One of my all-time favourite local multiplayer experiences occurred a little over ten years ago, on the solitary occasion in my life when enough Game Boy Advances and Link Cables had been gathered together with a GameCube for a full four-player session on Nintendo's magnificent co-op romp, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. Magnificent, but now near-forgotten, because the hardware barrier to entry to experience Four Swords Adventures as it was intended to be played was set so unrealistically high. It was as rarefied a mid-2000s gaming delight as a go on a Samba de Amigo set-up that actually worked.
Multiplayer Zelda is one of Nintendo's great, unrealised ideas. Unrealised not because Nintendo's designers lack the skill or imagination to create it - there's been an entertaining template in existence since 2002, when Four Swords debuted as a multiplayer add-on for the GBA version of the classic A Link to the Past. It's unrealised because Nintendo has never managed to hook it up with the right technology and bring players along for the ride. It has become elusive to the extent that an excellent Four Swords remake by Grezzo for DSi and 3DS was released for a limited time only a few years ago. If you didn't grab it, it was gone.
Tri Force Heroes for 3DS is Nintendo's latest swing at making multiplayer Zelda a reality - for three players this time - and, thanks to an online mode as well as generous local multiplayer options, it's the most accessible yet. But there's still a chance that history will record it as another near-miss.
0 comments:
Post a Comment