The history of Zelda's multiplayer is a history of failure. By now six games in the series already tried to implement a multiplayer mode, but still the Zelda series isn't known for its multiplayer experience. Let's take a closer look, how multiplayer was incorporated into Zelda and what went wrong.
Third part:
Four Swords Adventures
After the release of Four Swords a small part of the Zelda team was assigned to create something similar for the GameCube, while they were focusing on the possibilities of the GameCube to GameBoy Advance connection. Two Zelda games were announced on E3 2003 then, a new Four Swords (Hyrulian Adventure) and Tetra's Trackers, which were later bundled into one game called Four Swords Plus together with a third game mode called Shadow Battle. Sadly enough, Tetra's Trackers (or Navi Trackers) was only part of the Japanese version and didn't make it into the version released on the Western market, called Four Swords Adventures. But I've already posted an article about this topic a couple of months ago (here).
There are two big differences between Four Swords Adventures and the original Four Swords, the game doesn't come with a solid singleplayer game, but the Hyrulian Adventure mode is on the other hand entirely playable alone. You can control all four Links all by yourself and you don't need a second player to experience all of this game except for some minigames hosted by Tingle and the Shadow Battle mode. This is a big advantage over Four Swords. But alltogether it feels more or less like a "Party Zelda", since there's no real singleplayer Zelda experience.
There's no real singleplayer Zelda experience, because the game is divided into levels and stages much like a Mario game. The only thing you carry over from one stage to another is your number of collected Force Fairies, which are equal to the lives in a Mario game. There are 24 stages alltogether, which is six times more than Four Swords had, but the stages are all static and unlike in Four Swords not randomly generated. Also, there are no difficulty levels. So, while there are much more stages, the replay value of the game is much lower. It sort of balances it out.
But an advantage of the division into different stages is, that Four Swords Adventures offers Zelda gaming for in between. You can't just simply pick any of the other Zelda games up and play a dungeon. You are either playing the full game from beginning to end or not. But if you want to play a little round of Zelda in between times, this game is the best choice. Just pick a level and play through a dungeon or some forest. You can't do that in any other Zelda. Well, at least not yet. If they really include a scene mode in future Zelda games, where you can replay any parts as to your liking, you don't really need levels.
The gameplay is pretty much equal to Four Swords except for one crucial difference. There's no competition between the players. In Four Swords everyone wants to be first place, because everyone wants to get a Medal of Courage for A Link to the Past. But here it's not like you're getting new items for The Wind Waker, there's no real reason to want to be first place except for pure competition between the players theirselves. But it changes the gameplay and the way you play the game a lot, because you don't go on your own much and you don't fight fiercely for Force Gems or other items. Well, there are still the Heart Containers and Blue Bracelets, which are worth fighting for, but it's not as much. That you can solve the game alone by controlling all four Links at once also restricted the game a lot in puzzle and enemy design. There basically can't be any puzzles, where two Links do something asynchronous at the same time like pulling an enemy apart or using those nice little handcars going on tracks. And most of the time the Links just stay together, there's not much alone time.
The best thing about Four Swords Adventures is probably, that it uses nice updated 2D graphics from A Link to the Past. Overall the game is full of references to the SNES Zelda and it even somehow tells its backstory, the Imprisoning War. Well, the ending doesn't fit, because Ganon wasn't banned into the Dark Realm, but the theory that he later was banned with the help of the Four Sword was backed up by the Four Swords version of A Link to the Past on the GameBoy Advance, where the broken and cursed Four Sword resides inside the Pyramid. But this article isn't about timeline theories, let's just say, that fans of A Link to the Past will like this game a lot.
What I also liked was the small battle mode, Shadow Battles. It's basically Zelda Deathmatch, but with Last Man Standing rules. The last player alive wins. You can use your sword, all items from the game and even traps to kick the other players asses and it's a lot of fun. I would say, if you want to do a Zelda multiplayer, this is the best way. Zelda fans prefer to play the game alone anyway, so don't waste time with making some big standalone Zelda multiplayer games and just add something fun like this to the main games. (Which is basically, what they tried to do in the Nintendo DS Zelda games.)
The main problem with Four Swords Adventures is pretty much the same again, the connectivity. To play this game with two or more players, you need one GameBoy Advance and one GameCube to GameBoy Advance connection cable for each player. Seriously, how? The GameBoy Advance connection maybe was an interesting idea on the paper, but this game really jumped the shark. And I'm thankful, that this whole handheld to console connection thing is over and that Nintendo doesn't use the Nintendo DS for every second Wii game. The only bright side is, that you don't need any other players to play this game and that you don't even need a GameBoy Advance then. And this is how most Zelda fans experienced the game. Which shows, that there was absolutely no need for Nintendo to make this game. An A Link to the Past classic Zelda game with the addition of the Shadow Battle mode probably would have been much more successful than this "Party Zelda" mix. (Also, if you really have to make a Party Zelda mix, be sure to include all game modes and not to cut something like Navi Trackers out.)
But I doubt, Nintendo will ever do anything similar again. The game was a failure, the sales numbers speak for themselves, it only sold 250.000 units worldwide, which is underselling for a Zelda game. It's the only Zelda game, which didn't break the million. As a comparison Link's Crossbow Training sold 2.75 million copies, which is more than ten times more. Four Swords at least sold 1.81 million copies, but most of them probably because of A Link to the Past.
The Four Swords games are the worst selling and least played Zelda games in the series. Both of them were released ahead of their time and suffer from a heavy connectivity problem, on the Nintendo DS and Wii and their online capabilities they probably would have been more successful. But maybe the approach of making a standalone multiplayer Zelda game was wrong to begin with. A multiplayer mode as an addition to a fine and solid singleplayer Zelda is okay, but something like Four Swords just won't sell well. Zelda is all about the singleplayer.
Next game: Link's Crossbow Training
Third part:
Four Swords Adventures
After the release of Four Swords a small part of the Zelda team was assigned to create something similar for the GameCube, while they were focusing on the possibilities of the GameCube to GameBoy Advance connection. Two Zelda games were announced on E3 2003 then, a new Four Swords (Hyrulian Adventure) and Tetra's Trackers, which were later bundled into one game called Four Swords Plus together with a third game mode called Shadow Battle. Sadly enough, Tetra's Trackers (or Navi Trackers) was only part of the Japanese version and didn't make it into the version released on the Western market, called Four Swords Adventures. But I've already posted an article about this topic a couple of months ago (here).
There are two big differences between Four Swords Adventures and the original Four Swords, the game doesn't come with a solid singleplayer game, but the Hyrulian Adventure mode is on the other hand entirely playable alone. You can control all four Links all by yourself and you don't need a second player to experience all of this game except for some minigames hosted by Tingle and the Shadow Battle mode. This is a big advantage over Four Swords. But alltogether it feels more or less like a "Party Zelda", since there's no real singleplayer Zelda experience.
There's no real singleplayer Zelda experience, because the game is divided into levels and stages much like a Mario game. The only thing you carry over from one stage to another is your number of collected Force Fairies, which are equal to the lives in a Mario game. There are 24 stages alltogether, which is six times more than Four Swords had, but the stages are all static and unlike in Four Swords not randomly generated. Also, there are no difficulty levels. So, while there are much more stages, the replay value of the game is much lower. It sort of balances it out.
But an advantage of the division into different stages is, that Four Swords Adventures offers Zelda gaming for in between. You can't just simply pick any of the other Zelda games up and play a dungeon. You are either playing the full game from beginning to end or not. But if you want to play a little round of Zelda in between times, this game is the best choice. Just pick a level and play through a dungeon or some forest. You can't do that in any other Zelda. Well, at least not yet. If they really include a scene mode in future Zelda games, where you can replay any parts as to your liking, you don't really need levels.
The gameplay is pretty much equal to Four Swords except for one crucial difference. There's no competition between the players. In Four Swords everyone wants to be first place, because everyone wants to get a Medal of Courage for A Link to the Past. But here it's not like you're getting new items for The Wind Waker, there's no real reason to want to be first place except for pure competition between the players theirselves. But it changes the gameplay and the way you play the game a lot, because you don't go on your own much and you don't fight fiercely for Force Gems or other items. Well, there are still the Heart Containers and Blue Bracelets, which are worth fighting for, but it's not as much. That you can solve the game alone by controlling all four Links at once also restricted the game a lot in puzzle and enemy design. There basically can't be any puzzles, where two Links do something asynchronous at the same time like pulling an enemy apart or using those nice little handcars going on tracks. And most of the time the Links just stay together, there's not much alone time.
The best thing about Four Swords Adventures is probably, that it uses nice updated 2D graphics from A Link to the Past. Overall the game is full of references to the SNES Zelda and it even somehow tells its backstory, the Imprisoning War. Well, the ending doesn't fit, because Ganon wasn't banned into the Dark Realm, but the theory that he later was banned with the help of the Four Sword was backed up by the Four Swords version of A Link to the Past on the GameBoy Advance, where the broken and cursed Four Sword resides inside the Pyramid. But this article isn't about timeline theories, let's just say, that fans of A Link to the Past will like this game a lot.
What I also liked was the small battle mode, Shadow Battles. It's basically Zelda Deathmatch, but with Last Man Standing rules. The last player alive wins. You can use your sword, all items from the game and even traps to kick the other players asses and it's a lot of fun. I would say, if you want to do a Zelda multiplayer, this is the best way. Zelda fans prefer to play the game alone anyway, so don't waste time with making some big standalone Zelda multiplayer games and just add something fun like this to the main games. (Which is basically, what they tried to do in the Nintendo DS Zelda games.)
The main problem with Four Swords Adventures is pretty much the same again, the connectivity. To play this game with two or more players, you need one GameBoy Advance and one GameCube to GameBoy Advance connection cable for each player. Seriously, how? The GameBoy Advance connection maybe was an interesting idea on the paper, but this game really jumped the shark. And I'm thankful, that this whole handheld to console connection thing is over and that Nintendo doesn't use the Nintendo DS for every second Wii game. The only bright side is, that you don't need any other players to play this game and that you don't even need a GameBoy Advance then. And this is how most Zelda fans experienced the game. Which shows, that there was absolutely no need for Nintendo to make this game. An A Link to the Past classic Zelda game with the addition of the Shadow Battle mode probably would have been much more successful than this "Party Zelda" mix. (Also, if you really have to make a Party Zelda mix, be sure to include all game modes and not to cut something like Navi Trackers out.)
But I doubt, Nintendo will ever do anything similar again. The game was a failure, the sales numbers speak for themselves, it only sold 250.000 units worldwide, which is underselling for a Zelda game. It's the only Zelda game, which didn't break the million. As a comparison Link's Crossbow Training sold 2.75 million copies, which is more than ten times more. Four Swords at least sold 1.81 million copies, but most of them probably because of A Link to the Past.
The Four Swords games are the worst selling and least played Zelda games in the series. Both of them were released ahead of their time and suffer from a heavy connectivity problem, on the Nintendo DS and Wii and their online capabilities they probably would have been more successful. But maybe the approach of making a standalone multiplayer Zelda game was wrong to begin with. A multiplayer mode as an addition to a fine and solid singleplayer Zelda is okay, but something like Four Swords just won't sell well. Zelda is all about the singleplayer.
Next game: Link's Crossbow Training
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