Non-canon warning: This article or section contains non-canonical information that is not considered to be an official part of the Legend of Zelda series and should not be considered part of the overall storyline.

The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds is a fan overhaul of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past using new graphics, new music, a new overworld and underworld, and a new storyline. It is for the SNES. As of 2008, the game has been in production for 4-5 years and has had a demo release, a 1.0 release and a 1.1 patch to fix many bugs as well as minor changes in dialogue. A 2.0 release is planned and has been officially announced. This overhaul is infamous for its high level of difficulty.

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Storyline

You moved here from another land with a friend to find treasure. Not long after your arrival, a lot of strange occurrences started.

Seven people "appeared out of nowhere" and beings questioning about the Parallel Tower and the inhabitants of Kakariko Village. The Parallel Tower was situated in the Sky Islands northeast of the village. The legend behind the Parallel Tower was long lost, and only the elders knew the legend.

Word begins to spread out about the Parallel Tower, and people started to learn about the legend again. The legend says it was a by product of a war long ago and a power, known as the Triforce, existed at the top of it. It is said that nobody knows about the clues as to how to get to the top of the Tower. The seven people are said to know about these "clues" to the Tower.

The king was notified of these seven people and he invited them to the castle to find out what they wanted with the tower. Just the night before the seven people are to have an audience with the king, the king's assistant, Draegor, eliminates the king and claims the throne by default.

The seven people walked right into an obvious trap. Draegor, who people believe is a power hungry person, caught all 7 people and forces them to tell him what they know about the Tower.

When the people learned of the king's fate, a rebel force is gathered in secret to plot against Draegor. The rebel force learned that 2 out of 7 people whom Draegor caught are still alive and imprisoned in the guardhouse. They quickly rallied anyone who may be interested in the Tower and the locals to help these last 2 people.

You and your friend heard about this plan and are willing help the rebels against Draegor.

The night of the operation begins the story...

Releases

Parallel Worlds was originally released by an editor by the name of Euclid as a short demo around 2004 under the name The Tower of the Triforce. The setup and story are essentially the same but the game still used the original SNES graphics, though altered slightly to change Link's outfit and hair color. Other than graphics, the other thing that is drastically different from the official release is the map layout which was by the end completely overhauled.

Version 1.0 was released on December 31, 2006, and has become known as one of the hardest fan games in existence around internet forums. This release expands on the original demo with new graphics, sound, enemies, dungeons and quests. In addition to these changes, a lineup addition of another editor by the name of SePH contributed heavily to dungeon and underworld design. According to Euclid's blog, "[you] can think of this current version as open beta... if you want."

Version 1.1 is the most current version of the game. This patch fixed many of the bugs and spelling errors in the original 1.0 release. Overall, not much is changed other than minor things.

On May 16, 2008 Version 1.0 was "injected" into the Wii's Virtual Console release of "Donkey Kong Country 2" and released as a ".WAD" file. This allowed the game to be playable on the Wii's Virtual Console on modded Wiis playable with the Classic or Gamecube controllers.

Version 2.0 has been in discussion for at least a year or more as of 2008. Only minor details are currently known:

SePH is completely redoing underworld and dungeons - partly for aesthetic reasons and partly to change their difficulty.

Euclid has said that in the 2.0 version the Guardhouse will be made easier due to the number of complaints about the sheer difficulty of this first level.

In 2012, a new version of the hack was released by PuzzleDude, named Parallel Remodel, that lowered the difficulty and minimized the backtracking. This was in response to criticisms made about the original hack.

Design

Parallel Worlds does not avoid the pitfalls of game design altogether. One major complaint is the sheer difficulty curve. There is lots of damage that cannot be avoided and according to some players online, the levels do not seem well planned out as the high amount of backtracking seems excessive to them.

Several features from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time have been included in this game, such as the shields' appearances, the screen layout, and a day and night system.