When I was 13 years old I was a Sega fanboy. I loved the Genesis (or Mega Drive) and I hated Nintendo. Then my cousin Danny got a Super Nintendo for Christmas that year and he brought it over for our Christmas dinner. We were eating turkey and mashed potatoes, etc., and I was bored. So, when Danny booted up A Link to the Past using the gold cartridge, I sat down next to him and watched him play for hours. The first thing that struck me was the opening sequence – the rainy night, the telepathic princess calling for help, and your uncle grabbing his sword and telling you to stay put. I felt more engaged to the game than I ever did with any Genesis game I’d played. To say the least, I was impressed.
A lot of people talk about how the SNES produced graphics that were superior to anything on the Genesis. While that’s true, I think what impressed me more than that was the smoothness of transition from one area to another in the game. You’re not constantly interrupted by abrupt cuts like you often are in many 16-bit games. The game is presented as a complete world, not just a series of rooms that lead to other rooms. I ended up spending the entire day at Danny’s, barely saying a word to my family members, and completely absorbed in exploring the world of Hyrule.
What really made me feel like the game was special was the scene where Danny pulled the Master Sword from its pedestal. He’d been playing for weeks and I was sitting there watching, and when he finally pulled the sword out of the pedestal I knew right then and there that I was hooked. I mean, the whole sequence – the beam of light cutting through the Lost Woods, the ancient text talking about the dangers of pulling the sword, and that great musical buildup leading up to when Link pulls the sword from the pedestal – it was video game magic. I was blown away by it. I think at that moment I thought “Man, Nintendo really knows how to use this stuff.” Something I certainly didn’t want to admit to anyone at the time.
Then, came the twist that completely blew my mind and what I thought games were supposed to do. The Dark World reveal – finding out that the entire kingdom I’d been exploring had a corrupt mirror image and I could travel between them – totally destroyed my 13-year-old brain. When Danny first used the Magic Mirror and we travelled to the twisted version of the same map, I shouted “What the heck?” to my aunt. She yelled at me for yelling, but it was worth it. The Dark World wasn’t just a new level or area – it was like I discovered a secret basement under my house that was double the size of the top floor.
The genius of the Dark World was how it elevated the game’s storytelling above simple console loyalty – it made the game’s story feel intimate and pressing in a way that very few games could accomplish. Watching Kakariko Village turn into a monstrous Thieves’ Town overrun with monsters and seeing Lake Hylia dry up and become a poisonous waste dump – neither of those were just obstacles to overcome in the game, they were gut-punches. You weren’t saving Hyrule in some abstract way – you were preventing this specific nightmare from becoming a living hell.
That connection struck a chord deeper than “the princess needs saving, the game says so.”
As soon as I finished the game I asked Danny if I could borrow his cartridge for a couple of weeks. I told my parents I was spending the weekend at Danny’s house, but the truth is I spent the entire weekend in my basement playing A Link to the Past while they were at work. Yeah, I lied to my parents to play a Nintendo game. My 13-year-old Sega fanboy self would’ve killed himself if he’d known what I was doing.
I think what really drew me in more than anything else was the quality of the dungeon design in a way that the Genesis games simply couldn’t match at the time.
Each of the game’s six dungeons were designed like a perfect puzzle box – each room served a purpose and each item you picked up contributed to your eventual success in the game. Having the Hookshot in Swamp Palace wasn’t just needed to beat that dungeon – having the Hookshot allowed you to access more than half the overworld in a way you hadn’t before. I spent countless hours just swinging that thing back and forth just for the pure fun of it and the perfect “thwack” sound when I hit something. My dad caught me doing this once and asked me if I was crazy.
The boss battles in A Link to the Past were a huge departure from what I was used to in Genesis games. Most Genesis games relied on either pure pattern recognition or button mashing mayhem, but the boss battles in A Link to the Past required you to develop a strategy and adapt to the situation. I’ll never forget my first fight against Blind the Thief in Thieves’ Town – I was terrified. I wasn’t prepared for a Zelda game to have horror elements in the same way that most movies don’t – but when she turned into that creature that threw heads at you with that eerie glow overhead, I was about to throw the controller across the room.
The design of that fight used the game’s own mechanics to create a surprise in the story.
But what I think really impressed me, was how much the game trusted me to be intelligent and to learn at my own pace. This was 1991, pre-GameFAQs, pre-tutorials showing you exactly how to solve each part of the game, and pre-YouTube where you can search for answers. If you got stuck in the game, you had to figure out a way to get unstuck on your own, or ask your friends. The game trusted you to do that. There were no pop-up windows explaining every mechanic, no arrow pointing to the nearest checkpoint. The game just dropped you into that world and assumed you would explore and experiment until you figured out how everything worked.
I kept a notebook – yes, a paper notebook – to track the locations of heart pieces and places I couldn’t reach yet, but I wanted to remember them for when I could get to them. When I finally obtained the Titan Mitt, allowing me to move the massive stone blocks, I looked through my notes and found all the places I had marked months ago. The thrill of entering a previously inaccessible area with new abilities and discovering what was waiting for me inside never lost steam. In contrast to modern games that include auto-checkpoints and quest logs, this type of personal discovery has become rare.
The music in A Link to the Past was creating a sense of jealousy in me as a Sega fan. I’m not saying the Genesis didn’t produce some incredible soundtracks – Streets of Rage 2, Sonic, Phantasy Star – but Koji Kondo was operating on a whole different plane with A Link to the Past. Walking through the overworld of Hyrule felt both epic and important due to the overworld theme. The Dark World version of the same theme was a perfect representation of corruption without being annoying to listen to for hours. Even now, thirty years later, I find myself humming the Lost Woods theme while hiking. My wife hears it and just rolls her eyes.
The inventory system in A Link to the Past was smarter than it needed to be. With only two buttons controlling your items, I was required to think strategically about which items to equip. Do I equip the bow for ranged attacks or the Hookshot for greater mobility? Do I equip the fire rod for damage, or the lantern to see in the dark? Each of those were strategic decisions that directly impacted how you explored each area and how you fought each boss. Contrast that with modern games that give you 17 different guns and allow you to instantly switch between them – sometimes constraints can lead to better design.
There’s probably one of the largest reasons I’m willing to admit my Nintendo betrayal to the world is that A Link to the Past contains zero unnecessary elements. Every screen, every item, and every mechanism in the game serves multiple purposes and contributes to the overall experience. As someone who has spent decades defending Sega’s sometimes experimental, and often incomplete, design choices, I have to acknowledge Nintendo’s precision in this game. It’s as if they took all the best ideas from the first two Zelda games, fixed everything that didn’t work, and then polished the entire experience to perfection.
I’ve played A Link to the Past about 15 times over the years, and I still discover new things. New hidden passages I somehow missed, new lines of dialogue depending on where you are in the game, and new visual details that only make sense after you’ve completed the entire story. Last year, I played it again with my 15-year-old daughter, who complained at first about the “old-school” graphics, but was completely invested by the end of the first dungeon. Her reaction to discovering the Dark World for the first time triggered all the memories I experienced the first time I played it.
The design of A Link to the Past is so solid that it transcends generations.
The influence of A Link to the Past on modern game design cannot be overstated, and as someone who has watched the gaming industry evolve for 40 years, I can clearly see the DNA of A Link to the Past in Metroid and in virtually every modern indie game. The dual world design, the item gated progression, the combination of exploration and puzzle solving, and the combat – all of these have become common practice in modern game design because of how well they’re implemented in A Link to the Past. Playing A Link to the Past today doesn’t feel like experiencing a historical relic – it feels like taking a masterclass in interactive storytelling that very few modern games have reached.
Look, I’ll never stop being a Sega guy. The Genesis will always be my number one, the Saturn deserved better than it got, and the Dreamcast’s demise was a disaster for the gaming community. However, I won’t lie when I say that A Link to the Past helped me understand why Nintendo dominated the gaming landscape as it did. Sometimes, the competition produces something so good that you have to raise your hands and say it’s fantastic, regardless of whether it comes from the “enemy”. That’s one of those times, and after 30 years of essentially keeping this opinion to myself, it’s nice to finally admit it.
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