05/26/2013– Zelda Four Swords Anniversary Edition Released! Free download

This is just a reminder that The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Anniversary Edition has now been released on the Nintendo DSi and 3DS eshop. Developed cooperatively between Nintendo and Grezzo, it's being offered as a somewhat limited time free download for DSi (and by extension, 3DS as well). As of now, it should be available in all major world regions and will remain as a free download on the eshop until February 20th, 2012. There is time to spare, but you should still remember to grab your copy sometime before it is taken off. It is unknown if they will remove it entirely or if it will be rereleased at a price after the time expires. Grab yours sometime while it's still free!

Four Swords was such a chore before. Playing it as intended through its original release was a headache to set up, as you needed an avalanche of equipment to make it happen – four Game Boy Advance systems, four copies of the Link to the Past/Four Swords cartridge, three GBA Link Cables and enough friends to be able to make sense of it all.

Two years later the GameCube sequel Four Swords Adventures brought even more of a rat's nest into your living room, as you tried to get those same friends to come back again with their GBAs and invest in the new console, the new disc and four new GBA-to-GameCube cables (which were, of course, different from the old Link Cables).

The whole process was a mess. And since Four Swords was such a chore to set up properly in its first two appearances, many Nintendo gamers likely never had a chance to really experience either one in the way they were intended.

Four Swords Anniversary is an enhanced port of the Four Swords multiplayer mode from the GBA version of Zelda Link to the Past. It has been retooled somewhat for DSi to include a single player mode, where you can control two different colored Links (the original was multiplayer only, you couldn't even start the game without friends). There are also some new stages, some based on the NES and SNES Zelda games. Multiplayer returns, though it is limited to local download play. You can play with up to four players if everyone has a DSi or 3DS with their own copy of the game