Zelda’s Link is Google Maps’ latest Easter egg

It’s dangerous to go to that new antique store in that part of town you never go to alone! Take this.

Link, the hero from publisher Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda series, is the latest video game Easter egg buried in a Google product. If you boot up Google Maps on your browser, you’ll see that standard yellow “street view” icon now has a sword and is wearing Link’s famous green outfit. You can grab this Link, drop him on any road, and see him trot around the map. This is part of Nintendo’s attempts to market Twilight Princess HD, a rerelease of a classic Wii and GameCube game that is out today for the Wii U (read our review). This gaming Easter egg is just one of a dozen that you can find across Google websites, and it is part of a few that are explicitly related to video games.

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We tried out Link on Google Maps, and you can see little Link in action on the streets of New York City in the video below:

This isn’t the first time Google has included video game references in its products. If you type “do a barrel roll,” one of the first lines of dialogue from Nintendo’s Star Fox 64, into Google, your whole window will do a 360-degree spin.

If you type “zerg rush” into Google, characters will begin swarming and destroying items on your screen just like from the Blizzard strategy game StarCraft.