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Legend of Zelda, The - Links Awakening DX (USA, Europe, Germany, France, Japan) (SGB Enhanced) (1998) (Action Adventure) (GBC)
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening[a] is a 1993 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy. It is the fourth installment in the Legend of Zelda series and the first for a handheld game console. Link's Awakening is one of the few Zelda games not to take place in the land of Hyrule, and it does not feature Princess Zelda or the Triforce relic. Instead, the protagonist Link begins the game stranded on Koholint Island, a place guarded by a whale-like deity called the Wind Fish. Assuming the role of Link, the player fights monsters and solves puzzles while searching for eight musical instruments that will awaken the sleeping Wind Fish and allow him to escape from the island.
Development began as an effort to port the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past to the Game Boy, developed after-hours by Nintendo staff. It grew into an original project under the direction of Takashi Tezuka, with a story and script created by Yoshiaki Koizumi and Kensuke Tanabe. The majority of the Link to the Past team reassembled for Link's Awakening, and Tezuka wanted the game world to feel like the television series Twin Peaks. After a development period of one and a half years, Link's Awakening was released in Japan in June 1993 and worldwide later in the year.
Link's Awakening was critically and commercially
successful. Critics praised the game's depth and number of features;
complaints focused on its control scheme and monochrome graphics. An
updated rerelease, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX,[b] was released for the Game Boy Color in 1998 featuring color graphics, compatibility with the Game Boy Printer,
and an exclusive color-based dungeon. Together, the two versions of the
game have sold more than six million units worldwide, and have appeared
on multiple game publications' lists of the best video games of all time. A high-definition remake for the Nintendo Switch was developed by Grezzo and released worldwide in 2019.
Like most games in The Legend of Zelda series, Link's Awakening is an action-adventure game focused on exploration and combat.[8] The majority of the game takes place from an overhead perspective.[9] The player traverses the overworld of Koholint Island while fighting monsters and exploring underground dungeons. Dungeons steadily become larger and more difficult, and feature "Nightmare" boss characters that the player must defeat, taking different forms in each dungeon, and getting harder to defeat each time.[7] Success earns the player heart containers, which increase the amount of damage the player character can survive; when all of the player's heart containers have been emptied, the game restarts at the last doorway entered by the character. Defeating a Nightmare also earns the player one of the eight instruments necessary to complete the game.[7]
Link's Awakening was the first overhead-perspective Zelda game to allow Link to jump; this enables sidescrolling sequences similar to those in the earlier Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.[9] Players can expand their abilities with items, which are discovered in dungeons and through character interactions. Certain items grant access to previously inaccessible areas and are needed to enter and complete dungeons. The player may steal items from the game's shop, but doing so changes the player character's name to "THIEF" for the rest of the game and causes the shopkeeper to knock out the character upon re-entry of the shop.[9]
In addition to the main quest, Link's Awakening contains side-missions and diversions. Collectible "secret seashells" are hidden throughout the game; when twenty of these are found, the player can receive a powerful sword that fires energy beams when the player character is at full health, similar to the sword in the original The Legend of Zelda. Link's Awakening is the first Zelda game to include a trading sequence minigame: the player may give a certain item to a character, who in turn gives the player another item to trade with someone else.[7] It is also the first game in the Zelda series in which the A and B buttons may be assigned to different items, which enables more varied puzzles and item combinations.[9] Other series elements originating in Link's Awakening include fishing, and learning special songs on an ocarina; the latter mechanic is central to the next Zelda game released, Ocarina of Time.[10]
PlotAfter the events of A Link to the Past, the hero Link travels by ship to other countries to train for further threats. A storm destroys his boat at sea, and he washes ashore on Koholint Island,[19] where he is taken to the house of Tarin by his daughter Marin. She is fascinated by Link and the outside world, and tells Link wishfully that, if she were a seagull, she would leave and travel across the sea.[20] After Link recovers his sword, a mysterious owl tells him that he must wake the Wind Fish, Koholint's guardian, in order to return home. The Wind Fish lies dreaming in a giant egg on top of Mt. Tamaranch, and can only be awakened by the eight Instruments of the Sirens.
Link proceeds to explore a series of dungeons in order to recover the eight instruments. During his search for the sixth instrument, Link goes to the Ancient Ruins. There he finds a mural that details the reality of the island: that it is merely a dream world created by the Wind Fish.[21] After this revelation, the owl tells Link that this is only a rumor, and only the Wind Fish knows for certain whether it is true. Throughout Koholint Island, nightmare creatures attempt to obstruct Link's quest for the instruments, as they wish to rule the Wind Fish's dreamworld.
After collecting all eight instruments from the eight dungeons across Koholint, Link climbs to the top of Mt. Tamaranch and plays the Ballad of the Wind Fish.[7] This breaks open the egg in which the Wind Fish sleeps; Link enters and confronts the last evil being, a Nightmare that takes the form of Ganon and other enemies from Link's past.[22] Its final transformation is "DethI", a cyclopean, dual-tentacled Shadow.[23][24] After Link defeats DethI, the owl reveals itself to be the Wind Fish's spirit, and the Wind Fish confirms that Koholint is all his dream. When Link plays the Ballad of the Wind Fish again, he and the Wind Fish awaken; Koholint Island and all its inhabitants slowly disappear.[25] Link finds himself lying on his ship's driftwood in the middle of the ocean, with the Wind Fish flying overhead. If the player did not lose any lives during the game, Marin is shown flying after the ending credits finish.[26][c]
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