Despite often selling absurdly well, handheld consoles often feel like they're pushed under the rug compared to their more popular home counterparts. Handheld entries in popular series often feel somewhat forgotten, and in some cases like Sonic, they're not even regarded as mainline entries. And that's a bit of a shame, I have a real soft-spot for games build around handheld play because they have a unique design philosophy that you don't see with home consoles. They often have a more condensed and focused feel, being built with short play sessions in mind, and feel more willing to experiment and try new and weird things since they have that leniency. The original Game Boy is a great example of this, as Nintendo was still trying to figure out what made a handheld game work, so we got really strange and experimental titles like Super Mario Land 2, The Frog For Whom The Bell Tolls, and Donkey Kong 94. But the most successful experiment the console had to offer was Link's Awakening:
Link's Awakening is a game that stripped the Zelda series of its pre-established conventions and came out the other side not only having paved the way for the future of the series, but ended up becoming my favorite 2D Zelda in the franchise. It's a perfect summation of what made handheld gaming so magical.
When talking about Link's Awakening, it's impossible to not bring up the story, which easily ranks as one of my favorites in all of gaming. Despite being a Game Boy game, this is one incredibly rich and medium-aware narrative. The main premise completely eschews any of Zelda's conventions, with Link washing upon on the Island of Koholint and being tasked with finding eight instruments to wake up the sleeping Wind Fish. There's no Zelda, no Ganon, no Triforce, no Hyrule, it's an entirely new story with an entirely new cast, and quite the likable one at that. Link's new friend Marin in particular stands out as one of the more likable female leads in Zelda. To complement this strange new setting, Link's Awakening goes for an incredibly comedic, light-hearted, and almost parodical tone. NPC dialogue often references the fact that you're in a video game, enemies are sourced from other game series like Mario and Kirby, and the game frequently tosses surreal imagery at you like a raccoon suddenly transforming into Marin's father, a talking owl that pushes you forward, and Link holding Marin up as an item.
But it's not all fun and games, Link's Awakening counter-balances this light-hearted tone with a feeling of melancholy that permeates throughout, only getting worse as more gets revealed. The characters in Link's Awakening are so likable that the looming realization that Link will eventually have to leave is already a bit sad, but then, you get the game's big reveal: Koholint Island is the Wind Fish's dream, and waking it up will causing Koholint and everything on it to disappear, which of course leads to an absolutely heart-breaking ending where you do exactly that. Even though the people on Koholint aren't technically real, they feel real, and having to essentially kill them to leave is a harsh pill to swallow. It takes the infamous "it was all a dream" cliche and mines it for an impressive amount of dramatic potential, while also kinda commenting on the medium as a whole? Because the characters in a game aren't really either, they're pixels on a screen, but that doesn't mean you can't get attached to them either. Link's Awakening is one of the earliest games that I can think of that feels medium-aware, and uses that awareness to comment on the medium, something that's fairly common and popular in games nowadays. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, then, that this game's writer just so happened to be Yoshiaki Koizumi, the guy responsible for writing Majora's Mask. Who else at Nintendo could use the simplistic nature of a Game Boy game to craft such a thoughtful and emotionally resonant story?
On the gameplay front, Link's Awakening is pretty standard by Zelda standards nowadays, but at the time, I think it's one of the most influential games in the series in terms of establishing that traditional formula we all know today. Link To The Past was obviously important, but it had a few strange quirks particularly in its dungeon progression, but Link's Awakening really refines everything. In terms of moment to moment control, the biggest improvement is in the combat. Link's sword now swings in a wide arc making combat a cinch making it far easier to hit enemies, and the game introduces the Roc's Feather, a common item in the 2D entries that allows Link to jump. This is likely because Link's Awakening was built off the fantastic JP exclusive The Frog For Whom The Bell Tolls which had 2D platforming segments, which are also brought over to this game.
But ultimately, the bigger changes in Link's Awakening mostly came from the progression, both in terms of the overworld and the dungeons. Zelda 1 and LttP both had fairly open overworld maps in which most dungeons could be discovered simply by stumbling upon them. In Link's Awakening, however, the overworld must be slowly opened up as you progress through the story, and each dungeon needs to be uncovered by doing some sort of quest prior. Personally, I prefer this structure way more as it allows the game to modulate the pacing more carefully. As the game goes on, you get more freedom and it holds your hand less, and there's a nice balance between overworld exploration and dungeon crawling rather than the lopsided bias towards the latter that the earlier games had. It also helps that the overworld quests in question are incredibly fun and varied, ranging from saving a Chain Chomp from a Moblin base, to doing an elaborate trading sequence to get the Magical Boomerang, to returning a ghost to its resting place. It's not just the structure that's improved, but the substance of the game as well.
The dungeons themselves are also better structured, similarly establishing the formula many games would follow. The first half of each dungeon has you stumble upon a bunch of dead ends, then you find the dungeon item and you're able to use it to open all those dead ends, culminating in the dungeon's boss serving as a test of that item. In LttP, the dungeons items were often only used once or twice in each dungeon if at all, but here, each dungeon feels designed entirely around each item. The dungeon design in Link's Awakening is generally fantastic, with each dungeon being fairly open but with enough of a progression that fully unraveling them all is super satisfying. They also amp up in complexity at a perfect pace, culminating in the absolute behemoths that are Eagle's Tower and Turtle Rock, two of my favorite 2D dungeons in the series. The bosses are quite fun too, all taking advantage of the dungeon items, and the final boss Nightmare similarly stands out as one of my favorites in the series. As a whole, Link's Awakening doesn't really have any weak moments, it's all fun with pretty much no down-time, and the entire world is so tightly-knit. Aside from how little buttons the Game Boy has, I'd be inclined to call this a damn near perfect video game.
Eventually, the game got ported to the Game Boy Color as Link's Awakening DX, a fantastic move that allowed the game to hold up a lot better over time. Not only did the addition of the GBC's distinctly bright color palette help Link's Awakening really shine visually, but it adds some neat extras like an exclusive dungeon and a side quest built around taking photographs, meaning this version pretty much completely replaces the original. And Ii 2019, we ended up getting a top-to-bottom remake of Link's Awakening for the Switch by the same team that made A Link Between Worlds, and it's fantastic. It adds in a lot of modern conveniences like smooth screen-scrolling, eight-directional movement, and more buttons to limit the amount of time spent returning to the inventory which already makes it my preferred way to play the game. On top of that, this remake expands on a lot of the side content in Link's Awakening, adding in more Secret Seashells to find, fleshing out the Trendy Game, adding in a now obligatory Hero Mode, and introducing a rudimentary dungeon builder with a bunch of hidden dungeon tiles to find and missions to complete. But the biggest change is the new toy-like visual style, which I personally love. It's super charming, it looks fantastic, it feels timeless, and it fits with the game's story and themes quite well, and I can't wait to see it return in Echoes Of Wisdom. That being said, while I love the remake, I don't think it replaces DX entirely for me. DX's more simplistic graphics still have a lot of charm, it's a lot easier and faster to breeze through and 100%, and the photographs in DX didn't return in the remake which is a bit of a shame.
I also can't go without mentioning the soundtrack to Link's Awakening, especially since music is such an integral part to the game as a whole. It's easily the best soundtrack on the Game Boy, and one of my favorite in the Zelda series as a whole. Equal parts quirky and ethereal, it perfectly complements both the game's comedic tone and the dreamy setting, especially the overworld themes. Sword Search, Mabe Village, Peaceful Villagers, Mysterious Woods, the Ballad Of The Wind Fish, and especially Tal Tal Heights all rank as some of my favorite Zelda tracks. And the remake's soundtrack is equally stellar, using both orchestral instruments and the original chiptune to craft a reverant OST that perfectly captures the original's feel, and even expands on it like with many of the dungeon themes, Angler's Shrine and Face Shrine being the notable highlights. I go back and forth on which OST I find better though, the remake manages to elevate so many of the original's less interesting tracks, but the original chiptune has an incredibly atmospheric feel to it that fits the game really well. Either way, they're both standout Zelda scores and the game would be worse without them.
Overall, Link's Awakening is an incredibly important game. It's the first Zelda game to really nail the formula with its incredible world design and fluid gameplay, while also showing how malleable the series can be with its more comedic tone and experimental feel. It's a true showcase of how much you could wring out of the humble Game Boy both in terms of music and scale, and it demonstrated how the Zelda series could tell subtly powerful narratives through a simple action-adventure game formula. And out of all the great 2D Zelda games, Link's Awakening is the one that really left the biggest impact on me. On pretty much every level, it's an absolute delight.
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