The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures is the eleventh installment in Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series. It was released for the Nintendo GameCube home video game console in Japan on March 18, 2004; in North America on June 7, 2004; in Europe on January 7, 2005; and in Australia on April 7, 2005.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It greatly improves on the original Four Swords by adding minigames, many new enemies, a new storyline, and new gameplay.
 * 2) Unlike The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, which only had multiplayer and required at least two players before the DSi's Anniversary Edition, the Hyrulean Adventure mode of Four Swords Adventures supports single-player.
 * 3) One of the most unique things about the game is how the game is broken up into separate stages and levels. Additionally, you are able to replay any stage at any time.
 * 4) Numerous aspects of the game, such as the graphics, some music tracks, and a fair number of enemies, are callbacks to A Link to the Past. The graphics and smoke effects also incorporate elements from The Wind Waker.
 * 5) The game introduced Shadow Link, who is one of the main antagonists of the game. All four players in Shadow Battle also technically play as Shadow Links, although they are disguised as the four Links.
 * 6) The incorporation of the Dark World into parts of the stages is rather well done.
 * 7) It gave rise to the Four Swords manga by manga artist duo Akira Himekawa. The manga has a small, but dedicated fanbase and is one of the most popular of their Legend of Zelda manga adaptations.
 * 8) The concept of being able to use the Game Boy Advance as a controller when using the Nintendo GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable is unique.
 * 9) As you beat levels in Hyrulean Adventure, new stages for Shadow Battle will be added.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) In order to access the multiplayer modes, you have to have enough Game Boy Advance systems and link cables, both of which have long gone out of production.
 * 2) Because this game has not been re-released in any capacity, copies can fetch high prices online.
 * 3) There is an additional minigame that is exclusive to the Japanese and Korean versions of the game called Navi Trackers, where players compete against each other in finding members of Tetra's pirate crew in a maze and collect stamps from them before time runs out. The minigame also had a single-player mode where you would compete against Tingle. The official reason for why this mode was not included in other releases is unknown, though it might be because the voice acting is hard to implement.

Reception
Four Swords Adventures was considered the 48th-best game ever made for a Nintendo system by Nintendo Power, and received an aggregated 86 out of 100 from Metacritic.

It was the third best-selling game of June 2004 in North America, with 155,000 units, and has since sold 250,000 copies; it has also sold 127,000 units in Japan.