The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is a 1993 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy. It is the first installment in The Legend of Zelda series to be released on a handheld game console. Link's Awakening is one of the few Zelda games not to take place in the land of Hyrule, and it does not feature Princess Zelda or the Triforce relic. Instead, the protagonist Link begins the game stranded on Koholint Island, a place guarded by a whale-like deity called the Wind Fish. Assuming the role of Link, the player fights monsters and solves puzzles while searching for eight musical instruments that will awaken the sleeping Wind Fish and allow him to escape from the island.
Development began as an effort to port the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game A Link to the Past to the Game Boy, developed after-hours by Nintendo staff. It grew into an original project under the direction of Takashi Tezuka, with a story and script created by Yoshiaki Koizumi and Kensuke Tanabe. The majority of the Link to the Past team reassembled for Link's Awakening, and Tezuka wanted the game world to feel like the television series Twin Peaks. After a development period of one and a half years, Link's Awakening was released in Japan in June 1993 and worldwide later in the year.
Link's Awakening was critically and commercially successful. Critics praised the game's depth and number of features; complaints focused on its control scheme and monochrome graphics. An updated rerelease, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX, was released for the Game Boy Color in 1998 featuring color graphics, compatibility with the Game Boy Printer, and an exclusive color-based dungeon. The game has sold four million units worldwide, and has appeared on multiple game publications' lists of the best video games of all time. A high-definition remake developed by Grezzo for the Nintendo Switch was released in 2019.
Gameplay
thumb|left|The protagonist, Link, battles an enemy. The bottom of the screen displays equipped items, [[Hyrule#Currency|rupees, and the character's hearts or health.
Link's Awakening uses the same inventory/control system as in Ultima: Runes of Virtue (released two years earlier). The player can assign any item in the inventory to either the button "A" or "B".
Link's Awakening was the first overhead-perspective Zelda game to allow Link to jump; this enables sidescrolling sequences similar to those in the earlier Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Synopsis
Setting and characters
Unlike most The Legend of Zelda titles, Link's Awakening is set outside the kingdom of Hyrule. It omits locations and characters from previous games, aside from protagonist Link and a passing mention of Princess Zelda. Instead, the game takes place entirely on Koholint Island, Within the Zelda timeline, Link's Awakening takes place after Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past, but before Oracle of Seasons and Ages.
In Link's Awakening, the player is given advice and directions by non-player characters such as Ulrira, a shy old man who communicates with Link exclusively by telephone. The game contains cameo appearances by characters from other Nintendo titles, such as Wart, Yoshi, Kirby, Dr. Wright (renamed Mr. Write) from the Super NES version of SimCity, and the exiled prince Richard from The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls. Chomp, an enemy from the Mario series, was included after a programmer gave Link the ability to grab the creature and take it for a walk. Enemies from Super Mario Bros. such as Goombas and Piranha Plants also appear in underground side-scrolling sections; Link may land on top of them much as with Super Mario Bros., or he can attack them in the usual way: the two methods yield different bonuses. Director Takashi Tezuka said that the game's "freewheeling" development made Link's Awakening seem like a parody of The Legend of Zelda series.
Plot
After the events of A Link to the Past, the hero Link travels by ship to other countries to train for further threats. A storm destroys his boat at sea, and he washes ashore on Koholint Island, where he is taken to the house of Tarin by his daughter Marin. She is fascinated by Link and the outside world, and tells Link wishfully that, if she were a seagull, she would leave and travel across the sea. After Link recovers his sword, a mysterious owl tells him that he must wake the Wind Fish, Koholint's guardian, in order to return home. The Wind Fish lies dreaming in a giant egg on top of Mt. Tamaranch, and can only be awakened by the eight Instruments of the Sirens.
Link proceeds to explore a series of dungeons in order to recover the eight instruments. During his search for the sixth instrument, Link goes to the Ancient Ruins. There he finds a mural that details the reality of the island: that it is merely a dream world created by the Wind Fish. After this revelation, the owl tells Link that this is only a rumor, and only the Wind Fish knows for certain whether it is true. Throughout Koholint Island, nightmare creatures attempt to obstruct Link's quest for the instruments, as they wish to rule the Wind Fish's dreamworld.
After collecting all eight instruments from the eight dungeons across Koholint, Link climbs to the top of Mt. Tamaranch and plays the Ballad of the Wind Fish. Its final transformation is "DethI", a cyclopean, dual-tentacled Shadow. After Link defeats DethI, the owl reveals itself to be the Wind Fish's spirit, and the Wind Fish confirms that Koholint is all his dream. When Link plays the Ballad of the Wind Fish again, he and the Wind Fish awaken; Koholint Island and all its inhabitants slowly disappear. Link finds himself lying on his ship's driftwood in the middle of the ocean, with the Wind Fish flying overhead. If the player did not lose any lives during the game, Marin is shown flying after the ending credits finish.
Development
Link's Awakening began as an unsanctioned side project; programmer Kazuaki Morita created a Zelda-like game with one of the first Game Boy development kits, and he used it to experiment with the platform's capabilities. Other staff members of the Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development division joined him after-hours and worked on the game in what seemed to them like an "afterschool club". The results of these experiments with the Game Boy started to look promising. Following the 1991 release of the Super NES video game A Link to the Past, director Takashi Tezuka asked for permission to develop a handheld Zelda title; he intended it to be a port of A Link to the Past, but it evolved into an original game. The majority of the team that had created A Link to the Past was reassembled to advance this new project. Altogether, it took them one and a half years to develop Link's Awakening.
thumb|upright|Designer Yoshiaki Koizumi was in charge of the game's story and conceived major plot points, such as the dream world island setting.|alt=A long-haired man wearing a coat and a striped shirt.
Tezuka recalled that the early free-form development of Link's Awakening resulted in the game's "unrestrained" contents, such as the unauthorized cameo appearances of characters from the Mario and Kirby series. Tezuka sought to make Link's Awakening a spin-off, and he gave Tanabe instructions to omit common series elements such as Princess Zelda, the Triforce relic, and the setting Hyrule.
Later on, Yoshiaki Koizumi, who had previously helped with the plot of A Link to the Past, was brought into the team. Link's Awakening was described by series producer Eiji Aonuma as the first Zelda game with a proper plot, which he attributed to Koizumi's romanticism. Tezuka intended the game's world to have a similar feeling to the American television series Twin Peaks, which, like Link's Awakening, features characters in a small town. Tanabe implemented a previous idea of the world ending when a massive egg breaks on top of a mountain; this idea was originally meant for A Link to the Past. Tanabe really wanted to see this idea in a game and was able to implement it in Link's Awakening as the basic concept.
Masanao Arimoto and Shigefumi Hino designed the game's characters, while Yoichi Kotabe served as illustrator. Save for the opening and the ending, all pictures in the game were drawn by Arimoto. Super Smash Bros. Brawl includes a remix of the game's "Tal Tal Heights" theme, which has since returned in subsequent Super Smash Bros. titles.
In an interview about the evolution of the Zelda series, Aonuma called Link's Awakening the "quintessential isometric Zelda game". At another time, he stated that, had the game not come after A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time would have been very different. Several elements from Link's Awakening were re-used in later Zelda titles; for example, programmer Morita created a fishing minigame that reappeared in Ocarina of Time, among others. Tanabe implemented a trading sequence; Tezuka compared it to the Japanese Straw Millionaire folktale, in which someone trades up from a piece of straw to something of greater value. This concept also appeared in most sequels. The event, which lasted three days, allowed select players to test Link's Awakening in a timed race to complete the game. The event was meant not only to showcase the game, but also the Game Boy's superior battery life and portability, the latter of which was critical to the accessibility of a portable Zelda title.
In 1998, to promote the launch of the Game Boy Color, Nintendo re-released Link's Awakening as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. It features fully colorized graphics and is backward compatible with the original Game Boy. Link's Awakening DX contains a new optional dungeon, with unique enemies and puzzles based on color (due to this, the dungeon cannot be accessed on the earlier non-color Game Boy models). For Link's Awakening DX, Tezuka returned as project supervisor, with Yoshinori Tsuchiyama as the new director.
Remakes
Nintendo later re-released the DX version on the Virtual Console of the Nintendo 3DS in June 2011. In July 2013, Link's Awakening DX was offered as one of several Virtual Console games which "elite status" members of the North America Club Nintendo could redeem as a free gift. A high-definition remake was developed by Grezzo and released for the Nintendo Switch on September 20, 2019.
Link's Awakening was included in a Zelda-themed Game & Watch console alongside The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. It was released on November 12, 2021.