A Link to the Past / Four Swords

Quick Info
U.S. Release

System:
- Game Boy Advance
Date:
- December 2, 2002
Subtitle:
A Link to the Past / Four Swords
Japanese Release

System:
- Game Boy Advance
Date:
- March 14, 2003
Subtitle:
Kamigami no Triforce / Yottsu no Tsurugi
(Triforce of the Gods / Four Swords)
Resources
Guides/FAQs


This new Zelda game for the Game Boy Advance is actually two games in one. The main game is a port of the original "A Link to the Past" for the Super Nintendo. Released back in 1991, this was one of the best Zelda games ever made. (See my A Link to the Past page.) The port of ALttP is substantially different from the original. While most of the graphics and dungeon layouts are the same (with minor tweaks here and there), the game text has been completely reworked. Many quotes have either been re-translated or revised.

The other part of the game is a new multiplayer game called "Four Swords." Four players battle through randomly generated dungeons as four differently-colored Links, helping each other with puzzles and fighting each other for treasure. ALttP and Four Swords interact, allowing exchange of items and abilities between the two games. Beating the final boss of both games will open up the a new dungeon in ALttP.

Story

The story of ALttP is essentially the same as the original game, with some minor tweaks. The story of "Four Swords," as told in the manual, reads as follows:

Long ago, in the kingdom of Hyrule, there appeared a Wind Sorcerer named Vaati. Vaati could bend the wind to his will and used this awful power to terroize many villages of Hyrule. In his assualts on the villages, Vaati would kidnap any beautiful girls who caught his fancy.

Many knights from the castle and other brave men set out to subdue the sorcerer and rescue the girls, but each one fell in turn to Vaati's awesome power. Just as the people had begun to lose hope, a lone young boy traveling with little but a sword at his side appeared.

When this boy heard what was happening, he said only, "I will defeat this sorcerer." He boldly entered Vaati's palace, mystically trapped the evil sorcerer inside the blade of his sword, and returned the young girls to their villages. The boy then went deep into the forest and disappeared.

The villagers asked the girls how a boy so young could have saved them all and defeated the sorcerer when no one else could. The young girls told a story of how with just a wave of his sword, the boy's body shattered into four pieces, each of which formed a complete copy of the boy. These four young boys then worked together to defeat the sorcerer. The people did not believe the story, but they called it the Four Sword nonetheless. As rumors of the blade's power to divide a person into four entities spread, the people built a shrine to protect it.

Princess Zelda of the land of Hyrule was a beautiful young girl born with the mysterious power to sense approaching forces of evil. For this reason, she was assigned with the sacred duty of protecting the shrine of the Four Sword and the blade itself. One day, Zelda was in Hyrule Castle when she sensed that something unusual was ocurring at the Four Sword Shrine. She asked a boy named Link, whom she trusted above anyone else, to accompany her to investigate the happenings at the shrine...