The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
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| The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past<tr><td colspan="2" style="font-size: 100%; text-align: center;">Image:Zelda SNES.jpg</td></tr> | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Nintendo
<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)</th><td>Nintendo</td></tr><tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Designer(s)</th><td>Shigeru Miyamoto (producer) |
| Release date(s) | SNES version JPN November 21, 1991 NA April 13, 1992 EU November 24, 1992 GBA version NA December 2, 2002 JPN March 14, 2003 EU March 28, 2003 |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player
<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)</th><td>ESRB: E (Everyone) |
| Platform(s) | SNES, Satellaview, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console
<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media</th><td>8-megabit cartridge</td></tr><tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Input</th><td>SNES/SFCS Controller, GBA, Gamecube/Classic Controller (Wii)</td></tr> |
- "Zelda III" redirects here. For the rumored NES game, see The Legend of Zelda: The Triforce Saga.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (ゼルダの伝説 神々のトライフォース Zeruda no Densetsu Kamigami no Toraifōsu?, lit. "The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods"), also known as Zelda 3 or Zelda III, is an adventure video game developed by Nintendo and released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. It is the third video game in The Legend of Zelda series. It was released in Japan on November 21, 1991 and in North America and Europe in 1992. The project was conducted by Shigeru Miyamoto and his team.
Although Nintendo made Zelda II: The Adventure of Link into a sidescrolling adventure as opposed to a top-down adventure like the original The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past returned to the original's gameplay style. Despite its return to the original's style, A Link to the Past expanded on the original's mechanics, introducing many gameplay features that have become hallmarks of the Zelda series. Such features include multi-level dungeons, the Master Sword, the hookshot, and a dynamic environment with parallel worlds.
The storyline concerns the dark lord Ganon, who was sealed away ages ago into an alternate dimension known as the Sacred Realm. With the help of an evil wizard, Ganon makes an attempt to break free of his prison and take over the Light World, and only a young hero named Link can stop him.
A Link to the Past was later re-released in 2002 on the Game Boy Advance. The re-release itself had little new, but the cartridge also includes a multiplayer mode titled Four Swords, the first multiplayer mode in The Legend of Zelda history.
Contents |
[edit] Plot and characters
[edit] Story
Long before the period during which the game's events occur, stories were told in Hyrule about a Golden Land, with unknown powers and controlled by an omnipotent and omniscient golden power; known as the Triforce. Once the vile Ganon gets into the Golden Land, he holds the Triforce and turns it into the Dark World. To lock Ganon there, the Seven Wise Men, (Sages in the Game Boy Advance remake) created a seal to the Dark World, which can only be broken by the Sages or their descendants. This story became a legend, and it is told to the player as the game unfolds.
Right before the game starts, Agahnim, who had achieved an important advisory role in the kingdom, gets rid of the King of Hyrule and starts searching for seven maidens, descendants of the sages, in order to send them to the Dark World and break the seal.
At the beginning of the game, a young boy named Link receives a telepathic message from a girl named Princess Zelda. She says that she is locked in the dungeon of the castle, and Link goes to rescue her. On the way, however, Link finds his uncle severely wounded in the sewers, and receives his uncle's sword and shield before his uncle dies. Link and Zelda escape the castle via a secret passageway to a Sanctuary where Zelda stays while Link collects three pendants needed to free the Master Sword from its resting place.
Link retrieves the Master Sword only to learn that Zelda has been taken to the castle by Agahnim. Link goes to the castle to rescue her but arrives too late; she is the seventh girl Agahnim needed to break the seal. Zelda disappears into the Dark World and Link and Agahnim battle. Agahnim falls, but sends Link into the Dark World.
Once in the Dark World, Link finds himself standing atop the Pyramid of Power where Hyrule Castle stood in the Light World. The only way to destroy Ganon's Dark World (and subsequently save the once-peaceful Light World) is to defeat Ganon and take the Triforce from his clutches. In order to do that, Link must first rescue the maidens (including Zelda) from seven dungeons within the Dark World.
Once the girls have been freed, Link fights Agahnim one more time before confronting Ganon inside the Great Pyramid. As in the first Legend of Zelda game, Ganon can only be slain with the Silver Arrows. When Link touches the Triforce, his wishes cause the Dark World to disappear and peace returns to the Light World. With his quest completed, Link returns the Master Sword to its resting place.
[edit] Chronology
The true chronology of the Zelda series is an issue of much debate among fans. According to the text on the back of the game's packaging, A Link to the Past precedes the adventures of the Link and Princess Zelda from the NES games The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
The Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arguably serves as a backstory to the events of this game. Several of the maidens that Link rescues in A Link to the Past describe Ganon's rise to power, and their stories contain many plot elements portrayed in Ocarina. One refers to him as a thief named "Ganondorf," the first time that he is called by that name in the series. In Ocarina of Time, Ganondorf steals part of the Triforce, as chronicled in A Link to the Past, and only after Link defeats him at the end of Ocarina of Time does he turn into "Ganon," the giant, pig-like monster that Link fights in A Link to the Past. At the end of Ocarina of Time, Ganon swears to Link that he will return one day to exterminate his descendants. These references likely place A Link to the Past after Ocarina of Time in the Zelda timeline. However, it is not clear how the Triforce ends up in the Sacred Realm with Ganon between the events of Ocarina and A Link to the Past.
[edit] Characters
- Link: A young boy who lived with his uncle in a lone house outside of Hyrule Castle until one stormy night when he would be contacted telepathically by Princess Zelda. His uncle, also hearing the call, urged him to stay behind while he investigated the situation, yet Link followed and soon found his uncle on the brink of death within the castle walls. Realizing he was the princess' only hope, the aged swordsman bestowed upon Link the secret sword arts of their family before losing consciousness. Link's destiny was then revealed to be the protector of Zelda, and after her eventual re-capture by Agahnim, he was forced to enter the mysterious Dark World to rescue her and save Hyrule.
- Princess Zelda: As a descendant of the royal family of Hyrule, Zelda's ancestors were the very people who sealed away the fabled Golden Land years ago, and she has thus become a target of Agahnim as a catalyst for re-opening that very world. She is captured before the start of the game, yet is rescued by Link before she and the other maidens can be sent to the Dark World. After hiding in a church safe house while Link searches for the legendary Master Sword, Zelda is captured by Agahnim once again, and is at once sealed away in a magic crystal at the top of Death Mountain.
- Agahnim: A mysterious sorcerer who arrived at the Hyrule Kingdom not long before the beginning of the game. Although his motives were at first unclear, he gained favorable reputation with the royal family by ridding them of a number of problems plaguing their kingdom using unknown magic. He later developed an interest in the wise men who sealed away the mythical Golden Land ages ago, and realized that once this land was found, he could have all of its power for himself. He then placed a spell on the knights of the land, putting them under his direct control, and ordered them to find the descendants of these sages of lore, not the least of which was Princess Zelda herself. After murdering her father, King Hyrule, Agahnim was about to send Zelda to the Dark World when Link intervened, and escaped to the other world himself. Eventually Link returns to challenge him again in the Dark World, winning again and defeating Agahnim in the process. Link then learns that Ganon is the true enemy, and that he(Ganon) was merely possessing Agahnim to avoid suspicion. He is knocked out/off of Agahnim when Link defeats him(Agahnim) a second time.
- Sahasrahla: An aged, learned man who happens to be a descendant of the seven sages. Link meets him early in the game, and Sahasrahla informs him that in order to obtain the Master Sword, he must release its magical seal with the power of the three pendants. Whenever Link finds a Triforce-shaped glyph on a wall inside of a dungeon, Sahasrahla is able to communicate with him telepathically, and regularly offers advice on how to approach a certain situation. At the end of the game, he manages to return back home to the village, safe and sound.
- Link's Uncle: A former knight in service to the royal family of Hyrule, Link's uncle has been his caretaker for sometime, and taught him how to effectively use a sword. When he is summoned to the aid of the princess, he takes off for the castle, only to be critically wounded by the palace guards. He tells Link the secrets of his family's sword techniques, and urges him to protect Zelda. After Ganon is defeated, Link's uncle is shown to be alive and well.
- Early in the game, Link's uncle says "Zelda is your..." before falling unconscious. This caused some people to speculate that the full sentence would have read "Zelda is your sister", possibly in relation to the film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (less popular sentence endings included "ally" and "only hope"). The Japanese version of the game confirms that the translation of the sentence should have read, "Zelda is your destiny". The later GBA release would alter the text to read "It is your destiny to save Zelda".
[edit] Gameplay
Though not completely ignoring the changes made to the gameplay in Zelda II, A Link to the Past was largely a throwback to the original Zelda. Instead of building on Zelda II's overhead/sidescrolling hybrid system, A Link to the Past returned to the original's formula of both exploration and combat taking place in the same environment, with an overhead perspective. A Link to the Past also did away with the RPG-style leveling system implemented in Zelda II, but retained some elements of the game's magic system.
The overall control of Link is more flexible than in previous games, as he could now walk diagonally instead of just vertically and horizontally. And for the first time, he slashed his sword sideways instead of merely thrusting it forward like before. This gave his sword attacks a broader range and made combat easier. Link continued slashing his sword as the default attack in future Zelda games (although thrusting was also a possible attack in the later 3D incarnations).
A number of new items and techniques were created for this game, many of which would continue to appear in later incarnations of the series. Such items include the Hookshot, the Master Sword, and the Pegasus Boots. The Heart Containers that increased the player's maximum life points in the earlier two games are present, but many are split into pieces of heart, four of which make up one Heart Container. Most of them are hidden, adding replay value to the game. Another innovation was the multi-level dungeon, which allowed for Link to traverse up and down floors, and even fall through holes in a floor to land in lower levels.
A Link to the Past is also the first appearance of what would later become a major Zelda trademark: the existence of two parallel worlds that the player can travel between. The first, called the Light World, is the ordinary Hyrule where Link grew up with his uncle. The second was once the Sacred Realm, but became a corrupted version of Hyrule called the Dark World because of changes made by Ganon's evil power. Everything in the Light World (Hyrule) looks fairly normal, while the Dark World is true to its name by being creepy and depressing — the water is a dull shade, the grass is dead, there are skulls everywhere, and the trees have distorted faces. People even change forms when entering the Dark World, based on their nature. Each location in the Light World corresponds to a similar location in the Dark World, usually with a similar physical structure but sometimes with an opposite nature (e.g. a desert in the Light World corresponds to a Dark World swamp).
Unlike The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, where there is only one location at which Link can travel back and forth in time, A Link to the Past allows Link to travel from the Dark World to the Light World at almost any outside location by using a magical mirror. Once in the Light World, the player can only return to the Dark World by stepping into the stationary portal created by the mirror or by finding other hidden warp locations. This flexibility enabled a variety of puzzles that exploited slight differences between the Light and Dark Worlds.
[edit] Development
At the time, most SNES game cartridges had 4 Mbit (512 KB) of memory. This game broke the trend by using 8 Mbit (1 MB), allowing the Nintendo development team to create a remarkably expansive world for Link to inhabit. Like Super Mario World, this game used a simple graphic compression method on the SNES by limiting the color depth of many (but not all) tiles to 8 colors instead of the SNES's native 16-color tiles. The tiles were decompressed at runtime by simply adding a leading zero or one bit to each pixel's color index. Memory was saved by eliminating duplication: The Light World and the Dark World are almost identical and only the differences were saved, otherwise they would have needed to wait for a 16 Mbit ROM.
A Link to the Past, like the previous two entries in the series on the NES, featured a counter that registers how many times you died on your file. (With some work, you can finish the game with 000). This total is featured in the ending sequence upon finishing the game. However, the SNES version added to the counter every time the user selects "Save and Quit", so the only way to achieve 000 is to go through the whole game without dying or powering off the system. The GBA remake fixed this, such that saving and quitting does not advance the counter.
The English language localization includes a number of changes to the original Japanese game. The most common type of change was the removal of religious references to conform with Nintendo of America's content guidelines. The most obvious change was made to the subtitle of the game, which was changed from Triforce of the Gods to A Link to the Past. The font used in the game to represent an unreadable language, Hylian, originally had designs of a vulture and an ankh. These designs were based on Egyptian hieroglyphs which carry religious meanings, and were altered in the English version. The localization also made changes to plot included in the manual. The priest Agahnim became a wizard, and his background, which originally implied that he was sent by the gods, was altered to remove any celestial origin.
[edit] Music
The score to A Link to the Past was composed by Koji Kondo. The overworld theme of the original Legend of Zelda, (the Hyrule Overture) was carried over to A Link to the Past and played in the Light World, redone in SPC700 style. The game introduces several musical sub-themes to the series, such as the Theme of Princess Zelda (Zelda's Lullaby), the Royal Family Theme (Hyrule Castle), Kakariko Village and the Select Screen / Fairy Cave. Each of these tunes was reused in later games of the series.
[edit] Chris Houlihan room
The Chris Houlihan Room is a secret room in the game. Chris was a Nintendo Power subscriber who won a contest in which the winner's name would be included in a secret room in the game. In the Super NES version, the room can be accesed by entering the hole under the bush near the castle wall within the first few seconds of starting a saved game file. Several other locations have been reported as potential entrances to the room, as the game program sends the player to Chris's room whenever an error condition occurs when loading the next screen. It is not present in any future builds of the game, or in any version of the Japanese builds.
The Chris Houlihan room has a message on a tile on the wall, and 45 blue rupees (225 rupees total). It can be entered many times, but the rupees can only be taken once. After going out of the room, you will be transported to the outside of Link's uncle's house, even when you entered the secret room in the Dark World. In the Game Boy Advance port, the message is changed.
[edit] Versions
A Link to the Past was also made available for the Satellaview, the Japanese add-on for the Super Famicom. The game was completely unchanged, except for being converted into a downloadable format. A Satellaview-exclusive sequel, BS Zelda: Kodai no Sekiban, was released in Japan in 1997.
In 2002, Capcom ported A Link to the Past to the Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Advance version was released in North America on 2 December 2002 and in Japan on 13 March 2003. This port was packaged with a Capcom-developed multiplayer Zelda game called Four Swords. The two games worked together; extra features could be unlocked in one game by completing tasks in the other. Additions to A Link to the Past include voice clips, an additional dungeon, an additional end sequence for clearing the new dungeon, and the ability to unlock a continuous spin slash attack. Other changes include an easier puzzle in the fifth dungeon of the Dark World and a text overhaul.
[edit] Reception
A Link to the Past was critically acclaimed upon release and has since been recognized as one of the greatest video games of all time. It is noted for its exceptionally long stay on Nintendo Power's top games list: when the SNES list was finally retired, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past had more than five consecutive years in the number one spot.
[edit] Legacy
A Link to the Past established several recurring elements in the Zelda series, such as the Master Sword, Sacred Realm (the Golden Land), and Cuccos.
[edit] Sequels
- Further information: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
The next Zelda title, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was released in 1993 for the Nintendo Game Boy. It retained many of A Link to the Past's gameplay mechanics including the top-down perspective. It is a direct chronologic sequel to A Link to the Past according to the official Japanese Zelda website.[citation needed]
[edit] Comics
- Further information: Manga from The Legend of Zelda series
A comic book miniseries by Shotaro Ishinomori based on Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past appeared in Nintendo Power magazine beginning in January 1992, and ran for 12 issues. Many portions of the game were omitted, and several new story segments were added.
In the manga, a new character named Roam was introduced who was a knight with the ability to take on an avian form. While at first meeting Link as an enemy, the two quickly became allies and joined forces to help take down Ganon. Roam has a large nose, a common trait in Shotaro's designs.
Another manga written by the same writers who wrote the 'Ocarina Of Time' and 'Majora's Mask' manga. It was only released in Japan and introduced a new character called 'Ganty'. She was a thief with a single devil's horn and a star under her eye. This manga had a more 'beautiful' style then the Shotaro Ishinomori manga and the plot was a bit more faithful to the game then Shotaro's, however it was not completely faithful to the game.
[edit] Soundtrack
A soundtrack to A Link to the Past, entitled The Legend of Zelda: Sound and Drama was released in Japan. All of the game's themes are featured, and a bonus track is also included. The soundtrack has 2 disks, with disc one being 44 minutes long and disk two plays lasting 54 minutes.
[edit] Trivia
- Mario makes a cameo appearance in the game, appearing in paintings hanging inside certain houses. A Chain Chomp also makes a appearance inside the 7th Dungeon in the Dark World.
- In recent years a Japanese commercial of the game has become famous for its quirkiness. In the commercial a large cast of characters from the game are seen dancing (similar to Michael Jackson's Thriller) while a pop song plays in the background. Link (who is allegedly played by a woman) soon uses his spin attack to block a fireball and rescue Zelda as Ganon appears, leading to more dancing until the end of the commercial. The television show X-Play commented that it is one of their all-time favorite commercials from Japan. [1]
[edit] References
<references /> General References
- Instruction manuals from the following games: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992) and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past/Four Swords (2002).
- Arakawa, M. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Nintendo Player's Guide. Nintendo, 1992. ASIN B-000A-MPXN-M
- Kimishima, T. and Pelland, Scott. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords Official Guide. Prima Games, 2004. ISBN 0-7615-4118-7
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past official site
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past at GameFAQs
- Collection of reviews of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
- Collection of reviews of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (GBA)
- Zelda Legends has an exhaustive line-by-line comparison of the game versions.
- Speed Demos Archive - Speedruns
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past at MobyGames
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