Originally published on Set The Tape
Today it’s hard to think about The Legend of Zelda series and imagine it without handheld games. There are now roughly the same number of handheld games as there are console ones in the series. Depending on how you class the Switch alters that number too, and if you include spin-off games, the handhelds lead by quite a margin. But there was a time when Link and friends being on anything but a home console felt like a wild idea.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was the first Zelda game to make the leap, but it was never really intended to be when it was first created. Unusually, the game began life as a side-project, one that some of the developers at the Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development division worked on after hours in an unofficial capacity. It originally started with programmer Kazuaki Morita, who played around with one of the first Game Boy development kits, creating a Zelda-like game. After the release of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past Nintendo looked at porting the game to the Game Boy, but soon decided that the unofficial side project felt more promising.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is unusual for a Zelda game, as it was the first to not take place within the Kingdom of Hyrule, nor did it feature the titular Princess, or the evil Ganon. Instead, the game begins with Link, the hero of the previous instalment, caught in a fierce storm whilst out at sea. His ship is destroyed, and he wakes up on the remote Koholint Island. He learns that the only way off the island is to wake the mystical Wind Fish, a giant whale-like creature that lives inside a giant egg on the island’s mountaintop. In order to do so he will need to travel across the island, battling monsters inside eight dungeons, to collect the musical instruments needed to take the Wind Fish.
The game introduced a number of new features that would go on to become commonplace in the franchise, such as fishing, being able to map weapons and items to different buttons, and being able to play songs on the ocarina. These are game-play elements that fans of the series have likely now taken for granted, and may have first encountered in The Legends of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but series producer Eiji Aonuma credits Link’s Awakening for introducing them, and has said that Ocarina of Time would likely have been a very different game without the handheld entry.
In the same interview he would also describe how the game drew influence from the popular television series Twin Peaks, especially in its approach to friendly NPC’s. The townspeople were made to be suspicious, again something that would carry over into other games, and the game would play around with the fourth wall and player expectations. Due to not being able to use characters like Zelda, the game instead featured characters from the Mario and Kirby franchises, and characters would break the fourth wall at times, talking directly to the player rather than Link.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was hugely popular upon releases, and topped sales charts. It was the top selling Game Boy game of its release month in both Japan and the US, and even helped to boost sales of the Game Boy itself. The game would remain on the bestseller list for seven and a half years, and would receive a re-release in the Players Choice series. The sales and critical reception were so high that when the Game Boy Color was released the game received an overhaul with The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX version in 1998. This new version was presented in full colour, with an extra dungeon introduced into the game that made use of the colour mechanics. This version would sell more than 2.2 million copies, on top of the original’s 3.8 million. The colour version would also tackle the chief complaint about the game, that the grey-scale graphics sometimes made things harder to see.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening didn’t end there though. When the game was released on the virtual console for the Nintendo 3DS it became the top-selling downloadable game that year. This proved that there was still a lot of love for the game, and in 2019 it got the biggest overhaul yet. Released on the Nintendo Switch, this new version was a ground-up remake. It stayed true to the spirit of the original, keeping the top-down view, and used a ‘retro-modern’ style, making the characters look toy-like. The remake was a fantastic adaptation of the original, and would receive positive reviews, as well as a number of awards, and would go on to sell more than 6.4 million copies.
Whilst The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild often get held up as examples of the series at its best The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening deserves similar praise. It brought the franchise to the handheld consoles, and it created innovations that are still felt across the games to this day. And, as a personal note, it’s the very first Zelda game I ever played and completed. It might not be the first game that comes to mind when thinking of the franchise, but I’ll always argue that it’s one of the best.
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