I remember when The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures was announced for the GameCube. It was in the wake of, at the time, The Wind Waker “fiasco.” The series itself felt a little directionless after the harsh fan reaction to the cartoon-style graphics of The Wind Waker. I was in high school and a 16-bit inspired top-down Zelda was not what screamed “cool.” This was the heyday of Halo, but, alas, I preordered the game from GameStop and excitedly picked it up the first day it was available.
The big box.
Desperately Seeking A Second
I had only one other friend who had a GameCube and, despite me purchasing a second GBA link cable just so we could play together, it never really happened. I played through the entire 8-ish hour quest all by myself. Once completed, I wondered if I would ever get a chance to play Shadow Battle, the two-player battle mode. I boxed it up — GBA link and all — back in its oversized cardboard box and shoved it on the shelf with the rest of my games. I would occasionally pull it out and look at it and think about the moderate enjoyment I got out of it. It was a good game, I remember, but there were things that annoyed me about it. It was split into levels, and from there, individual stages. The stages were self-contained, therefore, when you got a heart container in one stage, it wouldn’t carry over to the next. I was hoping for a traditional single-player Zelda experience and Four Swords Adventures wasn’t quite that.
Additionally, the game existed in time a time when Nintendo was pushing hard to have the GBA link be a thing. I remember a number of exclusive games that would attempt to make use of the unique connection, from Pac-Man Vs. to Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. For those unfamiliar, it required the user to attach a cable to the top of the GBA and plug it into the GameCube like a regular controller. You would then use it as a controller while also being able to manage inventory, and the like, on the small screen. It was definitely a step up from the SEGA Dreamcast’s VRU and something of a precursor to the Wii U. In Four Swords Adventures, the second smaller screen is used when you move into anything that isn’t the main screen. This can be holes in the ground, houses, or caves.
A view from the inside.
In the present, my son and I were looking at our stack of Switch games trying to decide what was next. We recently had great success playing co-op through Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and were looking for something else we could play together. Then, like a light bulb going off in my brain, I thought Four Swords Adventures. I had recently discovered a box that housed my two GBA link cables. I still had a GBA and I knew someone else who had one that I could borrow. This was going to happen!
Embarking On Our Journey
The night came when we were destined to play. My son, always apprehensive of new things, asked if I was sure we wanted to play Four Swords Adventures, “remember last time?”
The original.
The “last time” he was referencing was when we played through a brief run of the original Four Swords together. The game, a pack-in for the A Link to the Past GBA remake, was simply a multiplayer mode with dungeons. I thought little of it when it came out, and it wasn’t until the various Zelda timelines included it that I decided to take it seriously and “beat it.” We did, but much to our own consternation, my son, who was six at the time, wasn’t quite good enough at games. There were tears. I nearly recruited my wife to finish off the final boss, despite her nonexistent interest or skill in video games.
Enter Four Swords Adventures. “We are ready,” I told my son, “You will love this!”
I was not wrong.
We were playing on a launch Wii. Not that it matters, just setting the stage. I had to explain to my son what a GameCube was and how this was all even possible. That made me feel old, but so does playing a 16-year-old game that I still remembering buying from the store.
We fired it up and my son, who does not like “pixelated graphics” (as he charmingly refers to them), was blown away at how cool the game looked. Four Swords Adventures keeps the visual style of A Link to the Past but adds flourishes from The Wind Waker. When the game transfers you to your GBA screen, it looks slightly more in the art style of The Minish Cap.
We started and finished the first level, and we were all smiles. One of the biggest things that the Four Swords games do, and to that matter the maligned Tri-Force Heroes, is that they disarm the Zelda series. They not only make it approachable with bright graphics and simplified gameplay but also make it fun. The Zelda series is a lot of things, but it is at its most manic in Four Swords Adventures. You are on a team, controlling two of the four Links, and you are allowed, and encouraged, to sabotage one another for the all-important Force Gems, which replace the rupees and are the markers of a successful outing. The more Force Gems, the better.
In stages, once you cross the 2000 Force Gem mark, you get sword power-ups. Throughout each stage, you get to select your items from a provided assortment. The game gives you the item or items that you need to finish each stage, but occasionally, after you have used them for their intended purpose (i.e. shot an arrow at an eye switch), you can ditch them for any of the other, optional weapons. This is all a very long precursor to the style of play seen in A Link Between Worlds where you choose the weapon and the direction you want to go.
The set-up.
You can roll through each stage, slicing and dicing enemies and each other. You can even pick up and throw one another into pits if you want. The friendly swipes do nothing for your hearts, but you will lose Force Gems, which the slashing teammate can steal from you and grow their overall collection. This is balanced with slicing through the sometimes enormous amounts of enemies.
Every action elicited a smile and a laugh from my son and me. Once the first stage was wrapped up and despite a casual observation from my son that it “felt long,” we were game for the next stage and quickly finished the first level boss.
The Start of Something Beautiful
Once completed, I suggested we try Shadow Battle, the mode that had alluded me for 16 years. Shadow Battle is an absolute blast. The mode drops the controlled Links onto a map and lets you duke it out with various weapons and traps. The last Link standing wins. This has become a nightly ritual, a quick best-of-five will often (always) spiral out to seven and nine. We can’t get enough. There are other additional multiplayer modes that include a race through multiple traps and pits spread across a map.
Not only would I say this is a testament to the Four Swords series but to Nintendo as a whole. They make wonderful games that, 16 years later, feel like they could have been just released. When it was rumored that the Switch remake of Link’s Awakening would feature a multiplayer mode, I didn’t think much of it. It ended up not having any multiplayer and, retroactively, I’m bummed. I’d like nothing more than to join a game of four players duking it out in Shadow Battle or playing through a few levels together in the Adventure Mode.
My son has a renewed interest in the series and has gone so far as to request playing through A Link to the Past. The game gave him a sense of agency that I don’t think he’s felt in games prior. The closest we had come in a co-op experience was playing LEGO games on the Wii U, where one person could control their character on the Gamepad and the other person got the TV. Four Swords Adventures let him control his own character on his own screen, and he was barely reliant on me to tell him what to do, which can often be the side effect of co-op games with younger kids. Four Swords Adventures presented itself in a manner that was inviting, accessible, and an overall rewarding and different experience.
The student bests the teacher.
Memories change and redevelop. They can catch your eye differently sometimes, and whatever energy I was putting into Four Swords Adventures the first time around was a square peg to its round hole. Nintendo knew that all along, and I just needed a bit of time to catch up.
by William Wright on January 20, 2021
