Friday, August 30, 2019

Link's Awakening Remake: More Secret Seashell Rewards!

Nintendo of Japan has updated their site for the new Link's Awakening with dozens of new screenshots. And one of them shows us something interesting, namely the inside of the new Seashell Mansion:

screenshot of Link standing inside the Seashell Mansion

This looks not only quite differently, but it's also of note that the bar on the right has not only three stops, but five, where there's at least two new rewards here.

This idea was already discussed in an earlier post, but it looks like things are even more extensive than anticipated. There seem to be more Secret Seashells in total, because there are exactly ten bars here now with stops at bar 1, 3, 6, 8 and 10. If you only need 20 Secret Seashells for everything all these bars would feel a little bit excessive and this would also mean that you get your first reward with two Secret Seashells already...

In the original there were additional rewards for visiting the Seashell Mansion with exactly five and ten seashells. In this case you would get a free Secret Seashell, but you had to visit the mansion with the exact amount. Hopefully, this gets changed, so you can still get the rewards, as long as you have collected enough of them. And getting more seashells for collecting seashells always felt like a lackluster reward, where the remake has lots of new options to replace them:

  • Piece of Heart
  • Heart Container
  • Fairy Bottle
  • Chamber(s)
  • Figurine
  • Great Spin Attack

I still like the idea of adding an upgraded Spin Attack as a final reward here (again kudos to Lankelink for this suggestion). And I would be honestly surprised, if this wasn't a location for a new Piece of Heart, maybe even an entire Heart Container... But there are various other options as well that come with the remake. Maybe not one of the figurines, because they seem to be confined to the village(s), but it's still a possibility.

Also, in addition to the extra seashells there was one more Secret Seashell that you could miss: the one at Kanalet Castle, where you need the Flying Rooster. Ideally, this one won't be missable any longer, because the game allows you to get the Flying Rooster back or so. But they need to make sure that there isn't anything missable at the end. In the original you only needed 20 out of 26 Secret Seashells, so either there is still a small buffer in the remake as well or you still should be able to get all Secret Seashells at the end of the game.

So, the big question is... what's the new total? My best bet is that there is now a total of either 40 or even 50 Secret Seashells. 50 seems a little bit too much, because this would effectively double the amount of Secret Seashells, but adding enough for 40 should be certainly doable. In any case it will be nice to have more, because the Secret Seashells are truly a fine collectible item, where they can potentially be hidden anywhere: under bushes, in the ground, in pots, in chests and so on... Having some more to find will certainly be awesome for veterans, because you have to explore all the new secret hiding spots.

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