Collection essentials #154: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Game Boy)

Here we have the fourth game in the Zelda series, and the third that I have covered in this series since that game came on the next system that I’m going to talk about. (Awkward, but putting all the games and consoles in order of release to do everything chronologically would have been far more trouble than it would have been worth)

By this time, Zelda had evolved a bit from the original game that captured the hearts of the world’s youth in the late 1980s. The games now were a bit more linear, with more focus on story and dialogue, while still featuring things like exploration and elaborately-crafted dungeons to navigate. More on that evolution when I get to the third game.

Link’s Awakening was originally planned to be a scaled-down port of the aforementioned third Zelda game, but eventually was reworked into its own original adventure. They could have simply made such a port, or a game that was very similar substantially and stylistically to the previous Zelda game, and nobody would have batted an eye. But instead they formed a unique creative vision for Link’s Awakening with some gameplay adjustments and its own style that really helped it stand out. The result is what many would consider the very best game for the original Game Boy. In an era where lots of Game Boy games were fairly primitive and very light on content, it’s pretty mind-blowing that among those games was a full-fledged original Zelda adventure. It simply blew away almost all of its contemporaries when it first released.

Link’s Awakening opens with a cool animated sequence of the hero, Link, at sea during a storm. He washes up on an island, the inhabitants of which help him out, and he soon finds out that he must awaken the “Wind Fish” in order to return home, so he sets out on a quest to do so. 

As I said before, this game has a unique style that’s maybe a bit more cartoony than other Zelda games. There’s lots of little memorable NPCs, such as little kids who teach you the mechanics of the game, seeming to break the fourth wall and then saying things like, “What’s the A button? Don’t ask me, I’m just a kid!” There’s also quite a few cameos of characters from other Nintendo games in here, such as enemies from the Mario series, Prince Richard from “The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls” (which I covered recently and served as a building block for this very game), an apparently-evil version of Kirby, and more. 

And of course, exploring the world, discovering things, finding cool items to use, and solving the clever puzzles of the dungeons are all a complete delight. Perhaps most notably in this game, there’s an item you can get that lets Link jump. Most other Zelda games don’t involve jumping, so that’s another way Link’s Awakening stands out from the very impressive crowd.

I think Link’s Awakening was yet another game that my mom found for me at a yard sale, when I was a teenager or perhaps a little before. I really liked it, though back then I wasn’t very good at figuring out Zelda games so I could only get so far. I think I didn’t actually beat it for the first time until I was 18. 

Link’s Awakening absolutely holds up today as a wonderful game that is well worth playing for anybody curious. However, this original version here is pretty much obsolete. A few years later an enhanced port would be released for the next iteration of the Game Boy, which I’ll get to down the road. Then much later, a full-fledged 3D remake was made for Nintendo’s latest console, the Switch. It would behoove you to look into one of those two options, rather than the very first release. And you really should, because this is a true shining classic game, a high-class essential.