Nintendo has made a lot of noise about the Gamecube-to-Game Boy Advance connectivity, but, ultimately, not much has come of it. Before The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, only three games (the extra island in Animal Crossing, the multiplayer-only Pac-Man Vs., and the practically multiplayer-only Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles) used this connectivity in a meaningful way, and all three were limited in some significant way. Now, in Four Swords Adventures, there is a GC/GBA game worth scrounging up multiple GBAs to play.

Four Swords Adventures is a true sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, released in 2002 on the GBA. Both Four Swords titles, in a nutshell, are multiplayer The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, as the presentation, puzzles, and controls are lifted from Link To The Past. A team of Links, each wielding the Four Sword (a magical sword with the ability to split its wielder into four identical quartuplets), have to cooperate to solve puzzles while competing for gems.

The largest change from Link To The Past to Four Swords Adventures is the episodic nature of the stages. Instead of having one open world to explore, Four Swords Adventures has single stages, with defined beginnings and endings. Each player, too, can only carry one item (like the bow or fire rod), and that item disappears after the stage is completed. Although some will miss the free-roaming nature of the rest of the Legend of Zelda series, these defined beginning and end points allow for measurable scores, in gems collected, giving players a way to compete while cooperating to solve puzzles.

The combination of competition and cooperation is insidiously addictive. Four Swords Adventures isn't particularly difficult and in-fighting is barely penalized at all, so players who need a break from the impeccable level design and imaginative puzzles can entertain themselves by flinging each other into pits or igniting their comrades' pants with the Fire Rod. Four Swords Adventures' genius is clear the first time all four Links search a room for their individual pressure plates, fight for their lives against the swarm of enemies the switches released, then all scramble for the gems that the enemies dropped.

For those interested in pure competition, there are a number of options. Shadow Battle, available from the main menu, is a pure deathmatch, with players wielding blades, bows, bombs, and even chickens to defeat the other Links. A bit less obvious are the Tingle's Tower games ranging from a frustratingly difficult-to-control horse race to a pair of insanely entertaining bouts against screen-filling swarms of enemies. There's enough variety in the minigames to fill several budget party titles.

All the multiplayer fun comes at a price: each player needs a GBA (or GBA SP) connected to the GC with a GC/GBA link cable. A single player can play the main mode with a regular GC controller, but only the main mode. (Four Swords required at least two players, but customized the puzzles for the number of players; Four Swords Adventures does neither, as the extra Links follow and can be controlled by a player-controlled Link, allowing for the single-player play, as well as dungeons of greater complexity.) Unlike Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, Four Swords Adventures is fun with only two players, but that still requires two players, each with their own GBA and GC/GBA link cable.

This isn't to say that Four Swords Adventures is completely unfun in single-player. There aren't any significant areas in the main campaign accessible only to multiple players, for example, but the low level of challenge and episodic nature of the stages may put off those looking for a more traditional Zelda experience.

Traditionalists will not have any problems with the presentation, however; Four Swords Adventures is a slicker, modernized version of Link to the Past, graphically. Grass waves, flames ripple, and explosions are impressively firey, but the Links, their foes, and the backgrounds are still 2D bitmapped sprites. The simple 2D charm of the SNES-style graphics has been combined with subtly cartoonish effects taken from The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker, making for an attractive old-school look.

The aural presentation is just as memorable as the visual, if a bit more derivative. The music is almost all lifted from Link to the Past, with slightly better sampling. In particular, the Hyrule Castle and Death Mountain themes hold up exceptionally well. The sound effects aren't quite up to this standard; each Link has a slightly different voice, which is a nice touch, but the rest of the game is largely 16-bit quality sound effects and voice blips.

Nintendo has finally delivered a connectivity game without significant problems. The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures blends cooperative and competitive play to make it one of the best cooperative console games released in a long time. Gamers who are more interested in a single-player experience may be put off by the low difficulty, episodic nature, and overall shortness of the Hyrule Adventure mode, but anyone with even a shred of nostalgia for Link to the Past will probably be having too much fun to notice.

Would it be too much to hope for, though, that Four Swords Adventures II be online?