Link's Awakening

 Last week, buried in the furvor of a new console launch, Nintendo released its first few titles for the 3DS Virtual console, including The Legend of Zelda: Link''s Awakening DX.

How gamers my age look back on Link's Awakening tends to go one of two ways - They remember it as a game they picked up when they finished Pokemon and realized they had no other GBC games to tide them over for the launch of Gold and Silver, or they simply remember how much the ending sucked. This says nothing of the generation that came before us, who experienced Link's Awakening two years after A Link to the Past was released, and were caught up in Top-Down Zelda furvor more strongly (despite Ocarina of Time having a similar gap to the rerelease of Link's Awakening). So, how's the gameplay held up over two decades?

On first view, its easy to see qualities of the Zelda series that started here that would frustrate gamers in later adventures. Zelda's existence in the story is limited to Link opening the game mistaking Marin for her. Not taking place in Hyrule was part of what made games like the Oracle pair feel 'cheaper' and less serious, but somehow despite being not in Hyrule, and being far more.. liberal with its uses of properties (including encountering numerous characters from the Mario franchise), Link's Awakening still feels like a proper Zelda game, exploring feels natural, fresh, and invigorating, and even with the flimsiest pretences its hard to not get excited about the next dungeon, the items inside, and yet another instrument towards waking the Windfish and ending the dream that is this game. 

Speaking of the dungeons, which for the only time in the Zelda series are never referred to as such or as Temples, are perfectly done. They are complex enough in scope to provide challenge to any gamer, yet small enough to be comfortable for on-the-go gaming in that you won't forget what you were up to when you need to put the system down. This could be said for the world itself as well, with a fairly large overworld featuring memorable and detailed settings, and colouration that does not feel dated despite the age of the game. 

Gameplay is your standard top-down Zelda affair, with items bound to your A and B buttons, though I doubt anyone takes their sword off A except for some very stupid jumping puzzles involving the Pegasus Boots and Roc's Feather. I hope the person who green-lit that puzzle was pushed into one of the many pits I fell into after missing the timing. Each dungeon (and a few minor subquests) feature items that help cross the gaps that prevent you from sequence breaking in an open world, and all are fairly interesting and not totally gimmicky. Two notes are that the usually-common Boomerang is actually the product of a long trading cycle, and is a powerful enough weapon to drop the final boss in a single shot; and that this is the Zelda title that debuted the item now that comes to mind when most people think Zelda after a sword and shield - the Ocarina. 

The 3DS screen lets the GBC colours shine clearly, but also brings a new wealth of problems. While you can save using a single restore state through the console, trying to save "properly" to relive the experience like the original is immensely frustrating, as hitting the SELECT, START, A, and B buttons was hard enough on the GBC, and with the 3DS's ridiculous design for Select and Start makes it immensely frustrating. Not as frustrating, however, as pressing the power button thinking it was start (as that location was Start on the DS Lite) and being told "Game software closed, do you want to go to sleep or power off?" No notifications or anything, just "Boom, hope you saved recently!"

While characters are fairly sparse in the game, the cast is memorable enough that you don't forget who is who, which makes the fact that the ending you thought was bad when you were eleven is still horrible even worse. At least potentially the most likeable character (Marin) gets some resolution, but this is a 1990s video game before difficulty was wrapped in protective foam, so finishing the game with 0 deaths is an immense challenge.. that is required to even see Marin's role in the finale. 

So, has the game survived the test of time? Yes. I'm actually concerned Ocarina of Time 3D will remind me how portable games need to feel portable and be paced appropriately. This is an adventure you can still get lost in, but you don't need to be paranoid about missing your bus stop if you want to pick up and play on the go either. Most gripes are products of the 3DS hardware implementation, or rehashes of the same problem that's been there since 1993 - the goddamn ending. It makes you feel like there should be something else, just like in this paragraph.