In 2019, Nintendo brought The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening from the classic Game Boy to the Switch, presenting it with a full remake featuring vibrant 3D visuals. However, a recent fan-made remaster, Link’s Awakening DX HD, offers a unique take on modernizing retro games. This unofficial remaster introduces widescreen and high frame-rate support, along with a continuous, smooth-scrolling landscape, departing from the original’s screen-by-screen presentation. Notably, the game engine simultaneously runs every screen of the original game. Digital Foundry’s John Linneman discovered a slider in the options that allows users to zoom out to 1:1 pixel scale, providing a breathtaking view of the entire Koholint Island at once, filled with tiny, pixelated life.
Link’s Awakening DX HD goes beyond the visual spectacle, incorporating practical enhancements like an autosave function and minor graphical improvements. Switching back to the default game scale, the experience remains smooth and lively at 120 frames per second, offering a more open and dynamic gameplay experience while staying true to the original content. Available as a free download on itch.io for Windows PCs, Link’s Awakening DX HD weighs in at just 24 MB. However, the fate of this fan creation is uncertain, considering Nintendo’s history of taking down such projects due to copyright concerns. As the remaster is based on a game still actively sold by Nintendo, its availability may be short-lived.
We already got a remake of this game it was released on the Switch in 2019.
And it was cheap, lazy one-to-one remake of a great Zelda title that didn’t add anything new(to an already very short game), apart from a half-baked boring dungeon maker.
This is a faithful HD remake, gone are the sliding square screens of the original, you can see literally everything and at up to 120fps. It’s funny too to hear that “the experience remains smooth and lively” when Link’s Awakening HD on Switch was notorious for having frame rate trouble.
Link’s Awakening HD was a rip-off as well at $60. I don’t like its plastic aesthetic either. While Link’s Awakening DX HD has the can’t be beaten price of $0.
And yet… my money is on that you played the Link’s Awakening remake but you’ll never play THIS project to completion.
I think that says it all.