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A lot of effort goes into ensuring that you don't randomize the game into an unwinnable state. Many of these games are so well known by speedrunners and fans, that they know what items are required for each part of the game. The Link to the Past randomizer, IIRC, actually gives you the option to randomize the game in a way that requires no glitches, or randomize the game so that glitches may be needed.

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In fact, it has multiple categories of glitches ("No Glitches," "Minor Glitches," "Overworld Glitches," and "Major Glitches", IIRC), defined by the ALttP speedrunning community, that the randomizer logic can take into account when placing the items throughout the game.

I thought this was a good introduction to that problem of unwinnable configurations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGIDzGvsrV8

Sounds like a good opportunity to dust off those graph algorithms many of us learned in undergrad CS.

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