3 stages per level and completing 1 level per day in The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures makes for a nice episodic adventure. This is some of the most fun I’ve had playing a video game cooperatively with another person. Yesterday was spent going through the Eastern Temple area consisting of the village of the Blue Maiden, and a remake of the Eastern Palace from A Link to the Past.
The village was lighter on action and more heavy on puzzle solving, and as such, I didn’t enjoy it as much, though the game needs variety with the amount of stages it has. A lot of time was spent searching all over the village and trying to figure out to do. The Dark World was introduced and allowed us to go back and forth to a similar but different version of the village to get around obstacles that were present in the “Light” world. When players are in the Dark World, the action is shown on the GBA, and in the light world, the players are shown as shadows moving around on the TV, and although you can’t interact with anything in the light world, you can actually pick up the other players while in the dark world. The Pegasus shoes were introduced in this stage and act just like they did in ALttP, although now are powerful enough to cause a crowd of people to scatter.
The Eastern Temple (or “Palace” depending on which term the game is using at the time), starts off with the same entrance room design as the original, but is totally different in design thereafter. Familar enemies such as the leaping Stalfos make a return, along with rooms that go wild with the shooting cannon balls. One room in particular involved activating a switch to open up the path ahead, only to have a giant cannon ball release from behind and chase us forward where we fell into a trap door. The cannon ball actually followed down the hole and reappeared on the GBA and started chasing us like a homing missile. The boss of the dungeon was a stone version of Argghus from A Link to the Past’s Level 2 swamp dungeon in the Dark World. No hookshot to use this time, so it was up to the boomerang. The boss required quick feet, with its massive size covering the room and circling minis, it quickily would hone in on us.
A warning to anyone playing with the original GBA: Make sure the batteries you are using have enough energy in them before playing. We were halfway through the Eastern Temple when a message popped up on the screen explaining that the link cable from socket 2 had been “pulled”, and that the game would be resetting automatically. It was only until after we played again and the same thing happend that I looked at my GBA and saw the red light was dim and I realized it was because the batteries were dying. So after a third try and realizing that I had grabbed another pair of dead batteries, we started the Eastern Temple again from the beginning with fresh new batteries. Nintendo must have made the game reset when a link cable plug is pulled to prevent possible cheating or abuse.
Reading the manual, I’ve learned that Tingle’s presence of floating by is not to help you, but for his own personal gain. If you leave Force Gems on the ground, he’ll actually come by and take them! In a comical manner, Tingle will actually utter a sound of frustration if you pick up a Force Gem right before he does.
Tonight Death Mountain was scaled and conquered. There were lot’s of little throwbacks to past Zeldas. The sign in the first stage was a take off of the wanted sign from ALttP, talking about capturing Green, Red, Blue, and Purple Link, each represented with a different color face. One area later in the mountain remakes a screen from The Legend of Zelda, the formation of rocks in the “Lost Hills” you climb to get to level 5. Knowledge of how to find Level 5 was useful
Green Chu Chus (or Buzz Blobs as they’re called in ALttP?) shockenly return and bring with them new movement from The Wind Waker. Not content to just wobble around, they’ll actually attack if you near by jumping at you. Gotta love all the AI tweaks of old enemies to throw off veteran Zelda players. Hinox, the one-eyed giant bomb throwers from ALttP’s Dark World, make a comeback in large numbers. They don’t seem to use bombs this time though, but dig up the dirt around them and toss large boulders at you. They’re also ferocious and will attack and grab you, shaking you around a bit and dropping your Force Gems on the ground. Gorons are scattered about the mountain not doing much of anything, and massive amounts of those stone turning enemies from ALttP’s Death Mountain take up space in a few areas. One of the descriptions for an area of Death Mountain used the word “Hebra”. In the Japanese version of A Link to the Past, “Hebra Mountain” was apparently another name used to refer to Death Mountain.
A certain mask wearing bird appears for Stage 2′s boss, dropping boulders as it flies by intially, then coming in closer to attack where you can hit it. One player has to toss bombs at the bird to knock it down, while the other goes inside a cave the bird gets stuck in and whack it in the head to weaken it. It took me a while to get bomb throwing from the bomb flowers right, as I’d wait at one end of the screen, and then the bird would fly by the other end, or I’d throw the bomb too late.
Death Mountain wrapped up with a fire dungeon contained in a building similar to the Tower of Hera from ALttP. Nostalgia filled this level with the theme music of The Legend of Zelda’s Level 9 dungeon theme. Fire breathing statues and moving platforms over lava provided obstacles to get around, sometimes requring the use of Roc’s Feather. Any item that gives Link the ability to use the downstab technique from Zelda II is awesome. Some rooms contained spinning lines of fire that had to be avoided while crossing over the narrow pathways, and occassionally hitting a switch to send the fire lines spinning in the other direction to pass. Dodongo’s, reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda originals with their orangish/tan colors provided for the boss fight.
The adventure continues tomorrow to liberate Hyrule Castle (again)!
The Eastern Temple (or “Palace” depending on which term the game is using at the time), starts off with the same entrance room design as the original, but is totally different in design thereafter. Familar enemies such as the leaping Stalfos make a return, along with rooms that go wild with the shooting cannon balls. One room in particular involved activating a switch to open up the path ahead, only to have a giant cannon ball release from behind and chase us forward where we fell into a trap door. The cannon ball actually followed down the hole and reappeared on the GBA and started chasing us like a homing missile. The boss of the dungeon was a stone version of Argghus from A Link to the Past’s Level 2 swamp dungeon in the Dark World. No hookshot to use this time, so it was up to the boomerang. The boss required quick feet, with its massive size covering the room and circling minis, it quickily would hone in on us.
A warning to anyone playing with the original GBA: Make sure the batteries you are using have enough energy in them before playing. We were halfway through the Eastern Temple when a message popped up on the screen explaining that the link cable from socket 2 had been “pulled”, and that the game would be resetting automatically. It was only until after we played again and the same thing happend that I looked at my GBA and saw the red light was dim and I realized it was because the batteries were dying. So after a third try and realizing that I had grabbed another pair of dead batteries, we started the Eastern Temple again from the beginning with fresh new batteries. Nintendo must have made the game reset when a link cable plug is pulled to prevent possible cheating or abuse.
Reading the manual, I’ve learned that Tingle’s presence of floating by is not to help you, but for his own personal gain. If you leave Force Gems on the ground, he’ll actually come by and take them! In a comical manner, Tingle will actually utter a sound of frustration if you pick up a Force Gem right before he does.
Tonight Death Mountain was scaled and conquered. There were lot’s of little throwbacks to past Zeldas. The sign in the first stage was a take off of the wanted sign from ALttP, talking about capturing Green, Red, Blue, and Purple Link, each represented with a different color face. One area later in the mountain remakes a screen from The Legend of Zelda, the formation of rocks in the “Lost Hills” you climb to get to level 5. Knowledge of how to find Level 5 was useful
Green Chu Chus (or Buzz Blobs as they’re called in ALttP?) shockenly return and bring with them new movement from The Wind Waker. Not content to just wobble around, they’ll actually attack if you near by jumping at you. Gotta love all the AI tweaks of old enemies to throw off veteran Zelda players. Hinox, the one-eyed giant bomb throwers from ALttP’s Dark World, make a comeback in large numbers. They don’t seem to use bombs this time though, but dig up the dirt around them and toss large boulders at you. They’re also ferocious and will attack and grab you, shaking you around a bit and dropping your Force Gems on the ground. Gorons are scattered about the mountain not doing much of anything, and massive amounts of those stone turning enemies from ALttP’s Death Mountain take up space in a few areas. One of the descriptions for an area of Death Mountain used the word “Hebra”. In the Japanese version of A Link to the Past, “Hebra Mountain” was apparently another name used to refer to Death Mountain.
A certain mask wearing bird appears for Stage 2′s boss, dropping boulders as it flies by intially, then coming in closer to attack where you can hit it. One player has to toss bombs at the bird to knock it down, while the other goes inside a cave the bird gets stuck in and whack it in the head to weaken it. It took me a while to get bomb throwing from the bomb flowers right, as I’d wait at one end of the screen, and then the bird would fly by the other end, or I’d throw the bomb too late.
Death Mountain wrapped up with a fire dungeon contained in a building similar to the Tower of Hera from ALttP. Nostalgia filled this level with the theme music of The Legend of Zelda’s Level 9 dungeon theme. Fire breathing statues and moving platforms over lava provided obstacles to get around, sometimes requring the use of Roc’s Feather. Any item that gives Link the ability to use the downstab technique from Zelda II is awesome. Some rooms contained spinning lines of fire that had to be avoided while crossing over the narrow pathways, and occassionally hitting a switch to send the fire lines spinning in the other direction to pass. Dodongo’s, reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda originals with their orangish/tan colors provided for the boss fight.
The adventure continues tomorrow to liberate Hyrule Castle (again)!
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