Review: The Legend of Zelda- A Link to the Past

I was a certified Zelda hater as a kid. The game didn’t really appeal to me. You have to fight with a sword and not a gun? Why does Zelda look like Mini-Me dressed up like Peter Pan? I gave the original a try on my dad’s NES and couldn’t figure out where to go after the first dungeon. I was much more drawn to the fast pace of side scrolling games such as Super Mario Bros and Donkey Kong Country. Legend of Zelda was one of those “boring medieval fantasy games” like Mystic Quest, Final Fantasy, or Chrono Trigger (just some of the most highly regarded games of all-time; yeah my tastes weren’t that great). Soon the 16 bit era would give way to the 3D revolution and Nintendo would fall out of favor with me for Playstation. And though I would be back on Nintendo’s bandwagon the following generation with the Gamecube, I never found myself giving the series a shot.

What a mistake that was. A few years ago, I decided to finally give the series a real chance, limiting myself just to using PDFs of the manuals and online scans of Nintendo Power, rather than using online walkthroughs. Experiencing the Legend of Zelda as the adventure it was meant to be, has given me the appreciation for the series that I just could not understand as a kid. You can read my thoughts on my experiences with The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II here and here.

Re-experiencing the series this way has brought me a lot of joy that I missed out on. Completing the original games and moving onto the next, has emulated the hype and excitement that fans would have experienced when the games were contemporary. Knowing that “A Link to the Past” would be expanding on the 4 star gameplay of the original but with the greater capabilities of the Super Nintendo, I was eager to get started. To see for myself why many people consider it to be one of the greatest Nintendo games of all time, when I had never given it the time of day before.

Development and Reception

Just like how The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. were developed for the NES, A Link to the Past began development around the same time as Super Mario World. Initially intended to launch in March of 1991 for the Super Famicom, it ended up being delayed until November, releasing a year after the system first launched. The game was developed by Nintendo’s EAD development team, previously known as R&D4 during the NES era. This team featured many of the same developers as the original Legend of Zelda, Miyamoto taking a producer role, his right-hand man Tezuka acting as the game’s director, and Koji Kondo returning as the game’s composer. The development of the game took around 3 years, first with just a few people testing the limits of the new hardware and then coming up with enemies and scenarios to implement those systems. After this initial period, development picked up in the final year with the rest of the team joining the work.

“The Men who made Zelda” - a snapshot of the development team. Taken from the Official Japanese guidebook published by Shogakukan in 1991.

Miyamoto had always planned on the third game in the Zelda series to return to the top down style of the first game. While the first game was novel at the time with its sword based dungeon-crawling action gameplay and fantasy elements, as well as having a save system and shops for acquiring new items to progress the game; many imitations had come out in the years since. Miyamoto was eager to use the more powerful hardware of the Super Nintendo to overcome the mechanical and graphical limitations in the first game that just weren’t possible on the NES. One of the examples Miyamoto would cite in interviews was how draining the water in the lake to enter the 7th dungeon of the original game was just accomplished by changing the palette to match the land. The team was able to accomplish the original vision they had for Zelda 1 in a Link to the Past with the more advanced water effects of the second dungeon.

Draining the water in the Legend of Zelda on NES (above), compared to the more deatiled effect of the same situation in A Link to the Past (below)

The additional buttons on the Super Nintendo allowed for more actions and abilities for the player character, Link. Not everything they imagined made it to the final game. For instance, they wanted the lantern item to not only be able to light up dark rooms but be able to start wildfires in the overworld. Miyamoto also imagined the game using a party system, with Link, an unnamed magic user, and a girl. (Man[a], that Secret-ly sounds like another SNES action RPG…) The girl character was actually used for the fairy spell in the Adventure of Link. While the game did include followers during certain sections of the game, the party system was ultimately scrapped.

Despite the cut features, all these additions did have result in A Link to the Past taking up 8MBs of cartridge space. The biggest SNES game ever at the time. You can read more about the development of A Link to the Past by reading these interviews translated by GlitterBerri on their website.

This time the world is larger, the story deeper, Link has new powers, and the graphics are incredible”- Nintendo Power #34

Once released, a Link to the Past was met with critical acclaim. In their March 1992 issue, Electronic Gaming Monthly’s panel of reviewers gave it 35/40, with one reviewer saying “Wow! This is the closest a game has ever gotten to a perfect 10”. In the game’s homeland of Japan, it earned the first 39 out 40 in the history of Famitsu Magazine. It was popular with gamers as well. Link to the Past consistently topped Nintendo Power’s players’ choice list during the magazine’s SNES era. In its 100 issue in September 1997, it gained the number 2 spot in the greatest game of all time, just behind Super Mario 64. This popularity led to it selling the 7th most copies of any title for the Super Nintendo according to VGChartz. This praise has persisted even into the present day, IGN still ranks it #4 in its top 100 games of all time, a list updated as recently as 2021. Clearly, I was right that Zelda is boring and all these people calling it the greatest game of all time were wrong, yes? Well, let’s find out. Onto the review!

Gameplay

A Link to the Past was meant to be the fulfillment of the vision that Miyamoto had for the Legend of Zelda on NES without the limitations of a 8 bit console. It takes the same formula, sprinkles in some of the great ideas that came from The Adventure of Link, and then turns it up to 11. The controls are perfection, giving the player full freedom of movement in 8 directions. Hit detection, which was a problem in the original on NES, is spot on here. There are many actions and they all feel great to perform. The game starts out with a limited moveset but gathering items will unlock new moves to expand the player’s arsenal. There are medallions and more that unlock special magic attacks that use the magic meter. Defensive items, such as the colored tunics, increase defense and reduce damage from enemy attacks. Combat is a matter of skill. A test of mastery of the several tools that the game gives the player; a sword swing, a spin attack, a charge attack and many special attacking items such as the bow, boomerang, or hookshot. No longer will seeing enemies appear on a new screen cause anxiety, fighting is a joy instead.

Speaking of fighting, instead of monsters; you are mostly just fighting dudes in the overworld. (The monsters of the NES game return in greater numbers in dungeons and in the dark world) Enemy behavior is much more engaging in A Link to the Past. Enemies are more intelligent, reacting to sound as well as sight. Dungeons are way more complex. Not only do you have bigger multi-screen rooms but you also need to deal with going up and down floors. The puzzles are more involved than just finding the key or pushing the right block. Instead you will be manipulating switches, pulling levers, hopping down holes in the floor and draining and flooding waterways to navigate to the boss rooms.

Bosses in this game are fun and engaging. Boss fights vary in difficulty but all can be defeated with a bit of practice. There are no health bars. Bosses make a whirring growl sound when they take damage instead. The early game bosses seem tricky when the player has fewer heart containers and weaker gear. The final level, Ganon’s Tower, features rematches with many of these early bosses. This time though, the skills, gear, and heart containers that have been acquired during the adventure make the battle much less daunting. The level of difficulty is elegant in this game as well. It starts out pretty simple; the first hour of the game is basically just a tutorial, a quest to find the Master Sword and the medallions required to unlock it. This time is spent teaching the player about the various rules of the game’s dungeons. Explore to find keys, the compass, and map to help progress through the dungeon and find the Big Key. It’s required to unlock the chest that contains the dungeon’s special item and unlock the door to the boss room.

But as you progress through the game, more difficult enemies start appearing in the overworld and dungeons. As the difficulty increases, the game gives more powerful equipment to the player to deal with these increases in difficulty. For players that find the game too puzzling, there exist a few “Gossip Houses” in the game where a fortune teller will give a hint on what to do next for a fee. The game continues to teach you techniques in solving puzzles and defeating enemies even after unlocking the master sword and discovering the Dark World.

A moment that stood out to me, in my playthrough, happened as I was tackling the fourth dungeon, Thieves’ Town. Various NPCs throughout the game had hinted to a master thief that used to live in Kakariko Village. Now I’ve found his new hideout in the Dark World. Even his weakness is told to me earlier in the game: his name is Blind and he hates the light. (Even if they hadn’t told me what his weakness was, his name may have given it away).The dungeon map and compass showed the boss should be in a certain room. After making it there, I found it empty. Strange. Eventually I found a message from Zelda warning me to beware of his deception and magic. The room was a dead end. It did have curious cracks in the floor and light shining through the window but nothing happened when trying to bomb the first few cracked floors. Exploring another part of the dungeon led me to a damsel in distress. It didn’t take a 9000 IQ to figure out her true identity. How do I turn her back into the dungeon boss? That was the galaxy brain query for me. I tried escorting her back to the room with the light shining in. It seemed like an obvious solution. But as I approached the staircase, she said “Please don’t go this way” and wouldn’t follow me up the stairs. I retrieved her from the dungeon basement a second time. This time my destination would be the entrance. It resulted in the same plea and a failure to follow me out. I spent hours trying to figure out the secret to changing her back.

This room in the 4th dungeon led me to believe that cracked floors couldn’t be bombed.

I should have given up earlier. The fifth dungeon, the Ice Palace, taught me how to defeat dungeon four. To clear the Ice Palace, a bomb must be placed on a cracked floor. The blast reveals a hole that can be fallen through to get to the second half of the dungeon. So my earlier suspicion was confirmed, cracked floors can be bombed. Just not all the time. It made me think back to some walls that seemed to be cracked before but bombs could not open them either.

This room in the 5th dungeon requires bombing the middle section to progress.

Nevertheless I had found my “aha!” moment and was able to return to the 4th dungeon, my resolve renewed and never stronger. I was able to throw a bomb onto the last cracked piece of floor where the light was shining through. The light flooded into the boss room below and the pretty damsel had transformed back into the ugly thief. If there was a part that frustrated me with a Link to the Past, it was this. The game wasn’t respecting its own rules. False cracks had made me believe that the dungeon wasn’t possible. Despite that it can be frustrating that the game doesn’t follow its own rules at times, discovering a secret that wasn’t telegraphed with a crack or other overt hint makes the game that much more satisfying. And because the game did teach me the solution in a natural way, I wasn’t frustrated. There isn’t any obscure wall to bomb, rock to push, or tree to burn like what is required in Zelda 1. Everything that needs to be done to finish the game has a teachable moment such as this.

When the game gets near its conclusion, it does a great job of raising the difficulty yet providing more means to face the new challenges. A fairy room in a cave near the start of the dungeon. Secret entrances that allow the player to continue closer to the boss room after a game-over. Some dungeons even have fairy rooms inside the dungeon itself; giving players respite and a means to prepare for the boss fight without having to leave. From the first hour until the very last, A Link to the Past never has a moment where it isn’t fun to play. Even when I was frustrated with the puzzle of dungeon 4, I could explore the map hunting for more pieces of heart and other secrets. I found the partner of the dwarven smithy. After reuniting them, they increased the power of my sword. The open-ended nature of the world meant that I always had something to do even when I didn’t know where to go and let me move on until I did find a way. Even the faults in the gameplay led to fun rather than real frustration. For a game to be able to pull that off, that speaks to the elegance of its gameplay design. 5 🎮s out of 5.

Presentation

“whoah nice graphics, I’d like to get ahold of that game”

Zelda 1 and 2 looked and sounded great for the NES. But they still came with the limitations of the system. 4 color sprites. Simple, single colored backgrounds. Limited music that just utilized the four sound channels of the NES hardware. The graphics and music were great in Zelda 1 and 2 despite the limitations of the platform but their platform dates them. While the later Legend of Zelda games for the Nintendo 64 brought the series into the third dimension, there is no denying that early console 3D graphics did not age well.

A Link to the Past exists in this sweet spot between the 8-bit and 3D generation. The expanded color palettes of the SNES and 32,768 colors of the system overall, affords A Link to the Past an art style that looks timeless and you can see how the pixel art style is imitated by even modern day indie titles such a Terraria, Undertale, and Shovel Knight. A Link to the Past contains many gorgeous and colorful settings. The grassy overworld with its fields and trees accented by shades of green. The vibrant blues of the waters of Lake Hylia. A dusty desert. A dark bleak mountaintop. The autumn shades added to everything when you enter the inverted copy of Hyrule that is the Dark World. The colors pop in each locale and character sprites are large and detailed. Animations are fluid and enemies move smoothly. Some moments that stick out for me as graphically impressive would be the shadow effects as you search for the master sword under the canopy of the lost woods, the view of the world beneath you as you summit Death Mountain, and the view atop the pyramid as you warp to the dark world for the very first time. I also love the boss sprites. The dungeons in particular demonstrate a great jump in graphical capabilities from the NES to SNES. The tilesets in the dungeons of Zelda 1 and 2 were often just simple palette swaps to give the illusion that they were more distinct than they really were. In a Link to the Past, the dungeons are all unique based of the locale that they are found in. The often imitated but never quite duplicated art style puts A Link to the Past at the top of the list of my favorite sprite based pixel art games. It’s a beautiful game that doesn’t have the crunchiness of the graphics that NES and even other games on the Super Nintendo tend to have.

Just as the jump to the Super Nintendo improved the graphics, the music was impacted in much of the same way. The sound track is equally iconic as the pixel-art graphics. The soundtrack for the game contains over 30 pieces of music. The overworld overture from Zelda 1 is here. The classic theme sounds great remixed for the SNES sound fonts. The new songs are great and atmospheric and would become series staples. Zelda’s Lullaby, a song important to the plot of Ocarina of Time and used in almost every Zelda game since, debuted as Zelda’s theme in this game. The File Select/Fairy theme also debuted in A Link to the Past and is one of the most iconic pieces of music in the series history. Some of my favorite new songs include the whimsical sound of the Lost Woods and the epic sounding march of the Dark World Overwold theme. The majestic ballad that was Hyrule Castle’s theme (appropriately titled Majestic Castle) is another song that sticks out. That one was the song the game’s composer, Koji Kondo, was most confident about. Speaking of Koji Kondo, he returned to compose A Link to the Past after not being involved in Zelda 2. He poured his heart and soul into this soundtrack and it showed. At first the music was a whole megabit and he had to tone it down so the game could fit on the cartridge. His efforts in composing in this game would go on to be referenced by him and other composers of the Legend of Zelda series. The impact of Link to the Past’s music is still felt today, Link occasionally hums Zelda’s theme while cooking in Tears of the Kingdom. Come to think of it, ever since beating the game, I have downloaded the game’s soundtrack and have been listening to it while I cook as well. Great minds think alike, Link!

I could gush for hours about how great the music, the art, and the sounds are in this game. To me, this game is up there with the heaviest hitters on the Super Nintendo like Chrono Trigger or Donkey Kong Country. The games’ presentation is just simply superb. 5 🖼️s out of 5.

Narrative

Zelda is my WHAT?! You can’t die on us now, man!

The game does a much better job telling a story than its predecessors.This time its not just limited to a few paragraphs in the manual or a short text scroll while idling on the game’s title screen. While that was fine and worked for those games, the way A Link to the Past sets up its story is much better. The player is an active participant as the story unfolds. An ominous thunderstorm and a telepathic call to action from the titular Zelda, opens the game. The player wanders out of their home and into the storm. The narrative is seen, not told and the game’s plot has been established. Ganon is seemingly not in this story, instead Zelda has been kidnapped and thrown in the castle dungeon by the dark wizard.

While Zelda 1 and 2 required aimless wandering of their overworlds in search of the next dungeon or a clue that may help the player progress, A Link to the Past guides the player on their quest. After Zelda is saved from the castle dungeon in the opening, an objective is given to search for help in a nearby village and a mark is placed on the map. From there the player is guided to seek out the help of a village elder who has gone missing near the Eastern palace and the location is once again marked on the map. Unlike Zelda 1, which had little story to begin with, the story guides the gameplay of A Link to the Past. Yet the overworld is still completely open for exploring and objectives can be completed in any order once they have been given. The player is free to try to sequence break but certain items and abilities will gatekeep them out of areas they aren’t supposed to be in yet. Part way through the game, a surprise twist in the story unlocks the Dark World and things open up even more in terms of story and secrets as the player strives to save both worlds from the return of Ganon.

It’s not a secret that NPCs in Zelda 1 are mostly useless

While Zelda 2 did have better interaction with NPCs for hints or items than the original, A Link to the Past expands it even further. In this adventure there are many characters who actually have more to contribute than just “Sorry I am too busy to talk to you” or “I AM ERROR”. Talking to certain NPCs may add markers on the map to point to the next objective. They give the player helpful items, or might explain the story and lore further. Some whisper something about a mysterious dark world/golden land, hinting about the twist that is about to come. When each of the seven maidens are saved, they give a short speech explaining Ganon’s actions and motivations, establishing the stakes that the player faces if they do not succeed in their quest.

With a bigger emphasis on NPCs, the game even has a “where are they now” segment after you beat the game, just before the closing credits. These sort of montages would become a series mainstay. It is a great bit of extra motivation to see how Link’s actions impacted the game’s world around him. A Link to the Past really established what it meant to be a Legend of Zelda game and not just a great top down adventure game or side scrolling action game. The story pushes players to continue on to see what happens next and to try to understand the titular “Link to the Past” that is directing the events that are unfolding around them. After playing the first two games in the series, I was convinced that story didn’t really matter in a Zelda game. The story of A Link to the Past changed that notion as quick as I came to it. While gameplay is the real reason the game is so good, without the story pushing things along, the experience just wouldn’t be wholly complete. A Link to the Past tells one of the best stories on the Super Nintendo and it doesn’t need to be a hundred hour JRPG to do it either, 5 📚s out of 5.

The So What

In an interview from the time of release Miyamoto let us know that his philosophy is when making a game. He doesn’t just consider the time you spend playing the game as the game. The whole experience of thinking about the game even when you are away from home is what makes the game. If Miyamoto set out to make A Link to the Past a game that makes you think, then he succeeded. Even the puzzles that had me stumped were engaging rather than wholly frustrating. If I was stuck and had to take a break, I would think and strategize about what I needed to do while at work. To me, that is a sign of a game masterfully crafted.

I hold the original NES games in high regard as some of my favorite games of all-time. A Link to the Past takes everything that I loved about both original games and perfects it. It’s as close to perfection on the Super Nintendo as there is. It’s important historically for what it did to establish the Zelda formula and series. Unlike some games with history, it’s a game that still holds up today; graphically, narratively, and gameplay wise. While I highly recommend the NES games to Zelda fans, A Link to the Past is an essential game. Both for fans of the Zelda series and average SNES enjoyers. It is my utmost pleasure to give this game my first perfect score in my review series. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past gets 5 ⭐️s out of 5.