Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is the 3rd game in the Zelda series, and a prequel to the original two titles. The game was produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, directed by Takashi Tezuka and written by Kensuke Tanabe and Yoshiaki Koizumi. The score was composed by Koji Kondo.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is the North American version of the Super Famicom title The Legend of Zelda: The Triforce of the Gods, and was released in North America in 1992, a year after the Japanese release. The game abandoned most of the changes introduced in Zelda 2 and focused on creating an experience similar to the original Legend of Zelda, with a top-down perspective.

The game originally began development as a 3rd Famicom title, but eventually migrated to the Super Famicom. Because of the popularity of the series, Nintendo invested a higher budget and larger development team than most other games to this project. The game was the first to be developed for an 8Mbit cartridge, which was the largest size available. Previously, cartridges were 4Mbit. Despite the increase in cartridge size, the team had to use many compression tricks during development in order to find room for the large world. These included utilizing a method for decompressing 8 color titles instead of the SNES's usual 16 colored tiles, and only saving the differences between the two worlds instead of an entire second map.

While Yoshiaki Koizumi was responsible for the background story, Kensuke Tanabe was brought on to write the game. Because of Nintendo's censorship policies, the North American version of the game removed several religious references which included changing the subtitle from The Triforce of the Gods to A Link to the Past, replacing the font used to represent an unreadable language, Hylian, which were based on Egyptian hieroglyphs that carry religious meanings, and changing the priest Agahnim to a wizard, as well as altering his background story, which implied that he was sent by the gods.

A Link to the Past is a prequel to the original The Legend of Zelda, and Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, in which a young Link received a telepathic message from Princess Zelda who is locked in the Hyrule Castle dungeon and sets out to save her.

Link's uncle had gone ahead to help Zelda but is founded wounded and passes on his sword and shield to Link. After finding Zelda, Link learns that the wizard Agahnim has usurped the throne and is planning to break an ancient seal created by seven sages to imprison the dark wizard Ganon. Ganon remains sealed in the Sacred Realm, which he invaded and ruled with the Triforce, turning it into the dark world. To destroy the seal, Agahnim needs the descendants of the Seven Sages. During his quest, Link must save the 7 maidens, defeat Agahim and save both the light and dark world.

The game features the largest overworld to date, and 13 dungeons, as well as quite a few additions in terms of gameplay, including multi-level dungeons and a parallel world. 

New items include arrows (now actual items as the bow used up rupees in the original) and silver arrows, boomerang, bottles, magic cape, a lantern, flute, magic wands, shovel, the hookshot and pegasus boots.

The game was the first in the series to allow Link to utilize features which have become standard fare in Zelda games, including storing fairies or potions in bottles, digging holes, cutting grass, etc.

Like the previous games, there are several weapon and equipment upgrades. Swords include the fighter's sword, master sword, tempered sword, and golden sword. Additional shields include the fighter's shield, red shield, and mirror shield. Armor includes the green mail, blue mail, and red mail.

Link can now move in 8 directions and can perform several different attacks with his sword; instead of just stabbing forward, he swings his sword now, but can still hold it out forward and ram enemies. After getting an upgrade, Link can also shoot a circular projectile from the sword when his health is full. 

A magic meter is added which is used to power certain magic items, like the lantern and staffs.

Additional hidden heart containers make an reappearance, but are now split into pieces. There are many more, but the player must find 4 to add a new heart to Link's health counter. 

In the multi-level dungeons, Link can find staircases to move between the floors or can fall through holes to get to the floors below. 

The player begins the game in the light world where Link lived, but can eventually travel back and forth to the parallel dark world, which was once the sacred realm. The dark world uses a different sprite set and is more desolate, though features the same layout as the light world. Characters have different forms in the dark world based on their nature. Link enters the dark world as a pink rabbit until he is able to collect an item which allows him to travel in that world in his regular form. Each location in the Light World corresponds to a similar location in the Dark World, usually with a similar physical structure but an opposite nature. A desert in the Light World corresponds to a swamp in the Dark World; a peaceful village in the Light World corresponds to a dilapidated town of thieves in the Dark World.

The player can enter the dark world by using a magic mirror, but can only return to the light world using the passageway created when they entered, or by finding hidden teleports. Moving between the worlds is a key aspect of the game's puzzles.

A Link to the Past was one of the best-selling SNES games, with 4.61 million units sold worldwide. The game held the number one spot in Nintendo Power's top lists for over 5 years and was re-released as Player's Choice title on the SNES because of its success. The game was also a critical success and is still listed on many best games of all time lists. 

The score to A Link to the Past was composed by Koji Kondo and, aside from a couple key themes from the original games, the tracks from A Link to the Past helped establish the musical core of the Zelda series. 

A soundtrack to A Link to the Past, entitled The Legend of Zelda: Sound and Drama, was released in Japan. Disc one is 44 minutes long and features rearranged versions of a selection of the game's themes, along with a bonus drama track. Disc two is 54 minutes of the original arrangements for the game and those of the original NES game, The Legend of Zelda.

In the mid nineties, the game inspired 2 manga series in Japan. A comic version of A Link to the Past written and illustrated by Shotaro Ishinomori was released in 12 chapters in Nintendo Power. A compilation of the 12 chapters was released as a stand alone graphic novel, but it is rare and hard to find. In 2005, a 4 volume manga series was released based on Triforce of the Gods/Link to the Past.

The game was ported to Gameboy Advanced, along with an extra mode entitled Four Swords which was developed by Nintendo and Capcom. While the main game featured minor updates, mainly replacing sound effects with those used in the N64 Zelda games, the Four Swords mode was a completely new experience which inspired its own sequel on the Gamecube.

Four Swords revolves around the wind mage, Vaati, who escapes from the Four Sword he is sealed in and captures Princess Zelda to marry her. Link uses the Four Sword to create three copies of himself and rescues Zelda, trapping Vaati in the sword once again. The game is considered to take place before A Link to the Past.

The new mode allowed the player to control 2 Links, or allow up to 4 players to connect their GBAs to solve co-op puzzles and complete several stages in the game. The game was designed using the Link to the Past code base and interacted with the Link to the Past game on the cartridge. If the player learned a new sword technique, it was made available in both modes and, by completing Four Swords, a new dungeon called the Palace of the Four Sword is unlocked in A Link to the Past. In Four Swords, the dungeons are randomly generated and affected by the number of players. If only two players are active, the game ensures that all puzzles generated do not require a third or fourth player to solve.

Another game was titled BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban ("BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets), which takes place six years after the events in A Link to the Past and it is set in Hyrule's Light World. It was released via the SNES Satellaview service in Japan only. The player does not control Link in the game and instead gets to choose a male or female avatar, which are the same player choices in the Satellaview remake of Zelda 1 entitled BS Zelda no Densetsu. The game was divided into four weekly episodes. These episodes were played live, and a voice-acted soundtrack simultaneously ran on the satellite network, sometimes containing suggestions, clues, and plot development for the game currently being broadcast. Each week, the player could only access certain portions of the overworld. Areas shrouded in clouds were unreachable. Two dungeons were accessible per week; however, the episode ended only when time expired and not when the player had completed all the objectives for that week. The game would make notable use of a voice broadcast system called SoundLink to provide voice-acting for several of the characters from A Link to the Past. The game could only be played during the set hours because the SoundLink content was central to gameplay (and not stored on the base unit or flash-RAM cartridge in any way), and the timer was based on a real-time clock set by the satellite itself.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link the Past is also available on Wii Virtual Console. It was followed up with the Gameboy title The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and the N64 title Legend of Zelda: Ocorina of Time. 3 non-cannon titles were also released for the Phillips CDI. In 2011, Shigeru Miyamoto expressed desire to have A Link to the Past remade for the Nintendo 3DS, stating how attractive the two layers would look.