Lookin’ Back #7 – The Legend Of Zelda : A Link To The Past

The lucky 7th edition of Lookin’ Back is here, with a look into one of the jewels in the SNES crown.

The Legend of Zelda is a classic Nintendo franchise, which started way back on the NES.  I’ve played every game in the series to appear on a Nintendo console, although I hear the CD-I games are abysmal.

However, the one I have the fondest memory of is the SNES incarnation of the series, ‘A Link to the Past’.  I can hear a lot of Zelda enthusiasts gasping and saying ‘But Ocarina of Time is the best Zelda game ever!’.  I agree that Ocarina is a better overall game, but Link to the Past is more fun for me.  I rented Link to the Past for several weeks from a guy who ran a games rental service where he actually came to the door every week to collect and drop off games.

So you play Link who has to save Zelda from the wizard Agahnim and, ultimately, Ganon.  Ganon wants to free himself from the Dark World and take over Hyrule, and you have to stop him.  A Link to the Past was the first Zelda game to feature the whole Light World/Dark World mechanic that featured in other Zelda games, such as Twilight Princess.

A Link to the Past was a very vibrant and colourful game, and saw the first appearances of many items and weapons that would become recurring items in the series, such as the Hookshot, the boomerang and, of course, the legendary Master Sword.

One of the best things about the game was the way the Light and Dark worlds connected to each other.  The ‘Light World’ is Hyrule, where as the ‘Dark World’ is a corrupted version of the ‘Sacred Realm’ which Ganon took over.  Both worlds shared similar maps and layouts, with some differences.  Once you got the Mirror, you could move between both worlds using both the mirrors and portals hidden around Hyrule, and this mechanic, combined with differences between the two worlds, was used to solve puzzles and make your way to areas of the map you couldn’t reach normally.

There were a lot of multi-floored dungeons in this game, full of various puzzles and enemies that you needed to overcome in order to progress.   In what became a staple of Zelda games, you often had to defeat the boss of the dungeon using the major weapon you got in the same dungeon in some way.

A Link to the Past also had my favourite soundtracks of any SNES game.  My favourite piece of music in that game was the ‘Dark World’ overworld music.  Incidentally, that music was remade and put in the soundtrack to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which was a pleasant surprise for me.

The game was brought onto the Game Boy Advance only a few years ago, with an additional multiplayer-only game called ‘Four Swords’.  The great thing about this version of the game was that any skills you learned in the Four Swords could also be used in A Link to the Past.  In addition, completing the Four Swords portion of the game unlocked an extra dungeon within the single player game.  Having rented the original, I actually bought the Game Boy Advance version and completed it, unlike the SNES version.

For me. this was probably the best game to come out for the SNES.  Also, it just pips Ocarina of Time for me as the best game in the Zelda franchise.  If you have any thoughts about Zelda, why not post them in the comments below, or visit our forums?

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