One of the best SNES games ever made "The Legend of Zelda – A Link to the Past"
A young man dressed in green. Pointed elf ears. A mighty sword hung from his back. And the weight of a world on his shoulders. Those of us who have played the Legend of Zelda video games on various Nintendo consoles have been fans of the series since the first time we played the game. It’s love beyond definition for die-hard Zelda fans. Is it the music that sneaks into your mind and plays over and over again for no reason? The pioneering game that introduced us all to the underground labyrinths where monsters and creatures lurked and haunted us for days on end? Or is it the classic story of cheering for good to triumph over evil and for the boy to save the girl from it? Whatever the reason, Zelda fans are hooked and have been since 1987.
The third installment in the Zelda series, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, was a groundbreaking game in its own right. Released in 1991 in Japan and 1992 in the United States, the game returned to the top-down view familiar to players of the original Legend of Zelda. The sequel on the NES, Link’s Awakening, used side-scrolling gameplay familiar to fans of the Super Mario Bros. series and most other games on the NES. This allowed the player to see everything around them within the screen before moving on to the next. The game moved along a kind of grid, where you played in a square, and when you moved to the edge to go to a different area, Link moved to another square.
Another new addition to the Zelda franchise was the addition of another parallel world to the real world that Link lives in. Link can move back and forth between the Light World and the Dark World, which used to be the Holy Realm before evil entered. However, players are greeted with a vision of Link as a pink rabbit if they attempt to enter the Dark World before obtaining the Moon Pearl. Depending on where the player attempted to cross between the worlds would determine where they would spawn in the opposite world, often unlocking different secrets that were otherwise unattainable. This concept would be central to the plot of another successful Zelda installment, Ocarina of Time.
The core characters from the original Legend of Zelda are present in Link to the Past, but some got a makeover for the new Super Nintendo capabilities. Link is, of course, still the main antagonist, but this is the first game in which Zelda takes a somewhat active role in her own rescue. Link goes to Hyrule Castle to rescue her from her and she is able to telepathically communicate with him to tell him where she is. She also gives Link a sword and shield when she finds it and follows him out of the dungeons. Ganon is still around as the ever-present dark enemy, but players don’t realize that fact until much later in the game. The character, Agahnim, is the enemy Link believes he is fighting, but in the game’s final battle, Ganon emerges from Agahnim’s broken body.
A Link to the Past was another groundbreaking game for Nintendo in the early 1990s, selling over 4.5 million copies. The game was re-released on the Game Boy Advance in 2002 as a bundled game with Four Swords, and was also recently re-released as a downloadable title on the Wii. Players can still play the game without having their SNES functional and connected, and by employing newer graphics and audio technology. It has been voted one of the best games by numerous magazines and game lists, and is a classic in the vein of the entire Zelda series. This game is a must for any Zelda fan, as well as any video game fan.
