The Legend of Zelda is a special series for many of us, mostly thanks to the grand sense of adventure it provides and the memories made playing through its wonderful games. For this gaming grandma, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will no doubt stay in the mind forever - partly thanks to just how much time she's spent playing the thing.
Reddit user u/millerischris has shared images and background info which tell the story of his grandmother's time with Link and co. After a whopping 755 hours, she's managed to beat the final boss and complete the game; Chris says he's "incredibly proud of her" and that she "absolutely loves Zelda".
The Reddit post has gone on to receive upwards of 65,000 upvotes at the time of writing, with messages of admiration, support, and goodwill (and even a marriage proposal) pouring in from other gaming fans. You can check it all out for yourself right here if you like - some of it's rather heartwarming to see, and the star of the show even created her own 'GramieGreat' Reddit account to reply to some of them.
Chris has also shared a number of text messages sent between himself and his grandmother during her playthrough. A couple of her messages made us chuckle, such as "I wonder if Nintendo gives prizes for the longest time to complete Twilight Princess", and "THE DRAGON IS DEAD!!!!", but they also show how passionate the pair are for the game and how their relationship has benefitted from the experience. Lovely stuff.
We're big fans of Zelda ourselves, but we doubt we'd be able to put in that many hours. If you're reading this, GramieGreat, we salute your dedication!
[source reddit.com]
Comments (52)
And I thought 100 hours was long
Wow when l finished the game over and over again like 9 times, my hours was always less than 100 hours, so l'm shock.
But go granny!
very proud of you!
welcome to the Twilight Princess fan club granny
This is such wholesome content. :'3
Awww that is a lovely story to read from time to time.
Gamer grandmas rise up
Looks like she enjoyed all 700+ hours of it. I wonder how she would feel about Breath of the Wild?
Someone give this woman a Switch and BOTW now. She'll probably have more than 2000 hours by the time she decides to finish it off.
755 hours? I bet she wasn't even a grandmother when she started it
Good for her though! I didn't even make to the end on my first time, ended up waiting for the HD version before I did that.
I hope she uploaded a Let's Play
Is there 755 hours of content??
I bet she caught all the bugs and poes 😁
Go you!
Awesome! Hope I'm still playing video games when I'm 70+. 😁
Nice, but also I'm vry curious how she managed to take that long xD
She should do Breath of the Wild next 0w0
I remember once seeing a video of someone's grandmother beating Galaga '88 many years ago.
Stories like this are heart warming.
Congrats to Grandma! Sounds like she enjoyed her time. I hope her recovery went well.
This is me in 50 years...
What is it with grandma's and hundreds of hours of game time?
I think someone should have bought her a strategy guide for Christmas.
@Spoony_Tech Yes there is, if your useless with nothing better to do and refuse to ask for help lol
I just can’t fathom how she took that long to finish it. I mean sure, the final rolling-ball maze is a tough nut, and maybe she stopped to admire the scenery... a lot... but still?
Wholesome story.
Awesome article.
@Spoony_Tech There is if you boot the game up every morning at 8am, fall asleep on the controller 10 minutes later, walk all over the place in your sleep, then eventually waking up completely lost, before falling asleep 10 minutes later etc. etc.
Play logs are wonderful things, but a guaranteed accurate record of how much time was spent consciously playing the game they are not.
Who's to say she didn't leave the game running every time she went out to the bingo etc?
@RedderRugfish lol. That’s like my two grandpas. The year we got our Wii for Christmas they played Wii Sports all day with us.
My Grandpa on my mums side was testing what happened if you gave a run up whilst bowling and he ran across the room and knocked over the TV. We couldn’t stop laughing.
RIP to both of them. And thanks Nintendo for the memories.
My grandmother still loves playing the first Super Mario Bros., and Donkey Kong games, on the NES. Those are her two favorites, which she'll still play today.
What did she do the whole game? Just walk around and look at stuff?
I see this as an absolute win
Awww...grannies playing are sooo cute! A bit condescending. But every generation thinks they invented sex, drugs and rock n roll.
Who do you think has been there from the beginning of gaming? Us olds, that's who.
Glad she finished the game, but I wouldn't have posted that it took me that long. Pride and all that.
My friends grandad who is 85 does sim racing and just loves gaming, this is more proof that gaming is for all, even if the media and so on portray it as something else.
My mum who passed away in January aged 55, was a big Nintendo fan, which is where my love of Nintendo came from. Playing Mario on the NES are some memories I'll never forget.
Very cool to hear...now somebody go get her a Switch & BotW (and a strategy guide, lol).
@Hughesy My condolences about your mum, that must be hard to have lost her so young.
So freakin awesome.
You go Grandma!
@RedderRugfish
how nice that you would play wii sports game with grandpa! My grandpa and grandma are not in the gaming thing at all, so they would never want to say yes to play a game with me, but l understand why. Anyways they're still fun people to hang out with and nice thing about them, that they're never boring.
I kid you all not when I say that I witnessed a grandma shopping at a GameStop talking about beating and playing games like she's still a young adult (albeit one who uses euphemisms for, ahem, curse words). I believe she even mentioned something about a game like Dark Souls being 'too easy'.
If I believe that, then I can believe that any grandma can beat any Zelda game any day
Good work. Imagine how long it would take her to beat Breath of the Wild 😅
Nice! Now I want to see a grandma curb stomping people at a Smash Bros competition with a low-tier character.
How much you want to bet literal days worth of this time was from leaving the game on overnight, with no one playing it? I'd wager less than half of that was genuine play time.
I only ever completd this game once, and I remember it as taking about thirty hours, but I've gotten older, so maybe my new numbers would be closer to this!
Good for her. 755 hours is a really long time, longer than I would have expected, but I can definitely see why it could take someone a very long time if they are new to video games and if they are elderly, so they don't take to new things as rapidly. You might this is an easy or average-difficulty game, but the controls are quite a lot to take in if you haven't played something like it before. And the puzzles in particular can be quite difficult. I remember them being fairly easy, but that's because I've been playing these types of games for decades and I know what things to expect and look out for, and the unwritten rules of Zelda dungeons. Like: an object you can interact with will be colored to stand out from its environment. Or: A puzzle will never become unsolvable, so you don't need to try things like dying on purpose to reset a room. I never thought about these rules until playing games in front of my Mom, who would offer these kind of suggestions that would never occur to me as options. If you don't know the basics of video game logic, it's going to be pretty challenging. Especially since the dungeons in Twilight Princess are so friggin' huge.
Let's hope she skips Skyward Sword and moves on to BOTW. (There's a nice interview at GameXplain with Andre's dad who finally beat BOTW after a similar ordeal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJMFAD5Wsr4)
@k8sMum As an almost 50-year-old who has been gaming their whole life, I always wonder how long it will take before people get used to the idea that older people play video games. Like come on, people, Space Invaders was a worldwide phenomenon played by millions in 1978. Do the math, there's a lot of old people who've been gaming most of their lives.
OK.
Now she should be starting on Breath of the wild...
Yes but how old is this grandma? I know a few people who are 40 and are a grandma
Maybe they didn't turn the game off and kept it running for that long. Technically that would have only taken across 31 days...
There are a lot of assumptions about older people here, many off base.
One overlooked fact is that the olds have experienced being young but the youngs haven't experienced being old.
I too fall asleep with a game on.
@Bunkerneath Yeah, maybe I missed it in the article or comments, but her actual age is never given. I've seen some very young grandparents as well as prehistoric ones and I'm curious to see where she falls in that range. Great accomplishment nonetheless.
I am turning 61 this year. I have been playing the Zelda games since The Legend of Zelda in the '80's. I just finished Breath of the Wild yesterday!!
@Spoony_Tech maybe she dozed off a few times
@RobynMWest
That's great! When my brother and I were kids, my Dad's best friend got us into the the 1st Legend of Zelda game. I think he is in his late 70's now, and has played every single one as soon as they've come out.
Never too old for games
Man people on the internet are so gullible, this is just another ‘fishing for reddit gold’ article. Obviously nintendolife doesn’t care if the story is fake cause it generates tons of clicks.
Very nice! But didn't she fall asleep many times during gameplay? I mean this is veeeerrrrrry long, lol!
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