The "Beating the Running Man" legend is an urban legend revolving around the 1998 action-adventure game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Description
The Running Man is a recurring character in the The Legend of Zelda series, but his most prominent appearance is in Hyrule Field in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He runs laps around the field and the player can engage in a race with him, a race that ends at the bridge in the Lost Woods. The main reason to race against the Running Man is to beat a certain time, but it is physically impossible to beat the Running Man himself.
Of course, this has not stopped players from attempting to figure out ways to win the race against him. Cheating, including by gaining super speed and even teleporting directly to the finish line, have failed to gain victory, as the Running Man has no programmed dialogue in the event that the player loses the race. No matter what players do, the Running Man will always win by at least one second.
Trivia
- A YouTube user by the name of RustySporks posted a video in 2009 claiming to have beaten the Running Man by starting the race, returning to child Link and waiting at the finish line for a full week in the real world. This however, was a huge hoax, given that the race ends automatically after just three minutes, Link cannot enter the future without pulling the Master Sword, and leaving a Nintendo 64 on for a solid week will probably cause hardware issues.
- The developers stated that they made him impossible to beat because they couldn't think of a prize.