Saturday, September 7, 2019

Link's Awakening Remake: No Missable Secret Seashells?

This was just a theory / suggestion before, but the Japanese overview video for Link's Awakening on Nintendo Switch actually fully supports the idea that there won't be any missable Secret Seashells any longer.

In both Link's Awakening and Link's Awakening DX for the GameBoy (Color) there was a total of three Secret Seashells, which you could potentially miss during your playthrough. This wasn't an issue, however, because you only needed 20 out of 26 Secret Seashells for the final reward.

But the reward system might change completely this time and there are even more Secret Seashells to collect, from what it seems. Two of the missable Secret Seashells were gotten as rewards from the Seashell Mansion, if you visited the place with exactly five and ten Secret Seashells in your possession. It had to be the exact amount or you wouldn't get the bonus seashells.

This was a little bit annoying, because the first thing you had to do after the second dungeon was basically going straight for the Seashell Mansion to not miss these rewards. But from what it seems, you won't have to worry about this any longer in the remake:

screenshot of Link receiving a present in the Seashell Mansion

On this screenshot Link receives the first out of now five rewards, but he doesn't have the exact amount. In fact the bar of green liquid is way above the first seashell marker, but still slightly below the second.

We can even assume that the first reward won't just be a Secret Seashell, but probably something else, like one of the new Pieces of Heart. So, the system probably works more like the Golden Skulltulas from Ocarina of Time or alike.

We also know that the one Secret Seashell near Kanalet Castle, where originally you had to use the Flying Rooster, is also no longer missable thanks to a pole for the Hookshot:

screenshot of Link using the Hookshot above the holes near Kanalet Castle

But this might also mean that you need to collect ALL of the Secret Seashells to receive all the rewards, which isn't a bad thing. Once you receive the final reward in the original, the remaining Secret Seashells that you haven't gotten yet will simply vanish or be replaced with 20 Rupees. (There is a Secret Seashell in a chest inside the Eagle's Tower for example, which I usually never get, because I already had the 20 shells a long time ago.) In the remake it will be nice to finally look for all the 24 original hiding spots (plus some new ones) on each playthrough.

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