A Portable Adventure Fit for the Super Nintendo

The Game Boy was an impressive piece of kit. A portable handheld that could put out games nearly to the level of the NES. It came out around the time when so many other competitors, from the Sega Game Gear to the Atari Lynx, were trying to crank out 16-bit color graphics and natural ports from their consoles, and here was Nintendo with this blocky, toy-like, little black-and-white console that didn’t seem all that impressive at all. But its base hardware was solid, its battery life was insane, and kids couldn’t easily destroy it. Although Nintendo treated the Game Boy like an afterthought when it first came out (seriously, check out the Nintendo Power coverage for the system in its first year on the market, and you’ll see Nintendo didn’t know what to do with it), it eventually went on to dominate portable gaming and destroyed all its competitors.

At a certain point, Nintendo realized they had something special with the Game Boy, and then decided to bring some of their biggest franchises to the system. Yes, Super Mario Land was one of the first releases for the portable (at least here in the U.S.), but it was practically a microgame, there simply to say, “hey, Super Mario is here.” When the console really took off, that’s what Nintendo tried to bring their A-list titles, even looking for ways to downport SNES like gameplay to the Game Boy’s tiny hardware. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins was like Super Mario World on the Game Boy, and then there was The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, which felt like its SNES big brother in every way that mattered. “Legend of ZeldaCreated by Nintendo in 1986, the original Legend of Zelda game presented players with a open world to explore, packed with dungeons and monsters all ready to kill them at a moment's notice. The mix of adventure and action game play created a winning game and launched not only a successful series but an entirely new video game genre.?! On the Game Boy? That’s unpossible!”

Bringing the game to the Game Boy was an impressive feat. Although you can go back and look at the graphics from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and notice how simple they are, how low the color count can be on many of the sprites, the game still looked great. Through the whole lifespan of the SNES the game was considered a “killer app”, a must buy for anyone that had an SNES. And then Nintendo came and said, “yep, we can do this on the Game Boy,” too, and suddenly everyone that had a love for the Zelda franchise needed not only a copy of the game but the Game Boy to go with it. This was the app so many kids were looking for.

When you boot it up, the game does feel like an SNES adventure. Yes, it’s black and white (or simple colors if you’re playing the Game Boy Color version), but the graphics still seem rich and the controls are spot on. If you’d played through the SNES game then with this title you would feel like you were transported right back there for a whole new adventure. There’s Link, there’s the familiar enemies, there’s all the gear you expect, and it’s all laid out on the Game Boy, letting you in for a whole new adventure. Nintendo did right by the game, turning out a gorgeously detailed version on their little portable console.

Now here’s where I say some controversial things: I don’t like this game as much as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I do think the game is great, but it is hard to compare this game to the SNES original, which is a masterpiece. I love the SNES game, and I will go back every few years and play it again. This Game Boy game is fun, and I love how it looks, but it never managed to sink its claws into me the way the SNES game could. I’ve played through it once, and then felt like I’d done all I needed to because, well, it’s another Zelda game.

Link’s Awakening does some things to push the format forward, which I can appreciate. Because the Game Boy only had two control buttons for all its actions, Nintendo elected to let you hot swap the various items you get, from the leaping Roc Feature, to the Power Bracelet, and even your sword and shield, on the A and B buttons. On the one hand this is nice because you have some flexibility about how to set things up and can find interesting combinations. At the same time, though, I don’t actually like all that swapping since I would often get confused about which thing was mapped where and I’d screw up my actions. Most of the time I just went with the Sword on B, Feather on A, and ignored everything else until I got to a puzzle that forced me to do something else. It was more of a pain, for me, than a power.

I also didn’t care as much for the world of Koholint. That’s the island that Link lands on here, where he has to collect the eight instruments to wake the Wind Fish and escape. It’s amusing to see alternate versions of some of the characters here, various crossover references from other games, and the like. But it also didn’t ever feel like the characters here were as richly detailed or interesting as I’d like. There are so many characters, with so many needs, and so much you are supposed to do for them, but you are never given a reason to care. “Oh, this dude wants me to deliver letters. Oh, this kid needs a Yoshi doll.” They were all fetch quest receptacles for a means to an end, and I didn’t care at all. A Link to the Past had its fetches too, but the world was just sparsely dotted enough that I didn’t feel like I was being forced to care about all the characters. If people are a means to an end, don’t try and force them to be cute so I am supposed to try and care.

The dungeons are also a mixed bag as well. Some are interesting, like the lava dungeon and a few of the more complex puzzles and bosses you can find along the way. But certain dungeons are just painful to get through. I hated the tower where I had to use a ball to knock down pillars, so that I could then access the boss. And this was a game where I really learned to despite water dungeons because all that swimming, and searching, and dying just became annoying after a while. There are great ideas here, but I never fell in love with the execution.

I think the thing that annoyed me the most, though, was that you didn’t just get an upgraded sword when the plot allowed it. There were secret seashells hidden all around the world and you had to find them. Get enough of them and the powered up level two sword was unlocked. Miss a few and suddenly you were locked out of your power. It put an arbitrary cap on what you could get because you didn’t search every nook and cranny hard enough to find one single shell you needed for a bigger sword. It was obnoxious.

I’ll be honest, I don’t even like trying to find all the pieces of heart that became a mainstay in the Zelda franchise. I get to a certain point where it’s like, “if I miss a few then I miss a few because I’m not spending the next three hours trying to find one shard I need to get maxed hearts.” That’s how I felt about the powered up sword. “Well, I’ve missed this and I’m never getting it now.” Except it’s even worse because if you miss one heart container you’re still nearly as powerful as you were before. If you miss the shells, though, you’re quite literally half as strong as you should be, and you might need all that power to kill the final few bosses. An arbitrary barrier to entry like this feels bad.

With all that said, the game does have its charms. It managed to take the basic look, feel, and concepts of the SNES game and bring them to the Game Boy. And then it ended up defining the 2D Zelda series for a few years, with the two Oracle games taking the same engine (including item swapping) and using that for big, new adventures. There is a lot to like in this game if you can get into it, and I know plenty of people who consider (some version of) this game to be their absolute favorite. Who am I to say they’re wrong? The game doesn’t work as well for me but it clearly worked for them.

And it worked for a lot of people. During its lifespan, the original version of the game sold close to 4 Mil copies. Its deluxe Game Boy Color remake added an additional 2.22 Mil copies as well to that sales total, and then the Virtual Console addition added 338k more. Over 6 Mil copies were sold of this game, which is a solid number for any game, but especially for a Game Boy title. It’s so popular that it’s one of the few Zelda games to get a proper remake, the Switch high-def remake also called The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, which added 6.46 Mil copies to its total. 12 Mil copies, in some form, have been sold of Link’s Awakening. That’s a truly staggering number.

So yes, this game was a cultural moment for Nintendo. It pushed the Zelda series forward, it added new concepts, and it became a beloved entry in the franchise for many, many fans. All quibbling about the game aside, that probably let’s it rank right up there with A Link to the Past on most “best of lists”, I’d think.