never named a character in a Zelda game anything crude like Ass-Butt. But I will admit I did name my rival in Pokemon “My Ass” on more than one playthrough.
I don’t know why Vitreous is always the first boss I think of when I think of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The fight is not terribly difficult, in fact Vitreous is one of the easier fights compared to Trinex the three headed rock turtle, or Blind the Thief the light-fearing monster who’s heads will literally disconnect and roam around the room shooting fireballs at the player. Vitreous is a challenge though because, like almost all of the bosses in A Link to the Past, it places emphasis on physical movement of Link rather than simply on a tool one has acquired.
While I am playing I have to calculate the distance between myself and the eyeballs approaching me, and likewise perfectly time my strikes against Vitreous otherwise I’ll take damage. I could potentially use the Cane of Somaria, the main item I unlock in Misery Mire to help with this, but experience has shown me that this tool is usually designed more for creating weight on switches instead of being a useful combat aid. A Link to the Past consistently makes its Boss Fights operations in how to move Link into the right place at the right time to avoid damage and attack the vulnerability of the boss monster.
In other words, fun tools I have acquired have their place in the game overall, but it’s my ability to move Link at just the right moment that will make or break a fight.
In terms of gameplay Vitreous is, in my mind, a satisfying boss because he’s fun to play, he’s fun to defeat, but he’s also a great example of how Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past manages to establish and execute unique aesthetics to their dungeons.
Put another way, this game really helped future Legend of Zelda players know, “Okay, this is the Water level.”
For clarification, Misery Mire isn’t the “water temple.”
It’s the “slime temple.”
Entering Misery Mire involves traveling through a portal which takes you to a stormy marsh, and once inside, the temple is filled with slime monsters that merge up through the floor, slime slugs that leave bombs behind them as they scatter about, walls covered with vines, and floor tiles that are textured with yellows and greens mimicking mosses, vegetation, and well, slime. Misery Mire is set in a bog, and through really well executed visual cues, the player can practically feel the claustrophobic humidity of this temple. The sensation of navigating the tunnels and rooms of Misery Mire is like traveling through a swamp.
Each temple would mimic this approach so that enemy npcs would feel as if they were part of the same mold that made the original structure. While some would be reused in multiple temples (for instance the little slimy bois that pop up from the ground), these npcs would be altered so as a player I never perceived this was a lazy design choice.
Vitreous was a strange and rather grotesque villain, compared at least to the other Boss npcs in the other temples, but looking at Misery Mire as a work unto itself, he is actually a natural fit. Misery Mire is the “slime temple,” which means it’s just as much, or at least the closest to, the level about death.
The Spirit Temple and Kakariko Village Well from Ocarina of Time are probably the closest comparable temples in terms of similar aesthetic. These levels employ obvious grotesque imagery that heighten the frailty and vulnerability of the body, and remind the player that death is as much about the end of life as it is the process of festering. Vitreous is a perfect conclusion to Misery Mire because his existence is seemingly unnatural, but in fact it’s just a logical conclusion. Life ends, and from that death more life, grotesque as it may seem, continues. All of the slime and death and decay manifests in this grotesque, bulbous orb that bounces towards us ready to crush our bodies, and spirit.
If that ain’t a beautiful commentary about death then I don’t know what is.
Also, while researching for this article, I failed to remember that even this boss’s name is fitting because Vitreous is the name for the fluid contained within the human eyeball between the lens and retina. The fact that this giant eyeball is floating in a puddle of acidic fluid is just a beautiful cherry on top.
Decades later Vitreous is still my favorite boss in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Were it not for Bongo Bongo in Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time he might be my favorite Zelda Boss ever, but that’s for another essay. He is the perfect rhetorical summation of everything that makes the temple of Misery Mire so unforgettable, and as a game mechanic he’s fun to fight and defeat.
Vitreous endures. And, it should be noted, he still sometimes manages to hit me with his lasers.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
10.9.2023
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