The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX

Just before Ocarina of Time took Zelda games literally into a whole new dimension (the third!) on Nintendo 64, the top-down, two dimensional Zelda games found a home of their own on handheld systems. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was released on the Game Boy in '93, and 5 years later the definitive Link's Awakening DX version was released as a launch title for the Game Boy Color. I am positive I had the DX version and pretty sure that at some point I played the original, but in recent years as I've dove deep into video game (and Zelda) fandom I grew suspicious that I never actually beaten the game. Knowing that Link's Awakening was a great game anyway, and that even if I had beaten it before it would hardly be a waste of money and time to download and play it on my 3DS, I made the purchase a few months ago and played it over the course of May. This proved a smart choice, because I definitely never beat it. Actually, I probably hadn't made it past the first dungeon, because almost everything here felt entirely new to me. Link's Awakening ditches the Hyrule kingdom that dominates most Zelda games for an island setting- we see Link sailing through a storm, getting shipwrecked, and waking up the next day on the mysterious Koholint Island. Everything on the island seems kinda off, and there's a bizarre task at hand- Link just wants to get home, but apparently the only way to do it is to collect 8 instruments strewn about the island, play them for a giant egg on top of a mountain, and awaken a giant fish. This also might bring about the end of the world, so it's hard to blame all of the bosses standing in your way- they make a compelling point that they're the ones doing the right thing, and maybe this is a sneaky example of a game where the protagonist is the selfish villain. Either way, it felt appropriate exploring this tropical island on a few late nights on my recent cruise; I didn't expect to get any gaming done at all, but Link's Awakening was a worthwile use of some downtime and a game that any Zelda fan should play. I've still got Adventures of Link, Majora's Mask, and Skyward Sword left in the series, and then the likely Christmas release of Link to the Past 2 will ensure that I'll be posting Zelda on the Blog many more times in the future.