What is it about the early 90’s that sets my gamer’s heart aflutter? Is it the 16-bit palette? Is it the MIDI sound? I’m not entirely sure, but if you put a carpal tunnel-inspiring SNES game pad in front of me, I’ll probably go weak in the knees. And one of the first games to ever get me excited about the system was the classic, irreplaceable The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
The creation of Shigeru Miyamoto, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was the third installment in the Zelda series. In addition to the huge graphical upgrade provided by the SNES, Link to the Past also wisely eschewed the baffling side-scrolling style of its immediate predecessor with its return to the overhead perspective of the first game. By the time Link to the Past had come out, the Zelda franchise was already popular with the growing gaming population of the world, and in some ways, Link to the Past managed to define the series with its excellence and sense of adventure.
To this day, I still get a thrill when the theme music plays and the pieces of Tri-Force spiral into place on the opening screen.
Like so many RPGs that followed, Link to the Past began with a sleeping hero with no understanding or awareness of his destiny. As far as opening sequences in the 16-bit era go, the first mini dungeon might provide the best introduction to gameplay mechanics possible. Within that small dungeon, the player becomes acclimated to many of the mechanics of the game. Of course, as with any Zelda game the mechanics evolve as Link gains access to more toys, but the fundamentals are established early.
As with many Zelda games, Link has to rescue Princess Zelda, but it’s not from Ganon in this instance. Instead, it’s from a wizard who is planning to free Ganon from his magical prison. So, you know, it’s basically Ganon by proxy. In this case, Zelda isn’t the focus on the game at all. Sure, she gets kidnapped again after Link has gathered up all the pendants he needs, but she’s just the MacGuffin.
To be perfectly honest, playing the game again, the structure is rather grating. Link always has to collect 3 or 7 items from 3 or 7 dungeons to unlock the next part of his adventure. Who can forget the seven descendants of the sages that sealed up Ganon that Link must rescue in the Dark World? Such vivid personalities they all had… no, wait, they were all MacGuffins. The player, though, doesn’t pay attention to the repetition because the dungeons are so well designed and so engaging. Each one offers a new challenge and a new experience. Plus, the player always got a new toy to play with in the course of every dungeon.
Putting aside the collect X doodads nature of the game progression, the world that Link could explore was incredibly open. The fourth wall was never broken because the barriers placed in front of a player were part of the game. If the game didn’t want you to get into a certain area, it put one of the really heavy 8-ball looking boulders in front of you that you could only lift when you got the Power Glove. In this way, by limiting access without making it rigid, the game guided the player through the objectives laid out.
Long before I ever had a chance to play the game, long before I ever had a Super Nintendo, I was obsessed with getting the opportunity to play the game because Nintendo Power published a comic about the game. It had just enough style and just enough panache to excite a soon-to-be comic nerd like myself.
When I was young, during the SNES period, I had to play all of my video games in the basement. It was a basement in a small town outside of Chicago, and although it was half-furnished, it was still very much a basement. Concrete walls and pipes that dripped. The whole shtick. Let me tell you, it got really really cold in there. But I would spend hours in that basement while the temperature dropped to the low teens outside playing through A Link to the Past with my numb hands clutching that game pad.
I think the greatest testament to the game was that when I knew I was close to beating the game, I would actually get up early on school days–since my mom wouldn’t let stay up late to play–and sneak down into the even colder basement to play A Link to the Past. I managed to beat the game just as my mom was calling me up to go to school, so I wasn’t able to watch the ending. Not that the ending was all that impressive or really much of a denouement at all, but it was a reward for victory. So I came home from school that day and immediately beat the game again.
I know there have been great Zelda games since this one, and I know they may define Link more for other players, but I will always think of Link first as a wee little elf with a wee little shield shot from a top-down view as he cavorts his way between Hyrule and the Dark World. I can’t be the only one because between the original SNES version (4.61m) and the GBA re-release (0.33m) the game has sold almost five million copies in its lifetime. Not bad for a young elf, eh?