First off, it’s been too long since I did this. Plowing through these games and getting that little check mark on Launchbox is really affirming to me in a weird way, so I’m glad to be back on this train. Hoping to pick the pace back up post Christmas and start getting into the flow of a game each week or so.
On the topic of this game, though… holy shit, man. I’ve bounced off of this game at least a dozen times – never having owned a Game Boy, I always have trouble getting into GB and GBC games, although once I’m invested, they tend to be some of my favorite 8 bit games, incorporating a lot of 90’s quality of life things into very 80’s looking games.
This one, though.
This immediately vaults into competition for my favorite Zelda game, which puts it pretty high up the list for best game I’ve ever played. I said in my retrospective on Ocarina of Time that I like the darkly tinted world that game has, the very 80’s dark fantasy thing, with the quirky and memorable characters, bittersweet mood, and sort of vibe of impending doom that hangs over the whole thing. Link’s Awakening, coming as it did a full five years before Ocarina, really feels like the template that Ocarina built off. I mean, it has the same dark world, same well developed characters (especially Marin/Malon and Tarin/Talon), same Ocarina… same annoying fucking Owl.
It just totally blows anything that came before it, and a lot of what came after it, out of the water. Like, Link to the Past is a damn fine game, but you’d never call it deep. It’s a glorified Mario game, save the princess from the castle. NPC’s are squishy sign posts, serving no purpose but to point Link to the next dungeon. And up to this point, Link to the Past had the most “plot” of any game in the series. Link’s Awakening is orders of magnitude more affecting and well written then anything that came before it in the series, and holds up incredibly well today.
I’d also like to say that both the pixel art and the music are shockingly good for a console this limited, pushing the boundaries of what the GB/GBC is capable of. The music in particular – I mean, this game is as focused on it’s music, from a story and gameplay perspective, as Ocarina of Time is. That design choice took some serious stones knowing the limitations of the GB sound chip, but the chip tunes here are super catchy and memorable, particularly the Ballad of the Wind Fish, which I know is going to be etched in my brain along with Sheik’s Theme and the original Zelda’s overworld theme as the definitive music of the whole series.
If I was held down and forced to say something bad about this game, it would be that Turtle Rock kind of does the same thing as OoT’s Water Temple, where it confuses obtuse and tedious design for difficulty. Like, Turtle Rock wasn’t a “Hard” dungeon, it was an annoying dungeon that made me go back to the start and pull up a guide. But hey, if that’s the worst thing I have to say about a game that turned 30 this year, I’m going to count that a serious win.
This one is going to stay with me.
CoinOpDad 
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