Turtle Rock

Turtle Rock is the first dungeon of Link's Awakening (although the game mistakenly labels it the eighth). The enemies here are surprisingly difficult for this early on in the game, although to compensate the dungeon is very short. After completing it, Marty obtains the Thunder Drum.

Early on in this dungeon Marty obtains the Magic Rod, which destroys most enemies in one hit. This takes much of the challenge out of the combat and leaves only the difficulty of finding the right way through dungeons, which remains extremely hard to do for most of the game.

Also appearing in this dungeon are the Level 1 and 2 Power Bracelets, which allow Marty to pick up extremely heavy objects and access later dungeons in just about any order.

Players have speculated that this was once intended to appear later on in game, but that the developers moved it to the front to give the game a more interesting first dungeon.