As they both were released in 2003, Four Swords Adventures and Tetra’s Trackers offered game developers a chance to showcase the compatibility between the Game Boy Advance and GameCube by using them as a platform to demonstrate compatibility between the two systems. In addition to adding Four Swords to the GBA version of A Link To The Past, Nintendo and Capcom had already demonstrated the merits of a four-player Zelda game with its ability to enable four Link characters to team up and take on dungeons together as well as compete against each other for rupees as they took on dungeons. This game was inspired in part by Nintendo’s new GameCube project, which had a similar concept, even though it was a little rough around the edges, and is generally considered to be the inspiration for the game on the Nintendo 64.
A few months later, Nintendo announced that the two titles (Four Swords had changed to Hyrulean Adventures while Tetra’s Trackers had changed to Navi Trackers) would be included on the same disc with a third title, Shadow Battle, added to the mix. In my opinion, Navi Trackers was an extremely intriguing game at the time because the game featured a comprehensive speech navigation system that would be able to recognize each player’s name and to notify them when it was their turn to play, making it a very intriguing game for the time. It was only available to Japanese gamers, unfortunately. There is no doubt that even with only two of the proposed games, the western version of Four Swords Adventures proved to be an essential release for any fan of the Zelda series.
A Necessity
A crucial aspect of Four Swords Adventures is ‘Hyrulean Adventures’, which is Capcom’s excellent addition to their original GBA multiplayer release. It goes above and beyond what Capcom did before. It should be noted that unlike the vast majority of Zelda games, Four Swords Adventures is divided up into eight distinct worlds, each of which is composed of three smaller levels containing well-known locations such as Lake Hylia and Kakariko Village, and which always culminate in an exciting boss fight. This was a major departure from the traditional sprawling worlds of Ocarina Of Time & The Wind Waker, but the more arcade-style mechanics incorporated into Four Sword Adventures perfectly suited the more action-oriented gameplay mechanics of the game.
When you play on your own, typically you control one of the links, with the other three following you (don’t worry; you can control each of them independently when needed). In order to make use of linked-up Links, you will need to master four different formation styles, which cover everything from defence to setting up attack strategies and solving puzzles in order to make use of them effectively. As difficult as the new mechanics are to get used to at first, you’ll soon get the hang of it and you’ll be activating switches, swapping attack formations and lobbing boulders many times your size without a second thought before you know it.
