“Demo Disk” – The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (2019) [Switch]

Demo Disk is a series of first impressions posts for new releases and quick opinions.

It’s sometimes risky to reimagine a classic.

my favorite Zelda game since the Game Boy days. Yes, after A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Breath of the Wild, and The Wind Waker, other favorites of mine, Awakening remains firmly on top in my heart. My favorites don’t typically change all too frequently.

So when Nintendo announced the remake for Link’s Awakening on Switch, I gasped with surprise and delight. At first. Then the old (healthy) skepticism set in. Not hate, just a bit of doubt. What if they got rid of the things I loved so much in the original? What if they bloated the thing up with so much extra content it became impossible to navigate? What if it sucked?

Well, this post is about my first impressions and I can say with certainty that it doesn’t suck.

Superficial comparisons with Skylanders and complaints about “baby game time kiddie Zelda for kids” aside, what you’ve likely heard about frame rate issues are true. If that really does ruin the entire game for you, then this won’t be the game for you. It does happen quite frequently. If you’re able to look past something like that, you’ll likely enjoy a beloved and structurally-sound 2D Zelda experience.

Despite the fact that this is my favorite Zelda, it’d been more than a few years since I played it. That meant that this remake felt extra new to me. I could remember the basic layout of the town on Koholint Island, as well as where a few early key locations stood, but I soon found myself shocked all over again, saying “Ah shoot, I didn’t remember that!”.

I found myself grinning ear to ear, seeing that chain chomp, the cuccoos, Marin and Tarin, the Owl, the sword lying in the surf all over again, like old friends. Nostalgia is a powerful thing and Link’s Awakening hits you with it like a cement truck traveling 80mph while you head towards it at 60mph and meet somewhere in Atlanta at 12:05pm. I imagine that the plastic toys and dioramas aesthetic they decided to go with for this remake will strike some folks as reminiscent of frustrations they might have had with Wind Waker’s cel-shading or Breath of the Wild’s openness; it’s potential fodder for the fan argument of “it just doesn’t feel like a Zelda game”.

It’s a Zelda game if that’s what the creators, publishers, and manufacturers call it. I think you’ll still find a lot of Zelda gameplay, should the visuals distract you but you decide to put up with them anyways.

Among the new features added to this remake are things like continuous screen-scrolling. Instead of the individual screens Link had to pass through in the Game Boy version, the island is your oyster here and you can explore it resembling some giant, interconnect open world, as befits modernity.

The dungeon customizer is also surprisingly enjoyable, mostly because you get to keep whatever rewards you set up for yourself in your own private crawling spaces. There’s a dude in the game you can see about creating your own shareable dungeons, which you can adventure in yourself after slapping them together. You can certainly come up with interesting ideas, especially after collecting new room types from the real dungeons you’ve visited. Nintendo wisely made it about collectibles, the thing that drives nearly everything they produce from games to Pokémon, power stars to amiibo.

Speaking of amiibo, I couldn’t pass up adding a second amiibo to my sprawling collection, literally doubling its size. The diminutive Link’s Awakening Link might remind certain Walmart cashiers of the dentist elf from Rankin & Bass’ Rudolf (I had to pick the amiibo up at Walmart because why is GameStop always sold out of everything?), but he’s the hero in my favorite Zelda. I had to snag him. Now he sits next to my Mega Man, my favorite video game character, and so begins my new amiibo obsession.

Call the police. Or my wife.

I think Link’s Awakening is beautiful and I’m loving rediscovering several things all over again. The best part is seeing my son’s eyes light up just like mine did (presumably) when I played the same adventure so many years ago on a tiny monochrome screen. He’s a little younger than I was, but he’s going to get the chance to explore the island of Koholint on his own and enjoy the sense of wonder while it lasts.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Wind Fish to wake.

Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage, Mage Cast, or Story Mode.