Switch suspend-and-rewind lets player 'cheat' through A Link to the Past

Polygon reports that after playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a writer found the Nintendo Switch Online suspend-and-rewind feature allowed them to effectively "cheat" through the SNES classic A Link to the Past. The writer credits Tears of the Kingdom’s flexibility — building contraptions, customizing weapons with consumables, rewinding time to move objects and using the ascend ability — for changing how they approach Zelda games, and for making them comfortable with frequent deaths thanks to a generous autosave.

Revisiting A Link to the Past, they struggled in the Dark Palace where enemies can knock Link into pits and, in SNES-era design, dying in a dungeon usually sends you back to the entrance (you keep treasure and unlocked doors remain open). The suspend function — invoked by holding the top trigger buttons and scrolling back a few moments — acts "functionally" like the rewind feature in the Forza Horizon games, the writer says, and they call using it cheating but consistent with Tears of the Kingdom’s rule-breaking design ethos.

The experience has increased their appreciation for long-running series touches — a compact Death Mountain, fairies present since 1991 and Zora that lend scuba gear — and the writer notes many on the Nintendo Switch subreddit report the suspend feature helps them enjoy older titles.

Key Topics

Culture, Nintendo Switch Online, Suspend Function, Dark Palace, Zora