Gamers Month - The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past

Cinco de Mayo~
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past



Desarrollador: Nintendo EAD
Distribuidora: Nintendo
Plataforma: SNES
Fecha de lanzamiento: 13 de abril de 1992

Un clasico que perduro años en el primer puesto del ranking de la revista Game Power. Conozco mucha gente que teniendo un Nintendo 64 y el "Ocarina of Time" a su alcance no podian despegarse de este, el unico juego de zelda que salio para Super Nintendo. Emu GamesWorld te da ademas la posibilidad de jugarlo en español.
Se trata de un RPG con un gran argumento que te deja todo el tiempo preguntandote que pasara a continuacion. La historia se situa mucho antes que todos los otros juegos de Zelda y Link es solo un niño o un adolescente.
El juego comienza con un pedido: Salvar a la princesa Zelda. Pero la historia va construyendose a medida que avanzas en el juego. Iras descubriendo tu verdadero destino y sumergiendote mas y mas en la trama.
Debes guiar a Link a traves de 13 castillos y enfrentar a igual numero de enemigos finales. En tu camino encontraras items que te ayudaran como flechas para atacar a los enemigos a distancia, antorchas para iluminar habitaciones oscuras, bombas, pasadizos secretos, etc.
"The legend of Zelda: A link to the past" tiene un balance perfecto de lucha, acertijos, usar correctamente los items, explorar un mundo que se expande cuando ya creias que conocias todo. En resumen, un gran juego de rol para Super Nintendo.

Alright that's enough, ese~


The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is to me the greatest Zelda game ever made. While there are a lot who put Ocarina of Time on that particular pedestal I just can't. OoT was groundbreaking in a lot of ways for successfully bringing a 2D franchise into 3D but it owes a lot to ALttP be it the parallel worlds, general game play mechanics, items, and even music. I imagine that for some OoT was their first personal Zelda experience and in that regard I myself am a little biased in the same way for ALttP.

Come here, son. Let me tell you a story...:

Sure, I had played a bit of Zelda 1 & 2 at one of my friend's but as those were long one player games and fairly difficult for me at the time I didn't really get a chance to really play them on my own terms. My first console was the Super Nintendo, and while I honed my initial skills on my uncle's Atari and over at my friends on their NES systems, I only really got up to speed on my own when I finally could play Super Mario World.

A year later while shopping with my parents I recall being at a SNES kiosk picking up where another kid had left off guiding some character walking outside in the rain and being delighted that I could pick up and throw bushes until a few bushes later I got my ass killed by a pissed off bee. Having died I put down the controller and let the next kid have at it. I don't recall what my parents were shopping for but they took quite a while. I stood and watched another kid go through the rain, into the castle, navigate it and its dungeon, release the princess from her shackles, and guide her to safety. He must have been bored because he handed the controller back to me and having learned some mechanics by watching him I just had at it exploring everything I could. I romped through the neighboring graveyard, jumped in the river discovering that I could not swim, lifted a bush to fall down a hole and got my beeping self healed by a giant fairy, and rushed off after being chased by a guard to stumble upon an amazing village. I had no idea what this game was but I knew I had to have it and wouldn't you know right then my folks came back and I was lead out of the store back home where I pondered when I'd be able to play this mysterious game again.

A month later my mother made a run to the PX and while I followed her around pushing the cart I noticed that they had a couple aisles dedicated for videogames. I asked her if I could look through them and get a game with my allowance that I'd been saving up for a while. I don't know how but the first game I picked up was the one I had been looking for. It was like I was drawn to it. Maybe it was the golden background or maybe it was that it had a sword and shield on the cover, but anyway I flipped over the back to see if there were any screen shots to confirm what I had played before and there in the upper-right section were four screen shots that made me carry what I held in my hands proudly to my mother.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was the very first game and to my recollection the very first anything that I ever purchased with my own money and I am very happy to include it in my list of firsts. It was worth every single penny. I had received videogames as gifts for Christmas and on my birthday before but there's something very special about getting a videogame on your own and knowing that it was yours. On the car ride home I looked through the instruction manual and drooled at the amazing artwork and all the cool things I would soon explore.

I took my time with this game pouring over any nook and cranny I might find and with each discovery a wild grin on my face. It would be quite sometime before I'd find the boy in the village who would mark my map and tell me where I was supposed to go. In the meantime I enjoyed whacking chickens until I had to run for my life, dodging arrows and bunnies in the swamp, likewise dodging sand monsters and buzzards in the desert, learning the woes of gambling, throwing fake swords at thieves and invading their dens, collecting and releasing fairies with my bug net, repeatedly falling into holes because I thought Link's falling animation was just hilarious, watching that floating squid explode over and over and over and over, listening to the boy play his flute for the animals only to mysteriously disappear as drew near, and playing with bush crabs that would toss ample rupees my way. It hadn't even occurred to me that there was more than this to the game because I was having a blast.

Then when I saw a red X on the map I found out about dungeons and that they held within them cool new items (which would add so much to the game play even outside of the dungeon), puzzles, mazes, interesting baddies, and amazing bosses that left me in awe. After defeating the first boss and getting a shiny new pendant it finally dawned on me that there was so much more that I was completely unaware of. A story was going on after I had rescued the princess earlier and I was a key player in moving it forward. I had a quest and adventure was mine to be had.

I figured out soon with a new pair of boots that these dungeons would allow me new abilities to unlock more of the game. Rocks I had passed off as rocks were soon just obstacles that I could remove to explore new places. Water ways then became accessible and with them their magical whirlpools that whisked me away far distances in seconds which used to take minutes. With Mario I had basically learned platforming mechanics and that to get where I wanted I was to dodge some baddies and move along to the right so I could play the next level. Zelda was completely different. It was open and without being so narrow in how I was supposed to play the game I got to learn a variety of new game mechanics over time and at my own pace that would form the foundation of gaming knowledge in ways no other game I'd played could.

It must have been at least two months before I got through the Light World. Even though I had been given a taster in my quest for the Moon Pearl I was not remotely prepared or expectant after I defeated Agahnim of what was to happen. An entire new world. I just sat there in awe on the top of the pyramid for a minute thinking that all that was merely a first chapter. There have been very few games since that have given me that same feeling and even then how could they really replicate this experience. I was essentially being given that same playground experience that I had when I first started all over again. The revelation of an even greater and bigger quest was pretty much like all holidays combined because seriously this game was the gift that kept on giving.

So back to why this is the best Zelda ever. It controls like a dream and introduced the most varied and interesting original items in a Zelda game. ALttP had an interesting albeit simple story that even OoT borrowed from. The music is kick-ass - really this is the Zelda soundtrack for me. It had an amazing and varied land full of characters (a few with their own interesting stories), and it had some of the very best numerous dungeons and bosses. No other Zelda game has quite the same punch in revealing to the player how much more new stuff there is to explore. Most of the newer Zelda titles cover more land but you'll find that those games are full of empty boring space. ALttP makes use of just about every pixel it is given and then some. Every part of it is chocked full of things to do. In that regard it is HUGE and no other Zelda game comes close except perhaps Majora's Mask.

If you haven't played this game do yourself a favor and change that. You really owe it to yourself to play this masterpiece. And if you're as big a fan as I am then I have a treat for you. My best friend and I have been playing A Link to the Past together ever since I got it those many many years ago. A side note: this guy actually found the very secret Chris Houlihan Room when he was a kid way way way before it was found using emulators by folks on the Internet. He fell into it by accident one of his first play-throughs, collected the blue rupees, left, wound up back in Link's house, shrugged it off, and was never able to get to it again. It was quite a fluke but it's still pretty cool, well, at least to me it is. Yeah, so every now and then we play through the game again but what we like to do now-a-days is use the built-in hex editors that emulators come with these days to hack the crap out of ALttP. Yeah, we still enjoy playing the game the regular way but messing around and seeing what sort of things you can find in the game is just like having a new playground all over again. GET TO THE POINT ACER! Oh right! We decided to get together on Saturday and record a Let's Play of one of our romps for your viewing pleasure.

Lately we've gotten into co-oping ALttP with me taking the movement and him performing the actions and accessing the item selection menu. It makes the game fresh again and learning to work in tandem is quite amusing. If you have a buddy and two controllers you should try mapping the controls this way sometime with a favorite game of yours. It really is a lot of fun.

So keeping that in mind I bring you our Let's Play co-op hacked ALttP. I apologize ahead of time if you don't find us the most enthralling of hosts but I say we did well enough for our first LP. And I'm very very sorry for my cackling laughter =( Anyway, it's a little over an hour long split into eight parts with an introduction episode of sorts. On to that~

YouTube Video

Heh, and here's part one of eight.

YouTube Video

If you enjoyed either of those then I suggest you click the link below that leads to an auto-playing list starting from the intro episode. It's for your convenience.

CLICK TO WATCH ALL

I do hope you enjoy our Let's Play of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. We had a lot of fun making it. And heck maybe you'll learn something and discover some hacks of your own. =)

Jam it back in, in the dark.