SNES Game Review: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is the main game for SNES that features the Zelda Series, though before Ocarina of Time, it was one of four Zelda games to hit in the 80's and early-to-mid 90's.  Nintendo wanted to make a big splash with A Link to the Past.  To say they made that splash is an understatement as this is widely considered by many as the best Super Nintendo game and one of the best in the Zelda series to this day.  What makes this game so good? Are there any downsides to it? What's my rating of it? All that is right below! 

Positives:

1. Music: Nintendo, music, Zelda.  They all go together and have stood a test of time for several decades of games made and even with A Link to the Past the music is absolutely phenomenal. 

2. Gameplay: Very fluid, very structured, no major foul-ups in the design of the game play make this an easy positive.  It is always a good game for gameplay and one that warrants someone to play it.  Another thing I like is this game does not hold hands and you have to do this yourself at the time (Remember, this is the 90's and the only thing that came along was a strategy guide.) 

3. Graphics: Nintendo, Zelda, graphics.  I would not need to say more but the design of the graphics was also a terrific thing as well.  They did well overall to paint a world and also use it to do a dark world as well.  Overall very, very well done.

4. Not exceptionally long: There is a theme with a lot of SNES games not named FF6, they tend to be on the shorter side of the ledger on time frame.  For instance with this game, you can beat it in a 10 hour span easily.  I beat it in less than 8.  It is a popular game for speedrunners.  Overall it won't take long to beat this game so long as you consult a guide to do it.

5. The changing worlds: I feel if Nintendo tried this again with A Link to the Past it wouldn't be vastly as successful as it was then.  I have no doubt how great they did the worlds and it is absolutely magnificent the job put in to make the worse to make it succeed overall.

6. Bosses: I could point out maybe 1-2 bosses that were super easy and deserve maybe a bit harder remakes.  And one is the first boss, which is really just an introductory one.  The other one is in the dark world.  After that, they are really well done and while can be a pain, are not unfair or a boss that makes you hate life. 

Negatives:

Good luck with that, because there really aren't any.  I hear people say they didn't know what to do and the game isn't helpful.  Here's what I say to them, there are things called YouTube, Google, look it up what you are supposed to do.  They then downgrade the game because of not knowing what to do and that also confuses me because that just makes me think you didn't have good expectations anyway. This game isn't Breath of the Wild, it isn't Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask.  You'll just have to deal with that.

Rating/Rank:

There is no doubt that A Link to the Past is one of the best games on the Super Nintendo.  It's an all-around gem in this era of gameplay and games.  This is the fourth of the four games to get a perfect rating from me, a 10 out of 10.  And myself ranks this game 4th on my Super Nintendo rating system.