The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past scores 9/10 in the verdict of The Games Market editorial team.
Once Upon a Time
Zelda: A Link to the Past, when the past is tied to the future!
by Simon Larocca·January 11, 2025
I don’t know about you, but I’ve found myself
imagining what life in Hyrule would be like. You know what I mean? A vast
land made up of so many continents you couldn’t count them on your fingers,
with creatures of all kinds and unexplored places hiding in plain sight. And the
inns? Who knows what a demanding life the bards of Hyrule must have,
forced to invent ballad after ballad recounting the deeds of the dozens of
incarnations of the hero Link, summoned
by yet another descendant of Zelda
to save the world from the vile Ganondorf.
Zelda: A Link to the Past for Game Boy Advance inspired the songs of twenty-first-century bards, specifically in 2002, giving the world an adventure destined to make history, as they say. As you well know, and if you don't know it I'll gladly tell you, the Zelda saga is perhaps one of the most important intellectual properties of the great N throughout its entire history, the only one truly capable of rivaling the feats of Super Mario, Nintendo's quintessential icon in the mainstream gaming world.
Ah Fun Fact! Spectacular the Japanese commercials made for the launch of the Super Famicom version... Epic... Closing parenthesis XD
Many are the
peculiarities that concern it, ever since 1986 when the first
legendary chapter created by the ever-present Shigeru Miyamoto saw the light of day: the title in fact mentions Zelda, the princess who
will often have to be saved or helped by the hero par excellence, and not Link, the
our silent avatar whom we will move through the world of Hyrule. Moreover, every
adventure conveys important and universal values, such as the protection
of the environment, respect for all living beings, and the ancestral connection between the forms of life
of a planet and the soul of the latter.
Greta Thunberg did not yet exist, in the days of Hyrule, but Miyamoto had real foresight, as always.
A Link to the Past, a brilliant title that plays on the protagonist’s name and makes the link between the saga’s past and the future it was meant to relaunch with the legendary color handheld console sparkle, takes the hero with the green tunic and proud scowl across Hyrule from end to end, facing dungeons with an overhead perspective unlike the previous chapter, the second, where what is currently the only version of a side-scrolling Zelda game was introduced.
Armored
with sword and shield, Link during his wanderings will be able to use
bow and arrow, spells, and restore his little hearts, his vital energy,
by killing enemies and opening treasure chests in the dark corners of the
infested levels.
In A Link to the Past we find
the classic gameplay of the series,
the one that brought the first NES title to the heights of success and that
introduced elements that have become much more than iconic, namely functional to the
narrative of the saga: the Triforce,
which here plays a crucial role similar to the Holy Grail of Indiana Jones or
the Excalibur of Arthurian memory, and the dualism Light/Darkness, a metaphor that takes shape with the exploration of
two different planes of existence, in which Link (and we with him) will have to give
all of our skill to reach the final showdown prepared.
Con chi?
Well, spoiler alert,
it’s always him: Ganondorf, the conquering and relentless Gerudo member
par excellence, the perfect antithesis of Link’s purity and courage. A small,
though not so small, curiosity: within this Game Boy
Advance version (the original came out for SNES
many years earlier) we will also find Four
Swords, thus giving us no fewer than two games that will make all the
Zelda addicts in the world happy!
E the bards, seated around the
fire with the late-night patrons, sing heroic songs awaiting the
new return of Link, when he will be awakened by his one and only Zelda.
9
Pro
Link’s adventures return from a bird’s-eye view, bringing the gameplay back to the glory days of the first chapter with a multitude of dungeons to discover
The Game Boy Advance seems born to run Zelda: colorful graphics, an ecstasy of pixels and crazy sound effects
More classic than classic itself, but that’s exactly what we expect to find when turning on the GBA. Right?
Contro
It is not always intuitive, because of the myriad dungeons and a complex plot that unfolds, as is traditional, without being guided by cutscenes and narrated interludes
Mi chiamo Simon Larocca, e sono un videogiocatore, collezionista e amante della cultura pop in tutte le sue forme. Vado al cinema ogni volta che posso, leggo da quando porto gli occhiali, quindi da sempre, e ho la passione per lo storytelling in tutte le sue forme, così dirompente da farla diventare una professione. Ma come direbbe Doc di Ritorno al Futuro, non ci sarebbe presente se non si guardasse al passato con rispetto e ammirazione, ed è il Simon bambino di più di trent’anni fa, anno più anno meno.
Simon Larocca
Mi chiamo Simon Larocca, e sono un videogiocatore, collezionista e amante della cultura pop in tutte le sue forme. Vado al cinema ogni volta che posso, leggo da quando porto gli occhiali, quindi da sempre, e ho la passione per lo storytelling in tutte le sue forme, così dirompente da farla diventare una professione. Ma come direbbe Doc di Ritorno al Futuro, non ci sarebbe presente se non si guardasse al passato con rispetto e ammirazione, ed è il Simon bambino di più di trent’anni fa, anno più anno meno.
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