Welcome back. Last time I posted the completed overworld map, but I forgot to put up the in-game version, so here it is. Anyway! Five and a bit years after I started, it's time to finish this dream. Let me just make a phone call, though:
'BRRING! BRRING! Hello, this is Ulrira speaking! Link, it's time for you to face the Egg on Mt. Tamaranch! Be careful, Link! Bye! CLICK!'
Looks like Ulrira wants me to get on with it. Well, the Egg is just to the east of here, but first I have one outstanding item on my to-do list. There's a Piece of Heart out there somewhere, and I'm gonna find it. I hope. The plan is to poke around in caves, and if that doesn't work, go swimming.
As it happens, there's a cave just south of this phone booth. I poke around all the walls, but don't find anything. Next!
I head south to the forest cave. I don't find anything in there, either, but while I'm in the area I stop through the forest pond and find a healing fairy. I've been here a few times through the game, but never found anything before. I haven't had it on my list because I didn't think there was anything to find, but I've still had it on my mind and have dropped by whenever I've had reason to revisit the forest. I assume what happened was every other time I came I already had full hearts, so the fairy didn't appear. I'm gonna add that to my list and cross it off right away. Satisfying!
I carry on to Mabe Village. Nobody has anything new to say. I enter the Dream Shrine and poke all the walls. I find no hidden passages, but I do learn something:
These guys can be killed with the L-2 Sword! I went back and checked: the L-1 didn't work on them without Pegasus Boots. In the previous update, I encountered them while I had the Boomerang equipped, so I didn't try just hitting them with the sword.
There's another cave just outside of town, but again I find nothing.
I continue along the cliff face to another cave. This one has a chest I couldn't reach until I got the Pegasus Boots. It didn't occur to me at the time to check for other secrets in here.
Turns out that this was an error.
You collected four Pieces of Heart. Now, you have a complete Heart Container!
Yes! Mission complete! I check the walls of this room, just in case, then call up my status screen. I've got all the active use items (aside from the traded-away Shovel), all the passive use items, all the keys, all the instruments, all the Rupees, and now, all the hearts. I guess I should have stocked up on consumables to really have the full set. Oh well.
Now it's time to go to the Egg.
I scale Mt. Tamaranch and stand before the Egg. All that's left to do at this point is to play the Ballad of the Wind Fish on my Ocarina and the small orchestra Link has been building up over the course of the game. Before I kick off the end game though, I thought I'd talk about Link's Awakening a little.
I hope my affection for the game has come through, and the quality of the game itself. Making this LP has been a lot of work, and although I've enjoyed it, it has sometimes been a drag. I know in a few places I've let that show through, when I've complained about bits that are frustrating or where I took my time to figure out what to do. It's easier to complain than to praise. The fact is though, this is one of my favourite games. It would be dishonest to pretend that a large part of that isn't because I first played it at the impressionable age of ten, but it's also because it's an excellent game. I've mentioned already that when I played it as a kid I got stuck in one of the dungeons. After scouring the world and failing to make any progress, I started over and played through to the end. In one sense, that looks bad for the game, but on the other hand, I enjoyed the game enough to do it all again. When I played A Link to the Past some years later, I also got stuck in a dungeon. I looked up a map online and found that the last small key was behind the locked door I was stuck at, and gave up. Now, a lot of that probably comes from me being older at the time, but ALttP just didn't grab me in the same way that LA did.
Link's Awakening is a remarkable achievement. It's a 4 megabit (i.e. 512KB) Game Boy game. The screen is 160 by 144 pixels, with only four shades of gray/green available (which probably helped with the file size, of course). I can't knowledgeably comment on the processing power of the GB, but I imagine it's not much. Into that tiny system, they crammed what I honestly think is one of the best games of all time. At every point in the game, it's clear that the people making it cared about what they were doing. Look at the Boomerang Death Zone. Look at Marin commenting on Link's actions. Look at the way the world map fits together. Look at the way the dungeon maps make little pictures. Despite the graphical limitations, the game is beautiful, with excellent sprite work and backgrounds. Every screen in the game has something going on, and almost every ability you get allows you to get somewhere you couldn't before. You spend the game criss-crossing the overworld map, getting a little closer to the edges each time, and loving it. Also, Link has a jump that you can control. Best Zelda, right there.
The game has its weaknesses: the two buttons on the system meaning you're constantly going in and out of the menu, the way brushing up against an obstacle prompts the game to say "there must be some way past it" even after you've gotten past it a hundred times, the damn genie boss, the horse head "puzzle", the location of the Piece of Heart I got last, but they are minor. The two button thing is even turned into a strength: you don't need the sword out all the time, and it allows for combinations like the bomb arrows, the long jump, even the Boomerang Death Zone. Honestly, flicking between items never takes more than a few seconds and doesn't detract that strongly from the game, in my view. Keeping the controls simple is also a strength.
The other thing this game has going for it is heart. The writing is pretty much delightful from top to bottom, especially commenting on Link's actions and discoveries. Marin, in particular, complements the taciturn Link and emerges as the most developed character in the game, with a simple but effective storyline about her wanting more than the island can offer. She even sets off to wake the Wind Fish herself late in the game, and maybe she would have done it even without the instruments if the monsters hadn't intervened.
Anyways. Let's continue:
I equip the Ocarina and the Ballad of the Wind Fish and start to play. The eight Instruments of the Sirens join in.
Once again, something is lost without sound.
In response to the music, an opening appears in the Egg, and the owl arrives.
The time has come... The Wind Fish awaits... Enter the Egg... Hoot! Hoot!
Message delivered, the owl stands there blinking. Let's go!
I enter the Wind Fish's Egg. Sure is dark in here. I head forwards, but in the middle of the second room Link falls into a hole, landing in what I think can be fairly described as a nondescript room. Which way should I go?
To-Do:
Go right four times, then up four times, in the passageways of the Egg.
Oh, right.
I do as 'Dark Secrets and Mysteries of Koholint' said to do, and reach a more descript room. It's got a big hole in it.
Link takes the plunge into the unknown.
We were born of nightmares... To take over this world, we made the Wind Fish sleep endlessly! If the Wind Fish doesn't wake up, this island will never disappear! We would have been the masters of this place... But you had to come here and disrupt our plans! Heh heh! You can never defeat us!!! Let's rumble!
He lands in a room with an image of a whale on the floor, presumably the Wind Fish. A shadow appears beneath Link, and the Nightmares speak.
The shadow moves to the edge of the room, reforms itself as a blob, and jumps at Link. He can break it apart with the sword, but doing so doesn't seem to cause injury.
I try the Magic Rod, Hook Shot, Bow, and Boomerang without success. Perhaps I really can't defeat this thing?
It turns out that powder is the key. Three hits and the blob form dissipates, leaving the nightmare core.
The next form is a wizard, I guess. It's got two attacks: the ball seen here, which can be knocked back with the sword to score a hit, and:
The cross, which must be avoided.
Two more hits and this form goes down. What's next?
It's the return of the Moldorm! This one gets really fast, but is surprisingly easy to avoid. I only get hit once.
Up next is this big guy with a double headed axe and some flame bats. The sword doesn't seem to work.
Again I cycle ineffectually through my various offensive options.
Turns out I needed the Pegasus Boots. I get a little sloppy defence-wise trying to kill this form, but once I know what to do it doesn't take long.
I get lucky with the next form, taking it out with the Hook Shot on my first guess.
Up next is this two-armed spinny thing. It moves around a bit, taking me perilously close to running out of hearts, before its eye opens. I know a weak spot when I see one, but the sword doesn't work.
I equip the Bow and the Feather and both land and take a hit. This costs me my last heart, but Crazy Tracey's potion kicks in and I'm back at full strength.
There's a fair bit of waiting between chances to attack, and I'm not always in a good position when it does open up, but I continue to land hits.
I've cut out quite a bit of this fight, but after enough hits the enemy shrinks down and disappears for good.
This island is going to disappear... Our world is going to disappear... Our world... Our... world...
It's a terrible fate to be born into a dream, doomed to disappear when the dreamer wakes. Can the Nightmares be blamed for seeking to avoid their destiny?
...Link, you have beaten all the Nightmares! Climb the stairs before you!
A voice speaks. Hey, there are no stairs before me!
Oh. Link begins his ascent.
Things get a bit strange, and the owl appears again.
Hoot! Young lad, I mean... Link, the hero! You have defeated the Nightmares! You have proven your wisdom, courage and power!
... ... ... ...
As part of the Wind Fish's spirit, I am the guardian of his dream world... But one day, the Nightmares entered the dream and began wreaking havoc. Then you, Link, came to rescue the island... I have always trusted in your courage to turn back the Nightmares. Thank you, Link... My work is done... The Wind Fish will wake soon. Good bye...Hoot!
The message appears on a white background, the inverse of every other message so far. I think Link's sprite here might be new, too. The owl reveals itself to be a part of the Wind Fish, and lays out the back story of the game. It also claims that Link has rescued the island, which is a bit odd considering what's about to happen. Maybe it will come back whenever the Wind Fish takes a nap?
Its job done, the owl fades away.
In its place, the Wind Fish appears. It appears to be a whale, so I guess the owl statue that said it wasn't a fish (or wind) was right.
I AM THE WIND FISH... LONG HAS BEEN MY SLUMBER... IN MY DREAMS... AN EGG APPEARED AND WAS SURROUNDED BY AN ISLAND, WITH PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AN ENTIRE WORLD! ... ... ... ... BUT, VERILY, IT BE THE NATURE OF DREAMS TO END! WHEN I DOST AWAKEN, KOHOLINT WILL BE GONE... ONLY THE MEMORY OF THIS DREAM LAND WILL EXIST IN THE WAKING WORLD... SOMEDAY, THOU MAY RECALL THIS ISLAND... THAT MEMORY MUST BE THE REAL DREAM WORLD...
... ... ... ...
COME, Link... LET US AWAKEN... TOGETHER!!
The Wind Fish, as befits a deity, speaks in all caps and uses words like "verily" and "dost".
The fish fades away, with an instruction to Link to play the Ballad of the Wind Fish on the Instruments of the Sirens. Link obeys.
People and places fade away as the world is unmade by Link's rendition of Marin's song.
Link is carried out from wherever he is on a giant waterspout.
Wherever he's wound up, there's sunlight.
A figure clings to flotsam floating on the sea.
Link awakens! Was the whole thing just a dream?
He pulls himself out of the water to sit on the debris, and a shadow comes over him. Looking up, he sees the shape of a whale blocking the sun. It wasn't a dream! Sort of. It all really happened! Kinda.
The credits roll. The flickering effect here comes from having alternate letters appear in each frame, which makes the names impossible to screenshot. Running the whole sequence made a gif that was too big, so I'm just crediting the first two people listed. Sorry to the others!
At the end of the credits the view scrolls up to reveal the Wind Fish, flying through the sky.
Thanks for reading! I hope you all have enjoyed it (feel free to let me know if so). If you've enjoyed it so much that you'd like to play it yourself, Link's Awakening is a little hard to come by these days: you need to find a copy of the original cart and something that'll play Game Boy games. Alternatively, Link's Awakening DX, the GBC remake, can be purchased on 3DS Virtual Console. I haven't played that version, but we've talked about it a little in the thread and it seems some members of the board swear by it. So far as I know it's basically the same game, but with colour, a new dungeon, and maybe some other small changes, so it's probably pretty good. 2020 Comment: There's also a recently released remake for Switch. I haven't played it yet, but supposedly it's pretty faithful and thus excellent.
There's one thing that can happen here that I haven't done: if you beat the game without dying (a tall ask for me), there's an extra scene here. There's a different one in the DX version, as well. You can find them online fairly easily, if you're interested.
Map:
I posted the full world map in the previous update, so this time I'll put it up with the screen boundaries shown (and the fairy in the forest pond added):
And now, for the last time:
To-Do:
Do something at the Forest Pond.Poke suspicious walls with the sword.Find the last Piece of Heart.
-Check the caves north of Mr Write's place.
-Check the cave with the signpost in the forest.
-Check the Dream Shrine.
-Check the caves in the cliff face east of Mabe Village.Go right four times, then up four times, in the passageways of the Egg.Play the eight Sirens' Instruments in front of the Wind Fish Egg.
-Wake the Wind Fish.Get off the island, I guess?
Almost...
Comments
Post a Comment