Zelda: Link’s Awakening
(Switch)
By: Nintendo
Just as Breath of the Wild gave people reason to buy Nintendo’s Switch, the portable’s sophomore Zelda lands just in time to flog the handheld-only Switch Lite.
A mere 26 years since Link’s Awakening squeezed Zelda onto primitive Game Boy screens, the fourth in the venerable series gets a second gasp. And given no one looks after their properties like Nintendo, this is no simple lick of paint.
One of the few games in the canon not to feature Hyrule, Princess Zelda or the Triforce, Link’s Awakening instead finds our young hero washed up on Koholint Island. Guarded by the Wind Fish, there's a small but densely packed map to traverse, dungeons to master and lashings of side challenges in an offbeat quest for eight musical instruments – culminating in one of the most genuinely poignant twists every committed to a Nintendo game.
A simpler, back to basics adventure stripped of this century’s hand-holding, its occasionally obtuse puzzles leave players poking around to their own devices, the way it used to be – though muscle memory will kick in for vets. Gone are Breath of the Wild’s sprawling 3D vistas, replaced with a resolutely old-school top-down RPG that updates a two-button control scheme with quality-of-life features such as map markers and bottles for fairies.
The original’s dot-matrix blur is now a searing blaze of colour, with cutesy toy models and a whiff of angular modernity added to the bird’s eye perspective. Nintendo haven’t just added some lipstick – this is a full Harley Street makeover, turning the fossilized original into a rubbery, fuzzy diorama. Though its scrolling world does chug a bit when entering new areas (a rare lack of spit for a Nintendo title), the overall effect is still incredible considering how low-tech the source material was.
Apart from the tech upgrade, this is Link's Awakening as it was in '93. Everything is where you remember – it’s just now in glorious Technicolor, beaming from its new home with all the wide-eyed innocence of a CBeebies show. And that wonderful soundtrack – the original's strongest suit - is given a hipster chamber orchestra do-over that classes the joint up no end.
Taking 42nd place on the Guinness World Records' list of the most important and influential games of all time, Link’s Awakening wowed on Nintendo’s first handheld and it’s no less amazing on their latest. And given most Switch owners won't have troubled the original, this unearthed relic feels as funky fresh as a brand-new Zelda – so eat, Link and be merry. Who says they don’t make ‘em like that anymore?
