The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

• 1. Introduction

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  The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past reached Japanese players in 1991 as the third entry in Nintendo's Zelda series. It was built for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and it followed Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which appeared in 1987. Over the decades since, critics, magazines and reader polls have kept placing it among the best video games ever made.

  Several questions sit behind that reputation. How did a hero's quest fit two entire worlds onto a single cartridge? What had already happened to the kingdom of Hyrule before the story even begins? And who is Chris Houlihan, and why does a secret room carry his name?

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• 2. Two Worlds

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  The village of Kakariko exists twice in A Link to the Past, once in the Light World and once as the Village of Outcasts in the Dark World. That pairing captures the central idea of the game. Hyrule comes in two versions, and the player must keep travelling between them.

  Link begins in the Light World and enters the Dark World through portals. The Dark World is a parallel version of the first, with different enemies, different non-playable characters and different dungeons. Its geography often lines up with the Light World's, which lets one map teach the player about the other.

  Travel between the two is not symmetrical. Link can enter by portal, but he can leave the Dark World only with an item called the Magic Mirror. The Mirror leaves a special portal behind for the return trip. That portal is erased if Link uses the Magic Mirror in the Dark World. Used cleverly, the Mirror lets Link reach areas that are otherwise inaccessible.

  Diagonal movement is one change from the original The Legend of Zelda, where Link could move in only four directions. The game also returns to the overhead view of that first game, after the side-scrolling perspective of Zelda II. Link explores the overworld, then enters dungeons to defeat bosses and win items needed to continue.

  Many of those dungeons have several levels, so Link climbs and descends stairs or drops through holes. Each dungeon holds a large chest with a piece of equipment that is typically necessary to finish the game. His sword and shield come early and can be upgraded multiple times. Some items, such as the Lantern, spend magic points. Out in the overworld, optional Heart Pieces reward exploration, and four of them form a Heart Container that raises Link's health by one.

  Why a second Hyrule exists at all is a question the story answers, and it begins with a message from a princess.

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• 3. Ganon's Return

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  A telepathic message from Princess Zelda wakes Link and his uncle at the start of the game. She says that the wizard Agahnim has locked her in the dungeon of Hyrule Castle. Link is the last descendant of the Knights of Hyrule. His uncle goes to rescue her first and orders Link to stay home, but Link follows anyway.

  His uncle is mortally wounded, and before he dies Link receives a sword and shield from him. Link then infiltrates the castle and hides Zelda in the Sanctuary, as his uncle's last wish. There a priest explains that Agahnim is a powerful wizard planning to free Ganon from the Dark World. Ganon had been imprisoned there for trying to use the Triforce for evil purposes.

  The backstory rests on the Seven Sages, who had sealed Ganon away. Before the game begins, their descendants are captured, Princess Zelda among them, and sent one by one to the Dark World. The King of Hyrule is murdered, and Agahnim takes over. Ganon, having gathered all three pieces of the Triforce, saw his evil desires transform the realm into the Dark World.

  Agahnim's weak point is the Master Sword, a relic weapon that only the chosen hero can wield. To claim it, Link must first obtain three pendants. A figure named Sahasrahla aids him along the way, and Link eventually wins the sword. Back at the Sanctuary, he finds the priest dying, and the priest tells him to rescue Zelda. Link tries and fails, because Agahnim sends her to the Dark World.

  After Link defeats Agahnim, the wizard sends him to the Dark World as well. There Link must rescue the descendants of the Seven Sages. He fights Agahnim a second time, and when the wizard falls, Ganon emerges from his corpse and flies to the Pyramid of Power. Once Ganon is beaten, Link retrieves the Triforce and is given the chance to make a wish.

  The wish undoes the damage. Link's uncle, the priest and the King of Hyrule are all resurrected, and everyone trapped in the Dark World comes home. Link later returns the Master Sword to its pedestal. The whole tale is a distant prequel to the original The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II. In the official chronology it opens the Defeated Hero timeline, which branches from a reality where Ganondorf defeats the Hero of Time in Ocarina of Time.

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• 4. Building the Game

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  Work on a new Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System began in 1988. A year later the project moved to Nintendo's next console, the Super Famicom, known elsewhere as the Super NES. The success of earlier Zelda games let Nintendo invest a large budget, ample development time and substantial resources.

  Storage was the central constraint. At the time, most Super NES cartridges held 4 Mbit, or 512 KB. This game used 8 Mbit, or 1 MB, which gave the team room to build a remarkably expansive world. They also borrowed a compression method seen in Super Mario World. Many tiles were limited to eight colors instead of the console's native sixteen, and the game restored the missing color range at runtime by adding a leading bit to each pixel's color index.

  The biggest saving came from eliminating duplication. The Light World and the Dark World are almost identical in layout, though they use different texture tiles. The Dark World therefore exists in the ROM only as an overlay of the Light World.

  Producer Shigeru Miyamoto originally wanted a party of heroes, which he described as "one that consists of the protagonist,... a magic user, and a girl". The script was written by Kensuke Tanabe, who was new to the series. Yoshiaki Koizumi was responsible for the background story that appears in the instruction manual.

  Time constraints cut several ideas. One was the ability to set wildfires in grassy areas, which returned later in Four Swords Adventures. Another was the freedom to choose which weapons to hold and to combine items, such as using bombs and arrows at the same time. According to Tezuka, that idea did not survive because Miyamoto asked that Link always have the sword equipped.

  The game was originally set for release in March 1991. Extra staff were hired to add more enemies and scenarios, and Miyamoto said these additions took another eight months. Koji Kondo composed, arranged and produced the score. He redid the "Hyrule Overture" of the first game in the S-SMP style of the Super NES sound chip, and it appears in "Light World Overworld" and "End Credits".

  Many recurring motifs of later Zelda scores come from this game, including "Zelda's Lullaby", "Ganondorf's Theme", "Hyrule Castle", "Kakariko Village" and "Select Screen/Fairy Cave". Sony Records released a soundtrack called The Legend of Zelda: Sound and Drama in Japan on the 22nd of June 1994. Its first disc runs 44 minutes with rearranged themes and a bonus drama track. Its second runs 54 minutes with original arrangements from this game and the first NES game.

  The Japanese release came on the 21st of November 1991. North America followed on the 13th of April 1992, and Europe on the 24th of September 1992. The English version changed the original in several ways. Most changes removed religious references to meet Nintendo of America's content guidelines. The subtitle Kamigami no Triforce, meaning "Triforce of the Gods", became A Link to the Past.

  The Hylian script, a font standing in for an unreadable language, had been based on Egyptian hieroglyphs, which carry religious meanings, so it was altered. The priest Agahnim became a wizard. One more release is easy to miss. A French version was sold in Canada, and it remains the only French-only Super NES release in North America.

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• 5. A Hidden Room

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  In 1990, Nintendo Power ran a contest asking players to photograph the "WarMECH", a powerful and rare enemy in Final Fantasy. The prize was that one randomly chosen winner would appear in an upcoming game, though the magazine did not say which one. The winner was Chris Houlihan, and his reward is a hidden room in A Link to the Past.

  Inside are 45 blue rupees and a greeting that reads "My name is Chris Houlihan. This is my top secret room. Keep it between us, okay?" The room also served a practical purpose as a crash prevention measure. If the game could not determine where Link was going when he moved to another area, it sent him there instead. Players have since found the room through five different methods.

  For more than a decade, hardly anyone knew about it. Wide awareness arrived in the 2000s, as the Internet and Super NES emulators grew more popular. The Game Boy Advance re-release removed the ability to access the room, although it can still be found in the game's code. The Virtual Console and Nintendo Classics versions contain it, because they emulate the original game.

  The Escapist, G4TV, GameSpy, Good Game, IGN, Nintendo Life and PALGN all referenced the room in articles about video game easter eggs and secrets. GamesRadar's Jason Fanelli called it "one of the Zelda franchise's biggest mysteries". Justin Towell, also of GamesRadar, ranked it second in his list of the top seven secret rooms in video games. He called it "one of the coolest and most exclusive secrets in the Zelda universe".

  1UP.com also featured the room in its list of "25 things you didn't know about The Legend of Zelda".

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• 6. Critical Acclaim

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  Four Famitsu reviewers, Tofuya Famibou, Muzno, Mariko Morishita and Giorgio Nakaji, all gave the game high scores. They praised its story and graphics. Morishita noted that even the smallest gestures of the characters were very detailed. Nakaji warned that the game might be difficult for players new to Zelda, yet he said it would remind players "how much fun games can be." It was the first game to receive a near-perfect score from Famitsu.

  American honors followed. Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded it Best Sequel of 1992. The Chicago Tribune named it Best Game of the Year, tied with Street Fighter II. In 1993, Sandy Petersen reviewed it in Dragon magazine and gave it 5 out of 5 stars.

  The ranked lists came later and have not stopped. Total! placed it 2nd on its Top 100 SNES Games in 1995. In 2005, IGN's editors put it 11th on their Top 100 Games, while IGN's readers voted it 5th. IGN later ranked it the second best game of all time, in both 2015 and 2019.

  Entertainment Weekly chose it as the best game of all time in 2006. Next Generation and Popular Mechanics also listed it first, while G4 and Gamereactor put it second. GamesRadar ranked it the third best Super NES game, behind Chrono Trigger in second and Super Metroid in first. Game Informer placed it 12th in 2009, saying it "remains a blast today".

  Not every list agreed. Readers of the Japanese magazine Famitsu ranked it only 31st in a 2006 poll. In 2018, Complex listed it 2nd among the best Super Nintendo games and felt it was "definitely Nintendo's best first-party title for the SNES".

  The Game Boy Advance version, A Link to the Past and Four Swords, drew similar praise. It holds the top spot on Metacritic's all-time high scores for Game Boy Advance games, with a score of 95. IGN called it a faithful conversion, though it found the audio less crisp and the frequent sound effects tiresome. In 2007, IGN named it the third best Game Boy Advance game of all time.

  GamePro's Star Dingo called the game a "masterpiece" and praised the overworld for its secrets and "quirky random characters". CNET called the Four Swords mode "an exciting, replayable multiplayer experience". UGO Networks was cooler, comparing Four Swords to Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons and calling it "similarly gimmicky". Nintendo Power gave the port a positive review, praising its level design and puzzles.

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• 7. Sales and Staying Power

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  In Japan, the game topped the Famitsu sales charts in November and December 1991 and again in January 1992. That made it the best-selling release of 1991 there. In the United States, it became the third best-selling game of 1992, behind Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Street Fighter II, with one million units sold.

  Nintendo Power's top games list shows how long the appeal lasted. When the Super NES list was retired, A Link to the Past had held the number one spot for more than five consecutive years. In December 2012, the magazine's last issue still ranked it number 2. A later Player's Choice release in North America indicated that at least one million copies had sold there. Worldwide, it was one of the best-selling Super NES games, with 4.61 million units sold as of 2004.

  The Game Boy Advance version added to the total. In the United States alone, it sold 1.4 million copies and earned 41 million dollars by August 2006. Between January 2000 and August 2006, it was the eighth highest-selling game launched for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable in that country. Worldwide, that version sold 1.89 million units by 2004, which brought the combined total to 6.5 million.

  Re-releases kept the game in circulation. It reached the Wii, Wii U and New Nintendo 3DS through the Virtual Console, and the Nintendo Switch through the Nintendo Classics service. It also appeared on the Super NES Classic Edition. On the 5th of September 2019, it joined Nintendo Switch Online with nineteen other SNES games, at no additional charge.

  A full sequel arrived on the Nintendo 3DS in 2013 under the title A Link Between Worlds.

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• 8. Branching Paths

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  On the 2nd of March 1997, the Satellaview broadcast service began carrying an unaltered re-release of the original Japanese version. It was rebroadcast more often than any other Zelda game on the service. It was also the only Zelda title the broadcaster St.GIGA kept airing after its ties with Nintendo broke in April 1999. Unlike two other Satellaview Zelda games, it lacked SoundLink support.

  That same year came a true follow-up, BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban, designed only for the Satellaview. It takes place six years after A Link to the Past in the Light World, and it has no character named Link. The player is the Hero of Light, played by a male or female BS-X avatar. The game ran as four weekly episodes, played live while a voice-acted track broadcast clues and plot developments over the satellite network. Each week opened only certain parts of the overworld, and clouds hid the rest.

  The 2002 Game Boy Advance release, developed jointly by Nintendo and Capcom, paired the game with Four Swords. Its port added voice clips and sound effects taken from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Four Swords is a multiplayer adventure with randomly generated dungeons shaped by the number of players. With only two players, the game ensures that no puzzle needs a third or fourth person. Completing it unlocks a new dungeon called the Palace of the Four Sword in A Link to the Past.

  In Four Swords, the wind mage Vaati escapes the sword that sealed him and captures Princess Zelda to marry her. Link uses the Four Sword to create three copies of himself, rescues her and traps Vaati again. At release, that story was considered the earliest point in the series' timeline.

  The next Zelda game after this one was Link's Awakening, released in 1993 for the Game Boy. It kept the top-down perspective and an overworld resembling this game's, though Link now awakens shipwrecked on an island called Koholint.

  The story also spread to print. Shotaro Ishinomori illustrated a comic adaptation serialized for 12 issues of Nintendo Power from January to December 1992. It was then reissued as a trade paperback in 1993, with several plot changes and new characters. In Japan, Ataru Cagiva's manga ran from 1995 to 1996 in Enix Corporation's Monthly GFantasy. In 2005, a one-volume manga by Akira Himekawa introduced a thief called "Ghanti", with a single devil's horn and a star under her eye.

  In 2011, Shigeru Miyamoto said he wanted A Link to the Past remade for the Nintendo 3DS, because of how attractive its two layers would look. Planning for a successor began after Spirit Tracks was completed in 2009, and full development began in 2012. Nintendo revealed the game in April 2013, and on the 22nd of November it released A Link Between Worlds. It used a new storyline and original dungeons, and its height and depth took advantage of the 3DS 3D feature.

  Fans built their own paths too. The unofficial 2007 sequel The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds is one of numerous fangames the game inspired. In 2023, the game was reverse-engineered, which made unofficial ports possible on a broad range of platforms. Super Smash Bros. uses several of its music tracks on Zelda-themed stages, and Princess Zelda's design in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate partly draws on her appearance here and in A Link Between Worlds.

  Speedrunners adopted it as well. In 2019, it had the fourth highest number of players of any game listed on Speedrun.com, though it has since fallen lower. It is commonly run at the Games Done Quick charity marathon, where it is often considered a highlight. Many runners use A Link to the Past: Randomizer, a mod that shuffles the locations of most items. Its aim is to bring back the uncertainty and excitement of playing the game for the first time.

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