Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Four Swords for Nintendo Switch Online?

There has been a leak of Nintendo's early development efforts with GameBoy (Color) and GameBoy Advance titles on Nintendo Switch. This shouldn't be all too surprising, where many fans are expecting this to happen eventually. Ideally, the GameBoy (Color) games will be part of the standard subscription, while GameBoy Advance games get moved to the Expansion Pack. It would be really low if every new collection became part of the latter from now on, and the GameBoy really should be next to NES and SNES.

Anyway, if Nintendo truly wants me to subscribe to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, they will only have to do one thing:

Four Links in the Sea of Trees at a starting point that's right next to the locked end point

Four Swords, with online multiplayer. The ability to play the multiplayer NES, SNES, and N64 games online hasn't been interesting to me so far, but the GBA with Four Swords could completely change this. I loved this game, but rarely had the chance to play it with others, where I've never even played this with four people at once, which could be fun and utterly chaotic.

Also, the GameBoy Advance version of A Link to the Past has never been re-released, where this would be nice to have, even though the original game is already part of the Super Nintendo service. But things like the Riddle Quest or the Palace of the Four Swords would be completely lost in time otherwise.

Well, the Anniversary Edition of Four Swords is equally lost in time, but the best thing about it was the singleplayer mode, which won't be as important if you can just easily play the game online with others. The Anniversary Edition was a DSiWare game and all about the 25th Anniversary, where it's questionable whether Nintendo will ever bring this back in any way, shape or form.

However, the current list of leaked GBA titles doesn't include A Link to the Past & Fours Swords, only The Minish Cap. There may also be concerns about griefing, because Four Swords was a game where you were cooperating and competing at the same time. You can pick up players and prevent them from doing things, kill yourself to waste Rupees, and so on. But since playing these emulated games online is limited to friends, this shouldn't be much of a concern, unlike in Tri Force Heroes, where you could play with random strangers.

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