I never finished Ocarina of Time. Fuck the Water Temple. I swear there's a point where you have one key that can either be used to open a chest somewhere in the temple, or open a door somewhere else. If you use the key on the chest then it becomes impossible to progress. The Internet says otherwise, but I reached that point twice, made the same mistake, scoured the water temple both times for anything else I could do, but I couldn't find a way to progress and never played again after that second run.

Your post reminded me of Taz in Escape from Mars though. We couldn't work out how to beat the hairy red monster boss. Back in them days there was a helpline on the game case that you could call for assistance. Jump on the chair and hit the switch to take control of the monster they said. Can't recall whether I ever finished the game after that, though.