A playthrough of Nintendo's 1992 action-adventure game for the Super Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
The third entry in the Zelda series is, in my opinion, not just one of the best games in the SNES library, but one of the best games Nintendo has ever made. It marked a triumphant return to the style pioneered by the original NES game (https://youtu.be/vyW3BngIKJE) after Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (https://youtu.be/pvse1JSiz9A) went rogue with its (excellent) platforming action, and it brought with it a boat load of improvements made possible by the power of Nintendo's shiny new 16-bit system.
I was lucky enough to get a copy for my tenth birthday, and I beat it over, and over, and over again. Of course, that was only after I'd spent countless hours exploring every single nook and cranny of the game world. Don't be fooled by the runtime of the video - this meaty game will take a first-timer a couple dozen hours to get through without a strategy guide, and that's really the best way to approach it. A big part of the Zelda magic comes from the sheer joy of exploring the world, experimenting with your inventory, and bombing every flat surface in sight, and Zelda 3 packs a more engaging and memorable experience into a single megabyte than most modern games can manage in 50+ gigabytes.
To nobody's surprise, it was instantly hailed as a classic when it was released in early 1992. The open-ended gameplay, the tough puzzles, and the parallel structure of its two worlds managed to recapture the magic of everything that people loved about the first game, and it offered several important innovations of its own. Toss in a ridiculously memorable soundtrack, a thoroughly next-gen graphical presentation, and a much improved control scheme, and you've got the perfect recipe for a fan-favorite with serious staying power.
A Link to the Past is also one of the few Zelda games that served as a jumping off point for a glut of spin-offs, sequels, and rereleases. It was followed up by both the "Ancient Stone Tablets" series (https://youtu.be/B49NZISlrhQ) for the Satellaview and "A Link Between Worlds" (https://youtu.be/11oBHvX3Sn8) for the 3DS, it was ported to the GBA (https://youtu.be/gJQX01tVPSo), it has been reissued on several platforms through Nintendo's eShops, and the Game Boy games were all built from the template established with A Link to the Past. I was also a big fan of the game's official comic that first ran in Nintendo Power and was later compiled into a dedicated volume.
Clearly, I find it difficult to not gush about A Link to the Past. I've loved it from the first time I played it thirty-two years ago, and I think that it has stood the test of time remarkably well. I still count it among the best in the series.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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