Link washes ashore on Koholint Island after a storm destroys his ship. Marin helps him recover, but leaving is another matter. He must find eight musical instruments and wake the Wind Fish, the creature sleeping inside the egg on the island’s mountain.
Link’s Awakening, released in 1993, was Zelda’s first Game Boy adventure. It uses the series’ familiar pattern of exploring, finding equipment and overcoming dungeon puzzles, while placing Link among unfamiliar neighbours far from Hyrule.
An experiment becomes a game
In Nintendo’s Iwata Asks interview, Takashi Tezuka recalled that the project began informally. SRD programmer Kazuaki Morita experimented with making something like Zelda on the team’s Game Boy development kit. Other staff joined in after their regular work, before Tezuka requested an official project.
This was not simply a finished console game squeezed onto a smaller screen. Tezuka remembered initially considering a transfer of A Link to the Past, but the resulting adventure developed its own setting. Morita’s interest in fishing also produced the island’s fishing game, an activity that returned in later Zelda titles.
Exploring Koholint
The Game Boy’s two action buttons can each hold an equipped item. Choosing what to carry in those slots matters: the shield is an active tool, and jumping adds another way to cross obstacles and attack. Nintendo’s contemporary preview highlighted these changes alongside the returning Hookshot and Magic Powder.
The quest combines dungeon journeys with life around the island. Fishing and the crane game provide diversions; conversations and errands connect Link to its residents. The eight instruments give the journey a clear objective, while the story gradually raises questions about what waking the Wind Fish will mean for Koholint.
Tezuka connected the island’s characterisation to Twin Peaks. His explanation concerned a small community with distinctive, suspicious inhabitants. It was an influence on the town’s atmosphere and cast, rather than a claim that Zelda copied the television programme’s plot.
Returning to the island
The 1998 Link’s Awakening DX added colour and an extra dungeon. Its photographer also records encounters in an album, a feature described in Nintendo Power’s contemporary challenge pages.
A new Nintendo Switch version followed on 20 September 2019. Grezzo credits itself with its planning, art style and development. The remake also gives the sword and shield dedicated controls and expands the map’s functions, reducing the original’s item swapping.
Its Chamber Dungeons let players arrange rooms earned during the adventure. Series producer Eiji Aonuma described this as a puzzle-solving activity: assemble a dungeon, then explore the arrangement yourself. It adds a different way of working with Koholint’s rooms to the returning quest.
Sources
- Nintendo, Iwata Asks: Zelda Handheld History, “Like an Afterschool Club” and “Make All Characters Suspicious Types”: firsthand development recollections, historical dates and characterisation.
- Nintendo Power 48, May 1993, pp. 58–61, “Link’s Awakening”: Nintendo’s contemporary preview of the premise, item controls and activities. Preview details are not treated as evidence for every feature of the finished game.
- Nintendo, Link’s Awakening DX catalogue entry: colour, additional dungeon and core quest. Its displayed 2011 date belongs to the 3DS rerelease.
- Nintendo Power 117, February 1999, “Challenges”: DX photographer and album.
- Grezzo, company history: September 2019 development credit.
- Nintendo, Switch gameplay guide and Eiji Aonuma’s June 2019 introduction: controls, map, Chamber Dungeons and release date.