Super Nintendo #1: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

I like to talk on here about how it's harder to write about a great game than an awful game. That's especially true if the game in question is one of the most famous ever made. Writing about A Link to the Past is a little bit like writing reviews for Beatles albums or Citizen Kane. So much has already been said that it's really difficult to say something that nobody's said before. It's also hard not to spend the whole article talking about how awesome it is. So let me try to get all the gushing out of the way here in the first paragraph. A Link to the Past is one of the greatest games of all time. I still think it's the best game in the series, even though it might not be my favorite. I'd say it's about 200 times better than Ocarina of time. It's also a game that represents the golden age of gaming possibly better than any other. This hobby that I love so much really hit its peak in the early 90s. I know that modern games have a lot more flash and do some amazing things, but nothing will ever top the 16-bit era for pure fun and innovation. Okay, I got that out of my system, now I can actually talk about the game.

There are many things about this game that would influence gaming for years to come. I want to start right at the beginning and talk about the title. Earlier, when I talked about Super C I mentioned the rise of games that had the word "Super" in the title. This game is the first (and only!) installment of the Zelda series on the SNES, and yet it is not called Super Zelda. No, it's has a cryptic title that includes a pun. It is not numbered and instead has a colon followed by a subtitle. Back before this game came out almost every game sequel was given a number. This was one of the first to forgo the number system completely and just have an odd subtitle. Thanks to this game our series have really got mixed up. You never know what game came before and what game came after. Seriously, what number are they up to in the Castlevania series? The world may never know. I would say that this it the only one of the game's innovations that I do not enjoy.

So in this game you're running around in a big ol' world full of surprises and fighting your way through a bunch of dungeons. It's called A Link to the Past, but you're not really traveling through time. It's more of a dimensional shift. It has a very well done overhead perspective. This is a good perspective for an action RPG, but it didn't always work that well. If you don't believe me just play Lagoon. Luckily Link's sword is just the right length so that he doesn't get a lot of cheap hits, but he can't wipe everything out at once either. Actually I want to talk about the perspective for a minute. People always talk about Ocarina of Time transforming the Zelda franchise into 3D. While I suppose this is technically true, it's not really much of an improvement. In LTTP you can move in all directions including up and down. It seems like OOt is about he same except ledges are harder to jump to and monsters just get rotated around. Of course you can't jump in the older Zelda games but that's beside the point.

Now there's a lot to love about this game. It's got cool graphics, a good storyline, engrossing dungeons with some good bosses in them, and lots of other things I could use adjectives in front of. My favorite things about this game, however, is exploring the overworld. In later Zelda games, and many action RPGs for that matter, the overworld is mostly just a means to get from place to place. Sure there will be a few secrets scattered about, but they mainly feel like they were put there to keep you from getting bored. In LTTP there's something exciting in almost every screen. You never know what you're going to find when you pull up that next rock or go into that cave. Will it be a heart piece or just some rupees to add to the 800 you already have? I almost hate going to dungeons because they cut into my item exploration time. Link to the Past is one of the only games I can think of that makes the journey just as much fun as the destination.

As you can tell, I really like this game, and I had a lot of fun playing through it again. Despite my tendency to play SNES games to death, I think I only beat this one once about 16 years ago. I've started up a game several times since then, but I never really had an excuse to go back through it all the way. That's why it's nice having a blog. As usual I was surprised both by how much I remembered about it and how much I had forgotten. I even had to use the internet to help me out a couple of times. I guess I shouldn't bee too ashamed about that. I remember when the game came out I read a few of the secrets on the back of a cereal box. So now that this game is approaching 20 years old it might be a good time to dust it off and play it again. When I played through it this time around it felt just as fresh as it did in 92. Of course if you read about games on the internet much you probably already know that.