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As any good Nintendo player well knows, Shigeru Miyamoto's The Legend Of Zelda series has been going strong for more than 15 years over a wide variety of platforms. Young hero Link's magical adventures began on the humble NES before spawning sequels and spin offs on the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and (argh) Phillips CD-I. In 1994, The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening graced the blurry, monochromatic screens of Game Boys across the globe. Many claimed that it was indeed better than the 16-bit SNES game that it chronologically followed, although navigating mazes where all the rooms looked similar and staring at that infernal screen for hours on end turned many would-be fans off. Nintendo has wisely used the launch of the next-generation (well, sort of) Game Boy Color to give the old game a fresh look and a fresh audience.
The locale of Link's Awakening, Koholint Island, is huge - even more so when you consider the hidden underground passageways, dungeons, and waterways. However, don't be afraid of getting lost. A map is always accessible by hitting Start (which, of course, also pauses the action). The map shows every area you have visited with unexplored locales represented as mysterious black blocks. The owl's messages are stored here, too (we'll get to him later). If you can't remember what you're supposed to be doing after loading a saved game, just take a look here. Also, note that your position on the map is saved where the last door you used is, so be sure to save near your next objective. There are beaches, towns, forests, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, fishing grounds, shops, mountains, deserts, fields... you name it, it's packed in here somewhere.
Link awakens in a hut and is slowly told by the locals that to leave and go back to Hyrule, he must awaken the Wind Fish. This aquatic heavy sleeper lives inside an egg on top of a nearby mountain and can only be lulled from its slumber by playing eight magical instruments. As you may have guessed, getting these instruments is a lot harder than it seems. The instruments lie at the heart of eight separate dungeons, protected by all sorts of monsters, traps, and puzzles. It's time to grab your trusty sword and shield and get to it
At key moments through the game, an owl (bearing a discernible likeness to the one found in N64's Ocarina Of Time) flutters in and gives you pointers. He'll offer cryptic clues to the larger storyline while telling you directly what your next objective is. His visage also appears in dungeon walls, revealing key clues for quick-thinking players. Other characters go about their daily business (usually by standing around in a room doing nothing but talk to complete strangers such as yourself) and can give valuable clues or even prized objects that come in useful later. You spend a significant portion of the game wandering around and taking items given to you by one character and trading them with another character for an even more useful item.
