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Koh · 05-13-2013, 05:35 AM

I just have to get this off my chest. It sort of bugs me.

There are many people who feel the GBA version of A Link to the Past is inferior to the SNES version in many ways, which is fine, that's their opinion. But some of these reasons are ridiculous, and I shall take these down specifically.

Silly Reason #1: Link Now Has a Voice!? - It's no more annoying here than it is on Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask. Same voice as Young Link from Ocarina of Time, and same amount of spam. What makes it more ridiculous for it to be on LTTP than OoT? Just because OoT is 3D? Yeah, right, the dimension doesn't change the fact that it happens frequently, and makes you want to have a voice volume setting.

Silly Reason #2: They Nerfed My Ice Palace, Dammat! - No, not really, they actually FIXED the Ice Palace. You already have to do a fair amount of backtracking in this dungeon. The extra layer you had to do on the SNES was just a waste of fucking time. Not something that added to gameplay.

Silly Reason #3: The Screen is Smaller! - Yes and No. While it's not a scaled image on your TV screen, the actual screen resolution isn't that much smaller. SNES: 256x224, GBA: 240x160. It still remains a playable and enjoyable game, and they even optimized it a bit for the GBA with the HUD and Item Menu.

Silly Reason #4: The Colors Are Way Too Bright! - There IS a brightness setting you know. It starts out on medium, and you can make it darker.

Now I shall tackle a couple of the legit reasons.

Legit Reason #1: The Sounds Are Shit Compared to the SNES - Why yes, of course. I don't know why anyone was expecting for it to sound the same, as these are two totally different hardware with different soundchips. Think about what happens when you play the same MIDI file across different computers, it's GOING to sound different. But why couldn't they just optimize the music and sounds for the GBA? Maybe they didn't care enough to, or thought they were passable, which they were (except maybe the warping sound...dear god. That with max volume and headphones...).

Legit Reason #2: I'd Rather Play on My TV - That's a personal preference. But it doesn't change how playable the game actually is. This is just one of those different strokes for different blokes situations, not of bad game design/porting.

Now for the benefits of the GBA version over the SNES version:

Benefit #1: Portability - Unless you actually want to haul your SNES everywhere with the cables, it's much easier to just carry around a GBA SP that folds up with the game inside it, pulling it out any time.

Benefit #2: Silliness & Glitch Fixes (and Introductions) - They fixed a lot of the silly problems and glitches with the SNES...only to introduce some of their own glitches, such as the Flute glitch. Despite that though, there were a bunch of silly problems with the SNES, mostly revolving around saving and loading. Why should saving INCREASE your death counter? That makes NO SENSE unless you hit save and continue or something on the Game Over screen. Also, why can you only restart in two locations on the SNES: The Sanctuary and The Pyramid. That's highly obnoxious, especially if you need to turn the game off to take care of something.

Benefit #3: Bonus Game, Dungeon and Ending - Who doesn't like extra stuff? I'll admit, it was pretty ridiculous of them to make it REQUIRED to play Four Swords with someone else, instead of having it operate like Four Swords Adventures on the GameCube. However the Bonus Dungeon, Palace of the Four Sword, while quaint, does house the strongest bosses in the game, and while they still might not be that hard, they offer more of a challenge than the original bosses did, since they are the original bosses with buffs and enhanced AI.

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I believe that's all I have to say about this.