The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is the third entry in the Zelda series and the first to really define what a Zelda game should feel like. You play as Link, a young hero who gets caught up in a battle against the evil sorcerer Agahnim, who’s trying to break the seal on the Dark World, a twisted mirror of Hyrule. With the help of Princess Zelda and a bunch of other characters, Link sets out to rescue the descendants of the Seven Sages, recover the Master Sword, and stop Ganon (yep, he’s back ) from taking over both worlds. The game’s got dungeons, puzzles sword swinging action and that classic Zelda exploration vibe but with way more polish than the NES originals.  

The top down perspective keeps things simple but allows for some clever level design. Combat feels tight: sword slashes, shield blocks, and items like the bow and hookshot add depth without overwhelming you. Dungeons are packed with puzzles that make you think but never feel unfair. The game also introduces the concept of two overlapping worlds, Light and Dark, which is used brilliantly for puzzles and exploration. Some items like the Pegasus Boots and the Magic Mirror become absolute game changers. The difficulty is just right, challenging enough to keep you engaged but never cheap.  

For a 16-bit game, the storytelling is surprisingly solid. There’s a real sense of adventure as you uncover Hyrule’s lore, from the Knights of Hyrule to the Triforce’s power struggle. The Dark World adds a cool, eerie contrast to the bright, peaceful Light World.

The pixel art looks fine even today: vibrant colors, detailed sprites and smooth animations make Hyrule feel alive. The Dark World’s grim palette sets the perfect tone. Music? Iconic. The overworld theme, the Dark World theme, even the dungeon tracks: Koji Kondo knocked it out of the park. Sound effects are crisp, from the ching of your sword to the satisfying thunk of an arrow hitting its mark.  

The GBA version is mostly faithful, but it’s got some tweaks: some good like voice clips and translations, some not. First off, the visuals are a bit brighter and more saturated to compensate for the GBA’s lack of a backlight. Some sprites look slightly different, and the color palette isn’t quite as moody in the Dark World, which takes away a little of that eerie vibe. The sound quality also took a hit, I mean, the music’s still sounds okay but the GBA’s weaker speakers make it sound tinnier compared to the SNES’s richer audio.

It also added Four Swords as a bonus multiplayer mode: a whole extra game where you and your friends could team up in a dungeon crawling adventure. The catch? You needed multiple GBAs, copies of the game and link cables, which makes it basically unplayable for the 3DS.

The Redux patch takes A Link to the Past DX (itself an enhanced colorization of the original SNES game) and cranks up the faithfulness to the broader Zelda franchise. This isn’t just a visual tweak: it’s a full on lore and QoL overhaul. The hack fixes mistranslations, adjusts sprites to match official artwork and even swaps the Flute for the Ocarina (because let’s be real, that was never a flute ). The retranslation patch cleans up the script to better match the Japanese original, while gameplay tweaks like increasing bomb/arrow limits to 60 and 99 respectively, make the adventure smoother.

But Redux doesn’t stop there. It restores cut content, like the Star of David in the Eastern Palace (censored outside Japan) and unused hieroglyphs, while also adding modern conveniences like skipping the title screen animation or adding a handy Kakariko Village shortcut.

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The fate of Hyrule rests in your hands, hero! Will you answer the call with the GBA port, embrace the polished lore of Redux or brave the chaotic multiplayer mayhem of Four Swords? Your quest begins now! Grab your QR, pick your path, and may Nayru guide your blade!

Redux

GBA version

Four Swords: 20th Anniversary Edition