Boss Details Ganon

The data below is what's found in the game's code. Sometimes a metadata entry concerns multiple enemies, and certain variables are then rewritten when the enemy is loaded by the game. This is taken into account in the statistics below. On the other hand, some enemies have particular behaviors that are hardcoded and override some of the values below. In such cases, I specify it in the "Notes" box to the best of my knowledge.

The official Japanese name is also given for the enemy when it can be found through an official source. The three main sources I relied on are the game's instruction manual, the official Japanese guide from that era (in its two volumes), the Hyrule Encyclopedia book in its Japanese version, and the game itself (original version). Next to the enemy's number, the name in capital letters is the enemy's code name assigned by the developers in the game's code.

The regional name, on the other hand, is either an official name that appears in an official guide / the English or French game manual, or a name given retroactively because other similar enemies appeared later in the series, or a name given by the speedrun community. If despite all this there is still no existing localization of the name, then I use the Japanese name by default, and if there isn't even an official Japanese name, then it's a brief description.

Details and Statistics

#214 GANON Name Japanese Name Comment on Japanese Name
Ganon 邪悪の王ガノン The word 邪悪 (jaaku) means "evil," "the evil," the word 王 (ou) means "king," and the rest, to my knowledge, is a simple proper noun with no particular meaning. This gives "Ganon, King of Evil." As an anecdote, his name was written with two "n"s, as "Gannon," in the Japanese version of the game, and this was changed to a single "n" in Western versions.
Description The final boss, Ganon. He has 4 distinct phases as follows:
  1. He sends his trident flying towards Link and teleports to retrieve it.
  2. He summons flaming bats that circle around him before charging at Link one by one.
  3. He jumps and smashes the ground to make the series of tiles at the ends of the room fall, and sends a flaming bat at Link after each jump.
  4. He extinguishes the two torches at the bottom of the room and constantly teleports around the room, sending flaming bats at Link. He is invincible as long as the torches are out, and Link must relight them before he can attack him.
Additional Information At the start of the battle, Ganon is given 255 HP (which is the value typically assigned to enemies that are meant to be invincible or defeated by unconventional means) and striking him during the first three phases will gradually reduce his HP. I was not able to verify this personally, but it seems intuitive that each phase transition occurs once a certain HP threshold is reached.
As a side note, a hardcoded condition prevents the Hammer from dealing any damage to him, despite the damage values it is assigned.
During phase 4, there are actually two ways to defeat him: the classic method, using the Silver Arrows (see enemy #215), and another one, which was most likely not planned: each time Ganon teleports, he is vulnerable for a single frame, so it is possible to defeat him by reducing his HP to zero with any weapon able to deal him damage, without ever using the Silver Arrows.
Enemy HP Damage to Link
255 HP
64 HP 48 HP 24 HP
No Drop Prize Pack Drop rate: 0%
-
Damage dealt by Link's weapons
Class 0 0 HP
Class 1 0 HP
Class 2 0 HP
Class 3 4 HP
Class 4 8 HP
Class 5 8 HP
Class 6 0 HP
Class 7 0 HP
Class 8 0 HP
Class 9 0 HP
Class 10 0 HP
Class 11 0 HP
Class 12 0 HP
Class 13 0 HP
Class 14 0 HP
Class 15 0 HP

Does a weapon appear in multiple classes?

In the table above, you can see the Master Sword (level 2 sword) appearing in the rows corresponding to classes 1, 2, and 3. This doesn't mean that the Master Sword will deal random damage determined by these three classes, but rather it's the type of attack you perform with this weapon that will determine the damage it inflicts. If you hover over the name of one of the classes, a tooltip will show you the list of attacks associated with that class.