Category: Four Swords Adventures

Ganondorf is an iconic villain, integral to the Legend of Zelda series. However, while Zelda and — to a lesser extent — Link’s personalities shift from game to game, Ganondorf remains just about the same in every entry. Nintendo compensates for the stagnant nature of their leading villain by adding in sidekicks or replacements for him from time to time. As an unfortunate side effect of not being cursed to participate in an endless ouroboros cycle between good and evil,…

Welcome to another episode of the show, where this week, we have the honor of closing out Zelda Dungeon’s Four Swords Week celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the single most unheralded Zelda game of them all: Four Swords Adventures! Andy and Al recount their memories of the game from the time it was first announced, to the first time they played together at the Zelda Dungeon Marathon, and reflect on the things that held it  back from being a huge…

Four Swords Adventures is, in a word, bizarre (in the best of ways). Each underrated Zelda game has its own set of anomalies that make it stand out from the rest of the series and Four Swords Adventures is no exception. Its increasing inaccessibility to players only adds to this mystique — and most emulations can’t replicate the experience of playing it on a fuzzy, old TV, clutching a chunky GameCube controller or Game Boy Advance. Four Swords Adventures’ eccentricities…

I guess it could be argued that, to some extent, Zelda has never truly been a solitary experience. I’ve read that ‘80s kids on playgrounds used to talk about their discoveries in the original The Legend of Zelda, swapping stories and hints about every secret they’d uncovered. Nintendo home consoles had long been equipped with multiple controller ports for couch co-op, but it wasn’t until the Game Boy Advance remake of A Link to the Past came out that we got…

Celebration is as much looking forward as it is reflecting back. For the recent anniversary of Four Swords Adventures, I invite everyone to look ahead to ponder if a modern attempt at a Four Swords title should be created? I’d argue that we need it now more than ever, considering online multiplayer for Tri Force Heroes will no longer be an option in less than a month from the time of writing. On the other hand, multiplayer Zelda games have…

Multiplayer games can be an immense amount of fun, but they can also present their own unique challenges. One of the challenges that game developers have to plan around is the potential for a wide range of skill levels among those who are playing together. When players are all experienced gamers and near similar skill levels, puzzles or bosses that revolve around precision timing and high levels of cooperation can be exhilarating to defeat. However, when a wide range of…

Multiplayer Zelda games are regularly ranked in the bottom third of our Best Zelda Ever lists, with last year’s ranking being no exception. It’s maybe no coincidence, either, that roughly a third of the voters haven’t even had the opportunity (or desire) to play the two bottom-ranked games, Four Swords and Tri Force Heroes, which are both multiplayer. Nowadays, these multiplayer games are increasingly hard to play in their original formats; but even in considering the games in their heydays, I don’t think I’m…

Welcome back to another edition of “Storytelling Through Sound,” a series of editorials dedicated to the analysis of the main themes from every Zelda game. In honor of Four Swords Week, we’ll be taking a look at this game’s version of the Lake Hylia theme and the way that it plays into nostalgia to hit you right in the feels. One of my favorite parts of playing a Zelda game is being unexpectedly hit with something familiar from the past, whether it be a…

The Legend of Zelda boasts a number of titles under its belt across many generations of consoles. I personally have been lucky to have played and had access to a lot of older titles, like The Wind Waker on the GameCube and Twilight Princess on the Wii/Wii U. And there are other classic Zelda titles that I never played when they first came around that have since made their way to Nintendo Switch Online, like the Oracle games and The…

This month marks 20 years since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. Even if you’ve been a longtime Legend of Zelda fan, however, there’s a good chance that you still haven’t played Four Swords Adventures or Four Swords. The most likely reason for this is because, to access these games as fully intended, you are required to play with friends. While multiplayer may be a simple proposition now, the hardware requirements for these games were a…