Link's Many Awakenings

Do you have this special feel-good title, where you keep going back to it every once in a while? Maybe a game from your childhood where you just enjoy bathing in the nostalgia that it brings? Well, for me this is The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, as you may be able to tell from the recent posts on this blog and from various posts before.

I've played through this particular game so many times that I can't even say for sure how often it was. The only other Zelda game where this is the case is Ocarina of Time, but that's mainly because it's been so long since the N64 days and not because I've played through it that often. For the rest I can give a clear count and even covered many of my repeat playthroughs on this blog (see here).

As for Link's Awakening, I've completed the Nintendo Switch remake four times in total since it came out, twice in Normal Mode and twice in Hero Mode. I've also beaten the Game & Watch version last year once and I've completed Link's Awakening DX twice on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console. So, that's a total of seven times on the more recent Nintendo systems.

Before that I've beaten the GameBoy classic on emulator two times and the GameBoy Color version once, so that I could make a collection of screenshots for this blog. I also own the original games on the original hardware, of course, and here is where things get nebulous and I can't really say for sure. But it must have been over ten times in total at least, because I didn't have many games as a kid, so I made good use of the ones that I have by playing them over and over. I still remember how my death count was above 70 when I've first beaten the game and how proud I was when I finally did it with "000" to get the good ending. That alone took me multiple attempts and then later came the DX version, which I've also kept playing.

And as I said many times before, it was a bit of a Christmas tradition to replay Link's Awakening, because it was my first Zelda game, which I got for Christmas 1997, 25 years ago. It may have been up to 30 times that I've beaten the game over the years, but I also tend to overestimate things... 

Anyway, what am I getting at? Well, I've already experienced some fatigue in the years before the remake came out, where I couldn't bring myself to uphold that Christmas tradition in 2017 and 2018. The remake then rekindled my passion with its charming style, the quality of life and improvement, but also with its many new Pieces of Hearts and Secret Seashells. This excitement of having something to find in every corner just never gets old, it all just made the game so much enjoyable and fun for me.

And I'm sure that I will return to it eventually because of this feeling. The Chamber Dungeon made it a bit of a commitment, however, where in my latest run I've completely exhausted this feature. Since I love collecting all the Pieces of Hearts, Secret Seashells, and so on, I tend to go for completion whenever I play through a Zelda game. And this makes certain games less enjoyable to replay than others. The Minish Cap for example is a lovely Zelda game overall, but the Gacha figurine collection is just very dull. And don't let me get started on collecting all the Ship Parts and Train Cars in the Nintendo DS Zelda games.

The Chamber Dungeon is still more enjoyable than any of this, but it's a bit much, while at the same time also hard to ignore for me. I guess a compromise for future playthroughs would be doing the basic challenges, while skipping the golden challenges that come after. But if you want to get all Chamber Stones, earning the Rupees from these challenges helps a lot, so I will probably do it anyway.

And I'm not really complaining, since I've played the remake over 100 hours by now, so I certainly got my money's worth. And I think that it's fantastic overall, where I can't wait for remakes of the Oracle games. It's just that I will probably miss having this short feel-good experience of replaying a Zelda game, where you know exactly on every step what you can get and find. And I'm afraid that Nintendo may not ever make such a Zelda game again, because they tend to add these more intricate features, like the StreetPass battles in A Link Between Worlds, so that the game has more to offer than your basic GameBoy adventure. A completionist's issue, for sure.

Now, I may have found another game, which doesn't have "Legend of Zelda" in its title, but which has the qualities that I'm currently looking for. More on that soon... With this post I just want to express my passion and love for Link's Awakening, which has made me a Zelda fan for life. It will hit its 30th Anniversary later this year, but then I will be too busy with playing Tears of the Kingdom, so it's probably best that I'm giving this game my accolades in advance, at the beginning of this eventful year for Zelda.

Koholint is like a second home to me, but it's also a dream you always have to wake up from. Just to return to it one day eventually, starting it all over again from Marin and Tarin's house...