Like Four Swords before it, Tri Force Heroes is built on the old-school, top-down style of Zelda - in this case, 2013's A Link Between Worlds, which furnishes its slick game engine, chunky little models and bright, toylike aesthetic. Earlier this week, painful lag and dropped connections were common when playing Tri Force Heroes online, but now that European players are online in significant number, it performs solidly. But there's still a chance that history will record it as another near-miss. Tri Force Heroes for 3DS is Nintendo's latest swing at making multiplayer Zelda a reality - for three players this time - and, thanks to an online mode as well as generous local multiplayer options, it's the most accessible yet. It has become elusive to the extent that an excellent Four Swords remake by Grezzo for DSi and 3DS was released for a limited time only a few years ago. It's unrealised because Nintendo has never managed to hook it up with the right technology and bring players along for the ride. Unrealised not because Nintendo's designers lack the skill or imagination to create it - there's been an entertaining template in existence since 2002, when Four Swords debuted as a multiplayer add-on for the GBA version of the classic A Link to the Past.
Multiplayer Zelda is one of Nintendo's great, unrealised ideas. It was as rarefied a mid-2000s gaming delight as a go on a Samba de Amigo set-up that actually worked. Magnificent, but now near-forgotten, because the hardware barrier to entry to experience Four Swords Adventures as it was intended to be played was set so unrealistically high. One of my all-time favourite local multiplayer experiences occurred a little over ten years ago, on the solitary occasion in my life when enough Game Boy Advances and Link Cables had been gathered together with a GameCube for a full four-player session on Nintendo's magnificent co-op romp, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. A unique, challenging and sporadically delightful co-op game - but forget about the clumsy solo play.
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