Back To The Past: Zelda 3

The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past

A short playthrough by Darris Pratt



Zelda fans are an interesting bunch. One could say we love nearly all of the main Zelda games, and most would agree with that. But when it comes down to which Zelda game is the best? That's when arguments start. If anything, I'd say there are only two things Zelda fans fight over; the Zelda timeline, and favorite Zelda game.

The other day at work me and a friend were discussing out favorite Zelda game, and right away we were at it, discussing which was better, for what reason, and why. It was an interesting debate, obviously not one in which either of us assumed victory, as we still loved each other's choices as well. Their favorite Zelda game was this one, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. And let me tell you, I understand why anyone would pick this game as their favorite.

Title Screen



Released April 13th, 1992, A Link to the Past was released a nearly four years after the previous title (Zelda II: The Adventure of Link), but it was well worth the wait. As Link to the Past was my first Zelda game (I was born in 1989), I remember a lot of very fond memories of the game, and hold it in very high regard. While the last game in the series was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Link to the Past was released on the Super Nintendo, and made very good use of the upgrade of graphics, sound, and control.

Creepy old witch...



Unlike the previous game in the series, Link to the Past controlled more like Zelda 1, as in the view is overhead the entire time. This gave the game a very slick and stylish look, along with the ability to move diagonally. Because of this update, the speed of the games combat really shined, as well did the games new sword moves and items. Overall, it was a lot like the first game, but better in nearly every single way.

As for where does this game sit in the timeline, it's hard to say. Some say that it was always planned to be a prequel to the originals, but since newer games, the role seem to be that it takes place after Zelda II. it's not that important, though. Majora's Mask messes up the timeline in a major way, but I'll get to that later.

At the beginning of the game, we are given a history of Hyrule for the very first time, but not the last, in any way. We learn that in the land of Hyrule, there was a golden treasure hidden, know as the Triforce, hidden away in the Sacred Realm. A band of thieves find a way into the realm, and their leader, Ganondorf, killed the other thieves so he could take the Triforce for himself. This sent the entire land into darkness, and the dark would draw people in, never to be seen again. Because of this, the King of Hyrule ordered seven sages to seal off the Sacred Realm, and this caused a massive battle to unfold. Monsters charged from the darkness and attacked the castle, trying to stop the sages. In the end, though many died, the sages were able to seal off the Sacred Realm with Ganon trapped inside. This would be know as the Imprisoning War. There were many centuries of peace after the war, but strange things started to happen. Drought and monsters started appearing, but the seal still stood. A mighty magician appeared, and solved all these problems. The King praised him, and gave him a place in the castle. This wizard, Agahnim, after waiting for the right time, cursed the castle guards, and started capturing all of the maidens that were decedents of the Seven Sages, trying to use their power to break the seal, and release the darkness from the Sacred Realm, along with the dark King Ganon.

Details know by the hearts of Zelda Nerds everywhere...

This is the first time we are ever given any real back story into the world of Zelda, and it is fascinating, to say the least. At a young age, I was taken aback at the depth of character in these details along, especially in a video game. The only other times I felt such a deep connection to a SNES games Setting and Story was with Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy 3 (aka 6). It drew me in right away.

After the opening, we are given another little scene, this time in a small house during a storm. Link is sleeping in bed, while his uncle sits at the table. Link is then sent a message that wakes him up, a message from Zelda.

This is a picture right from the games manual



As Link wakes up, he finds his uncle holding a sword and shield. He tells Link not to leave the house, and then he sets off. After jumping out of bed, and taking the lantern from the chest in the room, you head out and go to the castle. You find a secret entrance in the side garden (familiar to any Zelda fan, as its recreated in Ocarina of Time under different circumstances), and fall into a small chamber where you see Link's Uncle yet again, but this time he seem to be gravely injured. He gives you his sword and shield, gives you a final goodbye, and then passes away. And that's when the game proper begins.

I think this picture came from the games Official Strategy Guide

The first thing you need to do if find Zelda, who is located in the lower dungeons of the castle. After dispatching a few green and blue knights, you find her, guarded by a flailing knight. After rescuing Zelda, she tells you of a secret path out of the castle that leads from the sewers. You make your way through them and end up in a sanctuary that's north of the castle. The priest there tells you of Sahasrahla, an elder. When you meet him, he tells you of the Master Sword, a sword with the ability to destroy the Wizard (like the Master Sword needs an introduction today). But not just anyone can wield the sword, only someone who has proven himself can by gaining the three Pendants of Virtue.

These lead to sort of starter dungeons that prep you for harder one later on, as well as gain you some cool equipment. After getting all the pendants, you go deep into the Lost Woods, and find a clearing where the Master Sword sits. After claiming it, Link receives yet another message from Zelda, telling him that the evil knights have found the sanctuary she was hiding at. When you arrive, you find yourself too late, as she was already taken to the castle. As he goes to rescue her, he is too late yet again. Agahnim sends Princess Zelda off to the Dark World, and breaks the seal that kept the darkness away from the land.

A Zelda game without a Master Sword? Never.



Link is sent to the Dark World as well, right as he fights the wizard. This takes Link to a world much like the one he left, but covered in darkness, evil, and strong monsters. This mechanic, know as the Light World/Dark World puzzle, was revolutionary when it came to Zelda games, and would be replicated in later games in many different ways (Ocarina of Time Young Link/Adult Link, Season and Ages mechanics). While the maps were similar, if one were to find themselves at a dead end, you could switch over to the other world and find a new path, or part of the puzzle.

Simple enough, not as complex as some of the puzzles in later games...



As Link traverses the Dark World, he learns that he must save the maidens that were sent to the Dark World, and with their help, seal the Sacred Realm off from the Light world yet again. This brings Link to seven different dungeons in the Dark World, each more challenging than the next. Once Link rescues all the maidens, he makes his way to Ganon's Tower, a multi-level hell-hole that worked my puzzle solving skills to their very core, especially at a young age. At the end, you fight the Wizard for a second time, and now things get real. Fighting the Wizard at the top of Ganon Tower felt to me like the last boss, especially when I was a kid. So when I finally bested him, I exhaled slowly, expecting the end of the game to come next.

What a twat...

But after you defeat him, Ganon rises from the wizards body, turns into a bat, and flies off to the Pyramid of Power, the place where the final boss battle takes place, and it is an epic one. You travel to the center of the map, the location where the Hyrule Castle used to stand, and face Ganon atop the Pyramid. Ganon gains the full power of the Triforce, and uses magic and his trident to attack Link. But the Master Sword bests him in the end, and one more Silver Arrow put the evil fiend down. That's TWO silver arrow now, but in no way will it be the last. From all the boss fights in Zelda game history, this one is a good one, but is not nearly as memorable as the one's in some of the later games. You do fight Ganon's similar to this one in other Zelda titles (Boar figure with Trident), but Ganon evolves rather well into the later games.

It's not a weapon you normally throw...



So, peace has been claimed in the land of Hyrule yet again. Link lives out the rest of his life, and passes down his bloodline from generation to generation, until another is picked to be the next legend by fate. One special note goes out for this games music. It creates, remakes, and changed a lot of the simple notes and keys from the first two games, and makes them into powerhouse scores. The Overworld Theme that is so common among Zelda fans was perfected in this game, and carries through in nearly every game afterwards. If you haven't taken the time to listen to some of the games fantastic music, I will highlight some in later walkthroughs. It puts you in the mood for just about anything.

To be continued... with a different Link... and a different Zelda... in a different world...

As I said before, this was my first Zelda game, and it holds a dear place in my gaming heart. But that being said, it's not my favorite Zelda title. I'll let you know which one that is when we get to it, but for now, I'll end with this note. A Link to the Past was a groundbreaking recreation about what made the original so popular. Open world, dungeon exploration, interesting characters, and incredible bosses. And it will continue to be the favorite of many a Zelda fan.

NEXT TIME: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Reach for the Tuesday: 20 April 2011

I know it's been a while since I've posted practice results so let me just say...

Man, it took us a minute but once we started working together we rolled pretty hard.

Ryan always bitches about sucking and then goes on to have the highest score of the team.

Man, we suck ass. This went down to a lack of communication. We spent most of this match arguing with each other to the point Fat muted Dillon and I lost my cool and Ryan giggled.

They were the better team. They kept the pressure on us to the point where we couldn't move at all out of our base.

In short, the complaints are the same. Lack of communication and map superiority. We need to focus on map specific strategies that are more thought out than "I've got the sword, Dillon, get the turret, Fat, get the sniper rifle, and Ryan, look pretty!"



They've gotta come from SOMEwhere - 15/04/2011

I said I was going to make a comic this week, so here you go:



Ain't it beautiful? Anyway, this comic was interesting for me, cause I did the last few panels with a tablet. I've never used a tablet. I think it's pretty neat.

ANYWAY. I might post something else later, but probably not.

Ryan, out.

Comic -Raptor Inc. - Biathlon by Frankie Sanabria

Wouldn't it be great?!

Comic -Raptor Inc. - Hitler Sucks at Romance by Frankie Sanabria

I haven't done any comics in a while because I've been doing commision art pieces and the quality of our comics has degraded ever since. The most common way this happens is a. they're not done or b. they're not comics. So to illustrate at least what they should be I have done two this week.
This comic is based off of something random I said during a game of Who's Line is it Anyway.

Dillon's SAW #3 Finale: Temple & Comic

I never saw the desert until I was 21, and God willing I never will again. It was the second day of Autumn in the year of our Lord, 1191, exactly a month after the Siege of Acre was won and the Christians took Acre back from the Muslims. I was a fresh knight, fighting for the Knight's Templar with King Richard for the Pope; for God. I was taught that knights were an honorable and noble caste, but I had learned otherwise about knights, about corruption, about castes. Knights were bound to the Code of Chivalry, a humble promise, though a man can always find a way through a promise. A knight was pious, humble, a protector of the weak; the women and children, but to many knights, those who were not nobles were not worth protecting. Rapes, looting, defiling of holy grounds such as churches and graveyards. Many did not deserve being called a servant of God. I frequently wondered why any God would allow being represented by such "subjects".

A messenger from the King arrived with new orders, so we withdrew form Acre and headed into the middle of the harsh desert. The message told of an object of great importance, held within a temple, eight days travel from Acre. The travel was possibly the most boring thing a man could do. We crossed the empty desert. We charged into nowhere. We shouted at nothing. We looked towards the East, to our objective, the Temple.

We had arrived after our stint in the sun. I do not know quite what I expected, but it wasn’t we got, that thick, heavy silence. Behind the wind of the canyon and the sand hitting the stone, there was… nothing, no birds, no insects. Just deathly stillness. The place had an eerie tranquility to it. The message's directions were very specific so we had no trouble finding our way. We had made our way into the canyon. It was a slot canyon, so we left our horses behind, the way was only wide enough to go single file through. The light shone through from the narrow and wide openings at the top of the canyon. I had noticed most had been shaped as crosses or arrows, pointing the way, implying some religious importance. We came to a clearing in the valley. The Temple loomed over us like an ominous cloud.

The Temple was hard to describe, it was held up by pillars, but they were neither round nor fluted, just an odd, smooth, flowing pattern. There was no sign of individual pieces in the masonry, it appeared to have been carved out of a single immense block of white rock into a flowing and rounded shape. It was slick, glimmering from the light around it, almost as if it held a thin sheet of water. There was not a spot on the face of the temple that was without covered with an inscription or an image. The shapes and figures carved on the trim and open spaces were of the most amazing craftsmanship, they looked truly real, with perfect proportions and depth, as if the people and objects were turned to stone and placed as the decorations. The steps leading to its pure white porch had the length of two feet, one in front of the other, and there were at least two hundred of them. They were the only things that looked mildly out of place, there was a huge, magnificent temple, whose steps were dwarfed in comparison. The Temple looked as if it was made for a giant, and the steps were for nothing more than servants.

Once we had gotten over our awe-struck state, we had collected ourselves and entered the temple. The inside was as grand as the outside, with the same style of pillars, inscriptions, and figures, with only one difference. On the far side of the room, there was a wall with a large carving of the three crosses and above them a large goblet, with stone drops falling to the ground below the crosses. The entire building was pure white, not a single imperfection of grey or black. No dust, no sand or any other debris from the desert, the whole monument was immaculate, as if the place was just built; but that couldn’t be right. The whole structure felt incalculably old to me. It was lit by lamps burning a golden ore, producing a dim yellow light. It was cold and unnerving, yet the light was mildly reassuring. There was a set of stairs leading down deeper into the temple.

Our eight man chapter had split, I and three other men went down the stairs, taking with us one of the glimmering lamps, to investigate, while the rest stood guard and tried to interpret the pearly scripture. The carvings led us to believe this place held an artifact of great religious importance. We were not sure what it was this Temple protected, we had narrowed it to the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the True Cross, the Crown of Thorns, and the Titulus Crucis, the title nailed above Jesus' head, proclaiming him King of the Jews.

The stairs ended at a crossroad, each path leading down a glazed white stairwell. The three of us each took a set, with the extra coming with me. We descended the gradation to the right, it was sparkling magnificently from the golden light. Every few levels in no real pattern there was a stone door which was, unlike the rest of the Temple, made of granite. Unable to get them to budge in the slightest bit, we left the doors alone and continued down. The stairs finally ended with one last stone door, and the walls simply sloped away into a darkness. I tossed down a coin, waiting for a sound, but heard nothing. Deathly stillness. I pulled a torch from my belt, lit it with the lamp, and flung it down, but to no avail. The light was quickly swallowed, the walls did not have the glimmer the floor held. Neither of us spoke, we just turned to ascend back to the top when we saw the dried blood, our light glimmering off it. The blood led just a few feet and showed what was barely recognizable as the corpse of a man, leaning his back on the door. His chainmail had been ripped to shreds, he was riddled with gashes, his tabard was in tatters, and I barely recognized it as being of the kind French knights wore during the First Crusade, with a golden cross on a white background. We only had a few seconds to look at him before a sharp abrupt scream rang through the shaft. It echoed like the buzzing of far away insects in the desert, swallowed almost instantly, as if shushed. Even the echo rang only once.

We rushed quickly to the top, swords drawn. My friend led the way, holding up his shield as I held the lamp. We met the other two who went to investigate and, in a wedge formation, moved swiftly, shields drawn, except for me. I had sheathed my sword to move quicker and held the lamp. The Temple was deathly quiet around, there was not a trace of the four other men that had come on this pilgrimage with us. I could taste bile rising in my throat as panic threatened to cripple me; I felt crushed between the stairs to the darkness on one side and the dead canyon and harsh desert on the other. The silence rang in my ears and I struggled to still myself.

What approached us, I can barely describe. The thing, the first one that caught my eye, was wearing the skin of a French knight, mottled and rotted. The head lolled, limp on the shoulders and flailed when the monstrosity moved, tongue swollen and eyes cloudy. I could see where it was coming apart at the ill-defined joints, with ragged holes in the drying flesh. At the bottom of each of these raw pits was a darkness that seemed to churn and froth like an angry cloud.

The horror moved suddenly, the head snapping and rolling backwards as it dashed towards us. I had the lamp gripped tightly in my hands, but it simply did not occur to me to draw my sword or shield. All I could do was gape silently at the macabre sight bearing down on us, and think absurdly of marionettes.

A warcry from the man beside me, and I turned to see a dozen more of the horrors darting silently in on us. Among them were a few more rotten French forms, but the majority wore the same red cross as us, and were pale, fresh, and soaked in blood. I caught a glimpse of the Knight Captain's glassy eyes as his head dangled limp from his shoulders; I saw the great ragged wound in his back and the shuddering darkness that inhabited his corpse when he leapt just past me without a sound, landing like a graceful predator onto the man beside me. The others around me began to drop in a silent dance of kinetic energy and blurred motion.

I had no orders, no one needed to tell me. I just ran. I sprinted through the winding canyon pressing closer to the desert. The end of the canyon hit another note of fear in me, the horses were gone. My bow, my mace, my hope. Gone. I knew I would die in the desert. I had no hope. But, when I turned back to the opening, I saw one of the rotting monsters emerge, running on all fours, the hands splayed wide and the back contorted and cracked in an impossible angle. I no longer controlled my body, I ran mechanically farther into the desert. I began to feel the wind pick up and saw a monolithic wall in the distance. It was moving towards me as I ran for it. A sandstorm, moving at a blistering pace, roaring as it approached me. I saw it as a bastion of hope. I let it embrace me.

I awoke days later, covered in sand, by a caravan of merchants. They led me back to Acre. I arrived on August 31, 1191. I made my report. I was called crazy, suffering of heatstroke, gone mad from the sun. I never saw the Saladin defeated at the Battle of Arsuf. I never saw Jaffa taken by the Christians. I did not go home with the others a year later. I was sent back to the green hills of England. Perhaps God decided that he should no longer be represented by servants such as knights. Perhaps the Devil himself did not want us to gain something that would increase faith in God. Whatever it was, I suppose there are things man is not to know, and damn if it is not true that this is for the best.

Reach for the Tuesday: 09 March 2011

Uh oh! Get read for some craaaazy stuff! Not really.

I thought this was cool at first but the more I look at it the gayer it becomes

We had a very good first match, Dillon and I were almost the same person. We still need to get used to the new play system that's going on with arena, it's no longer pro slayer but much more arcade like in nature meaning new weapons are available that weren't before and new opportunities for play arise. But like in all other endevours we will adapt.

We were getting rolled on this map. The other team had the lock down on the upper levels and we couldn't stay together long enough to function and operate, they grabbed the power weapons and they pineed us down. The best player on their time was a sniper and a damn good one at that. Surprisingle Dillon got most of the kills and he wasn't even sick.

I blame myself for this one. It just felt like I was out of it I guess. I saw Dillon charge after people with his shields down instead of falling back to let himself recharge and I just lost it. There was a lot of screaming and no teamwork.

Well we came back and won the last game at least.

So overall it was a 2-2 practice session but I won't be satisfied until we're 4-0 like on our AC:B practices. The new expansion came out so that should be interesting and also I would like to bring up the pacing of FPS. The debate was that Call of Duty was faster in Halo. In Halo it is harder to die, this is true. You have shields and super powers and it makes things interesting. Call of Duty is all about the perks and crap and you die quite quickly. I don't think the strategy is there, however. A lot of the kills in Call of Duty are luck and bullshit. I think as a tactical and proffesional game Halo takes the cake. Go me.