A Blog to the Past

I was a late-bloomer to the gaming scene, not acquiring a SNES, my fist gaming console, until about 1996, around the end of its life cycle. I remember owning and playing a few classics: Super Mario All Stars (on which I played the hell out of Super Mario 3), the Donkey Kong Country series, and, of course, Super Mario World. However, the one game that really stands out, and one of the best games made for the SNES, maybe one of the best games of all time, was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Sometimes called Zelda III, this top-down action-adventure game was released in the United States in April of 1992 and was the first in the series to introduce the Master Sword, as well as other features we’ve come to expect from Zelda games such as multi-level dungeons and parallel worlds.

Link, the hero of the story, must save Princess Zelda, the Triforce, and the land of Hyrule from the clutches of the evil Ganon, who has been imprisoned in the Sacred Realms, a parallel world that he has twisted into what has become the Dark World, and who eventually finds a link between the two worlds in order to rule them both. Playing as Link, one must first collect three Pendants in the Light World to obtain the Master Sword (which can later be tempered to become more powerful). Once in possession of the sword, and after defeating the sorcerer Agahnim, there are seven dungeons in the Dark World to conquer in order to rescue the seven maidens, who, once together, allow Link to enter Ganon’s tower and fight him. Ganon escapes at the end of the battle and crash-lands into the Pyramid of Power, where Link is able to follow, drop through the ceiling, and defeat Ganon once and for all, restoring the Sacred Realms and rescuing Princess Zelda.

I can’t even count how many times I played this game all the way through—five or six, at least. After I knew how to solve the puzzles, I played through it again and again, focusing on collecting all the heart pieces or seeing how fast I could get through it, or just to hear the complex and sophisticated, yet playfully addicting, musical score. [I sometimes catch myself humming the Dark World theme to this day (doo doooooooo, doo doo doo doodadoo…)]. I think the story was most compelling to me, though: rescuing Princess Zelda, saving Hyrule, and all of the side stories and quests along the way (my favorite was acquiring the flute and the bird). It was probably the most in-depth game I had ever played or even seen before, and I just couldn’t put it down. I even packed my SNES and copy of A Link to the Past and took it along with me to college (because sometimes saving a Princess is much more important than passing classes).

And on top of all that, the game has aged quite well; the gameplay is tight and natural-feeling (especially with a SNES controller in your hands), and, though it’s 2-D, the graphics still have a bit of a modern feel to them: not too fancy, not too real, well animated, and slightly cartoony, with detailed sprites that aren’t so detailed that they take themselves too seriously.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is probably my favorite game of all time. If anyone out there hasn’t yet played this game, and don’t plan to, they are certainly missing out on one of the best action-adventure games ever produced.