Changing online now lets you cheat to the legend of Zelda

Today, Nintendo has continued to develop the NES library in its Switch Online application with the previously announced addition of NES Open Tournament Golf, Key of Solomon, and Super Dodge Ball. But there was also a surprise: "Live luxury life!," A saved backup for THE legend of Zelda which starts the players with a complete inventory and a lot of money ..

L & # 39; original Zelda famous starts with nothing but three hearts of health and a shield. A man in a nearby cave tells Link that "it's dangerous to go alone" and gives him a sword. From there, you are allowed to explore where you want and acquire more items and equipment while searching the dungeons for Triforce pieces. "Live the luxury lifestyle!", What Nintendo calls "special backup data", begins with offering you the most powerful sword of the game, the Magic Shield, the blue ring and the fancy bracelet, the blue candle, a red potion, a piece of meat, and three extra heart containers, in addition to a bag full of rupees, bombs and keys.

It's somewhere between an easy mode and a new game and you still have to finish all the dungeons and find most of the objects in the game, but with a generous wind in the back.

"Live the luxury lifestyle!" This is basically a hacking of the ROM, the version of the console game mods. Even the title seems to be playing with this idea, hinting at what an amateur developer would have called his homebrew project on a forum rather than the official copy of the Nintendo product.

THE legend of Zelda specifically has had a number of ROM hacks floating over the years. THE legend of Zelda Pocket Edition is a fairly simple version that makes the original game look more like the Game Boy Color entries in the series. Others, like The legend of Zelda Outlandsbasically change the whole game, with a revised world map and redrawn dungeons. It's a totally different game for the most part, but reflected through the lens of the original, much like the fan remixes before Super Mario Maker made them official.

While it may seem an exaggeration for Nintendo to add such complex special backups, it would still be good to see Switch Online's NES library build on the past of the original console. In a press release issued today, Nintendo said that other games would also receive special backup data in the future, calling them "new fun entry points into the games." fans' favorite, without specifying which ones and when.

In terms of giving you extra resources and power-ups in the beginning, Metroid, which Nintendo will add next month, seems to be an obvious candidate, especially given the brutality of its beginnings and the extent to which it discourages people from working later for much more interesting games. Or Nintendo could go wild and add a special backup making the game harder or allowing Samus to jump twice as high. Something more ambitious in the spirit of a ROM hack called Metroid Deluxe, basically the version of this game of THE legend of ZeldaThe second, more difficult quest would also be great.

Since Switch's virtual console version is a permanent subscription service that does not allow people to pay for individual games, it leaves much more room for Nintendo to make such bizarre experiences. Let's hope that the next batch becomes even stranger.