- Features new enemies;.
- eight huge dungeons;.
- powerful weapons;.
- battery-backed memory;.
- one-player action.
From the Manufacturer
---------------------
The legendary Link of Hirule tackles a new quest on the Game Boy
Color! Can Link escape from the mysterious island of Koholint?
The island is a place where dreams and reality merge and overlap
in surprising ways. Does the talking owl hold the secret to your
quest? Perhaps so, but he won't share it with Link until you've
conquered five dungeons packed with treacherous foes. To return
to the world that he knows, Link must find the eight instruments
of the Sirens. There are plenty of secrets to explore-including a
secret dungeon only accessible on the Game Boy Color system.
Review
------
As any good Nintendo player well knows, Shigeru Miyamoto's The
Legend Of Zelda series has been going strong for more than 15
years over a wide variety of platforms. Young hero Link's magical
adventures began on the humble NES before spawning sequels and
spin offs on the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and (argh) Phillips
CD-I. In 1994, The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening graced the
blurry, monochromatic screens of Game Boys across the globe. Many
cled that it was indeed better than the 16-bit SNES game that
it chronologically followed, although navigating mazes where all
the rooms looked similar and staring at that infernal screen for
hours on end turned many would-be fans off. Nintendo has wisely
used the launch of the next-generation (well, sort of) Game Boy
Color to give the old game a fresh look and a fresh audience. The
locale of Link's Awakening, Koholint Island, is huge - even more
so when you consider the hidden underground passageways,
dungeons, and waterways. However, don't be afraid of getting
lost. A is always accessible by hitting Start (which, of
course, also pauses the action). The shows every area you
have visited with unexplored locales represented as mysterious
black blocks. The owl's messages are stored here, too (we'll get
to him later). If you can't remember what you're supposed to be
doing after loading a saved game, just take a look here. Also,
note that your position on the is saved where the last door
you used is, so be sure to save near your next objective. There
are beaches, towns, forests, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, fishing
grounds, shops, ains, deserts, fields... you name it, it's
packed in here somewhere. Link awakens in a hut and is slowly
told by the locals that to leave and go back to Hyrule, he must
awaken the Wind Fish. This aquatic heavy er lives inside an
egg on top of a nearby ain and can only be lulled from its
slumber by playing eight magical instruments. As you may have
guessed, getting these instruments is a lot harder than it seems.
The instruments lie at the heart of eight separate dungeons,
protected by all sorts of monsters, traps, and puzzles. It's time
to grab your trusty and shield and get to it At key moments
through the game, an owl (bearing a discernible likeness to the
one found in N64's Ocarina Of Time) flutters in and gives you
pointers. He'll offer cryptic clues to the larger storyline while
telling you directly what your next objective is. His visage also
appears in dungeon walls, revealing key clues for quick-thinking
players. Other characters go about their daily business (usually
by standing around in a room doing nothing but talk to complete
strangers such as yourself) and can give valuable clues or even
prized objects that come in useful later. You spend a significant
portion of the game wandering around and taking items given to
you by one character and trading them with another character for
an even more useful item. Speaking of items, plan on spending a
good a of their playtime in the item selection menu.
Pressing Start opens it up, and the menu lets you assign two
useable items to the A and B buttons. While N64 players who have
been spoilt by the multiple assignments they can have with their
larger joypads will squirm at the thought of changing items
frequently, however, it's a system that works well within the
host machine's constraints. Dungeons are the meat of any good
RPG, and the ones in Zelda DX are extraordinarily filling. The
real beauty of the design is that you can reenter cleared
dungeons with new abilities (such as picking up and throwing
bombs) and discover new areas that were previously unreachable.
Each puzzle you are faced with has a perfectly logical solution,
and you'll only come across a few situations that will require
you to leave and get new items from the outside. Game Boy Color
owners are granted access to an all-new, exclusive dungeon that
isn't necessary to complete the game, but is pretty cool
nonetheless. It's nice to see Game Boy fans who bought the
original game rewarded with something new after buying a new
piece of hardware. Speaking of colors, the ones in Zelda DX can't
fail to impress. Each area has its own mood-setting color scheme
that makes remembering your location far easier than its
monochrome predecessor allowed. Characters sport their own
individually hued clothes and buildings, and objects have been
carefully painted. The overall effect makes the game highly
reminiscent of the SNES installment of the series, which, of
course, is no bad thing. Oh, and before we forget, owners of the
Game Boy printer get a photo scrapbook of Link's adventures that
you can copy. It's pretty cool when an accessory that cost as
much as the machine you bought it for is actually supported. The
beauty of Zelda is that it makes the y world of console RPGs
easily accessible for anyone, blending action, adventure, and
good old-fashioned gameplay into one seamless package. It's
definitely one of the best Game Boy games ever, and it looks
better than ever. We can't urge you enough to play this game.
--Cameron Davis
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review