I first played Link's Awakening when I was 4. I got my copy from Phat Boy's Video Games which in 2009 went out of business and was turned into a Game Stop. On my way home from Phat Boy's Video Games in the back of my mom's Geo Prism, I played Link's Awakening DX in the ugly stretched out mode on my Game Boy Advance SP achieved by pressing the shoulder buttons. I played no more than getting to the forest on that car trip home.
I never finished Link's Awakening until this year, and before this I did not make it farther than the second dungeon. But with just that narrow slice I knew that it was then my 2nd favorite top-down Zelda game.
I came back to Link's Awakening this year. This time I came at the game with a more scholarly disposition. I framed it to myself as research for the game I have been writing in C; that aspires to be nothing more than a clone of Link's Awakening but with rogue-like elements inserted in with all the tactfulness of a new Pokemon generations' gimmick.
In Link's Awakening there a many objects that occupy the width of a tile: pots, rocks, and different kinds of rocks. At the start of the game, you can push only a certain kind of rock. But EVERY SINGLE TIME you press against a big rock or a pot your game freezes as you have to navigate a slow rolling THREE dialogue box-spanning finger-waggle session hinting that you need the power bracelet that can be acquired in the second dungeon.
This kind of mechanical exposition is the laziest kind you can cram into a game. Its' presence being anchored behind the crawling text roll and three presses of the A button makes it all the more tedious. On this surface, this complaint is on the level of internet game knit-picking to make an earnest man cry. But this petty strife just could not escape my mind as I made my way through the first hours of this game. It was so striking to me that I felt to write this post exclusively about it.
What makes it stand out so is just that the rest of the game is so masterfully crafted. Seriously, this game does kicks the cock off of Ocarina of Time and Super Metroid, combined (Doom's shotgun noise). Also its' combat is better than Skyrim something the 3D Zeldas sincerely cannot claim. So much so that I would rather kill myself than not make a clone that preserves all of the finely tuned UI and Game-loop elements.
In spite of my exquisite taste in games as a 5 year old, I was wrong to assume that the original Legend of Zelda was better than Link's Awakening. Link's Awakening is the synthesis of all the lessons learned by games made up to that point in time.
Also frankly if you feel a lick of sympathy (or equally an ounce of pity) for my 5 year old self's love for the original Zelda's clockwork; the good parts of Skyrim exploration, before I had even heard of chess, you should check your phone in front of a moving bus. (Doom's shotgun noise)
Link's Awakening released in 1993, 8 years before I was born was basically the best game that had been released up to that point. Its' legacy rightfully earned among those who listen. But to be so close to perfection but to come just short because of a text crawling I find to be the most tragic form of irony. A machine with gears so narrowly calibrated that John Carmack still rolls around and pisses in bed thinking about it, is just so upsettingly tragic.
I eagerly wait for the night that a steam page is spawned, containing a game remotely as solid in shape and form as Link's Awakening. A game doesn't hold itself down with the burden of the past and doesn't focus on something as mind-numbing as kiting enemies that chase you and with puzzles as primitive as Atari's adventure.
I am waiting for the night.
