Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
Producer Shigeru Miyamoto originally intended the game to feature a party, "one that consists of the protagonist, ... a magic user, and a girl".
In 1995, Total! listed the game 2nd on its "Top 100 SNES Games".
In 1996, GamesMaster rated the game 80th on their "Top 100 Games of All Time".
In 2005, IGN editors placed it 11th in its "Top 100 Games", while readers voted it to 5th place, before IGN later ranked it the second best game of all time in 2015 and 2019.
It placed eighth (the second-highest Zelda game on the list) in Official Nintendo Magazines "100 greatest Nintendo games of all time" list.
In 2009, Game Informer put A Link to the Past 12th on their list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time", saying that it "remains a blast today".
In 2018, Complex listed the game 2nd on its "The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time".
They felt the game is "definitely Nintendo's best first-party title for the SNES".
He also praised the overworld for its secrets and "quirky random characters", adding that playing it required patience and exploring.
CNET praised both the original A Link to the Past release as well as the Four Swords multiplayer mode, calling the former a "great handheld port of one of the greatest games ever released for Nintendo's 16-bit system", while describing the latter as "an exciting, replayable multiplayer experience".
The reviewers praised the game's story and graphics with Morishita noting that even the smallest gestures of characters were very detailed.
IGN praised it for being a faithful conversion of the original, but noted that the audio did not sound as crisp on the Game Boy Advance, and found the frequent sound effects tiresome.
He also praised the overworld for its secrets and "quirky random characters", adding that playing it required patience and exploring.
Star Dingo praised the port of A Link to the Pasts ability to retain its visuals.
CNET praised both the original A Link to the Past release as well as the Four Swords multiplayer mode, calling the former a "great handheld port of one of the greatest games ever released for Nintendo's 16-bit system", while describing the latter as "an exciting, replayable multiplayer experience".
In Japan, it topped the Famitsu sales charts during November–December 1991 and January 1992, becoming the best-selling 1991 release.
In the United States, it became the third best-selling game of 1992 (below Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Street Fighter II) with one million units sold.
Worldwide, it was one of the best-selling Super NES games, with 4.61 million units sold as of 2004.
It was the first game to receive a near-perfect score by Famitsu magazine.
They felt the game is "definitely Nintendo's best first-party title for the SNES".
It had an exceptionally long stay on Nintendo Powers top games list (ranking number 2 in Nintendo Powers last issue in December 2012): when the Super NES list was retired, A Link to the Past had more than five consecutive years in the number one spot.
A French version of this game was released in Canada, making it the only French-only release in North America for the Super NES.
The game was rebroadcast more often than any other Zelda game on the Satellaview, and was the only Zelda title broadcast by St.GIGA after ties with Nintendo were broken in April 1999.
It was ported to the Game Boy Advance as A Link to the Past and Four Swords in 2002, and had sold 6.5 million copies across both platforms by 2004.
Worldwide, it was one of the best-selling Super NES games, with 4.61 million units sold as of 2004.
The later Game Boy Advance version in the United States alone sold 1.4 million copies and earned $41 million by August 2006.
The Game Boy Advance version sold 1.89 million units worldwide by 2004, bringing total sales to 6.5 million units as of 2004.
In the setting materials collection Hyrule Historia (Shogakukan, ), published in 2011, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, released in 2001, was also placed in the same era, but it was later changed to a story of a different era.
Producer Shigeru Miyamoto originally intended the game to feature a party, "one that consists of the protagonist, ... a magic user, and a girl".
It had an exceptionally long stay on Nintendo Powers top games list (ranking number 2 in Nintendo Powers last issue in December 2012): when the Super NES list was retired, A Link to the Past had more than five consecutive years in the number one spot.
A comic book adaptation of A Link to the Past illustrated by Shotaro Ishinomori was published in Nintendo Power that was serialized for 12 issues from January to December 1992.
It was discontinued when the magazine carrying it ceased publication, but the story, though hurried, was brought to a conclusion.
Beginning on March 2, 1997, a simple unaltered re-release of the original Japanese version of A Link to the Past was broadcast via Satellaview.
The passages quoted on this page are taken verbatim from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) — reusable under those terms. They are the work of the people who wrote them.