This was my letter to Santa Claus in 1998. While I can’t remember whether I got twisted metol or my front teeth or the golf course material, I’ll never forget waking up on Christmas Morning and seeing a blue Game Boy Pocket under the tree. That Game Boy came with two games, Super Mario Land 2 and Donkey Kong Land 3 (so lovingly referred to as Donkey Kong Crountry). I played that Game Boy until the buttons wore out. Game Boy was famous for ports and reimagining of console games, such as the two aforementioned games. Not only just famous for ports, but also for taking risks that Nintendo was unwilling to take on their home console games.
Reviewing the evidence shows I did get Twisted Metol 3 that year
You could point to Link’s Awakening as an example of this. Link’s Awakening started development as something of a secret side project to port A Link to the Past to the Game Boy. Takashi Tezuka, Zelda series veteran and director of A Link to the Past, had wanted to include both an A and B slot in A Link to the Past before Miyamoto stepped in and required that the sword must be equipped at all times. In Link’s Awakening, Miyamoto served as a producer and a game tester with less creative control over the project. Tezuka was able to implement his vision of dual equipment slots and the game was better for it.
I got a lot of mileage out of that Blue Game Boy Pocket, out of Super Mario Land 2 and the Donkey Kong Land series and later Pokemon Blue version. As something of a Zelda hater at the time, I never did ask for Link’s Awakening as a kid. But when I posted my Link to the Past review, I received a lot of comments asking if I had played Link’s Awakening yet. The Game Boy game got nearly as much praise as its Super Nintendo counterpart. A game I thought was one of the best games of all time. Could a Game Boy game really compare to the Super Nintendo classic it was based on? As a newly reformed Zelda Enjoyer, I loaded the game up in an emulator on my phone (it’s also available on Nintendo Switch Online) and decided to play it for the first time to find out. Onto the review!
Presentation
A Link to the Past was a legitimately beautiful game within its 16-bit art style on the Super Nintendo. The Game Boy has no such luxury, it has 4 shades of green and that’s pretty much it. Thankfully Link’s Awakening has a Gameboy Color rerelease from 1998 that colorized the game and added a new dungeon and Game Boy printer support. The Game Boy Color, while being an 8-bit console like its NES uncle, had color support for the same 32,768 colors with 56 colors being able to be used at one time. While this pales in comparison to the SNES in overall graphic capabilities, Nintendo’s developers were able to utilize their immense skill and various programming tricks to make Link’s Awakening look amazing.
You can see these tricks in action as soon as you start the game. The opening cutscene depicts a ship caught in a dark blue and stormy sea. Lightning flashes across the sky as rain is pouring down. A close shot of Link clinging to the ship’s mast appears before the last strike of lightning fades out to white. Next thing you know, Link is discovered by an unknown figure, washed ashore on an unknown island. The green treeline is a contrast to the yellow sands and blue water. Even when played on an original Game Boy instead of in full color, this introduction sequence is eye-catching considering the hardware. Everywhere the game has been touched up with the color prowess of the Game Boy Color. The island setting gives the game plenty of picturesque locales to take advantage of the GBC color palette. In the DX version, they introduced a photographer to take your picture at various points in the adventure. These moments add a nice break in the action and do well to show off the kinds of graphics the newly released Game Boy Color hardware was capable of. The graphics of Link’s Awakening manage to be just a step below a Link to the Past; but they are streets ahead of its 8-bit brethren on the NES. It’s hard to imagine a Game Boy Color game looking much better than this.
Soundwise, Link’s Awakening doesn’t feature the full SNES sound font of A Link to the Past. But it does feature the talents of Nintendo composing wizard Kazumi Totaka. Somehow, the 4 sound channels of the gameboy don’t hinder the music of Link’s Awakening. Instead, the same opening that showed off the graphics so well, also crushes it in the music department. The opening theme of Zelda remixed as a 8-bit chiptune sounds magical. The overworld theme is remixed with its own added motifs to make the sound reflect the adventure in a familiar yet strange new land. The Tal Tal Heights music goes hard. The dungeons have unique themes as well. The color dungeon features a remix of the original dungeon theme from Zelda 1. From the very first song of the game’s opening to the sentimental and somber staff roll, Link’s Awakening has some of the best music on the Game Boy.
Tal Tal Heights is one of the best Game Boy songs period. I put it up there with Pokemon GSC’s National Park
Despite the somewhat primitive hardware, Link’s Awakening set the standard of what a Game Boy game could look and sound like. Some Game Boy games don’t age well in these departments. Link’s Awakening is not among them, it gets 4 🖼️s out 5.
Gameplay
Like I had stated earlier, Link’s Awakening started its life as a port to A Link to the Past. Unlike A Link to the Past, which had smooth scrolling until the screen transitions when you reached the boundary of an area; Link’s Awakening features 8 by 10 tile screens arranged in a 16 by 16 grid. Not dissimilar to how its older brother, The Legend of Zelda, played on the NES. While the map of the game’s setting, Koholint Island, is smaller in scale than A Link to the Past’s world, exploring the map proves that there are just as many, if not more, secrets to uncover. In addition to the standard pieces of heart to be found (12 of them); there are 12 photos and 26 secret seashells to collect.
The gameplay begins to diverge from Link to the Past when you notice the dual [A/B] button item slots. In Link’s Awakening, rather than always having the sword equipped to one of the buttons, players control both the item in the traditional [ B ] button item slot and [ A ] button item slot. This allows players to chain together different items and adds a lot to exploring the island. Such as chaining together the Pegasus Boots and Roc’s Feather for extra long jumps. And it adds a lot to the combat, being able to chain together items such as the bombs and bow to create bomb arrows over a decade before Twilight Princess. Of course, two item slots means double the pauses to switch to different items for different situations. The game is also rather text heavy during its story moments and so this does lead to frequent interruptions to the game flow.
Like a typical Zelda game, Link’s Awakening requires players to explore dungeons to collect items that unlock areas that weren’t accessible before and to collect a macguffin for story related reasons. The 8 dungeons of Link’s Awakening all require keys to unlock. These keys are found by exploring the overworld. The dungeons in Link’s Awakening are similar to Zelda 1’s dungeons but a slightly smaller scale. Dungeons still feature keys, a compass, a map and the nightmare key that unlocks the boss room. Though in this game, screens are 8 x 10 rather than 11 x 16. Despite being more compact, dungeons are more creative featuring multiple floors, warps, mini bosses, and puzzles that require the many items of Link’s Awakening to solve. The compass has a nice new feature; it now plays a tone when a key is hidden on the current screen. The combat is not very difficult and the game alternates giving you 2 powerups, either Pieces of Power increasing your attack or Guardian Acorns increasing your defense. There is also a secret 9th dungeon only accessible in the DX version while played on a GBC/GBA/GB Player. The reward for clearing it is a colored tunic giving you a permanent boost to attack or defense.
The game is fairly easy but I still had several game-overs trying to discover the right strategy to defeat a dungeon boss or finding my way in the overworld. A game-over restarts you at the beginning of a dungeon or in the front door of the last building you exited in the overworld. Defeating a miniboss in a dungeon usually unlocks a warp near the boss’ room and so game-over is rarely that frustrating.
Occasionally, first time players may get lost. I know that I did. Thankfully, Grandpa Ulrira can be called for a hint from the many telephone booths in Koholint. The hints sometimes will tell you exactly where to go and sometimes be rather obscure but they almost always get the job done. There was one part in Link’s Awakening where I got stuck for nearly a month and I spent hours wandering….
The game can be sequence broke slightly, if you discover things out of order. It doesn’t impact the game much but you can miss some story beats by doing so. In my playthrough, I ended up missing out on a bit of story with Marin in Tal Tal Heights because I discovered and beat the 8th dungeon before the 7th. I was a bit disappointed when I discovered that I missed out on this. I adored the story with Marin so much. With the added mechanics of a second item slot, Link’s Awakening came up with a way to be nearly as good as A Link to the Past. When it comes to gameplay, Link’s Awakening gets 4 🎮s out of 5.
Narrative
The game takes place with Link shipwrecked and washed up on the beach of a mysterious Island. The island isn’t the only thing that is mysterious. The villagers all seem just a bit off. They give off an uncanny feeling like they are characters that don’t quite belong. In some cases they literally don’t! In Mabe Village, one woman has a pet Chain Chomp and another woman wants a Yoshi doll for her baby. The team was given full rein to put whatever they wanted in the game as long as it wasn’t Zelda, Hyrule, or the Triforce. The team filled the game with cameos as a result. Playing the game and seeing a Super Mario enemy in a dungeon and characters from other games, too, is such a fun experience.
To begin the game’s plot, Link regains consciousness in the home of Tarin and his daughter Marin. They graciously took Link in and gave him his shield and sent him on his way back to the beach to gather his sword. Link grabs his sword and is met by a strange talking owl who states that Link can not leave the island until he wakes the enigmatic Wind Fish. Over the course of the game, the Owl directs Link on his quest to leave the island. To go home, Link must gather the 8 Instruments of the Sirens to awaken the Wind Fish. These relics are hidden within the 8 dungeons and guarded by the many monsters and Nightmares of Koholint.
As Link progresses further in his adventure to gather the instruments, more perplexing details about Koholint and the Windfish are revealed by the Owl, the nightmares, and the villagers. One thing I really enjoy about Link’s Awakening is that there are so many quirky characters that Link comes across in his journey. None of these characters are more well developed and encountered as much as Marin. Link shares many moments in the game’s story with Marin. He learns of her dream to be able to leave the island someday, he sees her caring heart as she rescues him, and he hears from the villagers of Mabe and Animal village how much they adore her and her singing voice. Link and Marin share a sweet relationship over the course of the game. This kind of relationship building and character development is rare in the Legend of Zelda series and was basically unheard of at the time of Link’s Awakening’s release.
Toward the end of the game, the twist is revealed. Koholint is just a dream in the mind of Link and the Wind Fish. Players may have already been suspicious of it as the twist is hinted at before being fully revealed at the Southern Face Palace. When Link completes his quest and wakes up, everyone will fade away. I was actually left feeling like Link was something of the villain of Link’s Awakening. The monsters are only fighting for their own survival because they know everyone will cease their existence if Link wakes the Wind Fish. The ending is bittersweet as Link remembers the villagers, including Marin, before the dream fades away. If you can manage to beat the game without a game over (I died 50+ times), the end sequence gives Link a bit of closure as Marin lives on as a seagull after Link awakens.
Despite being “illusions”, dreams and the memories of those feelings can still have an impact on us and evoke emotions from us. The ending hits me the same way that a dream of seeing a long-lost loved one again does or hits the same way that a dream of a sweet experience with someone who may have never even existed could.
It is truly rare that a game gives me such a sentimental experience as this one did. The fact Nintendo managed to do it on the Game Boy is a marvel. The story, characters, and setting of Link’s Awakening drew me in and kept me motivated to keep playing and discover the fate of Link and this strange place. The fact that I have to implement spoilers in my review for the first time speaks for the strength of the story. It even had its own 1994 Manga adaptation that was translated to English by the website historyofhyrule.com. Link’s Awakening has the best story of any Game Boy game, of any 8-bit game, it has one of the best stories of any game that I’ve ever played. It gets 5 📚s of 5.
The So What
It has oft been said that “limitations breed creativity”. Many beautiful poems have been crafted from the limitations of haiku. In the same way, the limitations of the Game Boy motivated the Zelda team to work creatively to accomplish their vision in Link’s Awakening instead of just playing it safe. Link’s Awakening was remade for Nintendo Switch in 2019, and while it does remove some of the frustrations of these limitations, it isn’t without compromises. The art style and music, despite being HD, no longer hit the same beats that they did on the Gameboy Color. For this reason, I’d recommend playing the DX port on Nintendo Switch Online for the authentic experience. Link’s Awakening DX is the masterpiece haiku to Link to the Past’s master class prose.
Wind Fish slumbers deep, Island dreams in shades of blue, Awakening calls. 4 ⭐️s out 5
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