The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (1998)

My girlfriend and I went on a short trip and I brought my gameboy to pick this one up again. It took me a while and a trip to the walkthrough to remember what I was doing, but eventually I got there.

Oh, boy, they really ran out of ideas for the Face Shrine, didn't they? What's up with that knight "puzzle" in which you need to throw two knight pieces until they both land upright? No challenge, no smarts, just pure and tedious luck?

That same dungeon has a room that locks you in with four of those dispreading buggers that can only be damaged with arrows or bombs until you kill them. So what can you do if you enter the room with not enough arrows or bombs? Suck a lemon, I guess. They clearly knew that that was a possibility, so they added an arrow picky. But the pickup gives you 10 arrows and you need at least 16 to kill all the enemies even if you don't miss even one, so you can still soft-lock your progress. Yes, you can, either wrap back to the entrance with the ocarina or just save and quit and restart, but you are still out of bombs/arrows, so you need to go to town to buy more and back to the shrine, which is a slog.

This game has a couple of very specific annoying details in an otherwise fantastic experience.

I spent last night's session repeatedly cutting grass to farm the 300 rupees for the critical path. I don't know if I can forgive this crime against gaming but I guess it tells you how much I enjoy the rest of the game that I was willing to put up with this shit.

Still, it kind of fascinates me because it's hard to understand how the same people who designed all the other stuff would think gating progress behind currency was a good idea.

They must've known that it was meaningless for those who had the money and a slog for those who didn't, right? Then why include it at all? Was it some kind of publisher imposition to pad out the gameplay? Was it a panicked decision induced by an upcoming deadline? How do these clearly awful atomic choices get into otherwise good videogames?

Jumping to a modern game after playing this a bunch really brings home how much complexity is there in today's controllers and control schemes. This game has 4 directions, two action buttons, start and select. That's it. Now we have directions, two analogues, face buttons, triggers, shoulder buttons that games use in extremely complex ways, between button combinations, modifiers and context-dependent actions.

It shows how much more players need to know and intuitively understand in order to play nowadays.

Things I'm learning playing this on a gameboy color:

1. This game is super fun. Aside from some nitpicks, the gameplay is incredibly solid.
2. "Original hardware" is not always best. The GBC screen is terrible and the sound is pretty bad. Maybe it's a fault on my gameboy, but there's a constant buzz that can get quite annoying after half an hour of play or so. The ergonomics are also not great. My hands and my left thumb start to hurt after even a short session. Just to test, I booted up the game on my Android using retroarch and everything was so much smoother.

EDIT: as soon as I posted this I decided to investigate. Turns out that there's a lot of possible reasons for the buzzing sound. One of them is a dirty switch. So I opened it up and blew some compress air into it and did a superficial cleaning with a Q-tip and isopropyl alcohol; a deep clean would require desoldering, but I haven´t got a soldering iron (yet). However, with just that simple trick, the buzz is gone!

I started playing on honest-to-god real hardware. OMG the music in this game is off the charts. I almost don´t want to start the game, the title screen music is that good. Running around, getting skills, and all that is surprisingly fun. I was expecting it to be more rough, but it really holds up extremely well for its age. I did got stuck early on because apparently there are rocks that are too heavy to move, but rocks that you actually can move.. but only in some directions or something, idk it's very unclear.

I am not sure if playing on the original hardware is the best idea, though. That gameboy colour screen is ass. With no backlight I can hardly see anything if the room is too dark or if the light hits the screen the wrong way. I almost want to get a screen replacement, but that's an insane level of commitment just to play one game.

I can't be the only one who finds the incessant text annoying as heck. Every time I accidentally brush up against a rock without my gloves on or get a piece of power, it has remind me that the rock is too heavy or now my sword is powered up. It's so annoying!

Also, I feel like they could have made use of the two extra buttons for the 3DS version. Constantly switching out items because you only have two spaces (one if you always want to have your sword out) just isn't enough.

Day 6:

The Color Dungeon was... Well it was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I honestly don't know whether I'm disappointed or thankful for that, but either way I made it through the dungeon with very little difficulty.

The next dungeon on the list was the Angler's Tunnel, where I'd finally get my flippers! The dungeon was challenging enough without going overboard, but the boss was the easiest thing I've seen in the game so far...

Swim down, slash slash slash slash win. Okay, so to be fair I lucked out with a sword power-up immediately before entering the boss lair but... still...

Once out, I could explore the entire map freely, for the most part.

Which is good, since I apparently missed an item...

After walking around for a bit, searching for the last few seashells I needed, I came across a sad ghost looking for his home. The home was easy enough to find, I'd been there a few times, but after that he wanted to visit his grave, which for the life of me I couldn't remember the location of. After wandering the map for what seemed like forever, I finally came across it, and was rewarded with a new picture!

With Sad Ghost off my back, it was time to finish the shell hunt and get my new sword! Along the way I continued the trading game as well, which had me delivering a photo of Princess Peach to Will Wright... because... Zelda...

My night ultimately ended with my new sword in hand! Four more instruments to gather...