MisterRyan
1986
the foundation of the home i will spend the rest of my life in. like the concrete slab my current house sits on, it is obtuse, and can get cold. but it is strong and reliable. upon it comfortably rests a pantheon of excellent games that i adore.
1986's The Legend of Zelda is a game that embodies the Adventure that the developers, Mr. Shiggy in particular, experienced as children. Be it from the limitations the Famicom was burdened with, or the developers sense of being realistic, rather than nostalgic, The Legend of Zelda will give you the kind of experience you could have as a child going on an adventure, for better or worse. You will never forget the time you climbed a mountain and saw the tops of all the buildings in the town surrounding it, but you would probably prefer to forget being covered in ticks getting up to the top of that mountain. The Legend of Zelda's iconic music and gameplay and winding labyrinths and puzzles and cute character designs should never be forgotten, but you'll also never be able to forget the Wizzrobes, the ultimate Fucker Supreme in video games.
i have beaten this game at least seven times, and 100%ed it at least two of those times. I've beaten it with only the green tunic, and attempted to beat it without a sword but i didn't have the patience for it.
There are Zelda games that mean more to me, but i have nothing but respect and love for the one that started it all.
1986's The Legend of Zelda is a game that embodies the Adventure that the developers, Mr. Shiggy in particular, experienced as children. Be it from the limitations the Famicom was burdened with, or the developers sense of being realistic, rather than nostalgic, The Legend of Zelda will give you the kind of experience you could have as a child going on an adventure, for better or worse. You will never forget the time you climbed a mountain and saw the tops of all the buildings in the town surrounding it, but you would probably prefer to forget being covered in ticks getting up to the top of that mountain. The Legend of Zelda's iconic music and gameplay and winding labyrinths and puzzles and cute character designs should never be forgotten, but you'll also never be able to forget the Wizzrobes, the ultimate Fucker Supreme in video games.
i have beaten this game at least seven times, and 100%ed it at least two of those times. I've beaten it with only the green tunic, and attempted to beat it without a sword but i didn't have the patience for it.
There are Zelda games that mean more to me, but i have nothing but respect and love for the one that started it all.
you don't know what you have until it's too late, and Nintendo didn't know that the first Legend of Zelda was the one that really worked .
That's not to say that Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has nothing going for it. The developers wanted to focus on the sword fighting aspect of Zelda, and i think they did okay with it. Consider the slew of other NES games that involve a sword and the lack of tension in the combat. For better or worse, and if you're not playing with save states, definitely for worse, Zelda II can offer some nail biting NES sword fights. Once you get the upwards and downwards thrusts for attacks in the air, the game feels pretty fun to play, especially when you're pogo jumping on an enemy's head.
We get this combat, however, at the expense of most other things that made the original Zelda so much fun. Zelda II's palaces, are a homogenous blur of brickbuilt hallways with various enemies peppered along it. I only remember the final palace's layout because i game overed so many times on the way to the Thunderbird, and i barely remember that level's layout as it is.
Those palaces follow Zelda 1's trend of rewarding you with a item to help you on your journey, but they rarely ever help you in the part of the game that you're most connected to: the side-scrolling action platforming. The items go towards the top-down overworld map that you use to go from major location to major location, where they're mostly "keys" to get you to the next major location.
This disconnect between these items you get and the gameplay you're most linked (get it) to is somewhat mitigated by the spells you get from the various villages you find with those items. The spells give you temporary combat and movement and defensive buffs as well as some interesting things like a fairy transformation that cleverly lets you fly through keyholes.
In order to use these spells you need magic, and you can cast more spells by leveling up and giving yourself more magic meter. Zelda having an EXP (in this case, just P) Level-up system is something i'm glad didn't get carried over into the later games, but you might find yourself grinding for rupees in Majora's Mask or Wind Waker, so while the P system didn't come back, the ugly side of it certainly did. To an extent.
I have played this game three or four times. It's hard to beat this game without 100%ing it, so i guess i should say i have also done that three or four times.
despite being the """"black sheep"""", Zelda II is a game with a lot of firsts for the Zelda series. it's the first to have towns (which the sages in Ocarina of Time are named after), it's the first to have sword techniques (which are referenced by Smash Bros. to this day), and it's the first to have Dark Link. I recommend Zelda II for the real Zelder Freaks out there. You play it and you see the team trying to find what works while also improving on what they made before, and struggling to find their footing while also getting the ball rolling for true greatness.
The music, as always, is really good too.
That's not to say that Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has nothing going for it. The developers wanted to focus on the sword fighting aspect of Zelda, and i think they did okay with it. Consider the slew of other NES games that involve a sword and the lack of tension in the combat. For better or worse, and if you're not playing with save states, definitely for worse, Zelda II can offer some nail biting NES sword fights. Once you get the upwards and downwards thrusts for attacks in the air, the game feels pretty fun to play, especially when you're pogo jumping on an enemy's head.
We get this combat, however, at the expense of most other things that made the original Zelda so much fun. Zelda II's palaces, are a homogenous blur of brickbuilt hallways with various enemies peppered along it. I only remember the final palace's layout because i game overed so many times on the way to the Thunderbird, and i barely remember that level's layout as it is.
Those palaces follow Zelda 1's trend of rewarding you with a item to help you on your journey, but they rarely ever help you in the part of the game that you're most connected to: the side-scrolling action platforming. The items go towards the top-down overworld map that you use to go from major location to major location, where they're mostly "keys" to get you to the next major location.
This disconnect between these items you get and the gameplay you're most linked (get it) to is somewhat mitigated by the spells you get from the various villages you find with those items. The spells give you temporary combat and movement and defensive buffs as well as some interesting things like a fairy transformation that cleverly lets you fly through keyholes.
In order to use these spells you need magic, and you can cast more spells by leveling up and giving yourself more magic meter. Zelda having an EXP (in this case, just P) Level-up system is something i'm glad didn't get carried over into the later games, but you might find yourself grinding for rupees in Majora's Mask or Wind Waker, so while the P system didn't come back, the ugly side of it certainly did. To an extent.
I have played this game three or four times. It's hard to beat this game without 100%ing it, so i guess i should say i have also done that three or four times.
despite being the """"black sheep"""", Zelda II is a game with a lot of firsts for the Zelda series. it's the first to have towns (which the sages in Ocarina of Time are named after), it's the first to have sword techniques (which are referenced by Smash Bros. to this day), and it's the first to have Dark Link. I recommend Zelda II for the real Zelder Freaks out there. You play it and you see the team trying to find what works while also improving on what they made before, and struggling to find their footing while also getting the ball rolling for true greatness.
The music, as always, is really good too.
The King is back and he dyed his hair pink.
You turn the game on, you hear the rupee tinkle sound while the Nintendo logo pops up, and then the three golden pieces of the Triforce come spiraling into frame while a SNES harp beautifully glistens in one of my favorite openings for any piece of media, let alone video game.
After what is seen by many as a slight stumble, The Legend of Zelda series finds its footing again with the blueprint for what most classic Zelda games would be built from. The top-down perspective, dungeons with useful items, and a lush map you traverse in the same way you traverse anything else, it's all back and here to stay. There's also some semblance of a plot, in the form of clear, concise dialogue regarding the world of Hyrule and the happenings therein (these are actually in the game and not solely in the game manual. there is backstory in that manual but we'll get to that).
This is the first of many Zelda games to separate progression into three small dungeons, acquisition of the iconic Master Sword, and then a bigger handful of larger, more serious dungeons, equipped with both that Master Sword and shocking information to motivate your quest (zelda has been kidnapped by aghanim and the dark world is laid bare for you to explore/ seven years have passed and everything went to hell/ hyrule is underwater right under your nose/ Ganondorf's evil is corrupting the world of twilight).
Speaking of Ganondorf, this game's english manual is his first written appearance. "Ganondorf Dragmire", also known by his alias "Mandrag Ganon" is the villain of this story. With Zelda II having the threat be the return of a recently defeated Ganon, this makes A Link to the Past the first in the exhaustive list of "First in the Timeline" Zelda games.
A Link to the Past is also the first Zelda game to have the dual worlds gimmick, with the sunny green Light World and its dusky brown reflection, the Dark World. the two worlds intersect and ask the player to pay attention in a very Zelda way.
As if this game couldn't give us enough to be thankful for, A Link to the Past introduces a respectable arsenal of tools and toys to play with in the two worlds. From the staple Hookshot to the oddball Cane of Somaria, A Link to the Past swings for the bleachers with the amount of things to play with and doesn't miss.
i have played this game more times than i can count. i have played it so many times that i have in some ways eclipsed the notion of an opinion on it. however, unlike putting on my pants or brushing my teeth, playing A Link to the Past is always a fun part of my routine. it's like lunch or something.
One reason why i have played this game so much is that the Randomizer is so accessible. If you like A Link to the Past, you owe it to yourself to play the Randomizer. You will learn so many tricks and new ways to appreciate this already very appreciate-able game. I like this game so much i put myself through the agony of creating a sprite sheet for one of my characters so i can play as her whenever i make a new randomized rom.
Any new Zelder Freak owes it to themselves to play A Link to the Past. It's not the first Zelda, but it's The Blueprint.
You turn the game on, you hear the rupee tinkle sound while the Nintendo logo pops up, and then the three golden pieces of the Triforce come spiraling into frame while a SNES harp beautifully glistens in one of my favorite openings for any piece of media, let alone video game.
After what is seen by many as a slight stumble, The Legend of Zelda series finds its footing again with the blueprint for what most classic Zelda games would be built from. The top-down perspective, dungeons with useful items, and a lush map you traverse in the same way you traverse anything else, it's all back and here to stay. There's also some semblance of a plot, in the form of clear, concise dialogue regarding the world of Hyrule and the happenings therein (these are actually in the game and not solely in the game manual. there is backstory in that manual but we'll get to that).
This is the first of many Zelda games to separate progression into three small dungeons, acquisition of the iconic Master Sword, and then a bigger handful of larger, more serious dungeons, equipped with both that Master Sword and shocking information to motivate your quest (zelda has been kidnapped by aghanim and the dark world is laid bare for you to explore/ seven years have passed and everything went to hell/ hyrule is underwater right under your nose/ Ganondorf's evil is corrupting the world of twilight).
Speaking of Ganondorf, this game's english manual is his first written appearance. "Ganondorf Dragmire", also known by his alias "Mandrag Ganon" is the villain of this story. With Zelda II having the threat be the return of a recently defeated Ganon, this makes A Link to the Past the first in the exhaustive list of "First in the Timeline" Zelda games.
A Link to the Past is also the first Zelda game to have the dual worlds gimmick, with the sunny green Light World and its dusky brown reflection, the Dark World. the two worlds intersect and ask the player to pay attention in a very Zelda way.
As if this game couldn't give us enough to be thankful for, A Link to the Past introduces a respectable arsenal of tools and toys to play with in the two worlds. From the staple Hookshot to the oddball Cane of Somaria, A Link to the Past swings for the bleachers with the amount of things to play with and doesn't miss.
i have played this game more times than i can count. i have played it so many times that i have in some ways eclipsed the notion of an opinion on it. however, unlike putting on my pants or brushing my teeth, playing A Link to the Past is always a fun part of my routine. it's like lunch or something.
One reason why i have played this game so much is that the Randomizer is so accessible. If you like A Link to the Past, you owe it to yourself to play the Randomizer. You will learn so many tricks and new ways to appreciate this already very appreciate-able game. I like this game so much i put myself through the agony of creating a sprite sheet for one of my characters so i can play as her whenever i make a new randomized rom.
Any new Zelder Freak owes it to themselves to play A Link to the Past. It's not the first Zelda, but it's The Blueprint.
They put a jump button in this one and it's game-breakingly good.
If not my first video game ever, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is my first Zelda game. I vividly remember playing this game on my dad's big clunky Game Boy with my mom over my shoulder watching what i did and giving me suggestions of what to do. If this game was terrible, it would still hold a special place in my heart as the game my mother and i went on an adventure through.
But this game is particularly good, despite being on the Game Boy. I think that's something to temper your expectations with before going into it. It's a Game Boy game, and those always pale in comparison to their console counterparts. But Link's Awakening is one of the best Game Boy games ever. It's a simplified Zelda game, but it holds its own. If you need proof of this, it's been remade twice (once in color on the Game Boy Color, and then a full on 3D HD Remake on the Nintendo Switch).
There's a lot that makes this game so remake-able, and to that extent, enjoyable to play, and the most noteworthy is the intriguing story. But that story would be slightly less interesting if there wasn't a colorful (considering this review is on the black and white Game Boy version of the game, i'm using colorful with a bit of poetry here) cast of characters to interact with and adore. Marin in particular is a very lovable character, and she's lovable enough to play through the game without getting a single game over. Do it for her. She deserves it.
Link's Awakening falters for me in an interesting way, but I have to explain the good part about it first. It chooses to let you use the two face buttons on the Game Boy for any item however you want. For example, you can equip the sword to either the A or B button, or neither of them because you have the bow and shield out because you're low on hearts and don't want to get in close. This trait actually lets you use the first instance of Bomb Arrows in a Zelda game, beating Twilight Princess to it by over a decade. (Just press the bomb button slightly before the arrow button).
The way the game falters is that because it's on the Game Boy, and you only have two buttons to work with, you're constantly pressing the pause button and waiting a split second for it to show up so you can swap items and then wait another split second for it to go away so you can go back to the game. It's a little thing, but considering how many times i pause to swap the Roc's Feather out for something else and then pause again to swap back to the Roc's Feather adds up.
This brings us to the Roc's Feather. I like the Roc's Feather in the same way a crackhead likes Crack. The Roc's Feather lets Link jump, and jumping diagonally increases Link's speed. It feels incredible to play. But at the same time, playing without it for whatever reason makes the game feel less fun. It feels stiffer, it feels stunted. It shouldn't feel that way, it's a fine game on its own. But that feather changes everything. It's Crack. Thankfully, the 2019 Switch remake doubles the face buttons you can use and then adds a few more for good measure, so your Roc's Feather can always be on hand.
Despite this, the original is still worth playing. Any shortcomings you might find are balanced with cuteness and silly charm.
I have played this game so many times I know it by heart. I've played every version of it multiple times. I've glitched the DX version to do a full Damaged Sprite Tunic playthrough just because i liked how it looks. I adore the Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. My biggest gripe with it is that it's not long enough, i want more.
If not my first video game ever, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is my first Zelda game. I vividly remember playing this game on my dad's big clunky Game Boy with my mom over my shoulder watching what i did and giving me suggestions of what to do. If this game was terrible, it would still hold a special place in my heart as the game my mother and i went on an adventure through.
But this game is particularly good, despite being on the Game Boy. I think that's something to temper your expectations with before going into it. It's a Game Boy game, and those always pale in comparison to their console counterparts. But Link's Awakening is one of the best Game Boy games ever. It's a simplified Zelda game, but it holds its own. If you need proof of this, it's been remade twice (once in color on the Game Boy Color, and then a full on 3D HD Remake on the Nintendo Switch).
There's a lot that makes this game so remake-able, and to that extent, enjoyable to play, and the most noteworthy is the intriguing story. But that story would be slightly less interesting if there wasn't a colorful (considering this review is on the black and white Game Boy version of the game, i'm using colorful with a bit of poetry here) cast of characters to interact with and adore. Marin in particular is a very lovable character, and she's lovable enough to play through the game without getting a single game over. Do it for her. She deserves it.
Link's Awakening falters for me in an interesting way, but I have to explain the good part about it first. It chooses to let you use the two face buttons on the Game Boy for any item however you want. For example, you can equip the sword to either the A or B button, or neither of them because you have the bow and shield out because you're low on hearts and don't want to get in close. This trait actually lets you use the first instance of Bomb Arrows in a Zelda game, beating Twilight Princess to it by over a decade. (Just press the bomb button slightly before the arrow button).
The way the game falters is that because it's on the Game Boy, and you only have two buttons to work with, you're constantly pressing the pause button and waiting a split second for it to show up so you can swap items and then wait another split second for it to go away so you can go back to the game. It's a little thing, but considering how many times i pause to swap the Roc's Feather out for something else and then pause again to swap back to the Roc's Feather adds up.
This brings us to the Roc's Feather. I like the Roc's Feather in the same way a crackhead likes Crack. The Roc's Feather lets Link jump, and jumping diagonally increases Link's speed. It feels incredible to play. But at the same time, playing without it for whatever reason makes the game feel less fun. It feels stiffer, it feels stunted. It shouldn't feel that way, it's a fine game on its own. But that feather changes everything. It's Crack. Thankfully, the 2019 Switch remake doubles the face buttons you can use and then adds a few more for good measure, so your Roc's Feather can always be on hand.
Despite this, the original is still worth playing. Any shortcomings you might find are balanced with cuteness and silly charm.
I have played this game so many times I know it by heart. I've played every version of it multiple times. I've glitched the DX version to do a full Damaged Sprite Tunic playthrough just because i liked how it looks. I adore the Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. My biggest gripe with it is that it's not long enough, i want more.
The water temple is good, actually.
This is it. The high they’ll chase for decades to come. The Zelda Formula, perfected. The quintessential 3D Zelda, on the first try.
There was a time where I was of the opinion that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was just Okay. It was Fine. It was Overrated. Just A Link to the Past with 3D models. That was also a time in my life when I was a moron. Ocarina of Time deserves every bit of praise it ever has or ever will get.
My thoughts on Ocarina of Time was originally a novel’s worth of paragraphs. I went on about how hyrule field’s connectivity to its surrounding towns and locales with only a loading screen separating them pushed the sense of adventure. I rambled about the appealing and memorable characters that lived in those towns and locales. I talked about just how much of a home run Ganondorf’s first on-screen appearance was. I spoke on the coolness of Sheik, and just how much of a character princess Zelda became because of that. There’s so much to like about Ocarina of Time. Too much for a “””review””” like this.
I have played this game at least 10 times, and I've 100%ed it two or three of those times. Those Big Poes can be a real pain in the ass.
You don’t need me to tell you how good it is, it speaks for itself and its voice is loud and clear.
It's got the best Hyrule Field theme too. it brings a tear to my eye every time.
This is it. The high they’ll chase for decades to come. The Zelda Formula, perfected. The quintessential 3D Zelda, on the first try.
There was a time where I was of the opinion that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was just Okay. It was Fine. It was Overrated. Just A Link to the Past with 3D models. That was also a time in my life when I was a moron. Ocarina of Time deserves every bit of praise it ever has or ever will get.
My thoughts on Ocarina of Time was originally a novel’s worth of paragraphs. I went on about how hyrule field’s connectivity to its surrounding towns and locales with only a loading screen separating them pushed the sense of adventure. I rambled about the appealing and memorable characters that lived in those towns and locales. I talked about just how much of a home run Ganondorf’s first on-screen appearance was. I spoke on the coolness of Sheik, and just how much of a character princess Zelda became because of that. There’s so much to like about Ocarina of Time. Too much for a “””review””” like this.
I have played this game at least 10 times, and I've 100%ed it two or three of those times. Those Big Poes can be a real pain in the ass.
You don’t need me to tell you how good it is, it speaks for itself and its voice is loud and clear.
It's got the best Hyrule Field theme too. it brings a tear to my eye every time.
As a certified Gameboy Zelda Lover, I am biased, and the ability to transform into an Octorok deserves a perfect score.
On their own, the Oracle games are a pretty middling Zelda experience, with Ages not shining as brightly as Seasons. But together, through the programming magic of sharable passwords, they become a much more interesting and full experience. An experience that feels like the season finale of a Saturday morning action cartoon. This review, copied and pasted for each game, for better or worse, will be on that experience.
I should start by saying that when these games were first released, you had to buy each of them. For twice the price of a regular game you got the Oracle Twins’ full experience. Nowadays, one could easily play both of these games for as little as one savvy google search. Regardless, it’s worth criticizing nintendo for more or less selling you two weak games that make up a somewhat stronger, more interesting experience, rather than just making a great experience from the start for half the price. But what’s done is done, and I’ve said what I wanted to say on that.
The Oracle Twins are at their most fun and interesting when you have beaten at least one of them, but which one should you start with? Which Oracle game takes place first in the Zelda Timeline? Well, as far as the games themselves are concerned, each game has the potential to be the first or second in your playthrough. So start with whatever you want. Oracle of Seasons for the action? Or Oracle of Ages for the puzzles? Do you like blue haired ladies? Or redheads?
But why is it more fun to have already beaten one of them? Why not be fun from the start? Well, it is fun from the start. You’re playing a Zelda game, after all. But once you beat it, you’re given a special unique password that you can then use when you start the other game to turn it into a sequel of the one you started with. There are dialogue differences that slightly change the context of the games’ respective intros, your animal friend is carried over, and most importantly, your magic rings that you spent countless hours grinding for, which I will get into later, are also carried over. It makes the second playthrough a much more personal experience than just “the next game to play”. It’s a continuation of Your journey.
Since these games started off on a handheld console, they already had the benefit of being more personal than something that is played on a tv where anyone in the room can watch. Add to that the intimate nature of the Oracle’s Linked Game, and you have a nice quaint story all to yourself. Add to THAT the Linked Game Only side quests that require you to go BACK to the previous game and talk with old characters to fulfill those quests and bring the reward back again to the second game, and you have not just a story but an ongoing saga with living breathing worlds, all in your back pocket.
Now maybe you’re more of a Zelda Freak than I am. I only beat Ages and then a Linked Seasons, but if you want to get the full Oracles Experience and get all the little details: you beat each game, and then using the link codes, start a linked version of them, effectively starting both games again with slightly different contexts. That’s too much work for me, but here I am writing a review on it, so maybe I should have done it.
It’s kind of wild how much of a preamble this review has, considering the overall simplicity of the games themselves on their own. They’re your usual 2D Zelda affair, elaborating on 1993’s Link’s Awakening’s already abundantly charming graphics and fun controls. As someone who in turn abundantly loves Link’s Awakening, the Oracle Twins are a great time if only because I get to play as this Link some more. And then you tell me that there’s new goodies for this Link to play with? Like the Roc’s Cape that extends your jump into a glide? And the noisy but interesting Magnet Glove that opens up a host of interesting puzzles? I’m sold.
To add to the fun, there’s a horde of 64 magical rings to collect across both games. The usefulness of these rings range from simple baubles commemorating an achievement, to making enemies drop extra money when you defeat them, to tripling the damage you both deal and take. There’s also rings that transform Link into a green palette swap of some of the enemies in the games, like the shield swallowing Like-Likes or the perfect little Squit, the Octoroks. These rings are kind of just for show and don’t act as a disguise or anything, which is a shame, but they’re fun and I like having fun.
There is however, something shameful about the rings that I find indefensible, and it isn’t that you can only wear one ring at a time. It’s how you acquire these rings that I cannot defend. While some of them are scripted rewards, a great majority of the rings you collect will be through sheer chance. You might occasionally get a ring drop in the Maple the Witch minigame, which you have you grind for. You might also get a ring drop from a Gasha Nut, which randomly gives a tiered prize depending on how much you’ve grinded. So you could be like me and spend half an hour grinding away at killing enemies to spawn the Maple Minigame and then harvest a Gasha Nut only to get the same useless ring three times.
Because of this, I did not get every ring between the two games. I got every piece of heart between them, but I didn’t 100% them and I’m okay with that. There are other, better Zelda games to spend every waking moment with.
I’ve talked mostly about the mechanics of the games and not the story, because the mechanics are much more interesting to me. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue here though. Veran is a fun villain for Ages with a really strange design (I’m serious look up the promotional art for her and try to figure out how her hat looks, it’s infuriating), and Seasons is the only Zelda game where you can find the Jawa-like Subrosians. They’re very fun and silly but I think it’s the simplicity of their designs that held them back from being a recurring Zelda race. It’s a great design though. Everyone loves a little cloaked freak.
I think Subrosia alone is what makes Seasons the better of the two games. Being a pseudo-dark world with its own currency, it makes the world in this little game feel so much bigger, despite its relative simplicity.
There are sadly, other reasons why Seasons is the better of the Oracle Twins, and those reasons are things that are in Ages but are absent from Seasons. The most egregious being the Mermaid Tail. Ages gives you a swimming upgrade to make you move not only move faster in water, but also dive down into combat-capable underwater rooms. However, the Mermaid Tail requires you to frustratedly mash the directional buttons to move. You can't just hold the left button to move left. When switching back and forth between the linked games, the different swimming styles become dreadfully apparent, and playing Seasons just becomes less annoying.
Ages also has the Simon Says-like Goron Dancing minigame, which was a miserable time for me. And you can't hit me with that Skill Issue nonsense, i'm the Karaoke King in all the Yakuza games and i soloed the Orphan of Kos. It's not me.
Regardless, both games are a fine time. I have my problems with Ages but the good outweighs the bad. Despite the mermaid tail, I will probably play it again some day. Honestly, I dread running into the last few dungeons in each game than I do the mermaid tail. Those dungeons can get pretty tedious.
I have played each game twice, but only done a Linked Game once, where I got every piece of heart for each game.
I recommend the Oracle Twins Experience for anyone who enjoys Zelda but also anyone who likes the Game Boy. For some reason, the Game Boy has had a massive resurgence in the DIY/custom building scene, and the only reason i could see myself sinking the time and money into putting a backlight on a Game Boy Color would be to play the Oracle Twins again.
On their own, the Oracle games are a pretty middling Zelda experience, with Ages not shining as brightly as Seasons. But together, through the programming magic of sharable passwords, they become a much more interesting and full experience. An experience that feels like the season finale of a Saturday morning action cartoon. This review, copied and pasted for each game, for better or worse, will be on that experience.
I should start by saying that when these games were first released, you had to buy each of them. For twice the price of a regular game you got the Oracle Twins’ full experience. Nowadays, one could easily play both of these games for as little as one savvy google search. Regardless, it’s worth criticizing nintendo for more or less selling you two weak games that make up a somewhat stronger, more interesting experience, rather than just making a great experience from the start for half the price. But what’s done is done, and I’ve said what I wanted to say on that.
The Oracle Twins are at their most fun and interesting when you have beaten at least one of them, but which one should you start with? Which Oracle game takes place first in the Zelda Timeline? Well, as far as the games themselves are concerned, each game has the potential to be the first or second in your playthrough. So start with whatever you want. Oracle of Seasons for the action? Or Oracle of Ages for the puzzles? Do you like blue haired ladies? Or redheads?
But why is it more fun to have already beaten one of them? Why not be fun from the start? Well, it is fun from the start. You’re playing a Zelda game, after all. But once you beat it, you’re given a special unique password that you can then use when you start the other game to turn it into a sequel of the one you started with. There are dialogue differences that slightly change the context of the games’ respective intros, your animal friend is carried over, and most importantly, your magic rings that you spent countless hours grinding for, which I will get into later, are also carried over. It makes the second playthrough a much more personal experience than just “the next game to play”. It’s a continuation of Your journey.
Since these games started off on a handheld console, they already had the benefit of being more personal than something that is played on a tv where anyone in the room can watch. Add to that the intimate nature of the Oracle’s Linked Game, and you have a nice quaint story all to yourself. Add to THAT the Linked Game Only side quests that require you to go BACK to the previous game and talk with old characters to fulfill those quests and bring the reward back again to the second game, and you have not just a story but an ongoing saga with living breathing worlds, all in your back pocket.
Now maybe you’re more of a Zelda Freak than I am. I only beat Ages and then a Linked Seasons, but if you want to get the full Oracles Experience and get all the little details: you beat each game, and then using the link codes, start a linked version of them, effectively starting both games again with slightly different contexts. That’s too much work for me, but here I am writing a review on it, so maybe I should have done it.
It’s kind of wild how much of a preamble this review has, considering the overall simplicity of the games themselves on their own. They’re your usual 2D Zelda affair, elaborating on 1993’s Link’s Awakening’s already abundantly charming graphics and fun controls. As someone who in turn abundantly loves Link’s Awakening, the Oracle Twins are a great time if only because I get to play as this Link some more. And then you tell me that there’s new goodies for this Link to play with? Like the Roc’s Cape that extends your jump into a glide? And the noisy but interesting Magnet Glove that opens up a host of interesting puzzles? I’m sold.
To add to the fun, there’s a horde of 64 magical rings to collect across both games. The usefulness of these rings range from simple baubles commemorating an achievement, to making enemies drop extra money when you defeat them, to tripling the damage you both deal and take. There’s also rings that transform Link into a green palette swap of some of the enemies in the games, like the shield swallowing Like-Likes or the perfect little Squit, the Octoroks. These rings are kind of just for show and don’t act as a disguise or anything, which is a shame, but they’re fun and I like having fun.
There is however, something shameful about the rings that I find indefensible, and it isn’t that you can only wear one ring at a time. It’s how you acquire these rings that I cannot defend. While some of them are scripted rewards, a great majority of the rings you collect will be through sheer chance. You might occasionally get a ring drop in the Maple the Witch minigame, which you have you grind for. You might also get a ring drop from a Gasha Nut, which randomly gives a tiered prize depending on how much you’ve grinded. So you could be like me and spend half an hour grinding away at killing enemies to spawn the Maple Minigame and then harvest a Gasha Nut only to get the same useless ring three times.
Because of this, I did not get every ring between the two games. I got every piece of heart between them, but I didn’t 100% them and I’m okay with that. There are other, better Zelda games to spend every waking moment with.
I’ve talked mostly about the mechanics of the games and not the story, because the mechanics are much more interesting to me. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue here though. Veran is a fun villain for Ages with a really strange design (I’m serious look up the promotional art for her and try to figure out how her hat looks, it’s infuriating), and Seasons is the only Zelda game where you can find the Jawa-like Subrosians. They’re very fun and silly but I think it’s the simplicity of their designs that held them back from being a recurring Zelda race. It’s a great design though. Everyone loves a little cloaked freak.
I think Subrosia alone is what makes Seasons the better of the two games. Being a pseudo-dark world with its own currency, it makes the world in this little game feel so much bigger, despite its relative simplicity.
There are sadly, other reasons why Seasons is the better of the Oracle Twins, and those reasons are things that are in Ages but are absent from Seasons. The most egregious being the Mermaid Tail. Ages gives you a swimming upgrade to make you move not only move faster in water, but also dive down into combat-capable underwater rooms. However, the Mermaid Tail requires you to frustratedly mash the directional buttons to move. You can't just hold the left button to move left. When switching back and forth between the linked games, the different swimming styles become dreadfully apparent, and playing Seasons just becomes less annoying.
Ages also has the Simon Says-like Goron Dancing minigame, which was a miserable time for me. And you can't hit me with that Skill Issue nonsense, i'm the Karaoke King in all the Yakuza games and i soloed the Orphan of Kos. It's not me.
Regardless, both games are a fine time. I have my problems with Ages but the good outweighs the bad. Despite the mermaid tail, I will probably play it again some day. Honestly, I dread running into the last few dungeons in each game than I do the mermaid tail. Those dungeons can get pretty tedious.
I have played each game twice, but only done a Linked Game once, where I got every piece of heart for each game.
I recommend the Oracle Twins Experience for anyone who enjoys Zelda but also anyone who likes the Game Boy. For some reason, the Game Boy has had a massive resurgence in the DIY/custom building scene, and the only reason i could see myself sinking the time and money into putting a backlight on a Game Boy Color would be to play the Oracle Twins again.
As a certified Gameboy Zelda Lover, I am biased, and the ability to transform into an Octorok deserves a perfect score.
On their own, the Oracle games are a pretty middling Zelda experience, with Ages not shining as brightly as Seasons. But together, through the programming magic of sharable passwords, they become a much more interesting and full experience. An experience that feels like the season finale of a Saturday morning action cartoon. This review, copied and pasted for each game, for better or worse, will be on that experience.
I should start by saying that when these games were first released, you had to buy each of them. For twice the price of a regular game you got the Oracle Twins’ full experience. Nowadays, one could easily play both of these games for as little as one savvy google search. Regardless, it’s worth criticizing nintendo for more or less selling you two weak games that make up a somewhat stronger, more interesting experience, rather than just making a great experience from the start for half the price. But what’s done is done, and I’ve said what I wanted to say on that.
The Oracle Twins are at their most fun and interesting when you have beaten at least one of them, but which one should you start with? Which Oracle game takes place first in the Zelda Timeline? Well, as far as the games themselves are concerned, each game has the potential to be the first or second in your playthrough. So start with whatever you want. Oracle of Seasons for the action? Or Oracle of Ages for the puzzles? Do you like blue haired ladies? Or redheads?
But why is it more fun to have already beaten one of them? Why not be fun from the start? Well, it is fun from the start. You’re playing a Zelda game, after all. But once you beat it, you’re given a special unique password that you can then use when you start the other game to turn it into a sequel of the one you started with. There are dialogue differences that slightly change the context of the games’ respective intros, your animal friend is carried over, and most importantly, your magic rings that you spent countless hours grinding for, which I will get into later, are also carried over. It makes the second playthrough a much more personal experience than just “the next game to play”. It’s a continuation of Your journey.
Since these games started off on a handheld console, they already had the benefit of being more personal than something that is played on a tv where anyone in the room can watch. Add to that the intimate nature of the Oracle’s Linked Game, and you have a nice quaint story all to yourself. Add to THAT the Linked Game Only side quests that require you to go BACK to the previous game and talk with old characters to fulfill those quests and bring the reward back again to the second game, and you have not just a story but an ongoing saga with living breathing worlds, all in your back pocket.
Now maybe you’re more of a Zelda Freak than I am. I only beat Ages and then a Linked Seasons, but if you want to get the full Oracles Experience and get all the little details: you beat each game, and then using the link codes, start a linked version of them, effectively starting both games again with slightly different contexts. That’s too much work for me, but here I am writing a review on it, so maybe I should have done it.
It’s kind of wild how much of a preamble this review has, considering the overall simplicity of the games themselves on their own. They’re your usual 2D Zelda affair, elaborating on 1993’s Link’s Awakening’s already abundantly charming graphics and fun controls. As someone who in turn abundantly loves Link’s Awakening, the Oracle Twins are a great time if only because I get to play as this Link some more. And then you tell me that there’s new goodies for this Link to play with? Like the Roc’s Cape that extends your jump into a glide? And the noisy but interesting Magnet Glove that opens up a host of interesting puzzles? I’m sold.
To add to the fun, there’s a horde of 64 magical rings to collect across both games. The usefulness of these rings range from simple baubles commemorating an achievement, to making enemies drop extra money when you defeat them, to tripling the damage you both deal and take. There’s also rings that transform Link into a green palette swap of some of the enemies in the games, like the shield swallowing Like-Likes or the perfect little Squit, the Octoroks. These rings are kind of just for show and don’t act as a disguise or anything, which is a shame, but they’re fun and I like having fun.
There is however, something shameful about the rings that I find indefensible, and it isn’t that you can only wear one ring at a time. It’s how you acquire these rings that I cannot defend. While some of them are scripted rewards, a great majority of the rings you collect will be through sheer chance. You might occasionally get a ring drop in the Maple the Witch minigame, which you have you grind for. You might also get a ring drop from a Gasha Nut, which randomly gives a tiered prize depending on how much you’ve grinded. So you could be like me and spend half an hour grinding away at killing enemies to spawn the Maple Minigame and then harvest a Gasha Nut only to get the same useless ring three times.
Because of this, I did not get every ring between the two games. I got every piece of heart between them, but I didn’t 100% them and I’m okay with that. There are other, better Zelda games to spend every waking moment with.
I’ve talked mostly about the mechanics of the games and not the story, because the mechanics are much more interesting to me. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue here though. Veran is a fun villain for Ages with a really strange design (I’m serious look up the promotional art for her and try to figure out how her hat looks, it’s infuriating), and Seasons is the only Zelda game where you can find the Jawa-like Subrosians. They’re very fun and silly but I think it’s the simplicity of their designs that held them back from being a recurring Zelda race. It’s a great design though. Everyone loves a little cloaked freak.
I think Subrosia alone is what makes Seasons the better of the two games. Being a pseudo-dark world with its own currency, it makes the world in this little game feel so much bigger, despite its relative simplicity.
There are sadly, other reasons why Seasons is the better of the Oracle Twins, and those reasons are things that are in Ages but are absent from Seasons. The most egregious being the Mermaid Tail. Ages gives you a swimming upgrade to make you move not only move faster in water, but also dive down into combat-capable underwater rooms. However, the Mermaid Tail requires you to frustratedly mash the directional buttons to move. You can't just hold the left button to move left. When switching back and forth between the linked games, the different swimming styles become dreadfully apparent, and playing Seasons just becomes less annoying.
Ages also has the Simon Says-like Goron Dancing minigame, which was a miserable time for me. And you can't hit me with that Skill Issue nonsense, i'm the Karaoke King in all the Yakuza games and i soloed the Orphan of Kos. It's not me.
Regardless, both games are a fine time. I have my problems with Ages but the good outweighs the bad. Despite the mermaid tail, I will probably play it again some day. Honestly, I dread running into the last few dungeons in each game than I do the mermaid tail. Those dungeons can get pretty tedious.
I have played each game twice, but only done a Linked Game once, where I got every piece of heart for each game.
I recommend the Oracle Twins Experience for anyone who enjoys Zelda but also anyone who likes the Game Boy. For some reason, the Game Boy has had a massive resurgence in the DIY/custom building scene, and the only reason i could see myself sinking the time and money into putting a backlight on a Game Boy Color would be to play the Oracle Twins again.
On their own, the Oracle games are a pretty middling Zelda experience, with Ages not shining as brightly as Seasons. But together, through the programming magic of sharable passwords, they become a much more interesting and full experience. An experience that feels like the season finale of a Saturday morning action cartoon. This review, copied and pasted for each game, for better or worse, will be on that experience.
I should start by saying that when these games were first released, you had to buy each of them. For twice the price of a regular game you got the Oracle Twins’ full experience. Nowadays, one could easily play both of these games for as little as one savvy google search. Regardless, it’s worth criticizing nintendo for more or less selling you two weak games that make up a somewhat stronger, more interesting experience, rather than just making a great experience from the start for half the price. But what’s done is done, and I’ve said what I wanted to say on that.
The Oracle Twins are at their most fun and interesting when you have beaten at least one of them, but which one should you start with? Which Oracle game takes place first in the Zelda Timeline? Well, as far as the games themselves are concerned, each game has the potential to be the first or second in your playthrough. So start with whatever you want. Oracle of Seasons for the action? Or Oracle of Ages for the puzzles? Do you like blue haired ladies? Or redheads?
But why is it more fun to have already beaten one of them? Why not be fun from the start? Well, it is fun from the start. You’re playing a Zelda game, after all. But once you beat it, you’re given a special unique password that you can then use when you start the other game to turn it into a sequel of the one you started with. There are dialogue differences that slightly change the context of the games’ respective intros, your animal friend is carried over, and most importantly, your magic rings that you spent countless hours grinding for, which I will get into later, are also carried over. It makes the second playthrough a much more personal experience than just “the next game to play”. It’s a continuation of Your journey.
Since these games started off on a handheld console, they already had the benefit of being more personal than something that is played on a tv where anyone in the room can watch. Add to that the intimate nature of the Oracle’s Linked Game, and you have a nice quaint story all to yourself. Add to THAT the Linked Game Only side quests that require you to go BACK to the previous game and talk with old characters to fulfill those quests and bring the reward back again to the second game, and you have not just a story but an ongoing saga with living breathing worlds, all in your back pocket.
Now maybe you’re more of a Zelda Freak than I am. I only beat Ages and then a Linked Seasons, but if you want to get the full Oracles Experience and get all the little details: you beat each game, and then using the link codes, start a linked version of them, effectively starting both games again with slightly different contexts. That’s too much work for me, but here I am writing a review on it, so maybe I should have done it.
It’s kind of wild how much of a preamble this review has, considering the overall simplicity of the games themselves on their own. They’re your usual 2D Zelda affair, elaborating on 1993’s Link’s Awakening’s already abundantly charming graphics and fun controls. As someone who in turn abundantly loves Link’s Awakening, the Oracle Twins are a great time if only because I get to play as this Link some more. And then you tell me that there’s new goodies for this Link to play with? Like the Roc’s Cape that extends your jump into a glide? And the noisy but interesting Magnet Glove that opens up a host of interesting puzzles? I’m sold.
To add to the fun, there’s a horde of 64 magical rings to collect across both games. The usefulness of these rings range from simple baubles commemorating an achievement, to making enemies drop extra money when you defeat them, to tripling the damage you both deal and take. There’s also rings that transform Link into a green palette swap of some of the enemies in the games, like the shield swallowing Like-Likes or the perfect little Squit, the Octoroks. These rings are kind of just for show and don’t act as a disguise or anything, which is a shame, but they’re fun and I like having fun.
There is however, something shameful about the rings that I find indefensible, and it isn’t that you can only wear one ring at a time. It’s how you acquire these rings that I cannot defend. While some of them are scripted rewards, a great majority of the rings you collect will be through sheer chance. You might occasionally get a ring drop in the Maple the Witch minigame, which you have you grind for. You might also get a ring drop from a Gasha Nut, which randomly gives a tiered prize depending on how much you’ve grinded. So you could be like me and spend half an hour grinding away at killing enemies to spawn the Maple Minigame and then harvest a Gasha Nut only to get the same useless ring three times.
Because of this, I did not get every ring between the two games. I got every piece of heart between them, but I didn’t 100% them and I’m okay with that. There are other, better Zelda games to spend every waking moment with.
I’ve talked mostly about the mechanics of the games and not the story, because the mechanics are much more interesting to me. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue here though. Veran is a fun villain for Ages with a really strange design (I’m serious look up the promotional art for her and try to figure out how her hat looks, it’s infuriating), and Seasons is the only Zelda game where you can find the Jawa-like Subrosians. They’re very fun and silly but I think it’s the simplicity of their designs that held them back from being a recurring Zelda race. It’s a great design though. Everyone loves a little cloaked freak.
I think Subrosia alone is what makes Seasons the better of the two games. Being a pseudo-dark world with its own currency, it makes the world in this little game feel so much bigger, despite its relative simplicity.
There are sadly, other reasons why Seasons is the better of the Oracle Twins, and those reasons are things that are in Ages but are absent from Seasons. The most egregious being the Mermaid Tail. Ages gives you a swimming upgrade to make you move not only move faster in water, but also dive down into combat-capable underwater rooms. However, the Mermaid Tail requires you to frustratedly mash the directional buttons to move. You can't just hold the left button to move left. When switching back and forth between the linked games, the different swimming styles become dreadfully apparent, and playing Seasons just becomes less annoying.
Ages also has the Simon Says-like Goron Dancing minigame, which was a miserable time for me. And you can't hit me with that Skill Issue nonsense, i'm the Karaoke King in all the Yakuza games and i soloed the Orphan of Kos. It's not me.
Regardless, both games are a fine time. I have my problems with Ages but the good outweighs the bad. Despite the mermaid tail, I will probably play it again some day. Honestly, I dread running into the last few dungeons in each game than I do the mermaid tail. Those dungeons can get pretty tedious.
I have played each game twice, but only done a Linked Game once, where I got every piece of heart for each game.
I recommend the Oracle Twins Experience for anyone who enjoys Zelda but also anyone who likes the Game Boy. For some reason, the Game Boy has had a massive resurgence in the DIY/custom building scene, and the only reason i could see myself sinking the time and money into putting a backlight on a Game Boy Color would be to play the Oracle Twins again.
Tingle's first appearance deserves every bit of respect it gets.
I want more games like Majora’s Mask. I’m just an illustrator so it’s maybe a little rude to demand things that I have little ability to contribute to, but at the same time I’ll just say it again. I want more games like Majora’s Mask.
Clock Town is such a densely detailed place that I sometimes find myself forgetting that there’s also other locations in Majora’s Mask. I would have been just fine with Clock Town being the only location in the game. Even after decades of replaying it, I’m still finding out new things about the people who live in Clock Town. Did you know that Anju has her own Kafei Mask that she’ll wear for you if you meet her at the laundry pool on the second day? I didn’t until my 4th or 5th replay.
Characters like Anju have more going on than their peers, but each character has a little something to them, like the uptight Swordsman being a coward on the night of the final day, or the Swamp Tourist Center Guide who is revealed to be Tingle’s father, being very embarrassed with his son. It makes Clock Town, and Termina as a whole, more rich. But that richness goes deeper when you take the three day time loop that gives almost every major character a schedule for those three days. (I think Tingle is excluded from having a set schedule and is instead at whatever major location you’re at so you can get the map for that area).
Clock Town starts off as the most involved Zelda village, and then makes sure that nothing of the standard Zelda fare comes remotely close to it.
But then you’re given the permission to leave the walls of Clock Town and there’s a whole Zelda game out there. Maybe a few less dungeons to explore and conquer but I think with the buffet of side quests to choose from, it’s a fair trade. And I would take four solid dungeons over six weak ones any day, and Majora’s Mask has some pretty solid dungeons. Any time a Zelda dungeon makes you think about the space you’re in like it’s a 3D object and you have to learn this object as much as possible to proceed, it gets a thumbs up from me, and Majora’s Mask has a good handful of dungeons like this. Especially the impeccable Stone Tower Temple.
My only gripe with Majora’s Mask is it takes an obscene amount of time to be able to save your game for the first time. It’s like, I dunno. Half an hour before you can save. What if you have to stop sooner? You’re out of luck! You gotta start the game again from the beginning some other time. And this has happened to me more than I’d like to remember. I’ve started Majora’s Mask more times than I’ve played it.
And I’ve played Majora’s Mask several times and completed it at least two times.
Alright I guess I have another gripe about Majora's Mask, I guess the mirror shield in this game is pretty ugly and should have looked like a sun to visually show that Link is going against this lunar apocalypse that Termina has been trapped in. But that's not ruining it for me.
Whether you're a Zelda Freak like me or just someone who likes video games, you should play Majora's Mask. It's really special.
I want more games like Majora’s Mask. I’m just an illustrator so it’s maybe a little rude to demand things that I have little ability to contribute to, but at the same time I’ll just say it again. I want more games like Majora’s Mask.
Clock Town is such a densely detailed place that I sometimes find myself forgetting that there’s also other locations in Majora’s Mask. I would have been just fine with Clock Town being the only location in the game. Even after decades of replaying it, I’m still finding out new things about the people who live in Clock Town. Did you know that Anju has her own Kafei Mask that she’ll wear for you if you meet her at the laundry pool on the second day? I didn’t until my 4th or 5th replay.
Characters like Anju have more going on than their peers, but each character has a little something to them, like the uptight Swordsman being a coward on the night of the final day, or the Swamp Tourist Center Guide who is revealed to be Tingle’s father, being very embarrassed with his son. It makes Clock Town, and Termina as a whole, more rich. But that richness goes deeper when you take the three day time loop that gives almost every major character a schedule for those three days. (I think Tingle is excluded from having a set schedule and is instead at whatever major location you’re at so you can get the map for that area).
Clock Town starts off as the most involved Zelda village, and then makes sure that nothing of the standard Zelda fare comes remotely close to it.
But then you’re given the permission to leave the walls of Clock Town and there’s a whole Zelda game out there. Maybe a few less dungeons to explore and conquer but I think with the buffet of side quests to choose from, it’s a fair trade. And I would take four solid dungeons over six weak ones any day, and Majora’s Mask has some pretty solid dungeons. Any time a Zelda dungeon makes you think about the space you’re in like it’s a 3D object and you have to learn this object as much as possible to proceed, it gets a thumbs up from me, and Majora’s Mask has a good handful of dungeons like this. Especially the impeccable Stone Tower Temple.
My only gripe with Majora’s Mask is it takes an obscene amount of time to be able to save your game for the first time. It’s like, I dunno. Half an hour before you can save. What if you have to stop sooner? You’re out of luck! You gotta start the game again from the beginning some other time. And this has happened to me more than I’d like to remember. I’ve started Majora’s Mask more times than I’ve played it.
And I’ve played Majora’s Mask several times and completed it at least two times.
Alright I guess I have another gripe about Majora's Mask, I guess the mirror shield in this game is pretty ugly and should have looked like a sun to visually show that Link is going against this lunar apocalypse that Termina has been trapped in. But that's not ruining it for me.
Whether you're a Zelda Freak like me or just someone who likes video games, you should play Majora's Mask. It's really special.
If your friends are fun enough people, even the worst multiplayer game could be a good time. Better hope your friends are fun, then.
As a bonus game paired with the Game Boy Advance port of A Link to the Past, the Legend of Zelda: Four Swords is the stumbling, fumbling, humble beginnings of what I call the Four Sword Saga. On paper, it’s the first on screen appearance of the lovable and expressive Toon Link, coming out a whole year before his most well known outing, Wind Waker. Not only that, but there’s four of him, one for each possible player. These players would of course need their own Game Boy Advances, their own copies of the game, and their own link cables. As someone who struggled to find more than one person at a time to play this game with wirelessly on my 3DS, I can pretty easily see why Wind Waker is the one everyone knows Toon Link for, and not Four Swords.
To make matters worse, you can’t even start Four Swords without at least one other GBA, so even though I had the cart and my pre-owned GBA I got at GameStop for $25 of chores money, I couldn’t play it. I mean, sure I still had A Link to the Past to play for hours on end, but I really loved Wind Waker and Four Swords Adventures, I wanted to see what Four Swords was all about. It doesn’t help that this version of A Link to the Past has an extra dungeon that only lets you enter if you’ve played Four Swords. Four Swords taunted me for years.
Until one day, Nintendo rereleased a single-player capable version of Four Swords as a free digital download for the 3DS, in celebration of Zelda’s 25th anniversary (at the time of writing this, that was over a decade ago, the ceaseless march of time will trample us all).
After downloading the game as soon as I could, I eagerly began the Zelda game that eluded me.
And it turns out it’s basically if Zelda gameplay and a drawn out Mario Party minigame had a baby.
Like a Mario Party minigame, the conceit of Four Swords’ gameplay is a chaotic and greedy mad dash to the end of a randomly generated, excessively sprawling “dungeon”, while gathering as many rupees as you can get your grubby little hands on. The winner is the Link with the most cash, so even though everyone is more or less working together to get through the “dungeon”, they gotta do what they can to screw each other out of rupees.
Conceptually, it’s a cool and fun idea to have a Zelda party game, and the idea of turning the classic zelda gameplay into a party game is even cooler.
In execution, Four Swords has a critical flaw that makes the foundation shaky. And it’s not the simplistic puzzles or the spongey enemies. The flaw is the upgrade charms you can randomly find. There’s a green, blue, and red charm and collecting up to three of each gradually increases your Link’s walking speed, defense, and damage output, respectively. Now this would be a great idea…if you didn’t start every match slow, frail, and weak. Collecting the charms doesn’t make you better, it makes you good. Three red charms doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you strong. Movement is a big thing for me in games, so my Link’s speed being a steady crawl right at the start is infuriating.
But I pressed on, determined to experience the story of the game, and how it connects to the rest of the Four Sword Saga.
Imagine my shock when the party game that introduces the newest (at the time) non-Ganon villain (to keep the stakes low), has very little of interest to say about him.
Vaati the Wind Sorcerer wreaked havoc in the past, and then he was sealed by some unnamed hero kid with The Four Sword. The seal that trapped him weakened and he is once again terrorizing the countryside, capturing young girls. Your mission, should you, and you, and you, and you choose to accept it, is to get three keys to access his palace and stop him. Pretty simple stuff. No time travel, no cross-dressing disguised princesses, no towns. Just Zelda action with up to four players. And it’s alright.
I have completed this game one time, and 90% of it was done solo. It was not all that fun. The other 10% was (stupidly) during senior year French class with a friend who also miraculously had the game. It was Pretty Fun.
I don’t know if I could recommend Four Swords to anyone who isn’t a die hard Zelda Freak who wants to experience everything the series has to offer. Even then I’m not sure you’d be missing much. There are at least two games that use the same assets and ideas that are far and away more accessible, and do a better job at being a fun time.
As a bonus game paired with the Game Boy Advance port of A Link to the Past, the Legend of Zelda: Four Swords is the stumbling, fumbling, humble beginnings of what I call the Four Sword Saga. On paper, it’s the first on screen appearance of the lovable and expressive Toon Link, coming out a whole year before his most well known outing, Wind Waker. Not only that, but there’s four of him, one for each possible player. These players would of course need their own Game Boy Advances, their own copies of the game, and their own link cables. As someone who struggled to find more than one person at a time to play this game with wirelessly on my 3DS, I can pretty easily see why Wind Waker is the one everyone knows Toon Link for, and not Four Swords.
To make matters worse, you can’t even start Four Swords without at least one other GBA, so even though I had the cart and my pre-owned GBA I got at GameStop for $25 of chores money, I couldn’t play it. I mean, sure I still had A Link to the Past to play for hours on end, but I really loved Wind Waker and Four Swords Adventures, I wanted to see what Four Swords was all about. It doesn’t help that this version of A Link to the Past has an extra dungeon that only lets you enter if you’ve played Four Swords. Four Swords taunted me for years.
Until one day, Nintendo rereleased a single-player capable version of Four Swords as a free digital download for the 3DS, in celebration of Zelda’s 25th anniversary (at the time of writing this, that was over a decade ago, the ceaseless march of time will trample us all).
After downloading the game as soon as I could, I eagerly began the Zelda game that eluded me.
And it turns out it’s basically if Zelda gameplay and a drawn out Mario Party minigame had a baby.
Like a Mario Party minigame, the conceit of Four Swords’ gameplay is a chaotic and greedy mad dash to the end of a randomly generated, excessively sprawling “dungeon”, while gathering as many rupees as you can get your grubby little hands on. The winner is the Link with the most cash, so even though everyone is more or less working together to get through the “dungeon”, they gotta do what they can to screw each other out of rupees.
Conceptually, it’s a cool and fun idea to have a Zelda party game, and the idea of turning the classic zelda gameplay into a party game is even cooler.
In execution, Four Swords has a critical flaw that makes the foundation shaky. And it’s not the simplistic puzzles or the spongey enemies. The flaw is the upgrade charms you can randomly find. There’s a green, blue, and red charm and collecting up to three of each gradually increases your Link’s walking speed, defense, and damage output, respectively. Now this would be a great idea…if you didn’t start every match slow, frail, and weak. Collecting the charms doesn’t make you better, it makes you good. Three red charms doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you strong. Movement is a big thing for me in games, so my Link’s speed being a steady crawl right at the start is infuriating.
But I pressed on, determined to experience the story of the game, and how it connects to the rest of the Four Sword Saga.
Imagine my shock when the party game that introduces the newest (at the time) non-Ganon villain (to keep the stakes low), has very little of interest to say about him.
Vaati the Wind Sorcerer wreaked havoc in the past, and then he was sealed by some unnamed hero kid with The Four Sword. The seal that trapped him weakened and he is once again terrorizing the countryside, capturing young girls. Your mission, should you, and you, and you, and you choose to accept it, is to get three keys to access his palace and stop him. Pretty simple stuff. No time travel, no cross-dressing disguised princesses, no towns. Just Zelda action with up to four players. And it’s alright.
I have completed this game one time, and 90% of it was done solo. It was not all that fun. The other 10% was (stupidly) during senior year French class with a friend who also miraculously had the game. It was Pretty Fun.
I don’t know if I could recommend Four Swords to anyone who isn’t a die hard Zelda Freak who wants to experience everything the series has to offer. Even then I’m not sure you’d be missing much. There are at least two games that use the same assets and ideas that are far and away more accessible, and do a better job at being a fun time.
In 1904, game designer, writer, reporter, Georgist and feminist Elizabeth Magie patented The Landlord's Game: a scathing review of the contemporary trends of rent and land ownership (in the form of a board game). The idea was that players could understand the complicated web of "The Rich Get Richer" from a more simplified point of view. Fairness could be instilled in children when they play this game and realize how cruel the world could be if we let it. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, this did not work out. The world is still cruel because we have let it. Even more unfortunate for her, Parker Brothers made Monopoly in 1935, a game very much like The Landlord's Game, that quickly took the world by storm and became commonplace in American homes. Monopoly probably came to be due to some perfectly legal patent loopholes, but it's clear that a piece made to criticize greed eventually became a vehicle for it.
Perhaps Monopoly took off the way it did because The Landlord's Game is from the point of view of the owners of money and land. But what if it was from the point of view of someone who has no money?
Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is a scathing indictment of greed and the acquisition of money, more ferocious and toothed than anything The Landlord's Game could conjure up. It is made to inspire the soul crushing feelings of a minimum wage 9-5 and it does it very well. Most games demand you grind to work your way up. Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland demands you grind to lift your pathetic leg up on the first rung of the ladder.
Everything, down to talking with npcs, costs money. And you, as the titular 35-year-old virgin Tingle, (who has very, very little to do with the series he originated in) have none of it. Want to look at things in a store? Want to ask someone a question? Better clock in and beat up some animals to do an imaginary coin flip to get an item so that you can sell it for a paltry sum of rupees.
Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland works so much better as a piece of critical art than The Landlord's Game because it is terrible. It is boring, it is bland, it is repetitive, it is exactly what having a job is like. And brother? i quit this job after two days.
I hate this game. I recommend it to not only Zelda fans, but anyone who enjoys art.
Perhaps Monopoly took off the way it did because The Landlord's Game is from the point of view of the owners of money and land. But what if it was from the point of view of someone who has no money?
Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is a scathing indictment of greed and the acquisition of money, more ferocious and toothed than anything The Landlord's Game could conjure up. It is made to inspire the soul crushing feelings of a minimum wage 9-5 and it does it very well. Most games demand you grind to work your way up. Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland demands you grind to lift your pathetic leg up on the first rung of the ladder.
Everything, down to talking with npcs, costs money. And you, as the titular 35-year-old virgin Tingle, (who has very, very little to do with the series he originated in) have none of it. Want to look at things in a store? Want to ask someone a question? Better clock in and beat up some animals to do an imaginary coin flip to get an item so that you can sell it for a paltry sum of rupees.
Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland works so much better as a piece of critical art than The Landlord's Game because it is terrible. It is boring, it is bland, it is repetitive, it is exactly what having a job is like. And brother? i quit this job after two days.
I hate this game. I recommend it to not only Zelda fans, but anyone who enjoys art.
If you can’t stand the sailing, you only want the first half of the action/adventure genre.
Even though Four Swords was released a year beforehand, Wind Waker is the game that put the overly expressive Toon Link on the map. This is the game that truly began his massive and storied career. They never shoulda called him Toon Link, they shoulda called him Link and every other iteration “Realistic Link”. Dude’s been in more games than any other Link. Put some respect on my man’s name.
But anyway,
With iconic visuals inspired by the 1963 animated movie: The Little Prince and the Eight Headed Dragon; what used to be the “too cartoony” Zelda game is now one of the most timeless of them all. Aside from some crunchy textures here and there, 2003’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker looks just as good as (or really, better than) its dubiously necessary 2013 HD remake. At just a glance, Wind Waker is a game for the ages.
Looking deeper than that glance, Wind Waker is a lot of things. It’s a game about exploring a vast ocean, and in doing so, make it feel smaller. It’s a story about being turned into a secret weapon during the last gasp of a long and drawn out war. Its a story about clawing for the present while important players around you can’t feel their fingers from clutching the past. It’s a bright and cheery time full of memorable and lovable characters. It is the post-apocalyptic continuation of an epic that will leave you hopeful for the harrowing future. It also feels like something is missing.
Wind Waker is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, but not Majora’s Mask. I mean this in both a story and a mechanical sense. There’s no three day timer here. But it’s not a full retread of what made Ocarina of Time what it is. The Hyrule Field of old has been flooded and your big open playground is now the even bigger, and more open Great Sea.
And that Great Sea is peppered with 49 islands with various things to do and folks to meet, like the soon-to-be cornerstone of Zelda: Beedle. You can chase after flatulent pigs under the shining sun or fight the shrieking undead in the darkest depths. You can collect more rupees than you were ever able to carry and spend it all on the local auction.
According to the game, the water in the sea is cursed and can’t bear any fish so I guess everyone has been getting by on eating those flatulent pigs, but it does them well because the people of this new Hyrule are as lively and memorable as ever.
But you have to get on your boat and set sail to meet them.
Now, the sailing is probably the biggest point of contention about Wind Waker. That honor used to go to the visuals but I imagine we’ve all grown past that. But I still hear talk of Wind Waker followed up with a smug but regretful “yeah, there’s just too much sailing in it” and while I personally don’t agree with that sentiment (you eventually get the ability to warp around the map), I can understand where they’re coming from.
There is more of a disconnect between how Link moves on foot and on boat than there is between Link and Epona the horse from previous games. Link can run, roll, jump and “hiyah” his way through the environment with ease and comfort. In Wind Waker, Link’s continuous rolling can gain a bit of momentum, making traversal even more fun and easy, not to mention how cartoonishly high his jump attack is. Both Epona and the King of Red Lions are focused on speed across long distances and not necessarily agility. And even though the boat is more fully featured than the horse that came before it (you can use all your long range items as well as bombs on the boat, at this point you could only loose arrows on horseback), sailing is more of a different Mode of play, rather than a choice to be made while playing. You could, if you wanted to, go through Ocarina of Time without riding Epona because you don’t like it. You have no choice but to sail in Wind Waker. Again, I don’t have a problem with this.
If sailing really is that big of a problem for you, I recommend the speed running trick called Sail Pumping. Repeatedly unfurling and putting away your sail in a rhythm takes advantage of the initial jolt of speed you get when you first take the sail out.
The only minor problem particular to sailing I have is that changing the direction of the wind with the titular Wind Waker baton takes a little bit longer than it probably should. The HD version speeds this up, which is a welcome change. That being said, I don’t necessarily believe that something like the HD Remake’s Swift Sail is a positive change. The sailing really didn’t need to be sped up like that. Its a part of the adventure. It’s some delightful Quiet Time. I suppose I phrased that a little erroneously, as half the time spent sailing will be backed by one of the best Zelda themes of all time.
It’s a Zelda game. The music is gonna be good, I don’t need to say much more than that.
If you really gotta complain about the boat in Wind Waker, complain about the salvaging. You can find yourself boating around in circles trying to fish up that treasure. It’s maybe my least favorite thing about the game.
If you aren’t a Zelda Freak like me that has to 100% every game, you can avoid salvaging over 50 times and just do it the mandatory 8 times, during the last stretch of the game. That last stretch is sadly, where my actual least favorite thing about the game rears it’s ugly and forlorn head: that it comes to an end too soon.
Wind Waker came out only three years after Majora’s Mask. That’s a big technological leap in such a small and stressful amount of time. And because of that, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that corners were cut. One of those corners was the number of dungeons, as alluded to in a 2013 IGN interview with Wind Waker’s director Eiji Aonuma where he states that two of its dungeons were repurposed for later Zelda games (my guess is most likely Twilight Princess).
It’s pretty nice to know that the dungeons weren’t lost to time, but I would have liked to live in a world where Wind Waker could afford to get the extra dev time to have those two dungeons.
So you beat the 5 dungeons and the quests and met everyone and done everything and maybe even taken a picture of everything to get figurines made of them. Time to go to the endgame and go through what is basically an elaborate boss rush before the final boss.
But when you get to that final boss, you’re given dialogue that makes this game’s Ganondorf the uncontested best Ganondorf in Zelda. The fight is nothing crazy, but the character, the pathos. We meet him multiple times throughout the game and each time we see a bit more of him. It establishes his villainy and then gives us his motives. It is a shame that we haven’t come close to this introspective iteration of the King of Evil since.
I have beaten The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker at least five times. I haven’t gotten every figurine yet, and I will eventually, but otherwise I’ve 100%ed everything else at least three times. I’ve also done a three heart run and it turned out to be a very disappointing time. There was no adventure!
Wind Waker is an excellent game that under-stays its welcome. It feels good in the hands, and there’s tons of toys to play with, the music is great, the sights are lovely. I recommend it to anyone who wants an adventure. You’ll no doubt end up like me and wanting more (that’s where the equally excellent fan-made randomizer comes in.)
Even though Four Swords was released a year beforehand, Wind Waker is the game that put the overly expressive Toon Link on the map. This is the game that truly began his massive and storied career. They never shoulda called him Toon Link, they shoulda called him Link and every other iteration “Realistic Link”. Dude’s been in more games than any other Link. Put some respect on my man’s name.
But anyway,
With iconic visuals inspired by the 1963 animated movie: The Little Prince and the Eight Headed Dragon; what used to be the “too cartoony” Zelda game is now one of the most timeless of them all. Aside from some crunchy textures here and there, 2003’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker looks just as good as (or really, better than) its dubiously necessary 2013 HD remake. At just a glance, Wind Waker is a game for the ages.
Looking deeper than that glance, Wind Waker is a lot of things. It’s a game about exploring a vast ocean, and in doing so, make it feel smaller. It’s a story about being turned into a secret weapon during the last gasp of a long and drawn out war. Its a story about clawing for the present while important players around you can’t feel their fingers from clutching the past. It’s a bright and cheery time full of memorable and lovable characters. It is the post-apocalyptic continuation of an epic that will leave you hopeful for the harrowing future. It also feels like something is missing.
Wind Waker is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, but not Majora’s Mask. I mean this in both a story and a mechanical sense. There’s no three day timer here. But it’s not a full retread of what made Ocarina of Time what it is. The Hyrule Field of old has been flooded and your big open playground is now the even bigger, and more open Great Sea.
And that Great Sea is peppered with 49 islands with various things to do and folks to meet, like the soon-to-be cornerstone of Zelda: Beedle. You can chase after flatulent pigs under the shining sun or fight the shrieking undead in the darkest depths. You can collect more rupees than you were ever able to carry and spend it all on the local auction.
According to the game, the water in the sea is cursed and can’t bear any fish so I guess everyone has been getting by on eating those flatulent pigs, but it does them well because the people of this new Hyrule are as lively and memorable as ever.
But you have to get on your boat and set sail to meet them.
Now, the sailing is probably the biggest point of contention about Wind Waker. That honor used to go to the visuals but I imagine we’ve all grown past that. But I still hear talk of Wind Waker followed up with a smug but regretful “yeah, there’s just too much sailing in it” and while I personally don’t agree with that sentiment (you eventually get the ability to warp around the map), I can understand where they’re coming from.
There is more of a disconnect between how Link moves on foot and on boat than there is between Link and Epona the horse from previous games. Link can run, roll, jump and “hiyah” his way through the environment with ease and comfort. In Wind Waker, Link’s continuous rolling can gain a bit of momentum, making traversal even more fun and easy, not to mention how cartoonishly high his jump attack is. Both Epona and the King of Red Lions are focused on speed across long distances and not necessarily agility. And even though the boat is more fully featured than the horse that came before it (you can use all your long range items as well as bombs on the boat, at this point you could only loose arrows on horseback), sailing is more of a different Mode of play, rather than a choice to be made while playing. You could, if you wanted to, go through Ocarina of Time without riding Epona because you don’t like it. You have no choice but to sail in Wind Waker. Again, I don’t have a problem with this.
If sailing really is that big of a problem for you, I recommend the speed running trick called Sail Pumping. Repeatedly unfurling and putting away your sail in a rhythm takes advantage of the initial jolt of speed you get when you first take the sail out.
The only minor problem particular to sailing I have is that changing the direction of the wind with the titular Wind Waker baton takes a little bit longer than it probably should. The HD version speeds this up, which is a welcome change. That being said, I don’t necessarily believe that something like the HD Remake’s Swift Sail is a positive change. The sailing really didn’t need to be sped up like that. Its a part of the adventure. It’s some delightful Quiet Time. I suppose I phrased that a little erroneously, as half the time spent sailing will be backed by one of the best Zelda themes of all time.
It’s a Zelda game. The music is gonna be good, I don’t need to say much more than that.
If you really gotta complain about the boat in Wind Waker, complain about the salvaging. You can find yourself boating around in circles trying to fish up that treasure. It’s maybe my least favorite thing about the game.
If you aren’t a Zelda Freak like me that has to 100% every game, you can avoid salvaging over 50 times and just do it the mandatory 8 times, during the last stretch of the game. That last stretch is sadly, where my actual least favorite thing about the game rears it’s ugly and forlorn head: that it comes to an end too soon.
Wind Waker came out only three years after Majora’s Mask. That’s a big technological leap in such a small and stressful amount of time. And because of that, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that corners were cut. One of those corners was the number of dungeons, as alluded to in a 2013 IGN interview with Wind Waker’s director Eiji Aonuma where he states that two of its dungeons were repurposed for later Zelda games (my guess is most likely Twilight Princess).
It’s pretty nice to know that the dungeons weren’t lost to time, but I would have liked to live in a world where Wind Waker could afford to get the extra dev time to have those two dungeons.
So you beat the 5 dungeons and the quests and met everyone and done everything and maybe even taken a picture of everything to get figurines made of them. Time to go to the endgame and go through what is basically an elaborate boss rush before the final boss.
But when you get to that final boss, you’re given dialogue that makes this game’s Ganondorf the uncontested best Ganondorf in Zelda. The fight is nothing crazy, but the character, the pathos. We meet him multiple times throughout the game and each time we see a bit more of him. It establishes his villainy and then gives us his motives. It is a shame that we haven’t come close to this introspective iteration of the King of Evil since.
I have beaten The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker at least five times. I haven’t gotten every figurine yet, and I will eventually, but otherwise I’ve 100%ed everything else at least three times. I’ve also done a three heart run and it turned out to be a very disappointing time. There was no adventure!
Wind Waker is an excellent game that under-stays its welcome. It feels good in the hands, and there’s tons of toys to play with, the music is great, the sights are lovely. I recommend it to anyone who wants an adventure. You’ll no doubt end up like me and wanting more (that’s where the equally excellent fan-made randomizer comes in.)
1987
the shaky pilot episode of a long running saturday morning cartoon of a game series.
i love Mega Man. i don't love Mega Man (1987). it puts down the foundations of what a Mega Man game should be, but little else. they pretty much nailed how Mega Man moves, but they missed the mark on the locations he should move around. I'm sure the beginning of Guts Man's stage is what everyone goes to first when they gripe about this game, but Ice Man and Elec Man also have terrible levels. That's almost half the game, man. But hey, listen. The Magnet Beam ability is a really neat thing that showed off they could pull off some cool stuff. I just wish they did it more.
I've beaten Mega Man three times, and i used the Pause Glitch for each one of them. I cannot respect this jank game enough to play fair. i'm sorry. I recommend it to only the most avid Mega Man fans (or just video game enthusiasts), who want to play it from an academic point of view.
i love Mega Man. i don't love Mega Man (1987). it puts down the foundations of what a Mega Man game should be, but little else. they pretty much nailed how Mega Man moves, but they missed the mark on the locations he should move around. I'm sure the beginning of Guts Man's stage is what everyone goes to first when they gripe about this game, but Ice Man and Elec Man also have terrible levels. That's almost half the game, man. But hey, listen. The Magnet Beam ability is a really neat thing that showed off they could pull off some cool stuff. I just wish they did it more.
I've beaten Mega Man three times, and i used the Pause Glitch for each one of them. I cannot respect this jank game enough to play fair. i'm sorry. I recommend it to only the most avid Mega Man fans (or just video game enthusiasts), who want to play it from an academic point of view.
1989
The one that put my man Mega Man on the map, and for good reason.
Snappy controls, fun levels, and catchy music. That's all a Mega Man game needs and lord have mercy does Mega Man 2 have it. For a brief time in my life i would play Mega Man 2 all the way through to completion on New Year's Eve before the party would start, just so i ended the year on a high note, video game-wise.
the only thing about this game that i'm not crazy about is the weaknesses of the main bosses being all over the place, and one of the end game bosses requiring perfect play and soft locking you if you make a mistake. just don't make a mistake and the game's pretty good i guess.
I have beaten Mega Man 2 dozens of times and enjoyed it every time. The latest time i played was a little clunky, but i'm a little rusty. and yet despite that, i still had fun. Anyone who likes video games should probably do themselves a favor and check this bit of video game history out.
Long Live The Metal Blade
Snappy controls, fun levels, and catchy music. That's all a Mega Man game needs and lord have mercy does Mega Man 2 have it. For a brief time in my life i would play Mega Man 2 all the way through to completion on New Year's Eve before the party would start, just so i ended the year on a high note, video game-wise.
the only thing about this game that i'm not crazy about is the weaknesses of the main bosses being all over the place, and one of the end game bosses requiring perfect play and soft locking you if you make a mistake. just don't make a mistake and the game's pretty good i guess.
I have beaten Mega Man 2 dozens of times and enjoyed it every time. The latest time i played was a little clunky, but i'm a little rusty. and yet despite that, i still had fun. Anyone who likes video games should probably do themselves a favor and check this bit of video game history out.
Long Live The Metal Blade
You don’t need to call up some friends to bring their Game Boy Advances and appropriate link cables to play this, but good lord would it help.
The second game to be released in the Four Swords Saga, but the last in the story of that saga’s timeline, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures is a bizarre Frankenstein’s monster of a game. And I kind of love it.
Featuring the original four Link sprites from the Game Boy Advance Four Swords, certain enemy sprites and environments from A Link to the Past, sprites of varying quality made just for this game (the worst goron you will ever see is in this game), and special effects from Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures can look surreal at times. It feels like the most impressive fan game that could be made at the time. This feeling is only compounded further when the adventure is parsed out into easily digestible levels (or if you prefer, multiplayer challenges) organized on a Super Mario World-style map. It’s like your friend from another class that you only saw during recess said “what if Mario and Zelda combined?? And we could all play it!” and it was real.
2004’s Four Swords Adventures does what 2002’s Four Swords didn’t do, and made the levels have a linear flow to them. Gone are the long and drawn out open air dungeons of the past. Gone are the collectible charms that make your Link playable. This time you’re playing a game set up like a zelda game, that you can also play with 3 other people, and every Link can attack and zip around like never before.
Four Swords Adventures is the first released Zelda game using a top down point of view to give Link the ability to roll. There’s no i-frames but that burst of speed is such a delightful treat, and it feels so good to do with the satisfying click of a GameCube controller’s R button. Pressing B at the end of a roll executes an immediate spin attack, which is even more fun to do. I am not exaggerating when I say this roll is one of the reasons I like this lackluster game so much.
The game is lackluster for a few reasons, most of which stem from from its identity. Four Swords Adventures is first and foremost a classic single player Zelda experience. It is also a multiplayer experience. These two things could work beautifully together, with brain busting puzzles that really take advantage of having four Links on the screen, but the combination tends to just boil down to activating four switches at once or doing color-specific things as the matching Link. The multiplayer aspect is baked into the experience, but it the actual level and puzzle design was made for one player and then made to accommodate three others afterwards. This game is completely playable solo, which is interesting, but leaves you with a handful of stale moments meant for the full four player experience.
Another victim of the single player/multiplayer styles butting heads is every level being their own contained challenge. You can’t beat a level without getting 2,000 Force Gems (there’s no rupees in this game, just triangles), and each level makes sure you can easily get that many. They’re not carried over between levels, so unless you’re doing multiplayer and want to win, there’s no real in-game reason to grind for Force Gems.
The lack of Force Gems being carried over, means they’re not a currency (except for specific and ultimately useless situations), means that the occasional village level has none of the quiet charm of visiting a village in a regular Zelda game. There’s no shopping or side quests to do, it’s just another level. But at the same time, The Village of the Blue Maiden level is a pretty fun time! I would absolutely prefer to experience that village’s puzzle if it was a village in a Zelda game and not a village-shaped dungeon in a multiplayer game, though.
Force Gems aren’t the only thing not carried over. Link, Link, Link, and Link don’t have the usual arsenal of tools here, and instead can carry only one item at a time. In multiplayer, this could in theory make each Link “specialized” for one item as needed. Maybe the red Link’s player insists on using only the fire rod because he’s red. It’s a bit of fun character theming that the game could allow, solely due to one player’s choice. At the end of the level he puts the fire rod away, to try something else next level. But that’s not the case. Most levels are built around using only a specific item or two at a time, and they’re also made with single player in mind, and gives you four pedestals with the same item needed for the level. It’s pretty rare that a level will ever accommodate four Links using a different item each.
There is a lot weighing the Four Swords experience down (I didn’t even mention how shallow the main villain is), and yet somehow I still find it enjoyable. The game feels fun to play, and the music is great as always. But maybe do a level or two a day, so the patterns don’t make themselves too apparent too quickly.
I have beaten The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (at the time of writing this), ironically, four times. I’ve mostly soloed it but I have had friends over to play it and we had a great time griefing each other.
I’m not sure if I should recommend it though. I personally really like it, but I can still see the flaws. Still a really fun time though. But I’ll tell you what, Zelda Freaks should play this game just to see that strange collection of sprites it has.
The second game to be released in the Four Swords Saga, but the last in the story of that saga’s timeline, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures is a bizarre Frankenstein’s monster of a game. And I kind of love it.
Featuring the original four Link sprites from the Game Boy Advance Four Swords, certain enemy sprites and environments from A Link to the Past, sprites of varying quality made just for this game (the worst goron you will ever see is in this game), and special effects from Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures can look surreal at times. It feels like the most impressive fan game that could be made at the time. This feeling is only compounded further when the adventure is parsed out into easily digestible levels (or if you prefer, multiplayer challenges) organized on a Super Mario World-style map. It’s like your friend from another class that you only saw during recess said “what if Mario and Zelda combined?? And we could all play it!” and it was real.
2004’s Four Swords Adventures does what 2002’s Four Swords didn’t do, and made the levels have a linear flow to them. Gone are the long and drawn out open air dungeons of the past. Gone are the collectible charms that make your Link playable. This time you’re playing a game set up like a zelda game, that you can also play with 3 other people, and every Link can attack and zip around like never before.
Four Swords Adventures is the first released Zelda game using a top down point of view to give Link the ability to roll. There’s no i-frames but that burst of speed is such a delightful treat, and it feels so good to do with the satisfying click of a GameCube controller’s R button. Pressing B at the end of a roll executes an immediate spin attack, which is even more fun to do. I am not exaggerating when I say this roll is one of the reasons I like this lackluster game so much.
The game is lackluster for a few reasons, most of which stem from from its identity. Four Swords Adventures is first and foremost a classic single player Zelda experience. It is also a multiplayer experience. These two things could work beautifully together, with brain busting puzzles that really take advantage of having four Links on the screen, but the combination tends to just boil down to activating four switches at once or doing color-specific things as the matching Link. The multiplayer aspect is baked into the experience, but it the actual level and puzzle design was made for one player and then made to accommodate three others afterwards. This game is completely playable solo, which is interesting, but leaves you with a handful of stale moments meant for the full four player experience.
Another victim of the single player/multiplayer styles butting heads is every level being their own contained challenge. You can’t beat a level without getting 2,000 Force Gems (there’s no rupees in this game, just triangles), and each level makes sure you can easily get that many. They’re not carried over between levels, so unless you’re doing multiplayer and want to win, there’s no real in-game reason to grind for Force Gems.
The lack of Force Gems being carried over, means they’re not a currency (except for specific and ultimately useless situations), means that the occasional village level has none of the quiet charm of visiting a village in a regular Zelda game. There’s no shopping or side quests to do, it’s just another level. But at the same time, The Village of the Blue Maiden level is a pretty fun time! I would absolutely prefer to experience that village’s puzzle if it was a village in a Zelda game and not a village-shaped dungeon in a multiplayer game, though.
Force Gems aren’t the only thing not carried over. Link, Link, Link, and Link don’t have the usual arsenal of tools here, and instead can carry only one item at a time. In multiplayer, this could in theory make each Link “specialized” for one item as needed. Maybe the red Link’s player insists on using only the fire rod because he’s red. It’s a bit of fun character theming that the game could allow, solely due to one player’s choice. At the end of the level he puts the fire rod away, to try something else next level. But that’s not the case. Most levels are built around using only a specific item or two at a time, and they’re also made with single player in mind, and gives you four pedestals with the same item needed for the level. It’s pretty rare that a level will ever accommodate four Links using a different item each.
There is a lot weighing the Four Swords experience down (I didn’t even mention how shallow the main villain is), and yet somehow I still find it enjoyable. The game feels fun to play, and the music is great as always. But maybe do a level or two a day, so the patterns don’t make themselves too apparent too quickly.
I have beaten The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (at the time of writing this), ironically, four times. I’ve mostly soloed it but I have had friends over to play it and we had a great time griefing each other.
I’m not sure if I should recommend it though. I personally really like it, but I can still see the flaws. Still a really fun time though. But I’ll tell you what, Zelda Freaks should play this game just to see that strange collection of sprites it has.
1990
Classic Mega Man at its finest. It’s got that dog in it.
If Mega Man 2 improved on its predecessor by adding fun levels for the player to jump around in, Mega Man 3 improves on its predecessor by adding more things to do in new fun levels. The most noteworthy of these mechanical additions is Mega Man’s doggy friend Rush letting you jump and fly and occasionally swim. He’s a good boy.
That being said, I don’t want attention taken away from the slide, which I consider to be a huge step forward for Mega Man’s toolkit. Press down and jump and you briefly zip forward at half your height. It’s a little awkward to pull off but it’s satisfying and (with the right amount of skill) can be used for quick evasions and (with even more skill) extended jump distance.
The Robot Masters have fun designs, their stages have great music, you get to fight the bosses from MM2 again via the morbid Doc Robot (some kind of translation of its original name, Dokurobotto K-176), you get a ton of levels to play, Mega Man 3 has just about all you could ask of a Mega Man game. Except a charged shot, but I’m not docking points for that, they hadn’t thought of it yet at the time.
Mega Man 3 is on hardware that can struggle to allow for in-depth storytelling, and it was made in a time where the tricks to do that storytelling on that hardware hadn’t been discovered yet. As such, the Proto Man plotline, a fan favorite story beat, is left entirely to the ending, where the player is also left to infer a lot of the meat of this story. I’m a certified Mega Man Freak, so after hours of poring over manuals and comics, I can appreciate the story of Mega Man 3, but it would be nice to be able to just turn the game on and get the full experience. But that’s a discussion for old games as a whole, and not just Mega Man 3.
Something that bothers me is that the times that Proto Man is a mini boss, he is just regular ol Proto Man. But when we have our final showdown, he’s wearing his full mask with the Sniper Joe eye as Break Man. Those looks should have been switched around so that the player could assume they’ve been fighting an elite sniper joe. Then, we get the twist that he’s a guy like Mega Mn, and then at the end Dr. Light reveals he’s Mega Man’s long lost brother.
I’ve beaten Mega Man 3 about four or five times. It’s length and trickiness detract from its replayability, but I think it also adds to the substantialness of the experience. I recommend it to any video game enjoyer. It’s the best NES Mega Man game. No empty calories.
This is a pipe dream and a half but I fully welcome a Powered Up-style remake, just to get some cutscenes and dialogue to give us the angst and drama that this game deserves.
If Mega Man 2 improved on its predecessor by adding fun levels for the player to jump around in, Mega Man 3 improves on its predecessor by adding more things to do in new fun levels. The most noteworthy of these mechanical additions is Mega Man’s doggy friend Rush letting you jump and fly and occasionally swim. He’s a good boy.
That being said, I don’t want attention taken away from the slide, which I consider to be a huge step forward for Mega Man’s toolkit. Press down and jump and you briefly zip forward at half your height. It’s a little awkward to pull off but it’s satisfying and (with the right amount of skill) can be used for quick evasions and (with even more skill) extended jump distance.
The Robot Masters have fun designs, their stages have great music, you get to fight the bosses from MM2 again via the morbid Doc Robot (some kind of translation of its original name, Dokurobotto K-176), you get a ton of levels to play, Mega Man 3 has just about all you could ask of a Mega Man game. Except a charged shot, but I’m not docking points for that, they hadn’t thought of it yet at the time.
Mega Man 3 is on hardware that can struggle to allow for in-depth storytelling, and it was made in a time where the tricks to do that storytelling on that hardware hadn’t been discovered yet. As such, the Proto Man plotline, a fan favorite story beat, is left entirely to the ending, where the player is also left to infer a lot of the meat of this story. I’m a certified Mega Man Freak, so after hours of poring over manuals and comics, I can appreciate the story of Mega Man 3, but it would be nice to be able to just turn the game on and get the full experience. But that’s a discussion for old games as a whole, and not just Mega Man 3.
Something that bothers me is that the times that Proto Man is a mini boss, he is just regular ol Proto Man. But when we have our final showdown, he’s wearing his full mask with the Sniper Joe eye as Break Man. Those looks should have been switched around so that the player could assume they’ve been fighting an elite sniper joe. Then, we get the twist that he’s a guy like Mega Mn, and then at the end Dr. Light reveals he’s Mega Man’s long lost brother.
I’ve beaten Mega Man 3 about four or five times. It’s length and trickiness detract from its replayability, but I think it also adds to the substantialness of the experience. I recommend it to any video game enjoyer. It’s the best NES Mega Man game. No empty calories.
This is a pipe dream and a half but I fully welcome a Powered Up-style remake, just to get some cutscenes and dialogue to give us the angst and drama that this game deserves.