Ganon's Tower Spike Crystal

a.k.a. Spike & Pegs
(50% playback speed)
Cardinal (1.200)
Diagonal (1.233)

The door in this room is a "bastard door", so using a diagonal input to walk out of the doorway will slow Link's movement to 1px/frame instead of 1.5px/frame, losing 2 frames. There is a ~9-frame window for transitioning from right to up-right safely without losing movement or getting stuck on the crystal switch.


The collision box of the crystal switch is not vertically centered. When coming out of the door, holding down+right will result in Link getting stuck on the switch, but holding up+right will result in clearing the switch, so you should always move diagonally upward around the switch here.


The most common approach for this room is to use an item or a sword beam so that the switch triggers while Link is standing on the blue peg in the middle of the screen. This will give you enough invincibility frames to walk through the spikes into the warp tile. All four strats shown above are roughly equivalent in terms of time, with the hookshot strat being the most common since the hookshot is normally used in both the preceding and following rooms.

You'll want to ensure that Link is not too far to the left when the switch is hit, to avoid getting stuck on the peg.

The warp tile will not trigger until Link's i-frames expire, so you may need to wait a few frames for the warp to trigger. Optimally these frames would be utilized to move toward the lower-left corner of the warp, as the next room begins with a down+left movement.


(50% playback speed)
Walk (1.016)
Dash (1.016)

It's possible to dash to the right after hitting the peg, but this is not recommended. You'll need to cancel the dash manually to avoid bonking, and you can generally walk to the warp tile with some frames to spare before your i-frames expire anyways (as noted above).


Capedash (2.350)
TAS Capedash (2.250)

A capedash can be used to bypass the spikes as you dash across the entirety of the room, saving roughly 20 frames over the normal strats. This generally costs about 10 magic points (~8% of your magic bar), assuming you quickswap away from the cape immediately after passing the spike.

It's recommended that you quickswap back onto the cape as soon as possible, to prepare for a potential capedash in the next screen.


Dash (2.750)
Walk (2.866)

If the above strats are not available, the room can be done using only a single slash (or other item to hit the switch), walking around the switch and avoiding the spikes, with an optional dash to save a few frames. This only loses 4-11 frames over the peg strats, though will not come up often as the hookshot is usually available.


Somaria (2.900)

The cane of somaria can also be used to trigger the switch, but this is not recommended as it's slower than the itemless strat and consumes some magic.