Octorok
The Octorok is a recurring enemy in the Legend of Zelda franchise, videogames and otherwise.
Appearances
It's first appearance in the video game franchise was in Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It appeared in two color palettes: red and blue. The red octorok being the weaker of the two forms of the octorok.
In Zelda II: Adventure of Link, the Octorok returns in side-scrolling form. Again, the octorok appears in two palettes: red and blue. As with Legend of Zelda, red is the weaker of the two forms.
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past allowed octoroks only a very minor role as an enemy. They appeared in few areas and were very weak. They only had a single palette.
Octoroks once again return in Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. This time, however, it has two different forms - normal and winged. The normal version acts as octoroks have in past Zelda titles. The winged version jumps away from the player when he slashes his sword. When the octorok lands, it spits a projectile at the player.
Other than a mini-boss battle early in the game, octoroks are minor enemies in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. They appear in fixed locations near a few water sources and in the Forest Temple.
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Artificial Intelligence Pattern
Legend of Zelda
In Legend of Zelda, the octorok has a simple artificial intelligence. It has the ability to move in any direction on the X and Y plane. However, it can only move in one direction at any given time: left, right, up, and down. It follows a movement pattern of randomly choosing a direction, moving for a short random amount of time, then it either stops for a brief moment or fires a projectile in its current direction. Afterwards, the cycle repeats until the player has either moved to a new screen or has slain the octorok. The octorok has two speeds of movement.
Zelda II - Adventure of Link
The octorok's artificial intelligence pattern is further simplified in its second appearance in the Zelda game franchise. The standard form has the octorok sitting in one spot for a defined amount of time. Once the its timer has been reached, it jumps 16 pixels into the, fires a projectile at the player, then lands. The cycle resets until the player moves on or slays the octorok. The moving version of the octorok functions the same way, however, now it constantly moves towards the player and has a chance to randomly fire a projectile while moving on the ground. Also, the moving form of the octorok always jumps off the edge of a platform instead of just falling off. NOTE: The octorok's AI is shared with Zelda II's version of the Rope(the snake-like monsters).
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