Beta64 - A Link to the Past / Zelda 3

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is often considered the best 2D Zelda game if not one of the best titles in the Zelda series And even though A Link to the Past was released over 20 years ago it's never been forgotten. Its sequel A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS was released 21 years after the original And many upcoming games in the Zelda series are trying to replicate the gameplay style of A Link to the Past. And rightly so The freedom of exploration and incredibly polished gameplay is what sets this game above the rest So on this episode Beta64 I'm going to discuss the beta of The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past A link to the Past began its development in 1988 as an NES game dubbed "Zelda 3" But the game soon moved over to the SNES in 1989 because of the systems upcoming release in Japan This gave the Zelda team a longer development time than they had in earlier Zelda tiles as well as a larger budget The game also used an 8MB cartridge instead of the usual 4MB cartridge used in earlier SNES titles These are some of the biggest reasons why A Link to the Past became one of the greatest adventure games of all time In order to keep the Zelda series as innovative as it was before many ideas were considered and tested throughout the game's development One of these new ideas was diagonal movement In Zelda 1 Link could only move in four directions but A Link to the Past soon changed this The Zelda team not only wanted Link to move diagonally which did happen to make it into the release But they also wanted him to slice his sword in the same direction But the development team couldn't get diagonal slicing to work without sacrificing the operability of the game So in order for Link to attack enemies in that direction the spin attack was added to the game and it appears in every Zelda games since Breakable walls were also a new addition to A Link to the Past Finding these walls originally required Link to hit them with his sword Breakable walls would produce a hollower sound compared to normal walls However Miyamoto decided that it would take too long for players to find these walls so visible cracks were chosen instead of sounds. Some other ideas included expanding fire which was later used in Four Swords Adventures These ideas weren't removed because of hardware limitations but instead they were scrapped because there wasn't enough time to fully implement them A few screenshots from a European SNES poster show some differences between A Link to the Past beta and final versions The first image shows quite a few these differences The first of which is the magic meter which is different at the top to make it look more like a jar Also the counters are on the side of the images instead a below them and the images (with the exception of the bomb and key) are slightly different as well The key counter in the beta is actually visible whether or not Link is in a dungeon And it appears there may have been a limit of 255 Rupees that Link could hold in the beta which is likely because they originally used an 8-bit variable which has a limit of 255 The bow is slightly more detailed in the beta as well The life label in the final has lines beside the text while the beta uses plus signs And the amount of hearts in a row was increased from 8 in the beta to 10 in the final game In addition the area in this screenshot is lacking a tree and sign here as well as a path going from both sides of the bridge. This rock was also removed for some unknown reason The Green Archers shown in the screenshot never walk around like this in the final game Instead Green Archers hide in the grass in the final and only the Blue Archers chase Link In this next image you can see that Link's lantern uses a different sprite in the beta and the soldiers in the screenshot also carry a different sword than what's used in the final game. The main difference in this image is that there are four Armos instead of two This next screenshot has two differences One there are two Buzz Blobs in the beta instead of one and there are also a few extra bushes in the bottom left The beta screenshot at the Master Sword's pedestal has a few differences The stairs leading up to the platform are slightly different and the pedestal is much smaller and lack stairs and an inscription Link's shield is also brown instead blue which better matches the game's concept art and box This last image shows Link outside the entrance of The Sanctuary If you notice the big rock looks slightly different in the screenshot and the line of bushes and stones here was moved to the right in the final It could have been changed to make sure Link wouldn't get stuck between the tree and the stone or perhaps it was done to make the area look more centered Some unused objects and graphics lay hidden inside A Link to the Past and this unused sanctuary entrance is one of them Dungeon entrances in A Link to the Past are all lavishly decorated with the exception of the sanctuaries It appears that The Sanctuary was originally meant to have one of these entrances but it's unknown why it wasn't used Another mysterious unused dungeon object is this skull statue Although it was never used in A Link to the Past it was used in the game's Game Boy Advance remake in the Palace of 4 Swords dungeon You can load the skull statue into the original game by performing a glitch If you want to learn how click the link in the description A few unused items are also found inside the game Some which were originally used in Zelda 1 This scrap stopwatch is found near the graphics for the Rupee's so was most likely dropped by defeated enemies It's assumed that this stopwatch would've worked the same as the magical clock in Zelda 1 where the enemies would freeze when Link comes into contact with the clock This small and large bone with meat is found with the sprites for the magic refill jar It looks very similar to the bait in Zelda 1 and perhaps was meant to serve the same purpose but the fact that it's loaded indoors could mean it was meant for something entirely different In Zelda 1 when you meet the old man you'll receive a letter that you must give to the old woman and in return she will sell you 2 potions. A letter like this can be found in A Link to the Past which takes the place of the Magic Mirror This suggests that Link had to give the letter to someone and in return would receive the Magic Mirror Much like how he needs the shovel to receive the flute The letter uses the same icon as the map just like in Zelda 1 Bully's Friend in his Dark World form has a couple of unused sprites both of which show him crying In the final game Bully's Friend never changes his happy expression despite being kicked around like a soccer ball This next character never appears in game but is located with the graphics for the ending The animation he would have used shows him celebrating which would have fit nicely with the game's ending It's possible that he was an early villager or perhaps a resident of the Dark World This Dark World Bat is one of two unused enemies in A Link to the Past it doesn't have any functionality left but it's assumed that it would have shot these fireballs The other unused enemy is this Canon Trooper Unlike the bat, this enemy is still fully functional and worked perfectly in game which means he was probably a last-minute cut The Hyrulian soldiers Link fights early in the game have an unused helmet Some think that because they were simply brainwashed soldiers Nintendo didn't want it to seem like Link was hurting innocent people So they removed this helmet in in favor of one that covers the soldier's entire face However others believe that the helmet was simply changed to make them seem less threatening since they were the first enemies Link encounters in his quest These last two unused graphics are of a happy and mad face Both of which are stored in the menu When fighting the Cold Stare boss, he starts the battle surrounded by a shell of ice Once Link sets in on fire though the shell disappears and Link can begin to damage his opponent Interestingly the shell was actually meant to melt once Link used fire on it The reason that this melting animation doesn't appear in game is because the developers accidentally used one of the palates next to it which caused the shell to simply disappear Because it doesn't leave any side effects it was likely overlooked during playtesting The shell animation was actually restored in the Game Boy Advance release In September of 1990 Nintendo Power held a contest called the Warmech challenge To enter you had to take a photo of Warmech in Final Fantasy and send it to Nintendo Power by October 15th One randomly selected winner notified by mail would have his or her name programmed into a future Nintendo game Even though the winner in the game were never announced it's assumed that it was Chris Houlihan who has a secret room in A Link to the Past The room is actually air handler that appears whenever the game can't load an area and leaving the room always sends you in front of Link's house While the room appears in every version of A Link to the Past Chris's name only appears in the North American version for the SNES The room contains 255 Rupees and can only be entered by performing a glitch If you want to learn how to perform this glitch click the other link in the description On October 15th 2005 an Ebay seller name Richard listed a gray NES cartridge with the text The Legend of Zelda The Triforce Saga typed on the label The cartridge also had the date 1990 on it as well and the version number beta 0.6.24 To prove the game was legitimate the seller also uploaded a photo of the game being played on a real NES console The cartridge was sold for roughly $3000 to the winner under the nickname Killer 7 Two days later the seller stated that he believed the winner was actually an employee of the company Silicon Knights Which created Metal Gear and Eternal Darkness However the CEO and founder of Silicon Knights responded to this saying that the company didn't make the purchase and that they would investigate their employees in search of a connection between them and Killer 7 Soon after the auction a well-known Zelda fan site seemed to have proved the cartridge to be fake They noted that not only would be impossible to play the development cartridge on the console shown without a Game Genie but also that Zelda 3 was actually moved to the SNES in 1989 one year before the date typed on the sold cartridge So it would have been very unlikely for Nintendo to create an NES beta cartridge for Zelda 3 one year after they stopped working on the NES version In June of 2006 someone else tried to sell a Zelda 3 development cartridge This time for the Super Nintendo Nothing about the cartridge has been reported since then so it can be safely assumed that it was a fake as well So that's the beta of A Link to the Past I'm glad that Nintendo chose to release A Link to the Past for the SNES With the increased development time and storage of the cartridge not many objects and ideas were scrapped and the game eventually became the foundation of the entire Zelda series Its incredibly polished gameplay is still enjoyed by many today and I have a feeling that not even Nintendo knew how successful this game would really be So this has been Beta64 with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past beta Thanks for watching

Channel: Beta64

Views: 732,666

Keywords: beta, 64, beta64, zelda, link, sage, priest, to, the, past, legend, chris, houlihan, glitch, skull, room, nes, snes, early, screenshots, unused, scrapped, cannon, trooper, dark, world, bat, helmet, melt, shell, walls, luigi, mansion, majora's, mask, gba, four, swords, adventures, gamecube, gameboy, advance, conker, super, mario, banjo, ocarina, time, nintendo

Id: z3CXQ23qvek

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 23 2014