Category: Four Swords

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…

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Four Swords manga and Four Swords games. The multiplayer Zelda games are less story-rich than their solo-campaign counterparts. Some would argue that the original Four Swords contained barely a story at all. Instead, the game put all of its Rupees in the gameplay Wallet. Four Swords Adventures went many steps further, but was it enough?  Akira Himekawa, the pen name for the writing and illustrating duo for the Zelda mangas, faced this challenge…

The Legend of Zelda’s 25th Anniversary in 2011 was an exciting time to be a Zelda fan. If you were fully aware of all the great things Nintendo had on offer from 2011 to 2012, this period in Zelda history is probably a strongly nostalgic time for you. I was in my mid-teens, and was primarily focused on Skyward Sword. I was also completely obsessed with the 25th Anniversary Special Orchestra CD that came with the newest series title, even though…

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…

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…

The Legend of Zelda fans were feasting in 2011. With the series celebrating its 25th anniversary that year, Nintendo pulled out all the stops to make sure every corner of the fanbase was well fed on Zelda goodness. Ocarina of Time 3D — a remake long desired by fans — released that June, Skyward Sword — the first home console Zelda game in five years — released that November, Hyrule Historia — and the official Zelda timeline with it —…