Chris Houlihan, the winner of a Nintendo Power contest that got his name into A Link to the Past, has been found
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the most beloved classic titles from the Super Nintendo library, with the game releasing originally in 1991 on Japan, and 1992 overseas. The game vastly enriched the characters, lore and world of Hyrule, and pretty much cemented what was going to become the basis and standard for almost all subsequent 2D Zelda titles from there onwards.
Since its release, many secrets and glitches hidden within the game were slowly being found, with one in particular being a pretty unique room that the player could get into under very specific circumstances, being under a glitched behaviour that warped the player into this room as some form of failsafe when the game encountered such glitched state. This "failsafe" room has a dialogue tile within it that says the following:
Nintendo Power held a contest back in 1990, and the winner of said contest would get its name immortalized in one of Nintendo's upcoming videogames. Chris Houlihan was the winner, and his name became immortalized into A Link to the Past since then.
However, the actual identity of the real Chris Houlihan, or the story behind him, was a mystery to everyone online throughout the almost 35 years since the release of the original game back in 1991, with no one being able to contact or know who this person was, prompting several users online to think the character was just a made up name, making the real Chris Houlihan almost as elusive as the room he was featured in.
It wasn't until September 10th, 2025, that gaming YouTuber Kevin Hainline bumped into the ellusive Chris Houlihan through a series of interesting events. His mother mentioned that she met person with the last name of Houlihan through Houlihan's profession (which Hainline kept a secret in order to keep Houlihan's real identity intact). This prompted Hainline to ask his mother what the first name of the actual person was, to which she responded: "Chris". Kevin then explained the whole story behind this character, with a person by the name of Houlihan being the Nintendo Power winner and getting his name into the game.
Hainline, still in disbelief, left the topic aside thinking it was merely a coincidence, and that the person was probaly just an homonym to the original Chris Houlihan. Despite this, Hainline's mother didn't stop there, and she asked the person directly if he was the same person his son talked to her about, and interestingly enough, the person confirmed that he was indeed the real Chris Houlihan, being his father the one that used his named to be immortalized through the contest instead of his. Hainline wanted some kind of proof, to which his mother asked Houlihan directly if he had any proof, Chris did mention he might still have the letter sent to his dad stored in a box somewhere in his childhood home's attic, but Chris simply didn't give it much attention and left it aside.
Years later after that interaction, Hainline's mother got an email from Houlihan, and alongside the email, came an attached picture of the original letter sent to Chris from Nintendo of America, all the way back in September 19th, 1991, to which Hainline's mother forwarded it to him, sharing the contents of the letter and the whole ordeal on his YouTube channel:
Letter to Chris Houlihan from Nintendo said:
Everything according to the original contest, the names, the people involved, and everything else matches accordingly to believe that this is, indeed, the original Chris Houlihan that was immortalized in Zelda III all those decades ago.
However, there's one more intetesting bit that wasn't previously known.
It seems, and thanks to the contents of the letter, that Chris' name was immortalized not only on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but his name was also added to yet another Nintendo title released in 1991. Hainline initially thought it was the NES localization of Nintendo World Cup (which was originally a Kunio Kun game titled Kunio-kun's Nekketsu Soccer League in Japan). Despite this, there's no player named "Chris" in the US team. But World Cup did get a port later on for the Game Boy, and surprisingly, Chris' name is within this port, with Nintendo replacing the name of "Terry" from the original NES release with his for this Game Boy port.
After decades and decades of speculations, dead ends, and people in disbelief, the real Chris Houlihan has finally been found, giving closure to yet another long-lasting gaming mystery thanks to Kevin Hainline's odd course of events.
