Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch): Wonderful Zelda game in old school style

I was there when the first Zelda came out in the 80's. This was the birth of RPG's for a lot of people and it was the first wide-release game that was ever put to market where you could actually save your game. I know this sounds silly to modern gamers, but there was a time when it wasn't possible to save your game, you had to either complete the entire game in one go or you would write down some sort of really long password that if you got it wrong, you couldn't go back.

Link's Awakening on the Switch is a remake of a Game Boy Game from 1993 and I have no idea how this all managed to pass me by without me knowing that it even existed. Apparently it was on Game Boy and GB Color, and I never knew until now that it existed at all. So needless to say I was excited.

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This is obviously the Game Boy edition but let's take a look at the totally remastered graphics to give you an idea about how much has changed in 30 years.

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This is the same city and you can see the vast improvements that have been done. Honestly, the Switch could remake all the Zelda games from the 80's and 90's (except for the side scrolling one) and I think most people would gladly buy them again.

For me, this game was a return to when games were a lot more simplistic and didn't involve a ton of buttons. This game couldn't possibly involve a bunch of buttons since the source material is from a console that only had a couple of buttons on it. They ended up adding a few more buttons, apparently, but for me it was a normal amount of buttons and I am happy with that. From what I read they just enabled you to have more than 1 thing equipped at a time because well, the console has a lot more buttons than 2 :)

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For me, this is exactly what i look for in a modern Zelda game or really any of the games that I was introduced to as a kid. It definitely is challenging but I wouldn't call it "difficult." It also doesn't exactly hold your hand as far as knowing where to go next is concerned but it does give you enough clues that you feel like a bit of a dummy when you do finally figure it out and stop just wandering hoping something is going to happen. If at any point you don't know what you are supposed to do next you can always walk to one of the "telephone" locations on the map and get a few hints from the guy on the other end of the phone.

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The bosses are creative and cute, but none of the ones I have encountered so far have been increasingly challenging as you would expect and normally to defeat them you need to use some sort of ability that you have only recently discovered, as is tradition with almost all Zelda titles.

For people that were not alive during the release of the originals, this game might seem a bit too cutesy and simple for you. But for those of us that were here when they were first released back in the day, this is a wonderful trip down memory lane that has graphical and audio improvements that we would only be able to dream bout in the 90's.

This is a fantastic game but you have to have a Switch to play it as it is not available on any other platform.