intendo has touted “connectivity” for quite awhile, promising that the feature would open up new worlds and experiences for game players. Two years later and few medicore connectivity games later, Nintendo releases The Legend Of Zelda: Four Swords + for the GameCube in Japan. Finally, after so many promised innovations, they seem to have finally delivered the connectivity game that we’ve all been craving for so long. Part adventure, part multiplayer extravaganza, Four Swords + oozes everything that’s great about the Zelda franchise and then some. We here at Game Informer Online sat down today for some Nintendo fun with the Japanese version of the game and are as ecstatic as schoolchildren. For our session today, Managing Editor Billy Berghammer joined me for the fun.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Four Swords + is a multiplayer take on the classic gameplay of The Legend Of Zelda, with a few unique twists. With Nintendo’s connectivity feature using multiple GBA or GBA SPs, up to four players can play the game at once, opening up new avenues of teamwork, as well as competition. If you don’t have any friends or GBAs for that matter, don’t worry. The game does allow a single player to play the game using only a GameCube controller. At the start of Hyrule Adventure, the adventure mode featured on the game disc, you’re given the choice of selecting how many players will take part in the fun.

The story in Hyrule Adventure opens with Link speaking to a mystical woman, who along with six other sprites opens up a magical portal. Suddenly, from that portal, an evil and foreboding looking shadow Link emerges, capturing the seven beauties and sucking them into the portal. Determined to save them, Link gives chase, only to find himself in a strange hall with a sword stuck into a pedestal, complete with shadow Link jumping around like a crazy fool. With no weapon to fight his new foe, Link pulls the sword from its resting place. With a magnificent flash, Link is suddenly split into three other copies of himself. What? Four Links? Each Link is a different color, ranging from his traditional green garb, to more fancy shades like purple, red, and blue. But, with his new found weapon in hand, Link also seems to have unleashed a new evil, far more sinister than the mischievous Shadow Link. From the sword’s pedestal an eerie black fog pours out, and the poor Links are sucked up into a powerful tornado. When they awake, they’re in a strange new world. While confused, “they” are still determined to rescue their damsels in distress.

Control in Four Swords + is both intuitive and revolutionary, finally tapping into the possibilities of connectivity. Using a GameCube controller, or a GBA of GBA SP, movement is mapped to the D-pad. The B button is used to attack with your sword, which is capable of either a short combo or if pressed for a second or two, capable of unleashing a very Link-esque circular sword sweep. Pressing the L trigger will open a small window above your character that allows you to choose from four different formations you can place your characters in. Since you’re essentially controlling up to four Links at one time, the formation system is handy way of making sure that you can keep them all in line with their counterparts. Also, formations play a key role in the game’s many brain-busting puzzles. Pressing the R trigger will allow your various Links to do things like push, pull, and pick up both items around the game’s environment as well as other Links in your party.

Gameplay is a mix of both traditional The Legend Of Zelda action coupled with some new innovative features that take advantage of connectivity. Throughout Hyrule Adventure, you’ll experience pretty much the same gameplay that you’ve grown fond of all these years. You’ll guide Link through dungeons and mazes, fighting off enemies and solving puzzles that open up new passageways and uncover more secrets. Thankfully, Nintendo hasn’t changed any of those features. But, with the game’s new multiplayer slant, there have been a number of gameplay features to take advantage of the fact that there are now four Links running around on screen. First of all, the formation system, while helpful in battle, is mainly used for switch puzzles. Some switch puzzles require the four Links to stand in a particular order or formation, so only by switching to the right formation can you solve certain puzzles. Also, outside the realm of switch puzzles, you’ll be pulling your share of levers and other things, which also require different formations.

The game also features a handy system of switching through your available Links, either by assigning them into your party (if you’re playing with multiple human players), or designating them to be stationary and non-controllable. Pressing the select button will cause all your secondary Links to sit on the ground, motionless. While in that state, you can push them around and even pick them up to throw across gaps and chasms. This feature really comes into play when playing the game by yourself, since you won’t have other players around to actually maneuver the Links around for you. But, with a press of the L trigger, you’ll be able to call back all your stationary Links, making gathering them up a cinch. For those fans of previous games where you could discover and then carry around a virtual boatload of items, you may be disappointed to hear that the game doesn’t feature inventory screen. Instead, you’ll only be able to carry one additional item at a time, like a boomerang, slingshot, or bomb. When you come across an additional item, you have the choice of simply letting it be, or switching it out for what you’re currently carrying. While it won’t satisfy item junkies, it will satisfy gamers who may be playing the game with four total players, since each person could technically possess a different item. This proves to be very handy when faced with situations that call for a particular thing, like a bomb needed to blow up a wall, and also strengthens the case for the game’s strong multiplayer focus.

But, while the game is able to be played with one player, the real focus of Four Swords + is multiplayer teamwork and competition. While puzzles are able to be solved by a single player, there is a heavy emphasis on teamwork and puzzle solving as a group, which is evident immediately from the moment you start the game. Puzzles are built around the idea of teamwork, and while being able to push stationary Links around onto switches is passable by yourself, it gets a bit tedious after awhile. So, if you don’t have friends, get some. To make the multiplayer a bit more heated, the game features a neat system of keeping track of how many jewels each player has collected. Virtually everything that is destructible in the game will usually sprout jewels, and once they do, it’s usually a mad dash to see which player can snatch them up the quickest. Jewels comes in all sizes and denominations and even less than noble players can garner more by smacking around their friends, which results in them dropping their hard earned jewels.

Even boss battles are highly geared towards multiplayer cooperation. The first boss, a shadow knight very reminiscent of the one found in The Wind Waker, requires players to work together. The boss shoots out a large green energy ball at one player, who must hit it and ricochet it to another teammate. A quick additional hit will then cause the energy ball to careen back at the, knocking him to his knees and allowing you to get in quite a few hits for critical damage. Oh, he also drops a bunch of jewels, so it begs the question: is it nobler to help the team by attacking the boss, or be greedy by snatching up all the money? We’ll let you decide that one on your own.

Perhaps the most innovative feature of the game lies in the fact that the game supports use of a GBA or GBA SP to be used as both a controller for the game, as well as a “second screen” of sorts while navigating dungeons, caves, and castles. While earlier games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles used the GBA mainly as a controller and stuck gamers with a mana bucket to help ensure that all players stayed in the general vicinity of each other, Four Swords + breaks out of this idea completely. Using a GBA allows each player to pretty much roam around at their own free will, with only periodic areas requiring all four players to be on-screen at once. When entering a cave, dungeon, or castle, the game automatically switches to the screen on your GBA or GBA SP, and then reverts back to the television when you climb out. It’s a neat feature and one that finally gives connectivity some legs to stand on. Being able to roam about freely gives the areas in the game a strong sense of openness as well as a much needed sense of freedom when it comes to multiplayer adventure games. While the idea of having to constantly switch from looking at the TV to your GBA, and then back again does take some getting used to, we got used to it pretty quickly and really enjoyed the gameplay that was found in the GBA sections of the game.

Visually, Four Swords + lies somewhere in the realm between GameCube and Super Nintendo. The game features some nicely colored and detailed sprite-based graphics, reminiscent of A Link To The Past. You’ll still experience the same top-down viewpoint from games like the original Zelda game and A Link To The Past, but you’ll also run across the occasional 2D dungeon, which was interesting to say the least. To put it best, it’s very similar to the small item dungeons that were found in the original Zelda game, but are now complete with things like water and special cannons that shoot you up into the air in dungeons that feature multi-tiered levels. Also, it’s interesting to note that while the game does look pretty similar to A Link To The Past, it also features some very Wind Waker-esque visuals, particularly when it comes to special effects. Bombs explode with some nice cel-shaded flair and even things like the tornado at the beginning of the game seem to be taken straight from Wind Waker.

While the visuals in the game did impress me with its mix of both old and new school, I was a bit disappointed by the game’s audio. First of all, with the game being on the GameCube, there’s no excuse for not having some nice voice-over work. Outside of the standard text-based conversations, those enemies and characters that do utilize some voice overs come across as a bit confusing. For example, the shadow Link enemy, instead of possessing a foreboding and evil voice, only manages to let out the same creepy baby-like laugh every time you come into contact with him. But then again, the game does feature some nice voice over work for the Links. While nothing revolutionary, it’s neat to hear your four Links let out a triumphant yell as they solve a puzzle or unleash an attack. Unfortunately, the music in the game hasn’t been all that impressive yet. While the tunes are nice to listen to and are very Zelda-like, you won’t hear that much music that you haven’t heard before in other games in the series.  Zelda titles are well known for their high quality soundtracks, and since this is pretty much rehashed Wind Waker and Link To The Past music, we here at Game Informer say – weaksauce!

For those who get sick of playing with your friends, you can now also play against them. The game features two multiplayer modes including an interesting little Deathmatch-like game called Shadow Battle and the bizarre yet strangely enjoyable Navi Trackers. The Deathmatch game pits up to four players against each other in a number of different Hyrule inspired locales. During the course of a battle, players run around trying to deplete the hearts of all the other combatants, using either their swords or whatever items pop up on the playing field. Items range from things like bombs and the bow and arrow, and even include stranger offerings like having a mad chicken chase around an opponent and steal a heart for them to be applied towards your health. While interesting, the mode seemed a bit tacked on and didn’t really seem to serve a purpose other than some mindless action. It does seem that the mode will feature four additional levels that can be unlocked, but as of now, we’re not too sure on how to go about doing that.

The last multiplayer mode is Navi Trackers, starring Tetra the pirate from The Wind Waker as well as her entire pirate crew. The mode allows for up to four players to run around a pretty large level, gathering coins and attempting to bring pirates into giving you special numbered medals. All the action takes place on the GBA screen, while the TV offers up a zoomed-out map of what’s going on during play. There are a number of pirates in the level and each holds a special numbered flag. Your task is to collect jewels and then hand them over to the right pirate, which is displayed by a number on the TV. The order goes numerically, but the numbers that the pirates hold are switched up every now and then, resulting in some pretty frantic action. The mode features full voice-over work for both Tetra and her pirates, which is pretty impressive. Also cool is the fact that Tetra and her mates pull a virtual play-by-play during the course of a game, even going as far as to yelling out your player’s nickname that you can choose at the start of a match. It’s neat and quirky, but like the Deathmatch mode, doesn’t really seem to serve all that much of a purpose besides mindless action. But, for those who have a love for all these strange and Japanese, it’s a neat play. Unfortunately, we’ve heard word that the mode won’t be in the US release of Four Swords +, due to translation challenges.  Out of the three modes, we found it to be the weakest.

If what we’re feeling is true, Nintendo is about to really give their connectivity feature a shot in the arm thanks to The Legend Of Zelda: The Four Swords +. Even if you play alone, the game is a worthy purchase and you’ll find plenty to keep you both entertained and busy. And, if you do have a bunch of friends with GBAs and link cables, the game is that much better. With a truly epic and Zelda worthy adventure alone in the Hyrule Adventure, Four Swords + should be on every GameCube owners “must have” list. Just don’t get greedy and steal all the jewels, friends don’t like that.  Trust me, Billy almost fired me.