The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

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The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
The Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening.png
Logo from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Original title ゼ ル ダ の 伝 説 夢 を み る 島
transcription Zeruda no Densetsu: Yume o Miru Shima
Studio
Publisher Nintendo
Senior Developer
  • Takashi Tezuka (Director)
  • Shigeru Miyamoto (producer)
    		•
    Erstveröffent-
    lichung    		 JapanJapanJune 6, 1993 August 1993 November 1993
    North AmericaNorth America
    EuropeEurope
    platform Game Boy
    genre Action adventure
    Subject Fantasy
    Game mode Single player
    medium Game Boy module
    language German, English, French, Japanese
    Age rating
    USK released from 0
    PEGI recommended for ages 3+

    The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (for example: The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening ; jap. ゼ ル ダ の 伝 説 夢 を み る 島 , Zeruda no Densetsu: Yume o Miru Shima , for example: The Legend of Zelda: The Dreamed Island ; in short: TLoZ: LA ) is a video game of the action-adventure genre, which the Japanese game console maker Nintendo in 1993 for the game Boy published. It is the fourth installment in The Legend of Zelda series and the first game in the series to be released for a handheld console . Link's Awakening was developed under the direction of Zelda co- founder Takashi Tezuka by a team at Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development .

    The game principle is based on that of the series predecessor A Link to the Past ( SNES , 1991). From a bird's eye view, the player takes on the role of the protagonist Link, who is stranded on the fictional island of Cocolint after a shipwreck. On this one can explore landscapes, fight battles and solve puzzles. The object of the game is to wake a creature known as a windfish so that you can leave Cocolint again.

    The mostly positive reviews of Link's Awakening from the trade press particularly praised the scope and the technical implementation of the title in view of the underperforming Game Boy hardware. With approximately four million units sold, the game proved to be commercially successful. In 1998 Nintendo brought a colored new edition for the Game Boy Color onto the market, which the manufacturer re-released as a download for the Nintendo 3DS in 2011 . Link's Awakening is considered to be groundbreaking within the Zelda series in terms of the plot, its narrative style and atmosphere as well as the game principle.

    In February 2019, a Nintendo Direct announced a new HD version of the game for the Nintendo Switch console , which was released on September 20 of the same year.

    Game description

    action

    After the protagonist Link has defeated the serial antagonist Ganon at the end of The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages / Oracle of Seasons , he undertakes a training trip that takes him across the sea. When he sails back to the Kingdom of Hyrule after months of voyage, he gets caught in a storm and is shipwrecked . He was found unconscious on the beach on the island of Cocolint by the local Marin. Link wants to leave the island in order to continue his journey; however, the locals claim that there is nothing but water outside the island.

    While he is looking for his sword on the beach of Cocolint , Link learns from a speaking eagle owl that he can only leave the island by waking the windfish from its sleep. This being rests in an egg which is on the top of the highest mountain on Cocolint. In order to wake the windfish, Link has to find the eight instruments of the sirens, which are hidden all over Cocolint. Following the instructions, Link explores the island and befriends some of its residents, including Marin. He also penetrates into labyrinthine temples, each of which houses one of the eight monster-protected instruments.

    In the course of his adventure, Link learns that Cocolint is not real , but only exists in the dream of the windfish. If he were to awaken this being, he could indeed escape from this world, but at the same time would end the existence of the island and its inhabitants. The monsters on the island and in the temples want to avert the end of their existence and that of the island and fight Link so that he does not get to the instruments of the sirens. The talking eagle owl that advises Link on his adventure is actually a manifestation of the windfish consciousness .

    Ultimately, Link succeeds in recovering all eight instruments. After he has played the ballad of the wind fish taught to him by Marin on an ocarina in front of the wind fish egg, the egg opens and the hero enters it. As Link finds out, the windfish is plagued by nightmares that take the physical forms of bosses from previous Zelda games, such as Ganon's. After Link has defeated these nightmares known as Dethl in battle, he plays the ballad of the windfish again. Then the windfish wakes up together with Link and the island and its inhabitants dissolve. Drifting on the water, Link regains consciousness and sees the windfish fly away. He then continues his journey to Hyrule.

    Gameplay

    Link's Awakening is designed for the Game Boy console. Console buttons v. l. Right: D-pad, Select, Start, B and A

    Link's Awakening is an action-adventure game whose gameplay - a mixture of exploration, fighting and puzzles - is based on that of its predecessor A Link to the Past . The player controls the Link character from the third-person perspective with the help of the Game Boy's control pad in a horizontal and vertical direction. The game world is divided into individual, screen-filling areas, most of which are shown from a bird's eye view ; some underground sections, however, are shown from the side. If the character leaves the current screen section, the game pauses briefly and the next area is displayed by scrolling . Due to the hardware, the graphics of the game are in black and white and there is no voice output . At the bottom of the screen, the game displays information about the equipment, the health of the character and the number of rubies collected .

    The game starts in the so-called "Mövendorf" on Cocolint. Initially, the character is only in possession of a sword and shield . As the game progresses it gets more objects ( items ) such as grasping pen with which she can jump, or the Power Bracelet can be lifted due to its heavy objects. These items enable special actions that are necessary for entering and traversing further areas and dungeons (called "temples" in the game) on Cocolint. The player can freely assign the items to the A or B key of the Game Boy; The former is also used context-sensitive to address characters, read signs and carry out further interactions. For some actions in the game two items have to be used at the same time.

    Left state of health is visualized by life points , referred to in the game as the "heart container" . If opponents injure the character or if it falls into abysses or lava, the heart display goes back accordingly, and as soon as all hearts are used up, the game attempt ends and the game starts again at the last entered entrance. Hearts, which the player can get by defeating opponents or cutting grass, improve the character's health. In the course of the game, the player can collect additional heart containers, and heart parts are hidden in the game world, four of which unlock an additional heart container.

    The aim of Link's Awakening is to track down, enter and explore the eight dungeons in a set order and defeat their respective bosses . The player is confronted with puzzles and opponents. As soon as he collects the dungeon map, he has a schematic overview of the respective labyrinth. In addition, the player can come into possession of a compass that marks the whereabouts of other treasures in a dungeon on the map and generates an acoustic signal when the player enters a room with a key that can open a previously locked door of the labyrinth. Another item available in dungeons is the beak of an owl statue, which activates the associated statues, which give the player clues to solve a puzzle. In addition to rubies, which serve as currency in the game, there are often keys in treasure chests distributed both in temples and in the upper world, with which further rooms of the dungeon can be opened. If the character reaches the whereabouts of a dungeon boss opponent and defeats him in battle, he receives an additional heart container as well as one of the instruments of the sirens and has mastered the dungeon. After all labyrinths have been mastered, the player unlocks the fight against the final boss of the game. As soon as this has been defeated, the game ends.

    History of origin

    development

    Because the studio Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development (EAD) had not yet developed a game for the Game Boy and Kazuaki Morita , an employee of the EAD collaborating company Systems Research & Development (SRD) and one of the main programmers of the previous Zelda parts wanted to determine its potential and familiarize himself with its architecture, after completing A Link to the Past in late 1991 , he experimented with the only Game Boy developer console in the studio. When the results exceeded the expectations of the Zelda team, they decided to develop a Zelda game for the Game Boy and incorporate the experience gained from these experiments into it. So Morita joined a few other Nintendo developers. At first the project was unofficial; the team worked it out after completing the prescribed working hours. In retrospect, the developers compared the atmosphere during this early phase to a workshop in 2009 . Finally, in 1991 the Zelda co- founder Takashi Tezuka officially applied for the development of a Zelda game for the Game Boy, for which the team received a second developer console. Originally, Tezuka and his co-developers planned a Game Boy implementation of A Link to the Past .

    Link's Awakening took a year and a half to develop . According to Tezuka, it was straightforward and fun for the development team. In the end credits 13 participating developers are called. As director, Tezuka managed all aspects of game development that Morita and another SRD programmer realized. Yōichi Kotabe acted as an illustrator . The collaboration of the Zelda creator and EAD manager Shigeru Miyamoto , who was involved in the project as a producer , was limited to game test runs and feedback based on them.

    A design sketch for the game, first published in 2011 in the book Hyrule Historia , visualizes a planned boss fight between two characters. In combination with a handwritten note next to the sketch sites closed as Destructoid fact that the developer for Link's Awakening a co-op planned for two players, they rejected later.

    Plot and scenario

    • Yoshiaki Koizumi

    • Kensuke Tanabe (center)

    Tezuka, who was planning a smaller game after developing A Link to the Past , made some guidelines for the plot to be developed for the new project. Central elements of the previously published The Legend of Zelda games should be dispensed with, for example the princess of the same name, the magical Triforce or the kingdom of Hyrule as the game world. Tezuka also intended the plot and atmosphere of his game to have influences from the then-popular US mystery, crime, and horror television series Twin Peaks . The characters in Link's Awakening were designed to be “suspicious” and the plot should “be easy to understand in terms of its scope, but still be characterized by profound and distinctive characters”.

    Kensuke Tanabe , who started work on Link's Awakening relatively early, wrote the basics of the game plot and brought in his idea, which has existed since the development of A Link to the Past , of an ice resting on the top of the mountain of an island. In addition, he invented many of the characters and wrote - apart from those of the windfish and the owl - all the dialogues of the game. The team later hired Yoshiaki Koizumi , who had previously worked on the plot of A Link to the Past . The main story of Link's Awakening comes from Koizumi .

    In Link's Awakening , there are cameos of characters from other Nintendo games like characters from the Super Mario series or Kirby from the same series. In an interview, Tezuka justified the inclusion of such cameos with the free atmosphere at the beginning of the project development, the influence of which can be felt in the final product. As this resulted in a game atmosphere, which in previous Zelda did not give -Play, development've felt when you develop a Zelda - parody .

    music

    The soundtrack of Link's Awakening was created by the Nintendo composers Kozue Ishikawa and Minako Hamano, who both made their composer debut with the game. Kazumi Totaka was responsible for the sound effects and programming . A track known as "Totaka's Song", which Totaka used as an Easter Egg in almost all games with his involvement, is also in Link's Awakening .

    As part of the 2012 global concert tour The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses , an orchestral arrangement of the ballad of the windfish from Link's Awakening was played.

    Publication and sales

    The game, initially titled as Zelda IV , was originally supposed to be released in North America in the spring of 1993. In Japan it came out on June 6, 1993 under the title ゼ ル ダ の 伝 説 夢 を み る 島 , Zeruda no Densetsu: Yume o Miru Shima , translated as: The legend of Zelda: The dreamed island . Nintendo released the game in North America in August 1993 and in Europe in November of that year. It was released about four years after the Game Boy was launched and, apart from an offshoot published in 1989 as Game & Watch , is the first Zelda game for a handheld. Link's Awakening is located on a Game Boy module , the ROM of which has a storage capacity of 4 megabits . The English translation of the game texts was done by Daniel Owsen; the version intended for the German market was translated by the then editor-in-chief of Club Nintendo magazine , Claude M. Moyse.

    In 2004, Eiji Aonuma , later producer of The Legend of Zelda , confirmed that the Game Boy version of Link's Awakening had sold 3.83 million copies worldwide. According to Enterbrain , Nintendo sold around half a million units in Japan.

    New editions

    The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX

    The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX
    Studio
    • JapanJapan Nintendo R & D2 (planning, design and sound)
    • JapanJapan SRD (programming)
    • JapanJapan Nintendo EAD (Supervising)
    Publisher Nintendo
    Senior Developer
  • Yoshinori Tsuchiyama (Director)
  • Takashi Tezuka ( supervisor )
  • Shigeru Miyamoto (producer)
    		•
    Erstveröffent-
    lichung    		 Game Boy Color December 12, 1998 December 1998 January 1, 1999 Nintendo 3DS June 7, 2011 June 8, 2011 June 8, 2011 June 8, 2011
    JapanJapan
    United StatesUnited States
    EuropeEurope

    United StatesUnited States
    JapanJapan
    EuropeEurope
    AustraliaAustralia
    platform Game Boy, Game Boy Color , Nintendo 3DS
    genre Action adventure
    Game mode Single player
    control Gameboy (Color)
    medium Gameboy- plug-in module , Download
    language German, English, French, Japanese
    Age rating
    USK released from 0
    PEGI recommended for ages 3+
    information Supports the Game Boy Printer

    For the Game Boy Color (GBC), Nintendo's Research & Development 2 (R & D2) department, in cooperation with the EAD, developed a colored new edition under the title The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX . The game, which is also playable on the Game Boy, was released in Japan on December 12, 1998, in North America that same month, and in Europe on January 1, 1999.

    The new edition Link's Awakening DX has been supplemented by compatibility with the Game Boy Printer.

    Link's Awakening DX includes an additional dungeon that is based on color puzzles and can only be unlocked on the Game Boy Color. The developers also added a photo shop in the DX version. In the game, the main character is photographed at certain points and the resulting photos can be viewed later by the player and also printed out via the additional Game Boy Printer . Compared to the German version of Link's Awakening , dialogues with sexual allusions were replaced by harmless variants in the new edition for the German edition. In addition, the changes to the American version were also adopted in Europe. Compared to the Japanese version, the lost bikini top of a mermaid has been replaced by a pearl necklace and a slightly clad character has been changed.

    In 1999, IGN author Adam Cleveland praised the coloring, the additional dungeon and the printer compatibility of the new edition. In 2002, Peer Schneider described it as a so-called killer application that could boost sales of the Game Boy Color. The new edition sold 2.22 million copies worldwide, 300,000 of them in Japan.

    Republication

    In 1996, Nintendo relaunched Link's Awakening under the “Player's Choice” label in North America and in Europe as part of the “Nintendo Selects” range at a lower price.

    In 2011, Nintendo re-released Link's Awakening DX as a downloadable virtual console title in the eShop of the Nintendo 3DS handheld console . In North America, the port appeared on June 7, 2011, in Europe, Japan and Australia the following day. Since the screen of the 3DS offers a higher resolution than that of the Game Boy, the image output of the 3DS implementation is scaled ; Optionally Link's Awakening DX can also be played in the original resolution. In addition, additional functions are available on the 3DS, such as the comprehensive saving of the game status .

    As the market research company Forecasting & Analyzing Digital Entertainment estimated in 2012, the download republication of Link's Awakening DX was downloaded approximately 338,700 times in 2011 and generated sales of approximately US $ 2.3 million for Nintendo. Accordingly, it was the most successful game of 2011 in the 3DS eShop.

    New edition for Nintendo Switch

    In February 2019, Nintendo announced a new HD version of the game on Nintendo Switch, developed by Grezzo . The game offers a new camera that follows the player not only in sections but dynamically through the game world and was released on September 20, 2019.

    reception

    Reviews

    Websites like IGN or Nintendo Life named The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening the best game for the Game Boy and one of the best cross-platform games. Furthermore, Link's Awakening is considered the best Zelda game for a handheld according to publications such as the N-Zone .

    In 1993 the German video game magazine Mega Fun praised the scope, depth, level of difficulty and technical implementation of the title. In addition, the game is characterized by a new storyline and new game elements. The game offers "flawless" action food. It was slightly criticized that the developers took many elements directly from the previous game.

    The British video game magazine Official Nintendo Magazine (ONM) noted in a game review in 2011 that Link's Awakening was very similar to other action games with a bird's eye view in terms of sequence and style, but that the title could be differentiated by its setting. Despite clichéd places such as an enchanted forest or a desert, the compact game world ensures fun. Furthermore, drawing Link's Awakening by his humor. The ONM editor Neil Long described the dungeons of the game as high quality and noted that the high level of difficulty of the "unforgiving dungeon design" requires a high level of concentration from the player. Neil sums up that " Link's Awakening is at once brilliant, archaic, funny, frustrating - but never, ever anything less than fantastically entertaining" ).

    The website Nintendo Life wrote in a review of Link's Awakening in 2009 that the game principle was designed "brilliantly" and the graphics were impressive despite the small and monochrome Game Boy screen. In terms of optics, the game is characterized by great attention to detail and the soundtrack is "legendary". Nintendo Life judged that despite the limited hardware, the newly composed pieces were catchy and the remixes sounded good. Still, the game doesn't quite come close to A Link to the Past in terms of tone . In a review published on the same website in 2011, the graphic style of the game and the size of the game world were particularly praised; the website also highlighted the design of the dungeons and the steady increase in difficulty as the game progressed.

    In 2011, the German monthly magazine N-Zone, which specializes in Nintendo, praised the game's “likeable characters, [the] excellent gameplay and [the] challenging temples”. The scope of the game, which is in no way inferior to that of its predecessor A Link to the Past , is considerable in view of the weak Game Boy hardware.

    According to Carolyn Petit of the English website GameSpot , Link's Awakening is characterized by an impression of "playfulness and experimentation". The author explains this with the origin of the game as an unapproved side project. Although the impression arises that it is not a typical Zelda game, the title still has all the elements that characterize the series: “Worthwhile exploration, challenging dungeons and the exciting feeling of being an archetypal hero of the legend on an archetypal one Mission zu sein "('rewarding exploration, challenging dungeons, and the thrilling sensation that you are an archetypal hero of legend on an archetypal quest'). She summed up:

    Link's Awakening is surprising and wonderful in the way it combines these most traditional and defining elements of the [The] Legend of Zelda series with a sense of experimentation and whimsy. It's beautiful in the way that it slowly peels back the curtain on the secret of its world and in the way that characters and elements of other Nintendo games often drift into this one. If Nintendo had a soul that was capable of dreaming, this is what its dreams might look like.

    “What is surprising about Link's Awakening is how it combines the familiar components of the Zelda series with silliness in a wonderfully experimental way , how it reluctantly reveals the secret inherent in its game world and how it incorporates characters and elements from other Nintendo games into the action . If Nintendo had a soul capable of dreaming, dreams would look like this game. "

    - Carolyn Petit : GameSpot, 2011

    Rating mirror

    On the GameRankings website, Link's Awakening has an average rating of 89.82% based on eight registered ratings. It is the top rated Game Boy game according to the website. The new edition Link's Awakening DX has a slightly higher average rating of 91.21%, which was calculated from twelve ratings.

    The following table provides an overview of the ratings Link's Awakening has received. The “Version” column provides information about which of the three versions of the game were rated.

    Magazine / website Rating date version
    Cubed3 9/10 15th Mar 2006 original
    Cubed3 9/10 June 28, 2011 New edition
    GameSpot 8.7 / 10 Jan 28, 2000 New edition
    IGN 10/10 17 Sep 1999 New edition
    IGN 9.5 / 10 June 14, 2011 New edition (3DS)
    Mega fun 87%   1993 original
    Modojo 5/5   2011 New edition
    Nintendo Life 10/10 Aug 16, 2009 original
    Nintendo Life 10/10 June 14, 2011 New edition
    Nintendo Online 9/10 June 12, 2011 New edition
    Nintendo Power 8.8 / 10   1999 New edition
    N zone 9/10 June 15, 2011 New edition
    Official Nintendo Magazine 91% 22 Aug 2011 New edition
    RPGamer 8/10 original
    Total 1 1  Dec 1998 original
    1Rated with school grades

    Leaderboards

    Link's Awakening was placed in the following leaderboards :

    • The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time (1UP, 2006): # 173
    • The Top 25 Game Boy Games of All-Time ( Game Informer , 1998): 2nd place
    • The 25 Best Game Boy Games Of All Time (Game Informer, 2011): 3rd place
    • IGN Top 100 Games 2007 (IGN, 2007): 78th place
    • The Top 20 Games For Game Boy (Nintendo Power, 2008): 2nd place
    • The Top 285 Nintendo Games Of All Time (Nintendo Power, 2012): 25th place
    • Best Zelda Games Ever! (Official Nintendo Magazine, 2010): 5th place

    Interpretation of the plot

    Tom Phillips wrote in 2011 that the characters from Link's Awakening were easy to take to heart because of their distinct personalities. The plot of the game is structured in such a way that the player is first familiar with the game world and the people living in it. Once this is done, however, the player learns that the ultimate goal of the game is to wipe out the world and its people. Also, according to Phillips, the impression that the game events are only a dream is reinforced by the numerous cameos of characters from other Nintendo franchises, including Princess Peach , Yoshi , a parody of Dr. Wright from SimCity (SNES, 1991), the character Richard from Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (Game Boy, 1992) and opponents from the Super Mario universe.

    VentureBeat website recognized elements breaking the fourth wall in the act of Link's Awakening in 2011 . An essential part of the gameplay requires the player to find out what the game world actually is. Therefore, meta-statements that some non-player characters (NPCs) utter in the game are of great importance. As an example, the website mentioned the explanation of a character in the “Mövendorf”, how the game progress is saved, whereupon she adds that she is a child and does not understand the meaning of this explanation. Later this character asks if he will cease to exist when the windfish is woken up. VentureBeat also wrote that Link's Awakening explicitly states that the game world is a windfish's dream. Nevertheless, there are also indications that it is actually the dream of the game character. There are indications that the character Marin has strong similarities to Princess Zelda and that Link's arch-rival Ganon appears in the form of a nightmare that has to be fought. So it remains unclear whose dream the plot of Link's Awakening actually is. The fact that Link catches a glimpse of the windfish after his supposed awakening asks more questions than it answers, as it implies that the events were not a mere dream after all.

    Carolyn Petit wrote in 2011 as part of a GameSpot retrospective on the Zelda series that Link's Awakening creates a feeling of surrealism that increases as the game progresses . The central motif within the game, which Petit found fitting the style of Twin Peaks creator David Lynch , are dreams. The plot of the game confronts the player with questions about the origin of the world and with the feeling of actually being the antagonist unintentionally. In addition, the 'poignant' end shows the player that everything has to end. So the game creates a melancholy atmosphere.

    Plot compared to the Zelda series

    The plot of the first three Zelda parts followed the pattern: hero saves princess . As the fourth part of the series, Link's Awakening tells another plot that Tom Phillips of the online portal Eurogamer 2011 classified as darker in his retrospective on the game. Since central plot elements of the previous Zelda games do not appear in Link's Awakening at all, the game tells a story on its own. In addition, Phillips wrote that the game created the impression of an offshoot of the Zelda series. Reasons for this are that the plot acts like a side story to the Zelda saga and the title also appeared on a handheld that was technically inferior to home consoles. Nevertheless, it is not right to label Link's Awakening as an offshoot. Instead, it should be seen as a full title in the series and is one of the best Zelda games because of its plot and its humor .

    Game principle compared to the Zelda series

    In 2010, IGN editor Travis Fahs wrote in a retrospective of the Zelda series that Link's Awakening was not a step backwards compared to the 16-bit predecessor A Link to the Past , even though the game was for an 8-bit console with black -White screen was designed. In fact, the developers succeeded in adopting the game mechanics of the predecessor without making major compromises despite the hardware-related restrictions.

    The editor-in-chief of the British games magazine Edge , Tony Mott, noted in 2011 in 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die that Link's Awakening is the same despite the differences compared to its predecessors thanks to the overworld, the dungeons, the bosses and the characters Zelda game based on the original concept of the series is clearest .

    Influence on the Zelda series

    The shown from the side platformers Run -Abschnitte in the game are a tribute to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link ( NES , 1987) represents addition resulted. Link's Awakening new elements in the Zelda series one. Thus the diving Angel - Mini game programmer Kazuaki Morita and extended over the whole gameplay barter Quest , an idea of the scriptwriter Kensuke Tanabe, in some subsequent Zelda on -Play. Furthermore, since Link's Awakening , the shield has been of greater relevance for the player, and in some later Zelda games the music takes on greater importance for the plot and the gameplay. In addition, in Link's Awakening, for the first time in the history of the series , the player can freely equip items on the two keys A and B, which also makes it possible for the first time not to have the sword equipped.

    The later Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said in an interview with the Nintendo President Satoru Iwata in 2009 what influence Link's Awakening had on the series in his opinion. By the fact that the plot of Link's Awakening, thanks to the inspiration of Twin Peaks, has taken a different direction than that of its predecessors, it extends the limits of what is permissible in a Zelda game. This had a strong influence on the successor Ocarina of Time ( N64 , 1998), since according to Aonuma every participant had previously played Link's Awakening . Hence, Aonuma concluded that without Link's Awakening , Ocarina of Time would be a different game.

    In addition, some characters served as inspiration for characters from later titles. The characters Marin and Tarin are said to have been the godfather of the characters Malon and Talon from the successor Ocarina of Time and the eagle owl is said to have been the model for the owl Kaepora Gaebora from Ocarina of Time .

    successor

    Five years after Link's Awakening was first published , Nintendo continued the Zelda franchise with Ocarina of Time , which offered a 3D perspective for the first time in the series' history. The next 2D parts of The Legend of Zelda were Oracle of Ages / Oracle of Seasons (GBC, 2001), whose gameplay and graphics were largely taken from Link's Awakening . In terms of plot, A Link Between Worlds (3DS, 2013) is the game following Link's Awakening .

    literature

    Web links

    Remarks

    1. ↑ In Link's Awakening the player can choose the name of the character himself.
    2. ↑ According to the game instructions, Link's Awakening is between The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II . However, according to the 2011 book Hyrule Historia , which contains the official timeline of the Zelda series, Link's Awakening is actually set after the Oracle games.
    3. ↑ In the Japanese version "Kohorinto" (コ ホ リ ン ト), in the English version "Koholint"
    4. ↑ In the Japanese version "Marin" (マ リ ン)

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ a b c d e f The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (1993) Game Boy credits. In: MobyGames. Retrieved July 22, 2013 .
    2. ↑ a b Japanese homepage for Link's Awakening . In: Nintendo. Retrieved August 4, 2013 (Japanese).
    3. ↑ a b Official microsite for the game. (No longer available online.) In: Nintendo. Archived from the original on December 24, 2006 ; accessed on December 30, 2013 (English).
    4. ↑ a b c d e N-Zone 07/2011, p. 61
    5. ↑ a b c d Mega Fun 11/1993 via kultboy.com
    6. ↑ Hyrule Historia, p. 102
    7. ↑ a b c Peer Schneider: Hyrule Times Vol. 16: Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. In: IGN. April 1, 2002, accessed July 29, 2013 .
    8. ↑ a b c Hyrule Historia, p. 103
    9. ↑ N-Zone 07/2011, p. 66
    10. ↑ a b c Cameron Davis: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX Review. In: GameSpot. January 28, 2000, accessed December 28, 2015 .
    11. ↑ a b Iwata asks: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks, 2: The History of Zelda Games for the Handheld Console, 1: Like a Workshop. In: Nintendo. Retrieved July 29, 2013 .
    12. ↑ a b c English translation of a developer interview on the DX version. In: GlitterBerri. Retrieved July 29, 2013 .
    13. ↑ a b c English translation of a developer interview from the Shogakukan publisher's guide to the game. (No longer available online.) In: GlitterBerri. Archived from the original on December 24, 2013 ; accessed on July 29, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.glitterberri.com
    14. ↑ a b c d e f Iwata asks: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks, 2: The history of Zelda games for the handheld console, 2. Kirby and chain dogs at Zelda. In: Nintendo. Retrieved July 29, 2013 .
    15. ↑ Tony Ponce: Link's Awakening was supposed to have co-op? In: Destructoid. February 19, 2013, accessed July 29, 2013 .
    16. ↑ a b Iwata asks: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks, 2: The history of Zelda games for the handheld console, 3. Suspicious types. In: Nintendo. Retrieved July 29, 2013 .
    17. ^ Luke Plunkett: The Secret of the Secret Nintendo Song. In: Kotaku. August 11, 2011, accessed July 29, 2013 .
    18. ^ Zelda: Symphony Of The Goddesses - A report from an enthusiastic visitor. In: Nintendo-Online. June 27, 2013, accessed August 31, 2013 .
    19. ↑ a b Nintendo Power No. 44, 01/1993
    20. ↑ Inside Nintendo 25: Why Link's Awakening is so wonderfully good. In: Nintendo-Online. October 20, 2013, accessed December 22, 2013 .
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    This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 28, 2014 .