The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is an action-adventure game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, released in 1991. Link travels between a Light World and a shadowed Dark World to recover the Triforce and defeat Ganon — establishing the template for the Zelda series that every subsequent entry has worked from.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was developed by Nintendo EAD under director Yoshiaki Koizumi and producer Shigeru Miyamoto, releasing for the Super Famicom in November 1991. It was the third entry in the Zelda series and a return to the top-down perspective of the original, developed as a response to the mixed reception of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link's side-scrolling format.
Link begins in the Light World of Hyrule before discovering a gateway to the Dark World — a corrupted mirror of the same landscape, ruled by Ganon. Each of the game's seven Dark World dungeons contains a crystal imprisoning one of the Seven Maidens; freeing all seven opens the path to Ganon's Tower. The dual-world structure created a puzzle layer that extended across the entire overworld: items, secrets, and shortcuts in one world had counterparts in the other. Exploration felt earned, and the overworld — still considered one of the best-designed in the series — rewarded curiosity consistently.
A Link to the Past established the Zelda formula that the series still follows: a large overworld connecting to themed dungeons, each containing a new item that enables progression through the next area. The Master Sword, the Triforce mythology, the Light and Dark World duality, Ganon's full-game presence — all of these elements entered the series here and have persisted across decades of sequels.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is ranked #47 on Rolling Stone's 2025 list of the 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time. It is widely regarded as the definitive 2D Zelda and one of the finest action-adventure games ever made, its design influence visible in every Zelda title that followed.