Link to the Past

By: Shabadage

On: January 15th, 2007

Well, this game came out of nowhere (relative, of course, to my blindness), but it’s a good one. Basically, it’s a rom hack that replaces the normal Link to the Past with an adventure called Parallel Worlds. The hack is high quality, though some of the early dungeons are a bit simplistic, they do get better. If you’ve already beaten the crap out of Twilight Princess, then this game might hold you over until the DS Zelda launches later this year.

Notes: This is designed to work with the [U] GOODSNES designated rom. You might have to go through a few roms before you get one the hack works on.

(NOTE: TIGSource cannot and will not provide links to the ROM, only the hack.)

Posted in Mods / Hacks

Shabadage

Thanks to Radix, who turned me on…to this game.
Jimmy

Legally the patch is also infringing copyright, so if you won’t link to one you shouldn’t link to the other. Just link to the project’s webpage …
Shabadage

Ok, just to make you happy, “Mr. Do it this way” I’ll link to the page instead.
Jimmy

Sweet, I am like some kind of superhero now. “Mr. Do it this way”. I should make a costume.
Shabadage

You need to have a Thumbs up pose. I don’t know why, it just seems that it fits.
null

keep getting a “bad rom” error, won’t work for me :-(. used lips or whatever…oh well.
jc

The game picks up after the intro; once you get past all the spikes and pits you have to navigate while fireballs are shooting at you, you find that there’s a whole world of spikes and pits and fireballs waiting to be explored.
http://www.ectoprods.com/Radix/ Radix

Your paraphrasing might be a bit misleading there. I said the early dungeons are “ameteurish”. They’re definitely not simplistic. The first stage requires you to solid snake your way through a large confusing dungeon full of spikes and enemies and backtrackage before you even get the sword (remember to at least keep a savestate at the entrance btw, since the LttP engine doesn’t allow saving before you get the sword and shield).

I think for the overworld alone it’s worth at least a look, even if most of the dungeons are fairly standard hack scene stuff.
http://www.ectoprods.com/Radix/ Radix

@Null: I had the same problem, even with what was supposedly the correct ROM. I had to try a couple from my snes directory before finding one that worked. If you look you might be able to find a prepatched version; I think I saw a torrent a couple days a go.
null

Thanks Radix for the tip to get this game to work…but yeah, after going through the first dungeon i must say that this is utter crap. Sooo much back tracking and its simply no fun at all…ironically, they accomplished this while hacking one of the most fun games of all time. oh well.
Twe12ve

The problem with a lot of third-party re-imaginings of Zelda games is that they all too often go out of their way to be frustrating. That’s why I rarely, if ever, found myself enjoying any of the third-party Zelda Classic quests.
http://www.ectoprods.com/Radix/ Radix

@Null: “Utter” might be a bit harsh. To be fair it does improve a fair bit later on.

The hack is the work of two guys, one of whom did the hacking (which is good) and the dungeon design (which is mostly bad). The other guy did the overworld and some other stuff, and his contributions are gold.

I agree with the frustration sentiment. It’s a major problem in the hack scene that people confuse difficulty with challenge, and think they’re clever by piling on huge amounts of ridiculous obstacles. The odd ‘expert hack’ for certain games is fine, but the majority get too far away from the spirit of the original game to be playable.

This hack suffers from the same problem to an extent, but rather than being terribly difficult all the way through it fluctuates wildly. I eventually got fed up with it myself, but I still think it’s pretty great simply for being a LttP hack, which are extremely rare and nothing else comes anywhere near this one.