Since you only need to be able to see your character, the screen can merely transition in a normal manner, much like Four Swords Adventures did with a single-player quest.įor local or mixed online and local play, the solution is less ideal, but still practical. There are three easy solutions to this problem.įor online-only play, there really is no conflict. It was a fun trick, but not a good enough reason to make the system an absolute requirement. The original game had an unusual reason for requiring the Gameboy in the first place - when players moved their individually-controlled Link into a house or a cave, the screen was transferred to their Gameboy, while the overworld continued to be displayed on the television, sans them. Online play for up to four people, playing locally or over the ether (or a combination of the two), would make Four Swords Adventures on WiiWare far more accessible than its Gameboy-restricted predecessor. Simply put, a game that lives and dies by its multiplayer involvement needs online support. Not much needs to be done to this mode, really - a few more maps couldn't hurt, but it was already a fun, simple experience that worked well as a distraction from the main adventure.Ī feature that would have been wonderful in 2004 is critical in 2008. There needs to be a wealth of different puzzles and landscape configurations to ensure that, while some areas of each level may be familiar to players the 2nd or 3rd time, the experience is still fresh and different each and every playthrough.Ī competitive Shadow Battle mode complemented the Hyrulean Adventure, allowing players to whallop one another with traditional Zelda weaponry on a variety of small stages. Imagine a game in which each of these unique regions of Hyrule, from Lake Hylia to Death Mountain, was different every time you began a new quest. Bam.įour Swords Adventures was broken up into eight distinct levels, each with three sections. How can Nintendo remedy this situation and make a game that you'll want to play forever?
The problem? For a game focused on multiplayer, there wasn't a huge incentive to replay the quest over and over again. The game was smartly designed, with familiarly-styled puzzles, classic items, and a decently lengthy quest. If you've played Four Swords Adventures and are even slightly into adventure games in general or Zelda in particular, chances are you had a grand old time. By striving towards three simple goals, Nintendo could make a multiplayer Zelda game so awesome it might only be playable in small doses, lest your face be rocked entirely off. The solution? A budget-priced, WiiWare release of an all-new Four Swords Adventures game, played with the classic controller. Of course, people still played the game, but its audience was severely limited by the necessity of additional hardware for each player.īut with WiiWare, Nintendo could make up for their past failings. Four Swords Adventures was unfortunately crippled by the required Gameboy Advance and GameCube-Gameboy cable. Unlike most of the games that get the spotlight in Born for Wii, Four Swords Adventures isn't one that needs a radical Wiimake or some fancy-pants new integration. The GameCube iteration took most of the elements that made Four Swords a fun multiplayer experience and expanded them, incorporating a (slightly) more complex story and a longer quest. The game was successful enough to warrant a full-fledged console sequel in 2004: The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. It represented a new direction for the series, allowing gamers to link GBAs and work together to defeat the evil wizard Vaati.
LINK TO THE PAST GBA WITH 1PLAYER 4SWORDS SERIES
Discounting the rightfully-maligned CD-i games, only once has the series truly deviated from this formula, resulting in the birth of a little game called Four Swords.įour Swords was a small multiplayer adventure added onto the Gameboy Advance port of A Link to the Past. Typically this involves finding the Master Sword, rescuing Zelda and sending Ganon packing for his evil deeds. But ever since the release of the original in 1986, one thing has remained constant - Link, more or less alone, must save the world. The games in the Legend of Zelda series have evolved over the years into sprawling, epic adventures.