With all of the retro revivals hitting the gaming scene these days, one may wonder why Nintendo’s Zelda series has yet to receive the same amount of remake love as Sonic or Street Fighter. While Nintendo is content on releasing improved ports to the classics, leave it to the fans to create a remake to the Game Boy classic Link’s Awakening.
Developed by Xfixium in RPG Maker 2003, Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening 1.0 is a remake of the 8-bit portable classic The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. Long considered to be a fan-favorite, it has only received one updated port on the Game Boy Color.
This updated version contains re-rendered sprites and a lush overworld with some 16-bit touches straight out of A Link to the Past, alongside a more robust soundtrack and (most notably) a full color palette! Everything from the original is present as well, from the dialog scenes to the characters to even the many secret heart containers hidden over the island.
You can download it for free here.
WOW!
You should make the source available to some Wii Homebrewers and set it up as Wii Homerew. That would be awesome!
Check out my Zelda Timeline at http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/the-legend-of-zelda-timeline-theory/#more-15
Awsome work man!
Thanks for this !
( by the way, whats the other button beside enter and the arrows ?)
I need to check this out. :D
This is a great update can not wait till 1.1 because there are somethings to work out.
The Crane Game does not work to get the Yoshi Doll.
The controls need to be worked on.
the bottons need to be worked out better too when you go to menu it uses up the item that is on “Z”.
I would love to be a tester for this.
And this is the reason I have a USB controller for my PC. Well, this and Super Mario Crossover.
sweet. Gotta love me sum zelda games!
Very beautiful work Kartel. L’sA is one of my faves GB, and I played one game per month till the cartilage broke. Be careful, since Big N is gonna be re-releasing L’sA, they might not like the idea that a fan is releasing this now.
I’m gonna get buried alive from Zelda nuts, but can someone tell me the appeal of the early Zelda games? I played a couple about half way through, and then it just petered out for me.
Mind you, I love the new adventure take ever since the series went 3D, but just never quite understood the hook of the NES/SNES ones.
“alongside a more robust soundtrack and (most notably) a full color palate!”
If the roof of your mouth doesn’t have any color in it, I would go see a doctor. You probably mean a palette, right, kc?
How do you play this exactly, could it work on a r4 for example?
Master Lee, the snes and gameboy games are great. i was never a huge fan of the nes ones as i didnt really have a nes at the time so i can maybe understand why you dont see the appeal of the snes/gb ones if you didnt grow up with them.
links awakening has a fantastic story and imo, this and links awakening are more enjoyable than the 3D ones. I did love ocarina of time but the old ones just have that special something to them.
im assuming this doesn’t work on macs?
My word–I played the demo version of this remake way back when gamingw.net was still around, some time around 2005! I’m thrilled to hear that work’s continued on this, as it looked smashing back then.
Wow, just wow. Now, if someone can just port this to the psp..
This is just totally awesome. Thanks dude! :)
Anyway to run this on Ubuntu? It doesn’t seem to have the correct interpreter to run it, any advice?
@Jody: to run on Ubuntu, you’ll probably need VirtualBox or something similar to run Windows. WINE isn’t so great at most Windows-only games.
@Jody: Actually, I just started running it under WINE and, so far, it’s looking fine. Nice!
Jesus this looks Great. Also how has this not been shot down by nintendo’s law department.
Sell to the 3DS now!!!
ZOMG, thank you soooo much, I love this game!
Please let this be ported to the DS. (crosses fingers!).
How do you get it to play?
This game wont run on a 64bit OS. Is this legit?
Shame on all those of you who want a port on Homebrew & R4. SUPPORT THE MARKET & BUY YOUR GAMES!
how do you get this to run??? do you need an EMU?
files last edited in 2004…?
Okay so I have it running…. But I can’t make it do anything. What are the controls?
love the look of it HATE the control. You can’t move diagonally and you stand still when you swing your sword. Frustrating. I’ll stick with playing the gameboy color version for now.
I need help!!!
It’s great, I love you !!
When next the game ?
Man these are real hardcore Zelda fans.
I tried playing this game and, I have to say, I’m very disappointed. The game LOOKS amazing, but there are some major flaws.
Previously mentioned here are the sword controls and the crane game.
What boggles my mind is the lack of quick save, or anything related. You can ONLY save at save points, which sucks because sometimes you are pretty far from one.
The worst part, though, is the lack of restarts when you die. In other games, if you die, you can “save and quit,” or you can go back to the start of your current dungeon, forest, cave, whatever. This is not the case with this game. I had made it a fair way into the first dungeon and I died. I lost everything I had accomplished so far. How annoying is that?
Very disappointing. I was so excited when I downloaded this game.
is there something i need to play it?! i downloaded it and it came up in WinRAR but when i click on the executable file, a message pops up basically saying the operation cant be made. What do i do? I’d really like to play it!
i can’t play it. it downloads into winRAR then when i try to execute the file it says operation can not be done. HELP! i would love to play1
The Minish Cap sprites make me cringe. Link was not a blonde in this game lol.
Awesome! I really like the idea of a remake of the game. Thanks for the info! I’m downloading it right now.
i love what you did with the game so far, i played the original, loved it, and got so exited when i saw this, downloaded it, played it……and got the credits after the first dungeon. can you give an update on how the game is progressing cause i cant wait to see the rest ^^
This is awesome! I loved the classic zeldas, and this is pretty sweet! Good job, whoever made this :)
You guys did a terrific job; this took a lot of work and time, and looks amazing. Too bad it won’t be available to us for long, on account of Nin grabbing this up off of the internet, but while it lasts… :D
It’s great to see such dedicated fans!
I Wanna Play This Game, But I’m Having Problems, It Only Shows Me A Folder Filled With The Stuff In Game, But Not The Real Game
Everyone’s talking about how Nintendo would snap this off the internet…
I’m not so convinecd. Game developers find this kind of thing to be more of a compliment rather than an attack on their usual sales. No one’s going to buy more Link’s Awakening cartridges off them. If anything fan made games help their publicity. So long the game is free, they usually don’t care.
@Lythro
Not true. Remember Chrono Trigger 2? Square-Enix are a bunch of dicks.
There’s so much fanmade crap about Zelda, Mario, and Sonic that developers just don’t want to bother sending out cease-and-decist letters left and right. It’s not that they think it’s complimentary.
Played a bit of this, and it plays great. Few hang ups that have yet to be worked out, which I hope we’ll see in later versions, but other wise this is wonderful. I loved this game when I was a kid, playing it on my VHS sized Game Boy for hours on end… Thank you VERY much for your work on this!
really disappointed when it stopped after the first dungeon. keep up the good work and finish this.
This game was made with RPG Maker; RPG Maker is basically a drag-and-drop, window-based game-designing tool. It’s pretty powerful, but at the same time, it has a lot of limitations. Some of the complaints of the game are just a product of the tool that was used to make it.
It *looks* really good visually. But having been time avid user of RPG Maker at one time, I’m really skeptical of how well it *plays*. It probably feels really generic.
Incredible game, but, the letters look quite rare, like instead of seeing an a, you see an 8.
Er…I have to agree with the above opinions. Awesome look. Awesome concept.
buuut…wheres the music? and its bugging on me. first it wouldn’t let me save/quit, then it wouldnt let me load my game.
…i cant even play it! :*(
please someone tell me how to fix the letters. They’re difficult to read.
Is this more than a demo? All I was able to do was the first level.
Nice look, good effort, but quite a few bugs that make this hard to play. I understand that RPG maker is not a percect tool, but choosing to allow entirely grid-based play for a zelda game is a bad idea. Additionaly there is the issue with the controls. When holding any key it will twitch on and off, often a problem when trying to shield.
You may want to look into another port of the game that has (supposedly) been in development for years, for the TI86/89. Last I checked, there was a smooth engine for movement and graphics, almost identical to the original game, minus the problem of low resolution on the calculator screens. If anyone is still working on it, you may be able to help them finally finish.
Controls are very bad. No diagonal movement. You are forced to move full square so starting and stopping is very awkward. Just feels like an inadequate clone mostly because of the tools they used to build it.
My only real complaint is the hit detection and once I beat the first dungeon and grabbed the instrument, it said, “end of demo, thanks for playing” and rolled credits… I thought this was a fully functional game?
Not complaining mind you, just misled? or read it wrong I guess. Hope to see more
This game is little bit problem. Need fix crane bug.
haven’t opened it on my computer (on a mac and i’m afraid if i do i’m gonna discover that it doesn’t run) got wanted to mention that if you are going to finish this it would be nice if you could include the ‘secret’ dungeon from the DX color version, with the red or blue armor… not that it added much to the game but its always nice to have those extra dungeons to play through… whelp off to try running the file
Very nice interpretation, captures the essence of the original beautifully. Only complaints are the linear controls and the save system. Having to restart an entire dungeon due to a collision error with an enemy becomes frustrating after a few restarts.
Can someone tell me what emulator i need to play this
Can You port this into the Palm Pre or future WebOS devices through Homebre?
crap the website got suspended