GA101 - The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past

From thecrankyhermit

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In 1986, in the wake of Super Mario Bros.' immense success, Nintendo EAD released The Legend of Zelda, with Shigeru Miyamoto as lead designer. Rather than being another platformer, as the majority of Nintendo's post-SMB NES games would be, they created an open world to explore at your own pace, viewed from a semi-overhead perspective, in the style of and perhaps influenced by the Ultima series. But unlike the Ultima series, the game controlled fluidly, and combat was determined primarily by simple action game mechanics. What Nintendo created was essentially an action game, but with design elements more common of adventure games. This was not the first game to have such properties - 1980's //Adventure// on Atari 2600 may be the first - but it *was* the first game to be such a success and spawn a series of games which would build on the formula and become even bigger successes. As such, The Legend of Zelda launched and codified the action/adventure genre. A sequel released in 1987 by a different team within the same studio, strayed from the formula and became a platformer with adventure and light RPG elements. Both were among the best selling games on the NES.

In 1991, Nintendo EAD released the third installment of the Zelda series on the SNES. Developed by Shigeru Miyamoto's team, it returns to the gameplay style of the original Zelda, with much more polish, numerous improvements, a bigger scope, and an actual script.

There is much debate over the chronology of the Zelda series' plot, but A Link to the Past is known to take place at least a generation before the first Zelda game (hence the title), and features different characters who happen to be named Link and Zelda. You play as Link, and after receiving a telepathic message from Princess Zelda, venture into a castle where she is being held, rescue her, and escape to a hidden sanctuary. Within this sanctuary, you learn of the Dark World, and the evil sorcerer Ganon who has been trapped there for centuries. The wizard Agahim intends to use Zelda in a ritual to destroy the magic seal which binds him to the realm You must travel the land of Hyrule on a quest to find the Master Sword, a magical weapon forged to combat evil, to destroy Agahim, and ultimately venture into the Dark World to destroy Ganon as well.

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As in the original Legend of Zelda, gameplay is set in a large, open-ended overworld. After a brief, semi-linear prologue where you must venture into a castle and rescue Zelda, Hyrule is yours to explore. Not all of it is immediately accessible - many landmarks and sections of Hyrule are blocked off by obstacles. You are initially tasked with exploring three dungeons, each in a different part of Hyrule, and retrieving a magical amulet from each, and two of them are in these inaccessible locations. But as you play the game, with each dungeon you conquer, you locate new weapons and equipment that allows you to bypass these obstacles, giving you access to more places to explore, more secrets to discover, and more dungeons to conquer. Completing dungeons and other accomplishments also always advances the plot in some way, and you are always given direction to your next objective in the context of the plot. Through these mechanics and very careful design, you are rewarded every step of the way.

A Link to the Past's overworld is initially more restrictive than the original, which was happy to let you wander into places you weren't prepared for and offered no comfort upon your inevitable death. But by being less open, the experience is more regimented, more directed, and has a natural and satisfying sense of progression as you constantly discover new areas. By ensuring that you are prepared for an area by the time you are able to enter it, it becomes practical to create more sophisticated design, more interesting puzzles, and generally do more interesting things with the potential depth of the genre.

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The dungeons, as in the original, are mazes filled with puzzles, tough monsters, treasures, and a boss at the end. But they are remarkably more polished and better designed. Each dungeon now has a "theme" that dictates the design, such as verticality, flowing waterways, and interaction with the light and dark worlds. Every room serves a purpose to the greater design, with no repeats or filler. Puzzles are a good deal more sophisticated than in the original, which now frequently invoke the thematic gameplay mechanics. For instance, the Swamp Palace has dry waterways, which can be flooded with water, changing the dungeon's layout considerably.

Another part of the designs is that each dungeon now contains a new piece of equipment for you to collect, and has several rooms that you can't totally complete without said piece of equipment. Quite frequently, having this item grants you powers that you'll use throughout the entire game, making the moment of discovering this item a game-changing moment. This becomes evident as you go back and conquer every room in the dungeon that you couldn't before, and as after defeating the boss, you are able to explore parts of the world that were previously inaccessible. Perhaps the most significant piece of equipment, making its series debut here, is the hookshot - a grappling hook that enables you to create a makeshift bridge across any gap that has a suitable anchor on the other side. Moments after you acquire it and use it to reach areas you couldn't before, it becomes clear that the new possibilities are enormous.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past doesn't just return to its roots. It set the bar for all action-adventure games to come. It has truly cohesive design, an engaging plot, scads of game-changing items that would become staples of the series, masterfully designed dungeons, epic boss fights, and tons of memorable moments, all set in two worlds densely packed with things to discover.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Zelda series is that it added a kind of depth to action games. Most action games today are semi-linear, featuring some amount of backtracking, puzzle solving, logic, searching for items, and environmental manipulation. Even more action games today have a concept of permanently upgrading your hero, be it simply expanding your maximum health points, or acquiring new weapons with better properties and new uses. And yet, at the time that the early Zelda games were exploring these concepts, they were otherwise strictly the domain of adventure games; contemporary action games were linear stage-based affairs, where upgrades were temporary and puzzles were rare.

An emulated SNES version of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is available on the Wii's Virtual Console. I recommend playing this version over the Gameboy Advance version, thanks to the latter's lower screen resolution, inferior music, and unwelcome added voices.

Beginner tips:

  • Bottles are extremely valuable. You can find two almost right away, and a third after buying the flippers.
  • Catch fairies with the bug net and keep them in bottles - it's a cheap way to restore health in a pinch. Later on you may prefer Cure-All medicine from the magic shop.
  • Your shield automatically blocks light projectiles as long as you aren't in an attack posture.
  • If enemies in a dungeon are killing you too quickly, leave and search for more heart containers. Most of them are hidden on the overworld
  • When you have the hammer and magic powder, jump into the well outside the smithy and sprinkle magic powder into the cauldron. You will be cursed with awesome.


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