Seeds of Courage

"The Legend of Zelda: Seeds of Courage"

This is what I would call a remake of Oracle of Ages & Seasons at this point, mirroring Echoes of Wisdom in title. As explained in my Oracle of Worlds concept, which I wrote five years ago after the release of Link's Awakening for the Nintendo Switch, I would combine both of the Oracle games into one experience, where you travel between Holodrum and Labrynna via a portal inside the Maku Trees.

With such a combined experience, the game will need a new title, however. In Japanese this completely straightforward, because both games had the same subtitle, but they were divided into chapters. Oracle of Seasons is called "The Legend of Zelda: The Mysterious Seeds - Chapter of Earth", while Oracle of Ages is called "The Legend of Zelda: The Mysterious Seeds - Chapter of Space Time". So, if Nintendo were to remake both games into one, it probably would just be The Mysterious Seeds, without the chapter annotations.

Sadly, this isn't as simple for the rest of the world. You could name such a game "Oracles of Ages & Seasons", but then the title would get much longer and be a bit of a mouthful, while the triple plural isn't exactly nice either. Hence my proposal to call it differently.

And the title "Seeds of Courage" would do a number of things, all in one. As already mentioned, it would mirror Echoes of Wisdom, where wisdom stands for Zelda and the echoes are the main mechanic. While the main mechanics are different for the two Oracle games, they do share the importance of seeds. The Maku Seeds are the end goal, you plant Gasha Seeds all over the world, and then there is the Seed Satchel as one of the most important items. (Which I'd love to see expanded with Frost, Razor and Armor Seeds.)

"Courage" stands for Link, of course, highlighting that this would be his game again, for all those who may not have been happy with a playable Zelda. But it also stands for Farore, who would get a more important role in the remake, connecting the lands of Holodrum and Labrynna.

Finally, this is also a throwback to the unreleased third Oracle games, "Mystical Seed of Courage", where the other two games used to be called "Mystical Seed of Power" and "Mystical Seed of Wisdom", representing the Triforce. So, this should get some fans excited, though technically this won't come with a third Oracle game.

Replaying A Link to the Past (GBA) on the Switch

Back on the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U, I was quite thorough with replaying all the Zelda games that I had on the Virtual Console, before Breath of the Wild came out. Now, eight years later, I haven't really made much use of the equivalent on the Switch – the Nintendo Switch Online classic game libraries. I've checked out some games that I've never played before, for which this service is great, but I was not really invested in beating or completing any of them.

The difference is that with the Virtual Console you've purchased single games on purpose, which then made me feel "obligated" to actually play it. Plus, these games were present right there on your home screen, waiting to be started. On the Switch, however, the emulated Zelda games are hidden amongst many games where I have no plans to ever play them. And it's also part of a service that will cease to exist eventually...

So, it wasn't until the recent re-release of A Link to the Past & Four Swords that I've finally come around to beat a game on the system's emulators. Well, I also had to pay extra for the Expansion Pack, so there was some obligation here to make better use of it, and I'm not sure that it will be worth it in the long run, because I really only got it for the Game Boy Advance library.

Anyway, this is the first time that Nintendo has re-released this version of A Link to the Past and this brings back memories, because this was also the version that I've first owned. Some people don't like it as much as the SNES counterpart, because you have a smaller screen and you get those Young Link screams with every sword strike, but for the most part this is the better version.

It incorporated the save system from Link's Awakening, where it puts you at the last exit / entrance and saving your game doesn't count as a "game over". The inventory menu was improved, because you get to keep the Shovel and the Bottles all have their own slot. There is an additional warp point at the equivalent to the Turtle Rock, which is a blessing in the later game. And the controls feel more intuitive, but that's out of necessity due to the lack of buttons.

In addition, there are a variety of smaller things that made the game more wholesome on the Game Boy Advance. For example, you get yellow counters when your Rupees, bombs, or arrows are maxed out. Or how you can break pots with your Golden Sword and with arrows. They even added Like Likes as a new enemy, which wasn't present in the SNES version. And Maple is in the game as the witch's apprentice:

There's more and I'm not going into every detail here, but there is only so much they were able to do with this on the Game Boy Advance. Some aspects of the game haven't aged so well in both versions, especially if you compare them to A Link Between Worlds and alike.

For example, I felt that it took too long to unlock the Flute / Ocarina for teleporting, where you need the Hammer for that and until then you had to rely on the whirlpool warp points. But that's also an issue in Ocarina of Time. And you get the Blue Mail for some much needed additional defense quite late, in the Ice Palace, where the increased damage in the Dark World is super annoying.

In A Link Between Worlds I will just go straight for the Blue Mail in the Swamp Palace to compensate this right away. But that's not an option here, because you will need at least the Hammer and the Titan's Mitt beforehand, ideally you also want the Hookshot, because it makes the Ice Palace much easier...

My biggest complaint, however, is how empty the world feels in comparison to its later iterations, which already starts with Ancient Stone Tablets. The Maiamais in A Link Between Worlds add so much, so that there is something to discover in every corner, not just the occasional Piece of Heart. Given that A Link to the Past is only the third Zelda game and its overworld was already so much more sophisticated and beautiful compared to the NES classics, it's not a major criticism of the game. But a remake with a new collectible could do wonders.

The Game Boy Advance version added some new content with the Riddle Quest and the Palace of the Four Sword, but you may have never experienced any of that, because it needed to be unlocked via Four Swords and this required at least a second player with the game. For me this took many years until I finally had that sorted out...

But of course this isn't as much of a problem on NSO, which is the main reason why I got the Expansion Pack and why I've replayed this version of A Link to the Past: I want to play Four Swords online with others after 21 years. And I did, where I was able to beat the game and obtain ten Medals of Courage, which are the requirements to get into the extra contents.

As for the Riddle Quest, that's a bit underwhelming, especially if you've already played it before and know all the solutions to the "riddles". But I also noticed how the Bug-Catching Net only really lets you capture things that are eligible as answers for those riddles.

So, for example, there are some enemies that you need, like the Sand Crab. And you won't be able to put any other enemies into the basket, only the ones in question. Or one riddle asks for a specific type of Rupee, where the net won't recognize any other colors or even other drops, like hearts or bombs. It's understandable that they've done it this way back on the GBA, but it makes this even simpler than it already is, because this excludes 90% of possible wrong answers.

I still like the idea and if A Link to the Past ever gets remade, they could improve this quite significantly by letting you capture everything and also by adding more questions. Oh, and there needs to be a warp point near the Lumberjack's house for this, because it always takes a while to walk back there. Luckily, many of the solutions can be found nearby, in the Lost Woods.

Off to the Palace of the Four Sword, I still remember how difficult this dungeon was for me when I first played it around 20 years ago. I used the "walk through walls" glitch going from Thieves' Town to enter the dungeon back then, since I was not able to unlock it with no one else around who had the game. And I had to do this several times over, because I needed refills for my Blue Potions after every boss...

Today it's significantly easier, both getting into the dungeon, where I'm now able to use the front door, and the bosses themselves, which are the toughest bosses in the game, but still not too tough. I suppose that after playing games like Death's Door and Hollow Knight I'm used to worse, but I already felt the same about this dungeon back in 2011, so that's not really it.

Though, this time I almost did the entire dungeon almost in one swoop, I only went for a refill before the final boss, which you can cheese with the Cane of Byrna quite easily. That item is so massively overpowered in this game that I don't know why it's there, especially since there is also the Magic Cape...

As for refilling your Rupees, that also never has been easier than on NSO with the rewind feature, because with it you can cheese the Treasure Chest Game at the Village of Outcasts very easily. Invest 30 Rupees and if you don't get at least 100 Rupees out of the chests, you rewind.

What I never knew before is that the contents of the treasure chests aren't fixed, like they are in A Link Between Worlds. What you get is chosen randomly whenever you open a chest. That's why you can always get two of the same. And if you rewind, you can simply open the same chests again for different results.

As for the rest of the NSO emulation, I still miss options to customize your controls, ideally for each game individually. In this case I had trouble with the inventory on the minus button, whenever I was playing in handheld mode. It's positioned in a way that I often accidentally hit the left stick when I wanted to close the inventory, which then caused the game to switch to the wrong item beforehand.

That was very annoying and I would have preferred to swap this with the L button. I know that you can change button mappings via the Nintendo Switch settings, but doing this for the whole system is also inconvenient, because then you need to constantly swap this for other games.

Anyway, this is it for A Link to the Past on the Nintendo Switch for now. I doubt that I will bother with the SNES version, since this was mainly about playing this alongside Four Swords. But it was good timing for this, where later this year we will return to this Hyrule in Echoes of Wisdom, where I can't wait to find out how they've altered and expanded it.