This article has a talk page!The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Four Swords contains two games:
- A Link to the Past, a port/remake of the SNES original with a few bugfixes and additions (such as the Riddle Quest) as well as the typical GBA-era "enhancements" (such as added voice clips for Link, based off Young Link's voice clips from Ocarina of Time). A list of the specific changes from SNES to GBA can be seen here.
- Four Swords, a multiplayer-only adventure in which multiple Links team up to defeat Vaati the wind mage. Beating this game unlocks the Palace of the Four Sword in A Link to the Past, featuring harder versions of the game's bosses and an all-new boss fight against the Links from Four Swords.
A Link to the Past#
Chris Houlihan Room#
The famous hidden room from the original game is still present, albeit inaccessible by normal means as the original method of access does not work here. Unlike the original, there is no Telepathic Tile or blue floor, leaving only the Rupees for you to collect.
The text is still present in the game data.
GBA |
SNES |
|---|---|
|
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To access the room, use Codebreaker code 03002C4C 82 or Action Replay code 65776507 6FC6DDCF when entering a door or falling into a hole.
(Code: Dark Linkaël)
Four Swords#
Stage Completion Times#
Rupees are awarded for completing a stage in a certain amount of time, with a minimum award of 1. The game internally measures the time in frames, with the frame counter stored at address 0300ED9C (Europe).
In the below table, the number after the dash is the frames of that second, with 60 frames being 1 second:
Time |
Rupees |
|---|---|
0:00-0 - 0:00-59 |
1,000 |
0:01-0 - 0:01-59 |
800 |
0:02-0 - 0:59-59 |
600 |
1:00-0 - 1:59-59 |
500 |
2:00-0 - 2:59-59 |
400 |
3:00-0 - 3:59-59 |
300 |
4:00-0 - 4:59-59 |
200 |
5:00-0 - 99:59-0 |
1 |
As you can probably tell, this makes getting the higher rewards outright impossible. If the intent was to award based on seconds rather than frames, the times would be pretty lenient, with players having 50 minutes to get more than 1 Rupee.
Four Swords Anniversary Edition changed this to be based on how many seconds it took to complete the stage.
Maximum Life#
As in ALTTP, Four Swords allows for players to have a maximum of 20 hearts. This is not possible to achieve in normal gameplay, and it's not even possible to get over 15.
The player's number of hearts is stored at 0300EDE4 (Europe), while their current health is stored at 03009095 (Europe).