The ice arrows in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time have always been considered one of the game's most useless items. Not only is it possible to play through the adventure without them, but even if you do end up grabbing them from completing the Gerudo Training Grounds, there's not a whole lot of time to use them before you have to travel to the final area in order to beat Ganon.
The game itself even acknowledges their uselessness at one point, with players being able to access a gossip stone message as a child, located in the Desert Colossus, which reads: "They say that the treasure you can earn in the Gerudo's Training Ground is not as great as you would expect, given its difficulty!"
Recently, however, a Japanese fan named @chikara_shuzei caused shock online by showing off a little-known application for the magical item.
In a short video posted on Twitter, the Zelda fan demonstrated the arrow's ability to freeze the moving spikes prior to the Water Temple's boss fight. This is a particularly frustrating obstacle that many Ocarina of Time fans will likely remember, with most players simply having to run past them and risk losing a number of hearts in the process.
If you're wondering how this went undiscovered by so many players for years, the answer to that is pretty simple. In order to have the Ice Arrows at this point is pretty unintuitive. It essentially means completing most of the Water Temple to acquire the Longshot, before exiting the area and tackling the dungeons out of order. You then need to complete the optional Gerudo Training Grounds mini-dungeon to acquire the ice arrows and return to the room before the Water Temple's boss. It's a lot of work for a single obstacle, and from the number of heart containers on @chikara_shuzei's screen, it appears that not even they decided to tackle the game in this way, instead returning to the dungeon in the post-game to demonstrate this neat trick.
This is an article that will probably elicit some groans from hardcore Ocarina of Time players: I.E. people who have beaten the game several times and explored every possible application for every item in a range of increasingly questionable contexts. But for casual players, it’s an incredible revelation and proof that there's more to discover yet in the N64 title.
Did you know about this? Let us know in the comments!