E3 2002: The Legend of Zelda GBA impressions

After Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto finished demonstrating both Super Mario Sunshine and The Legend of Zelda for the GameCube at today's pre-E3 press event, he showed a surprise Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda for the Game Boy Advance. Apparently, the single-player portion of the game will simply be a port of the 1992 SNES classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. From the brief video we saw, it looks nearly identical to its console counterpart.

Nintendo also plans to support the Game Boy Advance's multiplayer capabilities in The Legend of Zelda by incorporating a special four-player multiplayer mode called "the four swords." In this mode, the ultimate objective is to grab the greatest number of rupies possible, but at various points in the dungeon, players will have to work together in order to progress. One example demonstrated by Miyamoto had two Links stand on switches to open a door, allowing the other two Links to grab the rupies from the two chests that were behind the door. Another area required several players to work together to push a large stone block. However, it appears as though players will be able to fight each other, as arrows and other weapons can be used to push players into pits in each dungeon.

Players will also notice that the Link in the four swords mode looks a little more like the Link in the GameCube version of The Legend of Zelda than the version of Link in A Link to the Past.

The Legend of Zelda for the Game Boy Advance is set for a December 9 release.