The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past/Four Swords
Release: December 2002
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Nintendo's Game Boy Advance has become a hotbed of ports from the 16-bit Super Nintendo. GBA owners have seen ports of Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, and others on the powerful handheld system, so it was no surprise when Nintendo announced at E3 2002 that the SNES Zelda, A Link to the Past, would be showing up on the GBA as well. Ported by Capcom's Flagship team, the new handheld version of A Link to the Past also featured Four Swords, a secondary multiplayer game for two to four players that took advantage of the GBA's linking capability. This was the first time that a Zelda game was playable by multiple people simultaneously.

A familiar scene.

Hyrule looks the same a decade later.

The Game Boy Advance version of A Link to the Past was virtually identical to the SNES version, both graphically and in terms of content. A few minor aspects like inventory control, text, and sound effects were tweaked, but for all intents and purposes, it was the same game you played on the Super Nintendo. Of course, that's not a bad thing, since the original game was so great. The one (relatively) big addition to the game was the riddle quest, a brief and optional side quest that you could unlock by obtaining medals in Four Swords. The riddle quest had you searching for a variety of items, animals, and the like to answer riddles presented by the lumberjack found north of Kakariko village. After completing the riddle quest, Link received a new sword technique.

Four Links, four times the fun!

Teamwork is vital in the multiplayer mode.

Compete for the spoils.

Four Swords was the biggest new addition to the GBA Zelda package, and it introduced a new sprite for Link that more closely resembled his look in The Wind Waker. Four Swords was a two-, three-, or four-player game with a fairly linear progression and randomized dungeon battles. The puzzles required cooperation between all players, so you had to work together if you wanted to keep going. Four Swords wasn't a huge gameplay component, but it did add some new value to the old package.