Replaying Link's Awakening (Game & Watch)

Link's Awakening on the original GameBoy was my first Zelda game, which turned me into a fan for life after Christmas 1997. It became a tradition for me to replay this game in some form every year, a tradition I broke once or twice in the recent years, which includes 2020. But I'm making up for this in 2021, where I've already replayed the remake this June, and this week I've returned to the classic GameBoy version via the new Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda system.

I've never been the biggest fan of the DX version (see Link's Awakening vs. Link's Awakening DX), where I'm really happy that Nintendo has now preserved the original version in some form. While I still own a copy for the GameBoy, its battery has died by now, so I can't save. I will fix this eventually, but hardware deteriorates and nothing is truly forever. Also, my best device to play GameBoy games is still my GameBoy Advance SP with a frontlit LCD screen, which is pretty dark...

So, having this Game & Watch system is actually quite neat for re-experiencing the GameBoy classic. And while they have altered some dialogues in the German version, it's still based on the "uncensored" Japanese version, so that's great as well. I also love how they've emulated the green GameBoy screen colors. It really looks like it was supposed to look on the GameBoy, which is something that the GameBoy Color and Advance couldn't replicate with their weird predefined coloring sets.

But playing through the GameBoy version one more time made me appreciate the remake even more. It's not just the constant item switching or the unnecessary text boxes, but the remake got streamlined in other parts as well, for example around Kanalet Castle. There you can just jump down from the castle balcony, so you don't have to walk back all the way through the castle again. I got used to this so much already that I was confused where the "gaps" in the castle wall went...

Or when you get the Slime Key, there is a shortcut to leave the Pothole Maze in the remake, which is just very convenient. And the additional teleporters really made traveling across Koholint so much better at almost every step after the second dungeon. All in all, there was a lot of "going back the way you came" as padding in the original, which all got shortened in the remake.

But to be fair, Link's Awakening on the GameBoy is a short game, probably the shortest Zelda next to The Legend of Zelda on the NES and Four Swords. If you remember the game well enough, you can easily beat it in one evening. While the remake offers some good shortcuts, it also takes much longer to complete thanks to the new mini-games and the Chamber Dungeon. Which is also good, but it's very much padding of its own.

So, if you just want to breeze through Koholint one more time for the sake of nostalgia, then the Game & Watch version might be the best way to do so. I can certainly recommend it.