{"id":95067,"date":"2019-06-13T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2019\/06\/hands_on_zelda_links_awakening_on_switch_treads_a_fine_line_between_remake_and_reimagining"},"modified":"2019-06-13T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T16:00:00","slug":"hands-on-zelda-links-awakening-on-switch-treads-a-fine-line-between-remake-and-reimagining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/06\/13\/hands-on-zelda-links-awakening-on-switch-treads-a-fine-line-between-remake-and-reimagining\/","title":{"rendered":"Hands On: Zelda: Link&#8217;s Awakening On Switch Treads A Fine Line Between Remake And Reimagining"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/64e6cee26108d\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/64e6cee26108d\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<aside class=\"object object-youtube\">\n<div class=\"youtube\">[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=G4eNxiRbk-I?rel=0&amp;hd=1&amp;showinfo=0&amp;modestbranding=0&amp;autohide=1&#038;w=900&#038;h=507]<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Wouldn\u2019t it be cool if you could play a <strong>Zelda<\/strong> game on the go?<\/p>\n<p>Okay, okay, <em>we know what you&#8217;re thinking<\/em>. Today, you could fill up a whole stadium with portable Zelda games alone. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2019\/02\/feature_meet_the_first_kid_to_beat_zelda_links_awakening\">But in 1993?<\/a> How would anyone <em>ever<\/em> get a Zelda game to fit onto a Game Boy cartridge? <em>Impossible<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Well, they obviously figured it out in the form of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/gameboy\/legend_of_zelda_links_awakening\">Link\u2019s Awakening<\/a><\/strong>, a technological marvel so memorable that Nintendo has once again revisited that feeling of holding a tiny toy in your hand. Not only is Link back to being portable on the Switch, but, well&#8230; <em>he looks like a toy!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/legend_of_zelda_links_awakening\">The Legend of Zelda: Link\u2019s Awakening<\/a><\/strong> for the Nintendo Switch gives us this adventure in glorious HD for the first time, but it is not an &#8220;HD remaster&#8221; in the traditional sense. And as Nintendo insisted to us during our E3 meeting, neither is the game a remake, as the company prefers to use the term \u201creimagining\u201d. Reimagined or not, in the demo the game played out beat-for-beat <em>identically<\/em> to the Game Boy and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/gbc\/legend_of_zelda_links_awakening_dx\">Game Boy Color<\/a> versions of the title.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"picture strip\"><a title=\"TLoZLA Ss 01\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/e958ae88e9471\/tlozla-ss-01.original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/static.nintendolife.com\/blank.gif\" data-original=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/e958ae88e9471\/tlozla-ss-01.900x.jpg\" alt=\"TLoZLA Ss 01\"><\/a><\/figure>\n<p>Link awakens in a bed, rescued from a terrible shipwreck. Your saviours hand you a familiar shield, drop an unsuitable amount of information for an almost-drowned sailor, and send you off in search of both your sword and puzzles to solve.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"left\">\n<p>Gone is the smooth, 360-degree analogue control, and instead, Link walks around on a grid, similar to the original game<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Have you played <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/3ds\/legend_of_zelda_a_link_between_worlds\">Link Between Worlds<\/a><\/strong> for the Nintendo 3DS? Well, this doesn\u2019t feel like that. Gone is the smooth, 360-degree analogue control, and instead, Link walks around on a grid, similar to the original game \u2013 albeit much more quickly. Once you get used to that, everything begins to flow. The animations look absolutely <em>incredible<\/em>. The depth of field when you walk produces a sort of slight blur for objects in the distance, which you\u2019d think might be limiting, but artistically makes the environment look like little, real-life models of houses and things. And the music? If you\u2019re a fan of the original soundtrack, look forward to listening to these modernized arrangements. Just the small portion we sampled from the opening segment of the game was spot-on and made us smile over and over.<\/p>\n<p>In our time with the game, we were allowed to goof around in the town and play remade versions of the original claw and fishing mini-games, or we could hustle towards the first dungeon objective. We did both. Inside the town, it\u2019s actually pretty impressive how well Nintendo captured the feel of every tiny character in the game, given how little detail was present in the original. The couple with the children look <em>uncanny<\/em>. The fisherman is a fitting homage too, but looking better than ever. Even the claw game played just as hard as we remembered it, though we still snagged ourselves a plush, digital Yoshi.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"picture strip\"><a title=\"TLoZLA Ss 03\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/783f9e6f7fb1f\/tlozla-ss-03.original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/static.nintendolife.com\/blank.gif\" data-original=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/783f9e6f7fb1f\/tlozla-ss-03.900x.jpg\" alt=\"TLoZLA Ss 03\"><\/a><\/figure>\n<p>As far as going north into the woods, that tugged at our nostalgia, but it was just a little bit different \u2013 in a great way. The enemy Moblins do much more than stick a few pixels out with the hope of impeding your progress; fully animated swoops, shielding, and dodges make defeating even common enemies more complex than in the Game Boy versions, but in a way that makes fighting fun and rewarding. Shielding really matters, and you can\u2019t just be swinging wildly \u2013 you\u2019ve gotta put a tiny bit of thought into it if Link is to survive.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"right\">\n<p>The enemy Moblins do much more than stick a few pixels out with the hope of impeding your progress<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>To arrive at the first dungeon with the key, you might recall a series of events involving a mushroom, a raccoon, and a witch. All of it is here, and fans of the old game who\u2019ve played it recently (or have incredible memories) will probably judge this to be much more \u201cremake\u201d than reimagining when it comes to stuff like main plot points. But nevertheless, it\u2019s just plain fun to re-encounter old favourites, like the wandering Stalfos skeletons that Link scatters with his sword. And if it\u2019s your first time playing this game, everything looks so dang good you\u2019ll probably get a lot of mileage out of the experience just the same.<\/p>\n<p>Because the demo was so open-ended, our time with the game ended before we managed to slay the final boss from the first dungeon. <em>We know, we\u2019re disappointed too.<\/em> But we won\u2019t have to wait terribly long until we once again ascend to the wind fish \u2013 Zelda: Link\u2019s Awakening is set to release September 20th, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=G4eNxiRbk-I?rel=0&amp;hd=1&amp;showinfo=0&amp;modestbranding=0&amp;autohide=1&#038;w=900&#038;h=507] Wouldn\u2019t it be cool if you could play a Zelda game on the go? Okay, okay, we know what you&#8217;re thinking. Today, you could fill up a whole stadium with portable Zelda games alone. But in 1993? How would anyone ever get a Zelda game to fit onto a Game Boy cartridge? Impossible. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}