The Legend of Zelda Fan Re-Imagines Game As An Old-School RPG

In a fun tribute to a beloved franchise, a group of skillful The Legend of Zelda fans have re-imagined one of Link’s earliest adventures, A Link to the Past, in the style of an old-school RPG. Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda series turned 35 earlier this year, and in that time, many have been sharing their own homages to the fantastical and valiant series.

As part of Nintendo’s 35th-anniversary celebrations this year, the company announced a remaster of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Switch. Along with this, Nintendo is also releasing Skyward Sword-themed Joy-Con to sweeten the deal. Many are still hopeful that, before too long, more news will become available about the sequel to 2017’s Breath of the Wild. So far, fans have only been given the darkly mysterious trailer to whet their appetites, and that was almost two years ago.

However, while Nintendo’s own news surrounding its The Legend of Zelda series has fairly been thin on the ground, fans have been more proactive in recognizing the franchise in its anniversary year. One such example by YouTube channel GamebillStudio has re-imagined The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as an old-school RPG. The video is brilliantly done and shows off protagonist Link during earlier days of his adventure. While at first, it may seem to be a fairly normal The Legend of Zelda top-down adventure, the video soon changes things up when Link comes across his first enemy, a spear knight. Rather than the standard battle encounters usually experienced in a Zelda game, the video instead switches to the classic RPG mode of turn-based combat. Throughout the video, Link has several of these encounters, however, he can only really retaliate once he has obtained the sword and shield from his Uncle in Hyrule Castle. Until then, his only real option is to flee the advancing enemies.

This is not the only fan-made video that re-imagines a game from within the Kingdom of Hyrule as a new genre. One creator managed the impressive feat of taking the ultra-modern and slick hack-and-slash Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and de-making it to resemble that of a Game Boy Color title, complete with 8-bit chiptune music and angular map. The same take on a Game Boy provisioning was applied to a Breath of the Wild demake, with adorable results.

Hopefully, Nintendo will soon announce more of its own news surrounding the The Legend of Zelda series. While a revisit to Skyloft will certainly be fun when Skyward Sword rereleases this summer, what most really want is the chance to dive back into the open world Hylian kingdom from Breath of the Wild and find out where Link and Princess Zelda’s adventures will take them to next.

Source: GamebillStudio/YouTube

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