The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: A Look Back at the First Hand Held Zelda Game

By 1993, the Legend of Zelda series was growing in popularity, undoubtedly helped by the release of A Link to the Past a year before. Since Zelda games tended to be rather big, people might have wondered if it was possible to fit all of the action in a Zelda title on the Game Boy. There question was answered when Nintendo brought the celebrated series to the hand held system for the first time with The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, a game that was as fun as it was innovative. Seventeen years later, both the original version and the Game Boy Color remake from 1998 are still considered to be among the best Zelda games ever made.

For the first time, Link's adventures do not take place in Hyrule. Instead, while sailing on his raft, he is caught in a terrible storm and is knocked unconscious. He awakens on a mysterious island called Koholint, where he meets Marin, a young girl who had rescued him following the crash. While exploring the strange island, Link meets an owl who tells him that the only way he will be able to get back home is to find eight magical instruments and use them to awaken the Wind Fish. However, the young hero will have to deal with plenty of monsters, who appeared not long after Link's arrival. The game features one of the more intriguing story lines in the Zelda series...for once, there is no princess to rescue (in fact, Zelda herself does not appear at all), and as the game progresses, the secrets of the island unfold right before Link's eyes.

The basic formula used in most Zelda games has been left intact here: Link will need to explore the land, solving puzzles and defeating enemies along the way. To retrieve the instruments, he will need to search the eight dungeons, each of which are filled with monsters and traps, and each of which are protected by a boss that must be defeated before Link can claim an instrument. Early in the game, Link can gain a sword to attack the creatures and a shield to protect himself and even flip some monsters over, but he can also gain a variety of other items to help him out. Familiar items such as the bow and the hook shot make a return appearance, while some new items such as Roc's Feather, which enables Link to jump, appear for the first time in this game.

When Link defeats a foe, he can gain other items that will aid him in his quest. Hearts can replenish his energy, which decreases when he is attacked. As usual, the game is over if Link runs out of hearts. Our hero starts off with three hearts, but he can gain more by clearing dungeons and collecting heart pieces hidden throughout the island. Rupees are gems that act as currency on Koholint Island, and Link can use them to buy items and play mini games for prizes. Exclusive to this game are the Guardian Acorn and the Piece of Power, which increases Link's defense and offense, respectively, until he is hit a few times or he enters a new area. In some areas, Link can even collect shells that can be taken to a mansion located somewhere on the island, and collecting enough shells will lead to a pretty neat reward for our hero.

In addition to the main quest, which takes Link to such locations as a mountain, a prairie, and a village populated by animals, there are side quests which players can do at their leisure. For example, there is a trading sequence, a first for a Zelda game, in which items can be collected and taken to other people, ultimately resulting in our hero finding a very special item. The sequence starts with a Yoshi doll, one of several references to Mario in this game. Other side quests include the aforementioned heart piece quest and one in which you can find places to increase the amount of some of the items that you can carry. Of course, there are plenty of secrets to discover, some of which are only triggered at certain parts of the game, such as when Marin is following you on the way to the desert and you can do some neat things with her. Nintendo pulled off all the stops to make this a full fledged Zelda adventure, and it shows.

This game is filled with features that would become commonplace in Zelda games. I already mentioned that this was the first game to include a trading sequence and to take place in a land other than Hyrule. Another first is that each dungeon now has its own theme song instead of having only a couple of dungeon tunes in the entire game. Then there is a save system that allows you to continue your game from the last building that you entered, a precursor to being able to save and continue from just about anywhere in later Zelda games. When you gain an ocarina, you can now learn several tunes, each with their own magical effects, foreshadowing similar features used in Ocarina of Time and other Zelda titles. Nintendo would continue to improve upon these features, but each of them started off strongly here.

When the game was ported to the Game Boy Color in 1998, it was given a variety of improvements. The graphics had been colorized, which resulted in some neat special effects not possible in the original version such as the screen becoming a bit darker when Link entered the Mysterious Forest. A new side quest was added in which Link could take pictures of a variety of places, people, and events. These pictures could be printed out with a Game Boy Printer, though some photos could be permanently missed if they were not taken at a certain point in the game. Best of all, a new dungeon was added, filled with color-based puzzles that served as great ways to test the capabilities of the then-new portable system. These, along with some smaller improvements such as being given more hints and the removal of flashes in some points due to epilepsy concerns, made the game even better than it was before.

That's not to say that the game was any good to begin with, because it was. In fact, it had everything a superb Zelda game should have: challenging puzzles and battles, useful items, engaging and sometimes humorous dialog, rewarding side quests, and a story that keeps you guessing right up until the very end. There is really nothing to complain about aside from two aspects. One, the save feature is a bit awkward in that you must press the A, B, Start and Select buttons all at the same time to bring up the save menu. It is a bit cumbersome and does not always work so well. Luckily, the save feature would be simplified in subsequent games. The only other quibble I have with this game is that, sooner or later, it must come to an end. Rest assured, though, that the game itself is fairly long, especially if you complete all of the side quests, and it is a lot of fun while it lasts.

Regardless of whether they are in black and white or in color, the graphics are a huge improvement over the NES Zelda games. The characters and locations all look better than ever, and the added effects for the colorized version are pretty neat. If Nintendo made a third NES Zelda game, it would surely have looked as cool as this game does. The soundtrack is filled with tunes that are quite memorable as far as Game Boy songs go, with a remix of the classic Zelda over world theme heard in many parts of the island. Other tunes are fittingly happy (the Animal Village theme), dramatic (many of the dungeon themes), and mysterious (the Southern Shrine), and they can all be stuck in your head for quite a while. Nintendo tends to make wonderful soundtracks for their games, and this is no exception.

Link's Awakening is a solid hand held title, and the best of the portable Zelda games that I have played. Just because it appeared on a less powerful system did not mean that Nintendo was willing to skimp on the features that make Zelda games so wonderful, and the effort that they put in this game resulted in it becoming one of the greatest Game Boy games of all time. Many years have passed, and players still cannot get enough of Link's adventures on Koholint Island. If you never experienced them for yourself, look for either the original or colorized versions of the game on e-bay or Amazon and see what an exceptionally good Zelda game for a portable system should be like.