Retro Monday #91 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Randomizer
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was made by Nintendo and released for the Super Famicom in 1991 in Japan and the Super Nintendo in the US and EU in 1992. It is the third Legend of Zelda game and did a lot to set the template for the Zelda series up until Breath of the Wild.
This week the game choices were all randomisers and over on GRcade Cheeky Devlin picked them for me to try. A Link to the Past was chosen by the members via a poll.
Well, while this is Link to the Past, one of my all-time favourite game; it’s ALttP with a major twist. It’s a randomiser. I know it’s a little different to the traditional way the games have been played normally, but, I thought having a randomiser would be a really interesting way to play an old game and breathe new life into it. I’m hoping those that read this and watch back the stream will agree that it’s a great way to see things old in a new way.
For those who don’t know, a randomiser is a mod for a game that takes a game ROM and then randomises the items. Simple really. An example: in this you could open the first chest in Link’s uncle’s house and normally you’d get the lamp. But instead you could get a shield, or hammer or rupees. It’s really interesting. There are also ways to set the randomiser so you can’t actually play for hours and hit a point when you can’t progress, and you can also pick how difficult it all is. It’s definitely worth trying it out and seeing for yourself.
The game itself is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and I love everything about it. The music is terrific, the visuals are lovely, the gameplay is great. There’s so much to love. I normally try to stick to around an hour and then move over to multiplayer games, but this I got really engrossed in and lost track of time and was playing for around four hours until after 1am.
Seriously give it a go – you’ll be surprised by how it may reinvigorate something you may now find you’ve overplayed.
Verdict: Highly Recommend.
If you’d like to take part in voting for the games or even picking the games yourself, take yourself over to the GRcade forums and pop into the Retro Monday thread and just post to show your interest. Not just that, you can watch the gameplay live over on Twitch where it’s streamed at 9pm on a Monday evening.