This is a perfect port of the original "A Link to the Past" for SNES. This game on SNES is one of my all time favorite games, and I was so happy to see that they released it for GBA, now that my SNES is old and crusty.

They did a fine job of remapping the controls using only 4 buttons instead of the 6 on the SNES controller. You don't miss the extra buttons at all... they just made it so that certain buttons do certain things at the appropriate times.

As for the sound, it is pretty much the same, except it seems like the music is a little dumbed down for the GBA hardware... it just seemed to sound a little more triumphant in the SNES version, but it's probably just the fact that I'm listening to it on the tiny little GBA speaker as opposed to a TV. Overall, sound is very clear, and is pretty much excatly the same as the SNES version.

The graphics are EXACTLY the same as the SNES version, and that is to say they are AWESOME! Even these days with the new zelda games out in beautiful 3D, this game still has kick-ass graphics that do an excellent job of bringing you into Hyrule. Plus, it reminds me of the old days :)

There are 2 minor improvements that I have noticed so far. One, is that there is an extra sound when you fall down one of those pits... it's the same yelling sound that Link has in Ocarina of Time. Very cool, although very minor. The other addition is that when you go into a dungeon, it tells you the name of the dungeon as you enter it... sort of like a little introduction, like they did in Ocarina. Just a more official way of letting the player know exactly where he/she is.

As for the multiplayer game that comes with it, The Four Swords, I haven't actually played it. From what I understand, you have to go through a bunch of dungeons with your buddies, helping each other out to solve the puzzles. You can't play it by yourself, as the puzzles require more than 1 person to complete. But, at the same time, you are also competing with the other guys to get the most rupees, or keys, or something like that, and there are ways to screw the other guy over, so you need to watch your back! I am waiting till one of my friends gets a GBA so we can bust it out. But from the way it sounds, how can this not be cool????

Overall, this game is basically the SNES game on a portable device. All I have to say is, this game kicked serious ass when it came out for SNES, and it still kicks ass on a 2 and a half inch screen :) If you've beaten this game several times on SNES, and you've got a GBA, this is awesome for long trips, or just sitting around the house remembering the old-school Zelda :)