This Week In Retro: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (1993) (Patreon)

June 6, 1993: We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams

by Diamond Feit

In the 1983 movie WarGames, when young David Lightman suspects his electronic bout of Global Thermonuclear War against an AI opponent might have cataclysmic ramifications, he asks the computer "Is this a game or it is real?" The machine, in its deadpan delivery, answers his question with a question: "WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?" David reacts as we in the audience do, with shock and fear, for this cold-blooded response suggests the AI simply doesn't care.

Yet if we look at this query from the computer's point of view, its reply can be read as genuine. A machine installed deep inside a military complex has no concept of human perception; it only knows what we program it to know, and only observes data that we feed to it. In this case, the computer runs simulations of warfare scenarios 24/7. To an intelligence that exclusively understands its existence by conducting digital combat, the line between "real" and "game" does not exist.

I know it sounds like I'm stuck on the subject of last week's column but I promise this will prove relevant later, for this week's column concerns a video game which openly challenges the player to question reality. You might expect such a heady premise on PC or perhaps from an independent studio, but no, this mind-bending tale came to us from Nintendo on the company's dedicated handheld console, the Game Boy. 30 years ago, The Legend of Zelda made the jump to portable screens with the release of Link's Awakening, a sequel that took the young franchise to strange places.

Nintendo first introduced The Legend of Zelda in 1986, only to quickly follow it with a wildly divergent sequel that neither looked nor played like the original. Both titles proved successful, but the company would refine the formula in the third game of the series, A Link to the Past for the SNES. This de facto "Zelda III" jettisoned the 2D side-scrolling platforming action introduced in Zelda II and returned to the overhead view of the very first game. The decision paid off, as A Link to the Past became a multi-million seller, becoming the basic template for the franchise going forward.

A Link to the Past sold so well, the development team considered porting it to the Nintendo Game Boy so players could enjoy it anywhere. The project began as an after-hours experiment, with more staff members joining the team as time passed. Director Takashi Tezuka, who had also directed A Link to the Past, compared the experience to "an after-school club" as they "had so much fun making it." Tezuka and his team ended up with an abundance of ideas, some being leftovers from A Link to the Past, so they shifted gears and decided to create an all-new adventure.

Perhaps due to the freewheeling nature of the development process or the perceived liberty of working on a handheld platform, Tezuka's crew made more than a few radical choices with this new Zelda title. For starters, Princess Zelda does not appear in Link's Awakening, nor does regular antagonist Ganon. Instead, Link explores an isolated place far away from familiar faces and places called Koholint Island where he encounters characters and monsters he's never seen before.

However, Link's Awakening does include a number of elements that players had seen before—in other Nintendo games. Two of the mustachioed villagers Link meets are the spitting image of Mario and Luigi. A crane game toy up for grabs looks just like Yoshi. Enemies resembling Goombas and Piranha Plants appear in the dungeons, and there's even a round creature with exceptional lung strength who can inhale and exhale other beings, a clear nod to Kirby who had debuted just one year earlier.

Link's Awakening begins much like A Link to the Past as Link starts the game in bed, only this time around he's not napping at home. From the moment the player turns on their Game Boy, Link's Awakening opens with a dramatic cutscene of our hero struggling at sea to keep his ship afloat in a terrible storm. He fails, and a young woman named Marin finds him washed up on the beach; she lives in a nearby village with her father Tarin where they bring Link's unconscious body.

Marin and Tarin tell Link that since his arrival, monsters have appeared all over Koholint Island, urging him to exercise caution should he leave the safety of the village. Tarin hands Link back his shield and with that, the player can set off to meet the other residents, retrieve Link's lost sword, and discover what strange things are afoot in Koholint Island.

Whenever Link arrives on the beach to claim his dropped sword, a large owl will appear and deliver an ultimatum: "You cannot leave the island unless you wake the Wind Fish." This becomes Link's primary quest, as the Wind Fish sleeps inside a giant egg that looms over the entire island. Only by clearing eight dungeons and collecting eight magical instruments can Link achieve his goal. The owl, who never gets a name, regularly appears throughout the game as Link advances the story, always nudging Link in the right direction as to his next destination.

Yet while the owl serves as Link's main navigator, the Nightmares who live in the dungeons also drop tidbits of information as Link faces them in combat. Most cannot manage more than a few menacing grunts or screams, but a few foes warn Link that his quest will only bring ruin to Koholint Island. They claim that the island and everything on it only exist in the psyche of the Wind Fish, so if he awakens, all of it will vanish into nothingness. Late in the game, they double down on their argument, telling Link that he also lives in this dream, meaning that he too will disappear if the dream ends.

I don't know at what point the "after-school club" at Nintendo thought of this plot twist, but I do know that even without it, Link's Awakening feels like a dream throughout as all the people Link comes to know on Koholint Island are extremely quirky. Kids playing in the village deliver control-specific tips—e.g. press the Select button to open the map—while admitting they don't understand what they're talking about. At one point, a talking raccoon blocks Link's path in the forest and only yields when dusted with magic powder, revealing himself to be Tarin in a mushroom-fueled haze. Even Marin, the ostensible love interest of Link's Awakening, comes off as equal parts sweet and goofy; given a chance to play the crane game, she ends up grabbing the shop owner with the claw.

As much as Link's Awakening leans into certain comical elements while also playing up its inherent weirdness, the game manages to captivate the player thanks to its emotional sincerity. Marin does most of the heavy lifting here, as she gets multiple opportunities to spend brief moments with Link in ways that Princess Zelda, perpetual damsel, couldn't possibly do. Marin loves to sing, even teaching Link a song she calls the "Ballad of the Wind Fish." When Link needs to rustle a stubborn walrus from a narrow passageway, he must call upon Marin's talents to woo the beast. This triggers a special cutscene where Link and Marin sit on the beach and stare at the ocean together; Link doesn't say anything, leaving Marin to fumble her words as she struggles to make small talk with our clueless hero. The conversation ends when Marin agrees to go with Link and, as he so often does, picks Marin up and holds her over his head—complete with a musical fanfare—as if he just grabbed a key item.

All these disparate elements come together to make Link's Awakening my favorite game in the entire Legend of Zelda series. I know promising that a piece of fiction will "make you laugh and make you cry" has become overused to the point of parody, but I can think of no better description for Link's Awakening. Takashi Tezuka and his collaborators didn't need to tell us that they enjoyed making this game because it shows; Link's Awakening is a joy to play, top to bottom, an unparalleled experience made all the more remarkable due to its petite stature as a Game Boy cartridge.

Which brings us full circle as we need to discuss the game's central hook of Koholint Island being only a dream. While every other Legend of Zelda game supposedly fits into a grand timeline of events where a lone hero defeats an evil wizard/pigman over and over again throughout history, Link's Awakening tells us that the events and characters it presents do not actually exist. When mishandled, this trope can act as a get-out-of-jail-free card, allowing a story to feature increasingly far-fetched events right up until someone wakes up and shrugs it all off.

Yet Link's Awakening uses its just-a-dream status to actually increase the stakes rather than undermine them, as it injects an air of melancholy into Link's quest. Instead of his usual, unambiguous heroism, his mission to rescue Koholint Island will ultimately destroy it. When Link defeats the last boss and actually meets the spirit of Wind Fish, the player must watch as those quirky villagers—including the kindhearted Marin—fade away, a real punch in the gut moment to wrap what had been such a fun fantasy romp.

However, in the words of that pesky WarGames AI, I must ask a question: "WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?" Every Legend of Zelda video game is, by definition, make-believe. Every game begins when we turn the power on and vanishes as soon as we save Hyrule. I've got at least 100 hours in Tears of the Kingdom right now but I am under no illusions; my time with that game is finite and one day I will put it down for good.

I say this not to dismiss video games as empty calories but to advocate the exact opposite, as they can be just as "real" as anything else we experience. When I have an unpleasant or disorienting dream, it can take me hours or even days to readjust back to my actual life. Some remain permanently nestled in the back of my mind. So if I, 30 years later, feel my heart sink a little bit every time I hear the Ballad of the Wind Fish, that makes it as valid a memory as any other moment from my past.

To put it bluntly, we only have one life to live, and the clock is always ticking regardless of how we spend our time. Someday, many decades from now I hope, I too will "wake the Wind Fish" so to speak, and everything I know and love will fade away. As Link's Awakening puts it, "IT BE THE NATURE OF DREAMS TO END," but endings do not undo or erase what we remember. I know I'll remember Link's Awakening right up until my final day—and perhaps afterwards.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.