One of Nintendo's marquee connectivity titles for 2003, The Four Swords is a GameCube version of the popular GBA half-game of the same name. It will be sold as a GameCube disc and played by up to four players, each using a GBA for his or her controller. No GBA cartridge is needed, but each player must have a GBA to play, i.e.

you cannot play with the GameCube controller at all.

The game's display takes place on the television screen most of the time. All four players are running around in the same environment, just like in the original Four Swords. However, the art style this time around is that of A Link to the Past, with a

few special effects taken from The Wind Waker.

Gameplay seems to be very much unchanged, with the four Links working both together and against each other to solve puzzles and compete for rupees. One interesting addition is that of side-scrolling mini-dungeons, like those found in the Game Boy and GBC Zelda titles. There are also times when the television screen will be literally filled with sprites, such as a rainshower of rupees or a huge army of enemy knights.

All four Links are shown on the same screen, and they have to all approach the side of one screen to move on to the next. The camera zooms out as they get farther apart from each other, so as to keep them all on the screen at once. When one of the Links enters a house, cave, or other enclosed area, his display moves to that player's GBA screen. Players can use this feature to hide from other players, get secret messages from the game, etc. There are also switches on the GBA screen that control what happens on the television screen.

We'll have more info and impressions of The Four Swords for GameCube in the coming days.