Ocarina of Time Castle Town Market: Minigames and Shops

Thonky's advice for Bombchu Bowling's Piece of Heart is to keep playing until you get it. That makes sense if every 30-Rupee game is a fresh roll of the dice, and the decompiled N64 code says it is not. The prize goes round a fixed wheel of five, and the only random part is where the wheel starts when you walk in. See one prize and you know the next.

That is the most useful thing in this guide, and there is plenty more. Hyrule Castle Town Market packs three Pieces of Heart, two capacity upgrades, a Gold Skulltula and the first Hylian Shield you can buy into one small square, and nearly all of it is locked to child Link and a time of day. Below is what is there, when it opens, and how each prize is actually picked.

The Market at a glance

The randomizer's location list makes a good checklist. These are the hearts, upgrades, Gold Skulltula and bottle among its Market entries; pots, crates, shop shelves, the balcony Rupees and the minigames' smaller prizes are left out. I have added the Bazaar's Hylian Shield, because a child cannot buy one anywhere else.

The ages and times come from the randomizer's logic file; the Dodongo's Cavern condition comes from the decompiled code and is explained below. The bottle has its own section in our bottle locations guide, and the Happy Mask Shop on the same square belongs to our mask trading guide. Malon singing by the fountain is the start of the castle visit in our Hyrule Castle guide.

Day, night and the drawbridge

Zelda Wiki splits the Market's businesses by the clock. The Bazaar, Potion Shop, Happy Mask Shop, Shooting Gallery and Bombchu Bowling Alley open by day. The Treasure Chest Game and the Bombchu Shop open only at night. The randomizer's logic agrees on all of them but one: it lets a child into the Bowling Alley at any hour.

The Dodongo's Cavern condition is in the code. The game sets one flag when you take the blue warp out of King Dodongo's chamber, at the same moment it gives you the Goron's Ruby. Until that flag is set, the Bowling Alley's operator tells you the place is not open, and the Bombchu Shop's clerk is never spawned at all. The Mask Shop's condition works the same way, off the flag the Kakariko guard sets when you show him the letter.

Getting to night takes some thought. Our Hyrule Castle guide covers the two rules: the town's drawbridge is only down by day, and time stands still inside the town, so waiting in the Market does nothing. There are two ways round it.

• The Sun's Song. Played somewhere time stands still, the decompiled code fades the screen out, reloads the area from the entrance you used, and switches it to night if it was day, or to day if it was night. The Market's restriction table allows the song. Play it once on the square for the night shift and again to get the shops back. You learn it in the Royal Family's Tomb, as our graveyard guide explains.
• The castle grounds. The randomizer's logic flags the grounds outside Hyrule Castle as an area where time passes, so before you have the song, wait out the evening there and walk back into the Market after dark.

Either way, remember the drawbridge. In the randomizer's logic a child cannot leave for Hyrule Field at night, so play the Sun's Song again, or wait for morning on the castle grounds, before you try to go home.

Bombchu Bowling is a wheel, not a slot machine

The rules, per Zelda Wiki: 30 Rupees a game, ten Bombchus supplied, and three targets to hit, each one further down the lane, past obstacles that include Cuccos. The operator will not tell you the prize until you have paid. The decompiled code confirms both numbers: it takes 30 Rupees and loads ten Bombchus.

What Zelda Wiki and Thonky do not explain is how the prize is chosen. In the code there are five prizes in a fixed order, and the operator keeps a pointer into that list:

Three rules decide what you play for:

• The start is random. When the alley loads, the code picks the starting step at random, with roughly a one-in-five chance for each. Zelda Wiki notes that the operator dozes off every time you leave and come back. In the code she is rebuilt each time too, and the start is rolled again.
• Every paid game moves the pointer one step, win or lose. It moves the moment the prize appears on the counter, so a lost game still uses up that prize's turn. After step 5 it goes back to step 1.
• Won prizes turn purple. Once you have the Bomb Bag or the heart, that step pays a Purple Rupee for the rest of the game.

So the prize on the counter tells you the next one. If the counter shows 10 Bombchus, the next game is for the Piece of Heart. If it shows a single Bomb, the Bomb Bag is next. Leave the alley and you lose that information, because the start is rolled again when you come back.

The cost follows from the wheel. From the moment you walk in, the heart is the prize in one of the first five games, so reaching it costs at most 150 Rupees. Lose that game and it comes round again five games later. The game's upgrade table caps the Child's Wallet at 99 Rupees, which is three games. Get the Adult's Wallet first: the House of Skulltula gives it out for 10 Gold Skulltula tokens, as our Gold Skulltulas guide explains.

Two smaller details from the code:

• The Bomb Bag is the next size up. It is the 30-Bomb bag if you still carry the 20, and the 40-Bomb bag if you already have 30. The rolling Goron in Goron City runs the same check, so the order does not matter. Zelda Wiki's Big Bomb Bag page says the same.
• The "Bombs" prize is one Bomb. The code hands out the single-Bomb item, and the randomizer's location list records it as one Bomb. Zelda Wiki's alley page says 10 Bombs. For the N64 game, trust the code.

The Treasure Chest Game: 1 in 32, or a sure thing

The Treasure Chest Game only opens at night, and Zelda Wiki quotes the sign saying so. The man at the counter takes 10 Rupees and hands you one key. That is the fee for the whole run.

Each of the first five rooms has two chests. In the decompiled code, one holds the key to the next door and the other holds Rupees, and which side gets the key is rolled as each room loads. Pick the key and you go on. Pick the Rupees and, per Zelda Wiki, you can go no further. The code then shows you what was in the other chest. The sixth room has a single chest with the Piece of Heart, or a Purple Rupee once the heart is yours.

The room colours are from Zelda Wiki; the prizes match the code. Guessing, each room is a coin flip (the code's roll is within a fraction of a percent of 50/50), so the chance of reaching the sixth room is 1 in 32, about 3%. Losing in the fifth room pays 10 Rupees more than the run cost.

The real answer is the Lens of Truth. The code puts a copy of each chest's contents floating just above it, and draws that copy only while the Lens is switched on. With the Lens up, you can see which chest has the key. The game even hints at it: Zelda Wiki records a Gossip Stone saying it is "against the rules to use glasses" in this shop.

The catch is getting the Lens as a child. It comes from the Bottom of the Well, which only drains after adult Link learns the Song of Storms, so you have to travel back in time for it. Our Bottom of the Well guide has the route. The Lens also burns Magic, so get the meter from the Great Fairy first (see our Great Fairy guide). The randomizer takes the same view: with the chest game's keys left vanilla, its logic does not count any of these chests as reachable without the Lens.

Richard, the dog with a Piece of Heart

At night the square empties and dogs roam it. Zelda Wiki notes that they follow Link if he gets close. One of them is Richard, the Pooch Lady's dog. Thonky's directions: the white dog by the empty stall in the corner of the Market near the town entrance. Walk up to him and he follows you. Lead him into the Back Alley and through the door of the woman's house.

The decompiled code adds four details:

• He only follows you at night. The code stops every dog in the daytime Market from following you. In the night Market, Richard only appears while he is lost, and the game marks him lost again at every new day.
• Dogs follow you through doors. The game remembers which dog is with you and spawns it beside you in the next area, so he comes into the Back Alley and the house with you.
• Do not outrun him. Get more than 400 units ahead and the dog stops following.
• One dog at a time. A dog will not join you while another is following. Bring the wrong one to the house and she does not take it, and it stops following you.

The reward is a Piece of Heart the first time and a Blue Rupee after that (Zelda Wiki, and the code agrees). Because he goes missing again each day, the Blue Rupee can be collected again on later nights.

Zelda Wiki says a child can go through three doors in the Back Alley: two homes and the Bombchu Shop. It also records a later scene here. After Zelda flees the castle, a dying soldier lies in the alley, tells you about Ganondorf's betrayal and sends you to the Temple of Time.

The Shooting Gallery

The Market's Shooting Gallery is a daytime game for child Link. Per Zelda Wiki, you get fifteen shots at ten Rupee targets, which come up in a fixed order for a child. The decompiled code charges 20 Rupees and adds two rules:

• Eight or nine hits gets a free retry. The code restarts the round with a fresh fifteen shots and does not charge you again.
• All ten wins. Anything under eight is a loss.

Do not stand there without shooting. Zelda Wiki notes that the owner takes offence and will not let you play again until you leave and come back in, and the code has a separate result for a round where no shots were fired.

The first win gets a Bullet Bag upgrade. The code gives the 40-seed bag if this is your first Bullet Bag upgrade and the 50-seed bag if you already won the Lost Woods target's, as our Lost Woods guide explains. Every win after that pays a Purple Rupee. The gallery counts its own fifteen shots rather than your Deku Seeds, and the randomizer's logic does not ask for the Slingshot here. After the seven years the gallery moves to Kakariko and pays out quivers instead (Zelda Wiki).

What a child can buy

The Bazaar and the Hylian Shield discount

These are the Bazaar's eight shelves and prices from the decompiled shop tables. Zelda Wiki's price list matches.

The shield discount is real, and random. Show Zelda's Letter to the guard at the Death Mountain gate in Kakariko and he tells you to visit the Bazaar and mention him for a special discount (Zelda Wiki quotes the line). In the code, once that conversation has happened, the shield still shows 80 Rupees and the shop still checks that you have 80, but it charges 80 minus a random 5 to 40, in steps of 5. Zelda Wiki's Bazaar page puts the discount at 10 to 40; the code's table starts at 5.

As a child, this is the shop for it. The decompiled shop tables stock the Hylian Shield in two places, this Bazaar and its Kakariko branch, and no Business Scrub's price list includes it. Zelda Wiki says the owner only moves to Kakariko after the seven years, and the randomizer only lets adult Link into the Kakariko shop. A child's other option is free: the chest under a grave in Kakariko Graveyard, covered in our graveyard guide. Either way, Zelda Wiki notes that young Link wears the shield like a turtle shell and cannot reflect Deku Scrub nuts with it, so keep the Deku Shield for those.

Two shelf rules are stranger than they look:

• Bombs wait for the Goron's Ruby. The shop's description only mentions needing a Bomb Bag, but the code also checks for the Ruby. You pick up the Bomb Bag partway through Dodongo's Cavern and the Ruby at the end, so for that stretch the Bazaar still will not sell you bombs.
• Arrows wait for the Fairy Bow. This Bazaar only serves child Link and the bow comes from the adult Forest Temple, so these shelves only open up after a trip back in time.

The Potion Shop and the Bombchu Shop

The Potion Shop opens by day. The code's price list: Red Potion 30, Green Potion 30, Blue Fire 300, a Fairy 50, Bugs 50, a Poe 30, a Fish 200 and five Deku Nuts for 15. Bottled goods need an empty bottle. Whether any of that is worth reselling to the Buyer, who stands in the Market while you are a child, is covered in our bottle locations guide.

The Bombchu Shop is in the Back Alley and only opens at night, after Dodongo's Cavern. The code stocks four packs of 10 Bombchus at 100 Rupees and four packs of 20 at 180, and records each pack as bought when you take it. Zelda Wiki says it never restocks. The code also refuses a sale while you are carrying 50 Bombchus. For comparison, a 30-Rupee game of Bombchu Bowling can pay out 10 Bombchus when the wheel lands on step 3.

The Guardhouse

The Guardhouse sits just inside the town gate and is open day and night. Zelda Wiki counts 44 Rupee pots, five wooden boxes and one Gold Skulltula inside, and quotes the bored soldier telling you to go ahead and break the pots. The Gold Skulltula is in the wooden box to the soldier's far left; Zelda Wiki's Guardhouse page says the Switch 2 remake moves it to the box at his immediate right. Because it is indoors, Zelda Wiki notes you can collect it by day as well as at night. The rest of the hunt is in our Gold Skulltulas guide.

Seven years later

Zelda Wiki describes the adult Market as ruins full of ReDeads. Ganondorf destroyed the drawbridge, so the town is open day and night, but the shops are shut and the Back Alley is blocked by rubble. The Bazaar and the Shooting Gallery have moved to Kakariko. The Guardhouse has become the Ghost Shop, where the Poe Collector buys Big Poes, as our bottle locations guide explains. Zelda Wiki adds that the Pooch Lady fled to Kakariko and that Richard died during the seven years.

Apart from the Ghost Shop bottle, everything in this guide is therefore a child-era job. If you are about to pull the Master Sword (see our dungeon order guide), you can still come back for any of it by returning the sword.

Version differences

• N64 vs 3DS. The prize wheel, the chest rolls, the dog rules and the prices above come from the decompiled N64 and GameCube code, so treat them as N64 numbers. Zelda Wiki notes the 3DS Bowling Alley is darker inside, with blue neon lighting.
• Master Quest. Zelda Wiki describes Master Quest as the same game with redesigned dungeons, and the Market is not a dungeon. On 3DS, though, Master Quest mirrors the whole map, so lefts and rights flip.
• The randomizer. The Ocarina of Time Randomizer lists Bombchu Bowling's Bomb Bag and Piece of Heart as two separate locations, a "First Prize" and a "Second Prize", and it can shuffle the chest game's keys.
• The Switch 2 remake. Zelda Wiki's notes on the remake say time of day now changes in the Market, the Market's camera is free, there are new NPCs there, and the Lens of Truth is now equipment shaped like a pair of glasses. Nothing about the wheel, the chests or the dog has been confirmed. Until the Switch 2 remake launches on November 5, 2026, treat this as an N64 and 3DS guide, especially the advice about the frozen clock.

Quick Action Checklist

• Clear Dodongo's Cavern first. Bombchu Bowling and the Bombchu Shop stay shut until you take King Dodongo's blue warp.
• Get the Adult's Wallet (10 Gold Skulltula tokens) before you bowl. The Child's Wallet only covers three 30-Rupee games.
• In Bombchu Bowling, read the counter: 10 Bombchus means the next game is for the heart, and a single Bomb means the Bomb Bag is next. Do not leave the alley between games.
• Play the Sun's Song in the Market to switch to night, and again to switch back. Without it, wait on the castle grounds, where time passes.
• At night, bring the Lens of Truth to the Treasure Chest Game. 10 Rupees buys one key for the whole run, and the key shows above its chest through the Lens.
• At night, lead Richard, the white dog by the empty stall near the entrance, to the Pooch Lady's house in the Back Alley. Stay within 400 units of him.
• By day, hit all ten targets at the Shooting Gallery for a Bullet Bag. Eight or nine hits earns a free retry.
• Show Zelda's Letter to the Kakariko gate guard, then buy the Hylian Shield at the Bazaar for 40 to 75 Rupees. Carry 80 anyway.
• Break the wooden box at the soldier's far left in the Guardhouse for a Gold Skulltula (his immediate right in the Switch 2 remake, per Zelda Wiki).