Patreon Pin Up 9/30/19 (Patreon)

In honor of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening remake being released recently, I went with Marin, the hot little island girl from the game for this week's pin up. I based this pic off the artwork from the Game Boy original from way back when, which I included in the post above just for fun. Anyhow, strap in if you're interested, I have a lot to say about this one. 

The original Link's Awakening was a very memorable experience for me for a lot of reasons.  I played this game for months. And by that, I don't mean that I finished it and started over again and again. I mean it took me months to beat it for the first time.

Link's Awakening was, in my opinion, the last entry in the series that was hard. And by hard I mean loaded with obtuse puzzles and vague objectives that would leave you wandering aimlessly around the map for hours, draining precious double-A batteries as you searched in vain for some tiny thing you could have missed. And this was before the internet was really a thing of course, so the closest thing there was to looking up a guide was asking around at recess and hoping one of the other kids was farther along than you were. 

At one point, I got hopelessly stuck. But the game was so great I didn't want to give up on it. So I wrote a letter to a magazine that was running at the time called Nintendo Power. The letter, addressed to no one in particular, begged for answers in solving the fourth dungeon in the game. And bless them, within a week I got response in the mail with all the solutions I asked for. I refer to this story often when people ask me why I'm such a lifelong Nintendo fanboy.

Anyhow, last week here comes the modern remake for the Switch. I hadn't read any reviews and had no prior knowledge of this one going in, and I was shocked to find how little they changed from the Game Boy original. Other than the audio/visual makeover and a few quality of life tweaks, they barely touched anything. Fine for me I suppose, but I feel bad for all those unwitting kids who were no doubt introduced to the series by Breath of the Wild. If BotW is like scampering up a lovely hiking trail holding hands with your sweetheart, Link's Awakening is like climbing a sheer frozen cliff side while fending off a bitter ex who's trying to shove bees into your mouth. Bit of a jarring follow up experience, is all I'm saying.

To close, I did notice one change they made to the remake. They toned down some of the weirdness from the original, which needles me more than a little. There was a part in the original where you could pick up a phone and hear a madman proclaim himself the "bucket mouse" before he hung up on you. A delightfully bizarre moment that was omitted from the remake. So my review is 2/10 stars.  #notmyawakening.