I posted this piece to
a Zelda forum a while back, but
after recently playing through the original black and white Link’s Awakening (I’d previously only
ever played the Game Boy Color “DX” version), I thought I’d revisit these
thoughts and expand on them. Heavy spoilers for Link’s Awakening are in the latter half of this post, but I’ll warn
you beforehand when we get there, as well as put a marker where the spoilers
end.
The first Legend of
Zelda game I ever played and completed was The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX for the Game Boy Color. I
remember my older brother showed me the original black and white version of Link’s Awakening and simply said
something like, “This is Zelda.” I recall looking over his shoulder and
watching him fight Moblins in the Mysterious Woods (from that day on, I would
never, ever forget that music). I was immediately intrigued. I picked up the
newer, color version of the game and dived in. I spent so much time just being
enthralled at how you could cut grass and practiced doing a spin-attack to cut
as much grass as possible in Mabe Village, where this adventure begins.
Link’s Awakening
has a mysterious nature that I still can’t quite accurately describe to this
day. The special, surreal feeling that this game exudes has remained unique to
it even all these years, and many other games, later. After about a year of
being stuck on a puzzle in the game’s second dungeon, Bottle Grotto (the one
where you must defeat three enemies in a certain order), I fully immersed
myself in the game during a week of being home sick from school with strep
throat. I’ll never forget that initial playthrough. The endless feeling of
discovery and intrigue the game provided was something I’d never experienced in
a game before. I realize today that this sense of discovery was one of the key
factors that initially attracted me to Zelda,
and adventure and exploration games in general.
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| Link's Awakening DX for Game Boy Color |
The entire experience is layered with mystery in a way that
no other Zelda game has quite
captured for me, not even Majora’s Mask,
the spiritual successor to Link’s
Awakening (don’t get me wrong: Majora
is magnificent and mysterious in its own right, and equally as special in its
own unique way). The game is full of baffling discoveries whose true purposes
only become clear when you find the right tool, character, plot device or when
you unlock some other mystery. I remember the first time I entered the
abandoned House by the Bay. The music was so lonely and I could only wonder
what the significance of this dark, decrepit shack was. Who lived there? Where
were they now? Then there are the numerous secret passages and caves that one
can find that lie just out of reach and seem impossible to get to, as well as
countless other puzzling circumstances present in the game (why is there a
flamethrower blocking my path in this cave, and how do I get past it?). The
feeling of finally figuring out how to reach one of those secrets or solve one
of those puzzling scenarios is one of the most satisfying feelings in all of my
gaming career. Of course, you could attribute these elements to many Zelda games, but this one feels
especially puzzling and cryptic at times (in a good way), often dangling a
tantalizing secret in front of the player but leaving it up to them to figure
out how to solve it. And then of course there is the incredibly memorable cast
of characters and enigmatic narrative.
Everything and everyone in the game gives off this surreal,
almost suspicious vibe. Character dialogue ranges from comically puzzling: “Yep!
Those're my boys! I'm Papahl,
pleased ta meetcha! I'll be lost in the hills later, so keep a look out for me,
hear?” to oddly suspicious: “HO HO
HO! I'm your bad guy this time!! HO HO HO!” to just plain surreal: “I dreamed that I turned into a carrot last
night… What an odd dream...” The central narrative that winds through
Link’s adventure is also shrouded in mystery, and the odd (yet charming) cast
of characters only builds on this enigma. What are the mysterious Owl’s
motivations? Who or what is the Wind Fish? Just what exactly is going on?
Nothing is ever quite clear, and as a young kid playing it for the first time,
the entire experience felt something like a dream.
…and Spoiler Alert
for those that haven’t experienced this handheld gem… (skip the next four paragraphs to avoid major spoilers)
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| Koholint Island, the setting of Link's Awakening |
…that’s because it is
a dream. But this isn’t your typical “it was all a dream” story that reveals
the twist at the very end as the main character wakes up, and doesn’t explore
the concept any further than that. In Link’s
Awakening, the dream narrative is woven into every facet of the game’s
world and character interactions. Hints are dropped everywhere about the true
nature of Koholint Island, and roughly three quarters into the adventure, the
truth is revealed to the player, leaving them to ponder it for the remainder of
the game and question every step they take. But this isn’t Link’s dream; the
entire world in the game along with all of its inhabitants and a visiting Link
exist within the dream of a slumbering deity-like being known as the “Wind Fish”. I said earlier that I can’t quite accurately describe the atmosphere of Link’s Awakening, but the best and most
obviously appropriate adjective to use is “dreamlike”. One of the interesting
aspects of this story is that all of the main characters are driven by selfish
motivations, including Link, who wants to wake the Wind Fish so he can leave
the island; likewise, the Owl, as an agent of the Wind Fish’s subconscious,
manipulates Link into waking up the being, the “villainous” Nightmares…well,
we’re told that they want to take over the island, but it seems to me like
they’re just trying to protect their own existence. You see, if the Wind Fish
wakes up, the dream will end and Koholint Island and everything and everyone on
it will disappear.
The friendly couple with the quadruplets in Mabe Village?
Gone. The two pen-pals trading letters? Gone. A chef that wants to start a
restaurant chain on the island? Gone. And then there’s Marin, a curious young
girl fascinated with Link for one reason: he is from outside the island. Marin
envies the seagulls and wonders where they come from, she wishes she could
sprout wings as well and discover what lies beyond the sea. Her curiosity and
actions seem to be those of a sentient, intelligent being. But when the Wind
Fish wakes up? She never existed…or did she?
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| Marin opens up to Link about her dreams |
That’s the question at the heart of Link’s Awakening, and it’s a harrowingly complex one for a humble
little Game Boy game that first released in 1993, and in a larger context for
video games as a whole at the time. In the end, Link destroys the last of the
Nightmares (who had been keeping the Wind Fish asleep interminably so their
world would never disappear…can’t say I blame them), wakes the Wind Fish, and
we watch helplessly as the island and all of its inhabitants are wiped from
existence. Link wakes up in the middle of the ocean, floating on the wreckage
of his ship, and watches the Wind Fish fly overhead as the credits roll, before
“The End” pops up on the screen. It’s a starkly simple but appropriate ending.
Just as the Wind Fish tells Link at the end: “It be the nature of dreams to
end”. Have you ever had a dream that felt so real, so tangible in the moment,
only to suddenly awaken and feel a sense of sadness that all of it is gone
forever? I have. Sometimes when I’ve first awoken, I’ve tried to fall back
asleep, to go back to the adventure that I was having. But I can’t. It’s gone,
existing only in my memory and soon that will likely be gone too.
Now, if the player manages to complete the entire quest
without ever dying (something I’ve never managed to do as it’s very easy to die
in Link’s Awakening), we are greeted
with an extra scene that differs slightly between the original black and white version and the DX version, but both basically amount to the same meaning.
Essentially, it is implied in this bonus ending that Marin gets her wish and
becomes a seagull. This provides some touching closure for Marin’s character
and it also raises even more questions about just how real the world of
Koholint really was. I can’t think of another action/adventure video game where
the world and all of its people is not only not saved at the end of the
adventure, but is completely obliterated, and at the “hero’s” own hands no
less. This one aspect is enough to make Link’s
Awakening unforgettable for me.
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| Marin |
Major Spoilers end
here for those who skipped ahead.
Beyond the mysteries and the intriguing narrative though, Link’s Awakening was a trendsetter for
the rest of the Zelda series, and it
never seems to get any credit for it. Not only was this the first time we see
Link venture away from Hyrule, Princess Zelda, Ganon, the Triforce and all that
business into a completely new place with a completely new story, mythology and
characters, but Link’s Awakening also
pioneered several trends that would go on to define Zelda games in the future, and that had an especially large
influence on the Zelda game that
immediately followed, that being the most widely regarded game in the series
(and one of the most widely regarded video games of all time), Ocarina of Time. A large cast of
uniquely quirky NPCs, a large trading quest that stretches across a sizable
portion of the game (a la the Biggoron’s Sword quest in Ocarina of Time), a large collectathon side-quest, fishing,
dungeons with unique background music and more of their own personality, a
talking owl that serves as the hero’s guide, an ocarina with a more expanded
role that plays several different songs used for warping and solving puzzles,
and even the Lens of Truth (known as the Magnifying Lens here, but it
essentially serves the same function) all come from Link’s Awakening. I’m sure many people would be quick to credit Ocarina of Time for bringing all of
these elements into Zelda, but nope,
it was the first handheld title in the series; a humble, often underappreciated
little masterwork that established all of this. Ocarina of Time only developed these elements even further, and later
titles continued to develop them and add to them. I would argue that Link’s Awakening is just as important to
what the Zelda series would
ultimately become and be known for as A Link to the Past is. As for the influence that Link’s Awakening has had on me personally, that should be clear by
now: it’s one of the most important works of art in my life and continues to
inspire me all the time.
So basically what I’m saying is that if you’ve never played Link’s Awakening, I highly recommend you
change that, dammit! It is one of the deepest and most unique games in the Zelda series and tied as my personal
favorite, along with Majora’s Mask
and The Wind Waker. You don’t have to
know anything about the Zelda series
to get something out of this game (it was my personal first after all), so even
if you have no experience with the franchise, I’d still recommend checking Link’s Awakening out. You can still find
the original Game Boy cartridge and the DX Game Boy Color version online, but
if you own a 3DS, you can simply download the DX version from the eShop for a
few bucks (that’s the version I recommend anyway). Hey, while you’re at it, you
can also download two Zelda games
that are even more overlooked than Link’s
Awakening: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, both of which also come
with a high recommendation from yours truly.
What are your thoughts on Link’s Awakening? Do you have a similar memory of your first Zelda experience? Or of your experience
with the first game you played in one of your favorite series? What video games
give you a sense of wonder and mystery similar to my experiences with Link’s Awakening? Let me know! I’d love
to hear about it!
Thanks for reading!
