Link's Awakening: Toto, we're not in Hyrule anymore.

Title: Link's Awakening (Yume o Miru Shima, or "The Dreaming Island" in Japanese)
Original Release: June 6, 1993
Game #: 4
Chronologically: #4, Young Link timeline


The first three Zelda titles were all distributed on Nintendo's main consoles, the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo. Link's Awakening was a whole new animal - for the first time, Zelda came to Nintendo's new and increasingly popular handheld console, the Gameboy. The original release of Link's Awakening was in black and white, which drove away many gamers who found it too difficult to distinguish between items and dungeon features without color. In response to those complaints, Nintendo re-released Link's Awakening for the Gameboy Color, changing a few gameplay elements and adding bright, vivid coloration. I will be playing this version of the game, called Link's Awakening DX.

Link's Awakening was very different from the previous entries in the Zelda series not only in its portable aspects. It was much less "seriously" a Zelda game, more geared towards the young fans of the Gameboy. Nintendo makes many references to its other games - including Goombas as an enemy, for example - and breaks the fantasy setting of the other Zeldas by including phones and other pieces of technology. Nintendo also chose to combine side-scrolling elements and top-down gameplay in Link's Awakening, making for an interesting shift in the experience. 

This was also the first Zelda game to take place outside Hyrule, instead located in a mysterious land called Koholint Island. It was also the first Zelda game which didn't feature Princess Zelda or Ganon, thus totally changing the nature of the Zelda legend. Finally, and most interestingly (at least to me) Link's Awakening does not have a cut-and-dry happy ending. It is considered by many to be the saddest in the series, and the most ambiguous in meaning.

Graphically, Link's Awakening DX is impressive for a Gameboy game, but Link's Awakening is lacking in definition, making it difficult to play. Regardless, next to Pokemon, Link's Awakening was perhaps the most popular Gameboy game ever released, selling around 6 million copies worldwide.