One of the most iconic villains in the Legend of Zelda franchise is Ganon, the red-haired menace who keeps Hyrule under constant threat. Well, there's a video that covers the history of Link's greatest arch nemesis.
YouTube outlet DidYouKnowGaming has a six minute history lesson on the evil Ganondorf. The video starts by going through a quick collage of the different iterations of Ganon, and his appearances throughout the Legend of Zelda series. We see his transformation from 8-bit to 64-bit, to his appearance on the Wii.
The video explains that based on some old conceptual designs, Ganon was originally known as the "Bull Demon King" and "Hakkai". The name "Hakkai" refers to a character named Chohakkai from the classic Journey to the West Chinese folk tale, a half human and half pig monster. This was how Ganon was first depicted in the series -- an evil pig type monster.
The video goes through how his name came to be and how it was originally misspelled as Gannon on the NES, but was later fixed to Ganon in the North American port.
The video is filled with tons of interesting tidbits of information, including how the game over screen for the old Legend of Zelda 2 used a picture of Ganon and a sound sample from one of the boxers in Punch-Out from the NES. The interesting thing about it is that Ganon wasn't actually in The Legend of Zelda 2, he just had the shadowy silhouette cameo in the game over screen.
The video continues to move through the history of the villain, revealing that by the time The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past came out for the SNES, the team had finally give Ganon his full name in his corporeal form as Ganondorf Dragmire. The video mentions that the surname of "Dragmire" was only ever mentioned in the North American booklet for The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, and thus isn't considered canon.
What is canon is that Ganon went full Ganondorf by the time he reappeared for the first time as a human instead of a pig-monster in the N64 classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
It's interesting because the video later shows that Ganondorf had a bit more to say originally in his speech during his defeat in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but the seven line dialogue was shortened to just two sentences. They also mention that he appears as the main villain in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker wielding twin blades with the inscription "Honmono" on it. It refers to the Japanese saying for "the real thing". It's explained that the inscription on the sword likely refers to the fact that players are facing off against the real Ganondorf and not the doppelgangers they fought earlier in the game.
The video wraps up with a other notes about the arch villain being foiled in combat with cheap tricks by Link, including fishing rods and bug-catching nets, and they also highlight that his birthday is February 21st, which is conveniently the release date of the original Legend of Zelda for the NES back in 1986.
