The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords

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The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords
Developer(s)	Nintendo R&D2, Flagship
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Release date(s)	December 3, 2002 March 14, 2003 March 28, 2003
Genre(s)	Action adventure
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Everyone
Platform(s)	Game Boy Advance
Media	GBA cartridge
Preceded by	Oracle of Seasons and Ages
Followed by	The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Credits • Gallery

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords is a Game Boy Advance port of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES. The Four Swords section of the game is entirely new, and was developed by both Nintendo and Flagship, the team behind The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and a company that was (is now defunct) owned by Capcom. It is primarily a multiplayer game, whereas A Link to the Past is exclusively a single player experience. It is one of the best received video games on the Game Boy Advance, partly because of the fact that it's a remake of one of the more beloved Zelda video games. On Metacritic the game has a whopping 95%.

[edit] Differences

The following are differences from the SNES game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and this remake of it.

• Some of the voices from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask are placed in this game.
• The Four Swords addition is an entirely new game.
• If the player finishes Four Swords, then a new temple will be added to the A Link to the Past game.
• IGN has noted that the music is not as crisp as it was in the SNES original, though this was not deliberate and may be considered negligible.

[edit] Four Swords

The Four Swords part of the game was developed by Capcom's Flagship studio in cooperation with Nintendo R&D2. The game is a multiplayer experience that has the players (2-4) go through randomly generated dungeons, completing the puzzles to reach the end. The puzzles that are present will be determined by the number of players currently playing. For example, if two players are playing, then a puzzle that can only be completed with four players will not be present, though that particular puzzle will be if there are four people connected. The game had a GameCube successor called The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. The mechanic of controlling more than one Link was also implemented in the Game Boy Advance title The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, which was also created by Flagship.