When playing Four Swords Adventures with friends, we quickly discovered that there was a lot of fun to be found in messing around. Certainly, co-operation was key to completing each level, but it was impossible to resist picking each other up and throwing each other around, especially into hazards.
While the banter it generated was already a great incentive, there may have been more utility (from a gameplay perspective) in throwing the Links around early in the game’s development.
In a text dump of Four Sword Adventures’ French translation, strings of untranslated English have been found, and there is a peculiar line that does not apply to the final game:
This is explained in Beta64’s video below, at the 12:21 mark.
This suggests that there were plans to allow the Links to transform into swords when thrown by the player.
If the second sentence was isolated, it could be argued that “ally” may not necessarily be referring to the Links. However, the fact that this is preceded with instructions on how to “make a formation” suggests this could only mean the Links.
This is purely speculation, but since the Four Sword splits its holder into four beings, it’s possible that this text is actually referring to a mechanic that allowed the player to return the doppelgangers to the Four Sword, putting the player in control of a single Link. Perhaps it was originally intended for the player to split and unsplit the Links on command.
Whatever the case, I love it when unused text and assets like this are found in a game’s code. They act as remnants of scrapped and changed ideas, offering us insight into the development journey that led to the final product.
