Celebrate Zelda's 25th with a game that was ahead of its time.
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords was originally bundled with the GBA re-release of A Link to the Past. Originally co-developed by Nintendo and Capcom, the DSiWare update comes courtesy of Grezzo, who worked on Ocarina of Time 3D. In Four Swords, Link has been split into four and must battle Vaati to save Princess Zelda. Up to four players must cooperate to pass obstacles and defeat enemies, while also competing with each other for rupees. Nintendo gave me the chance to check out the update.
The original sadly probably didn't get played much since it required a GBA, link cable, and copy of the game for each player (I haven't had a chance to play it since E3 2003). And unlike GameCube's Four Swords Adventures, there was no single-player mode. This has thankfully been remedied, though the experience is just a bit awkward since you have to switch back and forth between two players. While levels are modified to adapt between two to four players, single player still consists of two players. As the level design essentially revolves around maneuvering multiple Links through the levels, this makes sense. You can call the secondary Link to automatically follow you, but in many cases, you will need to toss him over gap.
Four Swords Anniversary Edition is a faithful port of the Game Boy Advance game. Stats have mostly been moved to the bottom screen, and the field of view has been expanded to take advantage of the larger top screen. The bottom screen also hosts an unlabeled map, and a new whistle button can help get others attention by highlighting the positions of players wanting to get attention (or serve as yet another way of causing grief to your cohorts).
Sadly, I did not get a chance to try out any of the new levels, which feature stages based on NES, Game Boy, and SNES editions of Zelda. You must first play the first three levels to unlock Vaati's lair and then defeat him to unlock the new stages.
Four Swords Anniversary Edition isn't a particularly deep experience, but it is a lot of fun -- fun that increases with the number of players who all must coordinate with one another, while each secretly scheming to steal the treasure. Finally, those who missed out the first time will get to play the innovative game. Best of all, it's free from launch on September 28 until February 20!