[Playing…] The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past

The Legend of Zelda It is one of the most classic and famous sagas in the history of video games and a direct reference when it comes to the adventure and Action RPG genre.

He Zelda The original was quite sparse in terms of story, focusing more on exploration, searching for secrets and solving puzzles than on the development of the plot, thus marking the path to follow in practically all the sequels.

The second game Zelda II: The Adventures of Link, changed the gameplay, which would go from a top-down view to a more typical development of a 2D action and platform game (although the top-down view on the map was maintained) and added more elements worthy of an RPG, such as experience, the magic bar, spells and towns full of characters to interact with.

Years later, a Zelda 3 for Super Nintendo, which would continue the story and (according to some sources) would allow us to play with several characters: Link, a wizard and a fairy. That game never came into existence, but a game was released. Zelda for Super Nintendo, known in the West as The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, that far from being a sequel, It was a prequel to what was seen in the NES games.

The decision to make this game chronologically before the others (at a time when absurd multiple timelines did not exist) was surely made to better explain the connection between Link and Zelda, since in this game, both Link and his uncle can hear the princess's pleas when she is captured, thus generating a connection between both families that would be maintained for generations. In the same way, the history of Hyrule, the creation of the Triforce and the evil plans of Ganon and his followers were delved much deeper.

The fact that it was an SNES game allowed the aesthetic section to be significantly improved compared to what was seen on the NES, despite the fact that the caricatured designs of the first Zelda They remained, now with a remarkable color that gave it a touch worthy of a fairy tale. All the tricks that the Super Nintendo could do (and that were new at its time) such as deformations, transparencies and rotations, were used at specific moments in the game as a mere complement to the nice visual style.

Curiously, the story is somewhat less happy, because although there are many comic elements and strange characters that will make us smile, we will find quite sad moments from the beginning of the game, which begins with the death of Link's uncle trying to save Zelda, leaving said responsibility on his deathbed to poor Link, who will manage to save the princess from the dungeons of Hyrule Castle, and then discover the evil plans of the sorcerer Agahnim and the evil Ganon who is trying to return from the Dark World sacrificing 7 maidens.

The Dark World was originally known as the Golden Land, but after falling under the control of Ganon it became a desolate and cruel world full of monsters and some poor unfortunate adventurers who came to it and were trapped while their bodies mutated into strange shapes. The Light World (in which we start the game) and the Dark World are connected, so What you do in one can modify events in another and in the same way, if you teleport from one to another, you can reach seemingly inaccessible areas. The two-world system has been used in other Zeldas (Ocarina of Time, twilight princess…) but the original idea comes from here.

In the same way, locations as important as Karariko Village or Lake Hylia and items as classic as the magic bottles to store fairies, the hook with chain, the ocarina or the mirror shield, come from A Link To The Past which makes this game is somewhere between the originals (in terms of fun and direct gameplay) and the later (in terms of history, items and locations).

The same thing happens with the soundtrack, this game recovers the opening theme of the first in the saga and creates a soundtrack that includes some songs that we have heard ad nauseam in the sequels, such as the Zelda theme or the Hyrule Castle theme.

But the best of all it has A Link To The Past is that its development and gameplay are above everything before. The game was designed to test our intelligence when solving puzzles, which is why the difficulty of the numerous dungeons (more than 10) gradually increases, proposing problems that will have different solutions (in fact, some of the simplest puzzles can be solved in different ways if we have the right items). It is not uncommon to find dungeons several stories high that require us to review the map looking for the solution to a supposedly closed path.

In the same way, exploration is rewarded con multitud de ítems y piezas de corazón. Algunos de los secretos los descubriremos gracias a los rumores que nos contarán los habitantes de ambos mundos, otros dependerán de nuestro ingenio y ganas de hacer tonterías, algo que en este juego es muy satisfactorio. Gran prueba de ello es la inclusión de un ítem como los polvos mágicos, que no tienen un uso definido, pero sirven para crear algunas situaciones extrañas como transformar un enemigo en otro diferente, a una gallina en ser humano o despertar de su letargo a un malvado ser que nos «castigará» por ello.

Completé este juego por primera vez hace unos 15 años y recientemente lo he vuelto a terminar, comprobando que no solo no ha envejecido, si no que me ha parecido mucho mejor de lo que recordaba y bastante más agradable para jugar que muchos de los últimos juegos, donde cualquier elemento, desde abrir un cofre a matar a un enemigo, lleva el triple de tiempo para ofrecernos el mismo resultado. No he tenido la suerte de poder jugar a la continuación de este juego (A Link Between Worlds) pero según tengo entendido, es un buen juego.

Aunque yo recomiendo jugar al original de SNES o en su defecto a la versión para Game Boy Advance que fue traducida al español (al menos en Europa) y prácticamente no tiene cambios (alguno hay) además de añadir el modo Four Swords, me gustaría comentar que existe una versión modificada por fans de A Link To The Past que incluye música con calidad CD e incluso vídeos (y sí, funciona en una SNES).