Nintendo announces The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening remake

The facts first: at the February 13, 2019 Nintendo Direct, Nintendo announced a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the Nintendo Switch, due the same year. The original came out in 1993 for the Game Boy and got a color version for the Game Boy Color in 1998, Link’s Awakening DX. Watch the announcement trailer:

The story stays the same: Link is shipwrecked in a storm and wakes up on Koholint Island, rescued by a girl named Marin. To leave, he must gather the eight Instruments of the Sirens and awaken the Wind Fish, the island’s legendary creature.

Translating the jargon: the remake, developed by Grezzo, keeps the top-down camera and the original’s gameplay, but swaps the pixels for a “retro-modern” style. The characters look like toys, the world resembles a diorama and a tilt-shift effect exaggerates the camera’s depth of field, imitating a scale model. From DX came the Color Dungeon, with color-based puzzles. DX’s photo shop, which depended on the Game Boy Printer, gave way to Dampé’s shack, where the player builds their own dungeons, the Chamber Dungeons.

What came next

The game was shown with a playable demo at E3 in June 2019 and came out on September 20, 2019, along with an amiibo of Link in the game’s look. Critics praised the gameplay and fidelity to the original but pointed to technical issues. The numbers: 5.49 million copies by March 2021 and more than 6.46 million by December 2022, one of the best-selling Switch games.

Source: Nintendo.