I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm calling a Zelda game overrated. It's one of those things you've always believed in your heart of hearts, but you wouldn't allow yourself to become one with the belief. Like you had to just remain within the safe confines of that thing called the "majority". Well no more. I hereby throw myself into the pack of wolves. But I will stand my ground to the very end.

As if it were really that dramatic.

Okay, bottom line is, A Link To The Past is actually a great game, and I do recommend it. It's a Zelda game, it's practically great by default, right? Well I won't argue with that. It has all the elements of a great Zelda game; the classic theme, the different land structures and layouts, the items, the evil palaces, the "chink chink" traps, and of course, Link and Ganon(dorf) in a duel to the death.

Basically, the story is like this. There is a paradise known as the Golden Land, and it is there that the Triforce exists. So one day Ganon stumbles across it, and because of his evil influence, the entire Golden Land is transformed into the Dark World. Seven wise men are there to seal him away inside of the paradise, but now no one will ever be able to go there again. So a hundred years or so pass, and guess what. The Dark World is leaking. Uh-oh.

You can read the whole thing here if you're really that curious...
http://www.ganonstower.com/story3.shtml

How does this look?
The graphics are not the greatest thing you've ever seen on the Super Nintendo, but I had no problem with that. They were fine enough. The animation of Link's walk (almost looked like he was walking on air) as well as the animation of his sword swinging were terrific and smooth, which was good since these two things were what you would be seeing the most of. The fog that hovered over the Lost Woods was truly a sight to behold, and the use of scaling to create a slanted overview of the world of Hyrule was especially fun to play around with, as you could move the map around and look at any area you wanted. On the other hand, there was nothing even remotely real-looking about some things; the leaves on the trees were big green balls and the ridges of Death Mountain looked like Smores all melted together.

I can't control you!
Actually the control here was super. The ability to walk diagonally and to sprint made exploring Hyrule much, much, MUCH easier and just a lot more fun. The sword strike was swift, responsive, and dad-gum effective. It was everything you could ask for in an adventure game with an overhead view.

That is the sound of inevitability...
The sound is where the first minor quibbles start to show up. The regular old Hyrule theme was just fine; the clashing of cymbals behind the theme gave it a wholly cinematic feel and greatly enhanced the confidence of the player and, seemingly, of Link himself. The Lost Woods theme was especially good. The Dark World theme, both of them, were excellent. So get to the problem already!

Okay. There were eleven temples or castles (not including a venture through Hyrule Castle) you had to go through to acquire a special item at the end. The music in the first three (in the Light World) had a faint resemblance to the old dungeon music from the original Zelda which I thought was great. So I don't know how to say this, but I just thought the music in the remaining 8 dungeons blew chunks. I can see how its ambience makes you feel more like you're lost in a dungeon and all, but the background "dit dit dit"ing (each "dit" being a small burst of synth noise, about 8 "dits" a second if you can imagine that) just got really annoying after a while. It's far too upbeat for dungeon music. You didn't hear this kind of thing when Simon Belmont was facing off with Dracula, now you wanna talk about an epic theme, that was it. Castlevania IV, check it out if you haven't already.

So let's talk about the items for a minute, shall we? This gets back into the strong points of A Link To The Past. This game had oodles of items coming out of its ears. There were the Zelda essentials such as bombs, life potions, bow & arrow, and the ever loved Heart Containers. In this game you would have to find four "Heart pieces" before you would get a new Heart container; I thought that was especially awesome. What was really great was the way they managed to bring in all these new items and make them feel as much a part of the game as if they had always been in the Zelda arsenal.

I couldn't possibly not mention the Hookshot, the greatest item in the entire game which worked not only as a way to grab onto things across a chasm and pull yourself over to them, but also made a killer weapon. (Works like a charm on those annoying penguins!!!) There was also a whistle that you could use to summon Calgon the Bird to take you to one of eight locations in the overworld. See that's what I always called him because the first few times I used him, I said the line from the old commercial -- Calgon, take me away! and one day it just stuck. Then there were two canes which had interesting effects, one of which was identical to that of another item in the game. I have no idea why they did that since both items are depleting the same magic meter.

Speaking of the magic meter, I never mentioned it, did I? Link got a new present for his... whatever birthday it was for him, and he gained the ability to use magic, which enabled him to blast enemies with fire and ice, disappear, or perform a hellacious spell that had a marked effect on all the enemies on the screen (even the rain!).

Can I take your order? Forget it, take your own order.
Like the first Zelda, there was a limit to which order you could take down the dungeons, but it doesn't FORCE you to take them in order. There's actually quite a lot to walk around and do in the meantime. Searching for Heart pieces, visiting the bat who "splits your magic in half", or looking around for those little Medallion spells. Warping back and forth between the Light and Dark Worlds becomes an art form, and learning how the system works proves to be some challenge. It must have taken me two days to find the Dark World warp by the Lost Woods entrance.

So open up I'm climbing in, take it easy!
The game is relatively easy; it's probably the easiest Zelda game there is. It was a lot tougher to find the secrets than it was to actually stay alive. Once you got the magic shield and three or four heart containers, you were good to go.

Um, I think I'm forgetting something..
Well, I haven't really given much of a reason why this game is overrated yet, now have I? I've been praising it left and right, so what's the big deal?

Well, for one thing I'm claustrophobic. I know that every Zelda game has always existed in an enclosed world; I guess it was just never more obvious than it is in A Link To The Past where the world is surrounded by clouds on the map screen. I'm just dying to know what would happen if I kept going in one direction! Then on top of that, you got the fact that the map is a perfect square and is so obviously divided into nine distinct sections, much like a Tic Tac Toe board. From the top left corner going clockwise, you have the Lost Woods, Death Mountain, Zora's falls, first pendant/crystal temple, Lake Hylia, swamp, desert, town. And Hyrule Castle in the middle. It's just too "processed", and it's not as big as they make it up to be. It's just that there are a lot of little holes, caves and secrets to find, and the dungeons are HUGE which maybe makes it seem bigger than it really is.

Secondly, the blue mail and red mail are placed way too late in the game. In the first Zelda, you had the fun of building up to 250 Rupees so you could buy the blue ring, and if you were like me you wanted to get.. excuse me, earn it early on. I used to be able to beat A Link To The Past in 2 hours and 12 minutes (my record time), but the blue mail doesn't appear until at least an hour and a half in. Now I always liked to do the 6th dungeon before the 5th one, because the item you get in the 6th dungeon will save you a good five or ten minutes in the fifth dungeon. Well, the blue mail appears in the 5th dungeon, so for me that was the 6th dungeon! The red mail doesn't appear until you're at Ganon's castle; e.g. ten minutes from beating the game. The red mail thing also applies to the original Zelda though. It's just the blue mail that bothers me. It's not easy being green ya know!

Third, the bosses. I've heard enough about how great and huge the bosses are. There are only two bosses in the entire game that are bigger than 3x3 inches on the TV screen! And three of them are eyeballs. Most of the time they only seemed bigger because there were multiple enemies... three pink eyeballs, three Agahnims, ten little Sir Vitreouses. Well, the second one is actually more of a jellyfish looking thing, but it's got a huge eye on its frontside. I guess the eyeballs were some kind of hidden message, but it's not like we don't already get the idea Ganon is watching us. While I'm on the subject of "getting the idea", I might also mention that the seven maidens you save in the Dark World all basically tell you the exact same thing, just in different words. The Triforce grants the wish of whoever touches it, but since Ganon's so evil, it transformed this world, yadda yadda yadda. And then after all of that, even the Triforce itself has to tell you too.

Fourth, the sound it makes when you uncover a secret. Remember the first few times you heard that in the original Zelda, you were a little unsure of exactly what it meant? But the more you heard it, the more gratifying it became to hear that ominous series of notes play out. In A Link To The Past, they have pretty much made this the most annoying sound effect in the entire game. It's extremely high pitched and while it won't give you a headache, it will probably drive you bonkers if you already have one. In the third Dungeon, there is a point where you are stepping on stars in the floor to switch the location of holes in the ground, and this sound effect comes out every time you step on one of them. You'll wind up hearing it over a dozen times in a matter of 10 seconds; it'll have to interrupt itself and start over because you'll be hitting them that often. Not exactly the kind of moment you look fondly back on.

So what now? Now that that's all out of the way.

Look, every Zelda game has been terrific, and I have no doubt there are thousands, millions that are drooling right along with me over the thought of the upcoming Gamecube Zelda. A Link To The Past is no exception to the rule; it too is an excellent Zelda game, but I'm just surprised that I've seen as much love for it as I have over its successor and its predecessor. I guess how you see things depends on what you look for and my otherwise observant nature was dulled by the fact I was in the midst of high school when I went through this game. It's not a bad game at all; but it's hardly the best of the series if you ask me.

Music Reviews, Movie Reviews, and other Nonsense
http://www.flamepillar.com

Recommended: Yes