Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 6/12/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage

Developer: Insomniac

Publisher: SCEI

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS1

Release Date: November 2, 1999

You know exactly what I’m going to say about Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage even before my first sentence. Yes, indeed, it’s a sequel that expands the parameters that the primitive base of the first game laid out and practically perfects the formula with its enhancements. By now, I’m sick to death of this statement being the overarching summation for almost every second game in most series, but it’s especially applicable to Ripto’s Rage. The little, purple dragon that could was a charming protagonist in a whimsical world that evoked all of the textbook tropes associated with the fantasy mythos of the Western world, with a pinch of irreverence to appeal to a more jaded modern audience. There was nothing inherently wrong with Spyro’s concept, aesthetic, or mechanical properties, but the first entry in Insomniac’s 3D platformer series faltered entirely because of its direction. Spyro 1 was as short and effortless as walking to one’s mailbox, a byproduct of what I can assume to be a conscious effort from the developers to placate their exceedingly young demographic. If we take a glance at gaming from a historical lens, several titles that share a similar atmosphere of innocence to Spyro have a reputation for breaking the spirits of the impressionable youths that play them, still being captivated by every minute of adversity, all the while. Gaming is arguably the only medium where a product’s content and its accessibility are interchangeable, probably stemming from the early days when kids everywhere were allured by the digital glow of the arcades just to have the machines beat them senselessly for their quarters like a common, back-alley thug. Spyro didn’t need to brutalize the children of the late 1990s, new to the realm of 3D or anything too drastic, but the game diluted many of gaming’s hallmarks, such as layered level progression and boss fights, for the sake of unnecessarily assuaging their audience. I’m glad that the first Spyro’s shortcomings were as obvious to Insomniac, for the sequel here has rectified them a good bit as part of its cultivation process to become the exemplary Spyro title.

Spyro evidently did such an outstanding job saving the dragon elders in the first game that the unsuspecting, pint-sized powerhouse is now a freelance hero, liable to be hired to fix any dilemma that might befall the realm of the dragons and its immediate surroundings. Spyro and his glowing insect buddy Sparx clamor for a vacation, but as the common police officer adage goes, crime doesn’t take a vacation. Instead of frivolously soaking up the sun’s rays on the Dragon Shores, the portal transports them to the far-off fantasy land of Avalar, where its denizens are in dire need of a dragon’s vigor and destructive potency. Apparently, the portal used to summon Spyro accidentally warped a dwarvish, orange megalomaniac named Ripto into their tranquil realm, and now he’s imposing on his inadvertent invitation by progressively usurping their land and becoming its despotic ruler. Before Ripto has the chance to traipse through every official significant castle with the tapestry of his unsightly visage that indicates his control, Spyro must exterminate the invasive pest along with his monstrous, ogre-like bodyguards of Crush and Gulp. Immediately, Ripto is ten times the antagonist that Gnasty Gnorc was in the first game. By adding tension to the conflict, the growing influence of this malevolent, Napoleon-esque pipsqueak, the player feels better incentivized to light a self-inflicted fire under Spyro’s ass and save the hapless inhabitants of this realm that Ripto feels no scruples in subjugating. There are some genuine stakes to the story, while scrounging the land to free the elders from their encasements felt borderline janitorial in practice.

Much of the enhancements and overall broadening of the Spyro formula that Ripto’s Rage implements revolves around the attributes that Spyro interacts with, but there should be some mention of the marginal changes the developers put into our plucky, purple scamp. Spyro is pretty organically gifted as a platformer protagonist, with inexhaustible energy for head-butting and innate fire-breathing ability fulfilling the qualifications of offense against most, if not all, enemies. Still, a little more variation on what is already agreeably competent couldn’t hurt to re-engage returning players. Spyro’s glide move, which he can also execute gracefully on account of the scaly, majestic wings protruding from his sides, is now augmented with an upward boost that finishes his flight, perfect for ensuring better accuracy with landing on platforms found from a great distance. Since Spyro’s traversal through the air could only have been tinkered with ever-so-slightly from a practical standpoint, the developers found it crucial for the purple dragon to occupy a whole new sphere of character-specific spaces. After some heavy contention in the boardroom, the developers decided not to prolong Spyro’s aversion to water like a platformer protagonist stereotype and conveniently insert swimming into the list of Spyro’s dragon-centric abilities. Not only will Spyro be able to keep himself physically afloat by paddling himself on the water’s surface. Soon after discovering his new ability, he’ll even be able to dive beneath the surface and swim underwater, and I guess the lack of an air gauge to mind suggests that a set of gills is another component to a dragon’s biology. With the way that Spyro treads through the deep with agile elegance, it’s hard to believe that he was ever handicapped by large bodies of H2O. In addition, any underwater section in Ripto’s Rage is absolutely spellbinding, impressively setting the player in a radically different physical plane without the primitive 3D graphics compromising on the immersion. Spyro can also learn how to execute a downward dive on land, which weaponizes the force of his skull into a rock and crate-breaking slam. With all of these new skills Spyro learns throughout the duration of Ripto’s Rage, none of them seem to overstep his simplistic beauty as a platformer character. Each innovation feels like they were staircase thoughts the developers wanted to add to their protagonist initially, instead of shoehorning in attributes for the sake of sprucing up a sequel.

Another quality-of-life improvement on Spyro, or at least in my subjective opinion, is the tweaking of his voice. Carlos Alazraqui is a perfectly wonderful voice actor, but his line delivery for our underestimated hero gave us more reason to doubt his capabilities, and if he had underwear, wrap it over the top of a flagpole. Instead of asking Mr. Alazraqui to lessen the nasally cadence of Spyro’s voice, Insomniac decided to just axe him in favor of Tom Kenny, aka the voice of SpongeBob. Ironically, for someone whose most notable role is defined by a high-pitched, squeaky affectation, Tom Kenny sufficiently lowers Spyro’s voice to an adequate octave to make him less grating when he speaks. Or, perhaps the kinks in Spyro’s voice are less noticeable this time around because the dialogue in Ripto’s Rage is spoken to Spyro rather than the inverse. Not only are the various NPCs per level quite chatty with their requests, but the series has taken the Sonic the Hedgehog approach to broadening an IP by integrating a slew of secondary characters into the mix with Spyro and his mute dragonfly buddy Sparx. Once Spyro is transported to Avalar, he’s debriefed on the prevailing dilemma by the trio of recurring characters, who also aid him throughout his quest to quell Ripto. Elora the faun seems to introduce every significant progression point in the three different overworlds, helpfully updating Spyro on the mission at hand. “The Professor,” an elderly mole-like creature, is a man of science if his glasses and lab coat combination didn’t visually suggest it. Using his mechanical prowess, he’ll often provide access to certain levels in the overworld by activating their respective warp gates. Lastly, Hunter the Cheetah is the comic relief whom the other two constantly reprimand for his oafishness. The bipedal cat still possesses a spunky charisma, I guess. From what we know from the aforementioned series that infamously bloated itself with excess faces clogging the screen, adding all of these supporting characters spells imminent disaster for the Spyro series. For now, the Avalar faction is fine and dandy in adding some extra dynamics to the story with their varied personalities and ubiquitous yet subordinate roles. Their presence, however, will only be palatable if they are endemic to Avalar in this game alone or if the series persists with them and only them moving forward. The series is already treading on thin ice by augmenting the character roster, especially since they all have too much fur on their bodies for comfort, which is likely to attract the worst kinds of Sonic fans.

Oh, and we can’t forget about Moneybags, the aristocratic bear who aptly speaks in a posh accent to signify his opulent wealth and social status. Considering his debonair, exalted outfit and demeanor, matched with the assets around Avalar that he seemingly lets Spyro borrow for a fee of gems, one would think he’s the governing force of the land whose power and influence Ripto covets. He’s obviously a contemptible character by design, but I don’t think the hoity-toity bear is an unwelcome stain on Ripto’s Rage because he’s an integral aspect of adding depth to the overall Spyro experience. Because Moneybags is an impediment that blocks immediate progression with a sum of currency needed, it not only gives the gems more value; it also incentivizes the player to become better acquainted with the nooks and crannies of each level where gems might be found. In turn, the exploration process fixes the issue of the series levels feeling in one ear and out of the other.

I would say that the level designs in Ripto’s Rage are the focal point of the amplification initiative of Ripto’s Rage, but one wouldn’t know that at face value. The main objective for each of these levels persists as simply traveling to an arbitrary goal point, which grants Spyro another collectible and unlocks the exit warp gate to signify completion. Unlike the first game, where every level’s objective consistently applied to the overarching goal of finding the elders and freeing them, the level-ending conditions of the areas in Ripto’s Rage feature a myriad of situations. In “Aquaria Towers,” Spyro will resupply the seahorse society with water after a group of diving-suited hooligans has drained it. Similarly, in “Magma Cone,” Spyro must find a way to cease the eruption of a local volcano, which has been spurting molten lava since a band of mischievous Earthshapers unsealed its tip to inconvenience a tribe of fauns. Other level highlights include the Arab-esque “Shady Oasis” that sees Spyro accompanying a hippopotamus cub to a tall pillar while Spyro feeds him fruit that momentarily transforms the boy into a hulking beast that smashes through the gated barriers. The Eskimo NPCs of “Crystal Glacier” will also return the favor to Spyro when he thaws out their frozen captivity by helping him through level impediments. There is even some inner realm cohesion between “Zephyr” and “Breeze Harbor,” with both areas waging war with one another and Spyro acting as a double agent working for the benefit of both sides. Is Spyro intending for the conflict to result in a draw by doing this? “Metropolis” is the token futuristic level that is uncharacteristic for the series, but the ultra-advanced environment still doesn’t complicate the process of Spyro traveling from point A to B while platforming and scorching enemies with his fire breath along the way. Rescuing the Satyrs in “Fractured Hills” from their stony confinements is the task most reminiscent of the first game’s general mission, but the mythical, hedonistic goat hybrids will actually repay Spyro by blowing away chunks of an obscured fortress with the playing of bagpipes. I’m not sure if this scene is intended to display the underlying power of the instrument or if it’s a further comment on its shrillness. If delving into the levels of Ripto’s Rage feels like one of my patented highlight reels, it’s because I can’t describe all of them succinctly in one paragraph. Instead of increasing the breadth of Spyro’s levels, the developers decided to swell each realm with eight levels, subtracting the inordinate amount to four for the “Winter Tundra” realm. Sure, there were twenty total levels in the first game, but it highlights a persisting problem with Spyro’s progression direction. Even though the NPCs introducing the scenes and scenarios never repeat themselves, the fact that they all amount to the same brief, linear trek to an endpoint so many times still evokes the underwhelming terseness that plagued the first game.

However, the fleeting feeling that comes with completing a Spyro level only pertains to achieving the main collectible of the talismans, level-specific trinkets that signify a sign of bonding between Spyro and the folk of these levels that he aids. To implore the player to deviate from the fixed, narrow path of bare minimum victory, the developers have added orbs as the game’s “secondary collectible.” Upon exploring what lies beyond the beaten path to a talisman, Spyro will find new situations that are either entirely removed from the area’s central scenario or extend upon the overarching conflict. Solving said tangential situation will net Spyro an orb as a reward for his splendid deed, which can range from collecting gears on a trolley in “Breeze Harbor,” playing ice hockey in “Colossus,” saving a tribe of cavemen from being eaten whole by carnivorous raptor hatchlings, etc. Hunter is commonly involved in plenty of orb gathering opportunities, whether it be collaborating with the doofus by collecting monkeys in the arid land of “Scorch,” or competing against him in grabbing volcanic crystals that jet out of the ground in “Magma Cone.” I guess his role as a fieldman justifies his placement among Elora and The Professor, because he sure as shit doesn’t offer any tactical advice or medical assistance. Methinks Insomniac took a glimpse at a certain N64 Rareware title that released the same year as the first Spyro game and decided to take a liberal helping from that game’s freeform progression philosophy. I can’t say I blame Insomniac, for you’d have to put every 3D platformer developer on trial for shamelessly aping Banjo Kazooie’s template forevermore after 1999, sequel or not. Like the buoyantly animated N64 exclusive that Spyro 2 has obviously reinterpreted, orb quests greatly facilitate a sense of exploration, motivating the player to experience the full expanse of a level. Plus, the diverse tasks needed to obtain these orbs add a desperately-needed layer of difficulty with their unfamiliar conditions.

Still, Insomniac should’ve copied Banjo Kazooie's collectible course right down to its last detail, for Spyro 2 commits something erroneous with the orbs that is the developer’s unique doing. I described the orbs as a secondary collectible in quotation marks because what the game doesn’t reveal until its final stretches is that they have more precedence in progression than the talismans. In fact, the final realm forgoes talismans entirely in favor of focusing on the orbs, so the player can feasibly fulfill the steep total of 40 needed to unlock the barrier between the player and the final boss. It’s made abundantly clear that collecting orbs is still necessary to progress the game in incidental increments, but the sudden swap that occurs is downright deceitful. Because the player is duped into thinking that the orbs were only necessary in minor instances and the talismans were the main collectible driving progression, this results in a large swath of backtracking that wedges an obstructive boulder in the game’s pacing. Sure, locking the pathway to some orbs behind skills that are initially unlearnable already implies that backtracking was a consciously implemented factor by the developers, but the return time to previous levels is extended unduly because of this flagrant form of miscommunication.

In those progression milestones, whether they be contingent on the collecting of orbs or talismans, access is unlocked for the game’s bosses. Returning players may treat this requisite video game trope with a lack of enthusiasm, as the first game proved that having the dragon chase you is not as intoxicating as the popular inverse. Insomniac totally scraps their baffling, facile boss formula and exhibits some bona fide bosses for their sequel. Crush, Gulp, and Ripto are the bosses fought between traveling to the next realm, a modest lineup but one that remains consistent with the stakes the story sets up from the beginning. Crush channels fire and electric energy before becoming frustrated with Spyro thwarting him, caving in the ceiling, and having the rubble fall on his head as a result of his temper. Gulp fires energy blasts from the laser cannon strapped to his back, which genuinely take some swift, proficient dodging maneuvers to avoid while Spyro combats him with the array of explosives the bird fleet overhead provides. Lastly, the battle against the big (in the sense of status) orange cheese is an epic escapade divided into three distinct phases to elongate the scope of this appropriately formidable boss fight. I might be marveling at these three duels due to the first game lowering the bar so deeply that what qualifies as a boss fight became as imperceptible as the contents of the abyss in which they reside. Still, I believe that the developers have now crafted an exceptional arrangement of climactic skirmishes that supersede simply fulfilling the requisites of health bars, phases, and other factors that should comprise a competent boss fight.

Spryo 2: Ripto’s Rage expectedly surpasses the debut title in the series in spades, but I feel a tad hesitant in assigning it as the apex of the series, as I felt comfortable doing at first based on common trends across video game series. The levels incorporate more substance by adding auxiliary objectives that prolong their visit time to a satisfying length, and I no longer need to contemplate the definition of a boss fight because the baddies of Ripto’s Rage deliver on their expectations splendidly. Spyro’s new friends add a layer of exuberance to the story, while Spyro’s voice no longer makes me irrationally angry at him. What else could anyone want from Insomniac’s deadly dragon tyke? Actually, I’d really like the series to stop offering objectives where the player can just breezily hike to a goal in under a minute and call it a day. If the developers had made the orbs the game’s sole progression collectible, the player could’ve chosen which objectives would fulfill the requirements and focused on the more engrossing, substantial challenges littered throughout the field a little less conspicuously. Still, maybe the simple stipulations of standard progression are an indelible factor to Spyro’s accessible format, but I wish that the developers either firmly established that the “talisman routes” were the ways to progress the game instead of drastically deciding that the orbs held more significance at the last minute. Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage undoubtedly stands head and shoulders over its predecessor, but the salient smudges the game inadvertently exhibits only make me fret for future entries when this is considered to be the series' peak.

Sonic Colors Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 6/4/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Sonic Colors

Developer: Sonic Team

Publisher: Sega

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: Wii

Release Date: November 12, 2010

After playing Sonic Unleashed, I stated with steadfast conviction that I would never trust any glowing praise a Sonic fan might express for one of the blue blur’s divisive 3D titles. It’s a “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” type of scenario, and I should’ve stuck with my gut that knew playing a game where he howls at the moon was going to be dreadful from the get-go. Why, then, have I decided to dive deeper into Sonic’s hazy, post-stardom modern era with the Wii exclusive, Sonic Colors, especially since the Sonic games endemic to Nintendo’s motion-controlled system have also been known to be complete dogshit? If you read the finer notes of my statement, I said that I would no longer listen to the words of Sonic fans. Surprisingly, for the first time since Sonic’s genesis period (no pun intended), Sonic Colors was receiving genuine praise from outside his circle of disturbingly devout fans. Quite frankly, it’s easier to trust the opinions of the sports-watching, god-fearing, laid-getting common folk when it comes to Sonic, for they’d cast all of the collective passion projects on the internet involving Sonic down to the depths of Hell where it belongs. Normal people can enjoy Sonic (a demographic I undoubtedly fall under *cough* *cough*), otherwise, he wouldn’t have skyrocketed to a level of gaming stardom that rivaled Nintendo’s Italian stallion back in the 1990s. Because the sensible majority who had derided Sonic’s output since Sega bowed out of the console market were finally complimenting a new release from the blue blur, and my opinions more or less fall in line with theirs, Sonic Colors had ignited a sense of curiosity in me once again. This time, I actually wasn’t being led astray.

Sonic Colors achieves the fleeting feeling of yesteryear's adulation by dialing a few things back a bit. One aspect of Sonic’s 3D titles that I always found unsavory was writing a grandiose, hyperdramatic story to support and give context to a game’s sequence of levels. The impetus of elevating the scale of a Sonic story is to both expand the narrative potential of a Sonic adventure and match the nuanced, multidimensional range of cinematic space that 3D ushered into the medium. While attempting to grow the series and adapt to the heightened gaming climate brought about by the third dimension, stories revolving around cerebral and or profound themes of time travel, love, and the impending apocalyptic falter in execution when they’re all being driven by a cast of quippy, anthropomorphic characters whose animated designs alone compromise the intended sincerity the story is intended to evoke. One exception the series has produced that does effectively tell a more thought-provoking, emotionally resonating tale is E-102 Gamma’s story from the first Sonic Adventure, only because the robot’s arc was almost completely removed from the game's base plot involving Sonic. After shooting for the moon of cinematic spectacle and failing miserably too many times for comfort, Sonic has returned to the familiar ground of stopping Robotnik/Eggman from committing heinous acts of animal cruelty in the form of self-aggrandized industrialization. Eggman’s scheme as of late is the creation of an interstellar amusement park, another entrepreneurial venture for the awkwardly-shaped mechanical madman. Besides the fact that it continues the trend of Eggman’s properties being eccentric eyesores, the problematic portion of this establishment that obliges Sonic to intervene as always is that it’s actually a front meant to distract Sonic from his actual ambitions: a gigantic mind-control laser pointed at Earth for diabolical reasons one can probably infer for themselves. The power of this laser is being generated by an alien species referred to as “wisps,” and Sonic must liberate these colorful creatures from indentured servitude. Even if the creatures in question are fictional and intergalactic, the premise of Sonic Colors sees Sonic defending an ecosystem of small, helpless lifeforms against the torturous grasp of Eggman, similarly to his glory days on Mobius.

I adore the 3D interpretation of Sonic’s classic conundrum with Eggman (with Tails on the sidelines as the only Sonic friend to accompany him as a sign of great restraint), but several Sonic fans express feelings of dissatisfaction in regards to Sonic rekindling his roots. Specifically, they comment that the concept is beneath the blue blur now, equating Sonic Colors to the impactless, mindless thirty-minute entertainment burst of a Saturday morning cartoon. The denial dealer who sells to the collective Sonic fandom should definitely get pinched, for the dope he’s peddling is too potent for human consumption. Admittedly, Sonic has shown to be an adequate cinematic property only in recent years, far after the release of Sonic Colors. Up until that point and in the years that followed, how many incarnations of a Sonic cartoon series have there been? I rest my case. It’s more than evident that a blue hedgehog stopping the plans of an evil genius is suited for an episodic, early-weekend morning timeslot on television. Playing devil’s advocate for a bit, I can at least sympathize with their complaints that Sonic Colors perhaps lays on the wacky lightheartedness associated with a children’s cartoon series a little too thick. Sonic is more obnoxious than ever, uttering an eye-rolling line of levity intended to be a clever joke at every waking moment. He’s intended to be charmingly witty and confident, but in reality, he’s a loathsome dork. The “baldy nosehair” descriptor of Eggman from the mistranslated words of Sonic and Tails’ wisp friend, Yacker, lives in infamy as an appallingly awful “comedic” line from this game, and the person who wrote this line thinking it would be as funny as Sonic did should be brought to swift and merciless justice. Eggman also has two diminutive, incompetent robot cronies following him around, just like in the first Sonic cartoon series, who are also not as mirthful as their writers seem to think. One moment of genuine amusement from this game came from a Taxi Driver reference, quoting his famous line of isolation because his malfunctioning voice chip was set to “New Yorker.” The constant stream of sophomoric kookiness can grate on the nerves of any player over a single-digit age range. Still, one has to admit that this sort of atmosphere is more appropriate for Sonic than one of epic melodrama.

Beyond the surface that is admittedly hard to stomach at times, most of the remaining elements of Sonic Colors are delightful. Firstly, for a place whose purpose is to deceive Sonic and probably a few major Earth nation governments, Eggman has created quite the vibrant and eclectic theme park. Its eclecticism stems from the fact that the tethered coalition of six planets isn’t limited to collectively recreate Six Flags in space. Each planet that functions as Sonic Colors’ worlds exhibits its own distinct theme based on a recreational establishment that requires a sum of money to attend. The first world that the player is propelled into at the start is a tropical resort, evoking the laidback aura that compels people to drink their weight in pina coladas. “Sweet Mountain” is literally the Land of Chocolate from The Simpsons that Dream Land from the Kirby series has often taken visual inspiration from, and “Aquarium Park” is a series of fairly competent water levels with a wondrous aquatic zoo as their consistent foreground. Combining “Starlight Carnival” and “Asteroid Coaster” would result in the faithful, typical representation of an amusement park, but since they are separated, the former is a vivid display of neon lights and fireworks, while the latter is a bodacious rollercoaster that operates through an oozing array of space rocks. Eat your heart out, Twinkle Park. Planet Wisp, the arboreal home of Eggman’s energy source, is the only world that doesn’t clearly fit the theme, unless someone wants to argue that camping or hiking elicits as much merriment as the themes of the other worlds. Still, “Planet Wisp” is a highlight that contrasts the otherworldly, organic glow of the environment with the ugly, mechanical adulteration of Eggman’s operations superbly. While the diversity between the worlds is outstanding and their respective aesthetics are captivating, the individual levels that comprise these worlds are unfortunately not created equal. The levels are constructed in a linear thread similar to the Super Mario Bros. 3 template, with the world’s boss leading Sonic to a climactic dead end. Each world features approximately six levels before Sonic fights one of Eggman’s robotic contraptions to cap it off, but the issue is that some of these levels are reasonably lengthy, and some are short excursions tied down by a single platforming gimmick like the moving spring pad. It’s reminiscent of how Sonic Unleashed’s worlds pronounced the enormity of the first level while featuring more only as secondary larks, but the first levels of that game were long and arduous enough to span the length of an entire world in Sonic Colors. When Sonic Colors follows the same pattern, there is a disappointing sense of unevenness.

When comparing Sonic Colors to Unleashed, the fact that Colors is a Wii exclusive presents a giant, Egg-Carrier-sized elephant in the room. It’s common knowledge that there was another version of Unleashed on the Wii that was forced to cut much of the content from its HD equivalent, resulting in a radically different product that most people consider to be less-than-definitive. While decreasing the visual fidelity to a modest standard definition and streamlining the hubs for the Wii version of Unleashed may present an argument that Sonic should stray away from Nintendo’s motion-controlled money maker (the dreadful storybook games also adding evidence to this), some feel that a silver lining to subduing Unleashed was that the game was not as marred by the HD version’s ambitions. Sonic Colors is a game marked by restraint, but not compromise. Surprisingly, Sonic Colors managed to continue Unleashed’s modern template for Sonic’s gameplay even on a technically inferior system. Unleashed’s ultimate stride in Sonic innovation with its boost feature persists in Colors, and the nature of manually scraping the sound barrier as Sonic has been streamlined, so the player isn’t punished nearly as often for using this calamitous mechanic. Drifting through curved bends on the tracks is made far more manageable here because Colors offers a break option that slightly interrupts momentum for smoother turning. All the while, reducing the breakneck blast that the boost feature facilitates never feels jaggedly minimized to ensure that the player doesn’t haphazardly kill the blue blur at any point they use this mechanic. Colors also reworks the implementation of Unleashed’s in-level collectibles, swapping for red rings in lieu of contrasting sun and moon medals no longer having any thematic relevance. Besides the shift in color, their significance has also been altered to being completely optional to collect, negating the tedious, pace-breaking slog of having to gather up an inordinate amount of them to progress through the game. Still, it’s recommended that the player make a modicum of effort to collect these rings, for they are in plain sight of the medals from Unleashed and lead the player towards alternate paths in the levels that likely wouldn’t have been discovered otherwise. Overall, the changes that Colors makes to Unleashed’s gameplay formula aren’t the result of having to dilute the high-definition elements of its predecessor due to an inhibited console. Having these alterations here in Colors shows that these quality-of-life enhancements are a product of deep developer consideration that could’ve been implemented on any piece of hardware. On the subject, the quick-time events that plagued Unleashed have been altered entirely into a simple few presses of a single button when Sonic zooms off a ramp. Halle-fucking-lujah.

One might ask if the Wii’s patented motion controls are implemented into Colors in any capacity, and if they are, to what extent does their irritation stem from too much involvement? Fortunately, Colors limits the central gimmick of its hardware to one shake to summon each of the wisp powers. When Sonic runs into a capsule on the track, the wisp inside will grant him their respective powers that add to the depth and variety of Colors’ gameplay. A cyan-color wisp will allow Sonic to dart around a level at immeasurable speeds like a fired laser, stopping the gameplay momentarily so the player can methodically aim its trajectory. A yellow wisp introduced in “Sweet Mountain” allows Sonic to drill through the flaky crust underneath his feet, while an orange rocket propels Sonic vertically into the air in a matter of seconds. Platforming complications can be rectified by either a pink wisp that allows Sonic to climb up walls (like Knuckles) and over spikes (not like Knuckles) or melt the solid foundation of blue blocks into collectible coins with the pink and blue wisps, respectively. The green wisp that transforms Sonic, which allows Sonic to hover at a manageable pace, is quite awkward for its booger-shaped blobbery and how it bounces when it hits an object, and assigning it as the only way Sonic can execute the ring dash, a 3D Sonic requisite, is inexcusable. While the “hover wisp” is the least satisfactory of the bunch, the sinisterly purple “frenzy” wisp is my favorite for its allowance for Sonic to become a rabid animal and expand in size with every object and enemy it chomps on. Somehow, the power of this “corrupt” wisp feels more dangerous and wild than Sonic’s werewolf persona. I appreciate the variety of powers that each wisp offers, and am grateful that these delicate little space buggers are returning the favor to Sonic after he frees them from captivity. Still, using the wisp powers practically feels entirely incidental to certain moments in the level, unlike the boost feature, which can be used on a whim to skillfully augment the standard rate of Sonic’s trajectory. Maybe the wisps feel somewhat gimmicky because they tend to be the dominant mechanic for some of the briefer levels, highlighting the claim of their incidental nature even further.

Perhaps the wisps would feel like a stronger, more clever inclusion into Sonic Colors if they were a prominent key to defeating the bosses, like an item gained in a Zelda dungeon. Really, anything would’ve been appreciated in sprucing up the paltry selection of bosses that Colors displays. In essence, Colors features three boss battles, a robotic eye in a hamster wheel arena, a ship captain, and a flying frigate that Sonic chases and dismantles piece by piece. These three are repeated once more for the later worlds with marginal differences in difficulty and arena conditions. Not only does the repetition grate on the player, but the general ease of these bosses compounds the lukewarm feelings to total apathy. Some of the wisps are included in these bouts, but why would I use them when Sonic’s base moveset will prove to be just as effective, and quicker, I might add, in dispatching them? The only admirable boss fight in Colors is the climactic one with Eggman’s Nega-Wisp, who uses the powers of the wisps to combat Sonic as opposed to the inverse scenario. While this lengthy duel against Eggman is more substantial than the bosses leading up to it, as a final boss should ideally be, chasing it while avoiding its firepower reminds me of many bosses from Unleashed. Dare I say, but I’ve realized that the ones from the previous game proved to be more exhilarating and offered a heftier challenge. When an aspect from Unleashed proves to be better, it should embarrass Colors even more to have neglected the one factor, considering how many of Unleashed’s attributes it improves upon.

I’ve come to the realization after exploring Sonic’s gameography (is this a real term?) that it's a series that exemplifies the career arc of a rockstar more than any other series in gaming. It reveled in the excess that came with success in its prime period, and crashed mighty hard when its label (Sega’s console market) dropped them. Games like its 2006 self-titled and Sonic Unleashed were a period where tabloids took a humiliating snapshot of Sonic’s burnt-out malaise, which concerned former fans who remembered his former glory. After hitting rock bottom, meditating on the source of his problems, and going to rehab to halt his ego-trip, Sonic Colors is the product of the blue hedgehog’s newfound sobriety. Admittedly, it exhibits aspects that I find either underwhelming or unsavory, but the high notes of Sonic Colors more than match any of the best moments from the series’ glory days. Hopefully, Sonic won’t relapse into its tendencies for broken, unfeasible ambitions again and continue this unexpected instance of high quality into a streak that will save the hedgehog from continuing to dig the grave it almost fell into *ahem.*

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/14/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

Developer: Flagship

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: Game Boy Color

Release Date: February 27, 2001

For ages, I thought that the Oracle duology of Zelda titles on the Game Boy Color presented minor alterations of the same game as any pair of Pokemon titles. Now, after conquering the action-oriented Seasons, it’s time to delve into its more cerebral twin, Oracle of Ages. My reason for tackling Ages second after Seasons was not based on a preference for swinging Link’s sword at a multitude of enemies, but because of the preconceived notion that Ages was a rather high-brow experience. I was under the impression that Seasons was the little piggy who crafted a shoddy shack out of assorted twigs and glue, while Ages was the more astute brother pig who built a house out of reinforced concrete. Being the big, bad wolf in this analogy, I figured I’d practice blowing down the foundation with the less durable material before attempting to collapse a lung trying to penetrate the solid fortress. Did “practicing” for Ages by playing Seasons make my experience with Ages smoother? From what I’ve gathered, a few returning elements were more readily approachable. Still, no matter the similarities, Ages is truly a fundamentally different Zelda title than Seasons in ways that scratch deep beneath their surfaces. Oracle of Ages may not be too obtuse to humor, but it’s still one of the most challenging titles in the franchise.

The player will have to trust my assertion of Age’s differences from Seasons, for the game’s introduction might prove otherwise. Once again, Link is abruptly summoned to adventure by some sort of cosmic influence, and he awakens in a pleasant spot of grass in an unfamiliar land. This time around, the goddess whose the center of attention in this scene is Nayru, the blue sister of Din, who is alternately more demure than her fiery, self-assured sister. A crowd of curious people surrounds Nayru as she serenades them, but her modest performance is interrupted by a malevolent force. This time around, it’s not Onox with a violent windstorm. The evil perpetrator is a witchy succubus named Veran, who infiltrates the gathering by possessing series staple character Impa to get close enough to the goddess and take full control of her personal autonomy. The plot premises between Ages and Seasons ring so eerily similar that one’s initial assumption of these twin titles being pallet-swapped clones like a pair of Pokemon games. Still, despite the litany of copied properties with a few minor differences, one major implement Ages inserts into its story is the addition of a deuteragonist of sorts. Ralph is apparently Nayru’s de facto guardian, tardily arriving on the scene of her capture and expressing the most zeal for the situation at hand. He’s certainly committed to his role of taking all of the proverbial bullets for the lovely Nayru, and he’s made it a competition with Link to be the one who wins her freedom over the control of Veran and possibly her heart by proxy. I don’t have the heart to tell this poor sap that his efforts will be all for naught, or at least in the department I’m certain he yearns for. Considering that the conflict narrative took a backseat in the nosebleed sections of Seasons until the climactic point of the adventure, it’s nice to see that Ages is implementing a character that will remind the player of the quest’s purpose from time to time.

The Game Boy Color’s pixelated graphics might also make the player believe that Ages’ takes place in the same setting as Seasons, but Labrynna exhibits plenty of fundamental differences from the map of Holodrum. While Seasons tended to evoke elements from the first Zelda game as a sign of the series’ evolution in fifteen years, Ages conversely revels in a prosperous, post-Ocarina period of the franchise. Labrynna shares as many typical topographical features that comprise a Zelda overworld as Holodrum, but the differences lie in what exists in those naturalistic regions. Mountains still tower over Labrynna in the north, but these hilly peaks are the grounds of the Gorons, a major race of rock creatures who were only seen in the 3D Zelda titles up until this point. I suppose the aquatic fish whose heads emerge from under the water to spit balls of fire are classified as “Zoras,” and they are here in the rivers of Labrynna to hurl flaming loogies at all angles relative to Link’s position. For the first time, the domesticated, articulate Zoras from Ocarina of Time coexist with their hostile, neanderthal cousins. In addition to districting sizable sections of the map to two of Ocarina’s major races, Labrynna also has the Zelda world standards of a hub village near the spawn point, graveyards, and grassy plains that stretch for miles. In the context of Ages’ prevalent obtuseness, I suppose the more pressing question regarding the overworld is how difficult it is to navigate through. Surprisingly, I’d make the argument for Holodrum being the more arduous overworld to traverse through, for there are four seasonal conditions that complicate the terrain. This isn’t to say that progressing through Labrynna is smooth sailing throughout, but my experience constantly changing the terrain of Holodrum with the “Rod of Seasons” made all of the progression snags in Labrynna far more approachable. Like Seasons, general progression is hinted at by the wise Maku Tree located around the vicinity of the overworld’s primary village hub. However, the key difference with this character/traversal aid is that in Ages, it’s a younger, gender-swapped version of the mighty, omniscient oak. A distinctly feminine tree isn’t inherently odd, but the bulging, kawaii eyes and facial expressions are slightly disturbing. The female Maku Tree even develops a crush on Link because, naturally, it's her feminine duty to find our intrepid hero sexually irresistible. Is anyone else uncomfortable?

Traversal through Labrynna also acts in conjunction with the game’s “alternate setting.” In Seasons, a land called Subrosia was nestled between a dimensional rift under Holodrum, showcasing a dynamic relationship between both lands, bonded by the core mechanical gimmick of the game. Technically, Ages doesn’t have an alternate setting, complete with its separate zip code and radically different environment. The portals that appear in the square patterns in select spots on the ground will instead transport Link to Labrynna about a century in the past. The general graphical color palette shifts from bright and vivid to a muted tone to discern and signify the two eras of Labrynna’s history, and topographical elements are warped around ever-so-slightly to suggest that approximately one hundred years is enough time for land masses and manmade architectures to naturally bend with the passing of time. With this mechanic at play, Ages yet again reminds us that despite its rudimentary pixels, it’s a game that succeeds the more technically expansive 3D titles of the series. Time travel has been used as a mechanical and narrative conceit for both Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, so I’m going to have to deduct points from Ages for aping a series standard instead of carving out its own distinctive, untested gimmick like its Oracle twin. Still, I’ll give Ages credit for providing the clearest display of time travel and its effects through its gameplay. Unlike Ocarina, whose cataclysmic event was sandwiched ambiguously between two playable time periods and the ephemeral three-day reset of Majora’s Mask, the cause and effect of altering Labrynna’s history showcases a permanent change in its present. For example, King Zora is absent in the present day of Zora’s Domain because he succumbed to an illness, but Link can give him a potion that cures his terminal ailment, so he’s still sitting on his throne in the future. A token of “brotherhood” received from Goron legends will help Link navigate through the present-day Goron tribe, and the Maku Tree’s affections for Link stem from him performing a kind deed for her when she was just a sproutling. The paradoxical nature of time travel is treated with a surprisingly direct correlation, almost as masterfully as Chrono Trigger. It utilizes the premise of time travel more tactfully than either of the 3D games preceding it.

Link uses a mythical harp to transport back to Labrynna’s glory(?) days, an instrument obviously influenced by the time-altering properties of the ocarina. In relation to how the “Rod of Seasons” was the integral item in employing the game’s core mechanic, the “Harp of Ages” is also accompanied by a slew of other tools at Link’s disposal. Because Ages focuses its gameplay on puzzles instead of combat, some items have been swapped to appropriately complement a more wit-oriented Zelda experience. Platforming-intensive items like the Roc’s Cape and the magnetic gloves are no longer of relevant use, but other items replace them to round out Link’s arsenal. A regular hookshot replaces the magnetic gloves in spirit, and clinging to objects out of Link’s reach propels him to areas he’d have issues climbing otherwise. The Cane of Somaria makes its valiant return from A Link to the Past to materialize blocks to use in stamping down button switches and navigating through platforms with invisible trajectories. The seeds are just as prevalent here as they were in Seasons, but the apparatus that turns them into projectile ammunition is a tube that shoots a single seed. Subtracting the simultaneous flinging of multiple seeds may be disappointing if one has played Seasons first, but the aerodynamic force of the tube allows the seeds to ricochet across all the walls momentarily, allowing the player to coordinate their seed shots as if they are playing billiards. If the physics involved with the seed shooter is any indication, the items in store foster the puzzle-latent gameplay of Ages beautifully as the items did for the respective gameplay ethos of Seasons.

When discussing the utility of the weapons available in Ages, I’m mostly referring to instances in the game’s dungeons. Still, the range of Ages puzzles expands far beyond the enclosed parameters of dungeon progression. When I stated that Labrynna was easier to traverse than Holodrum, I meant generally walking about the game’s overworld. When it comes to progressing from point A to B, B usually pertaining to the next dungeon, Ages maintains its puzzle-laden mechanics throughout its run time to such a degree that it’s almost absurd. The entirety of Ages is denser than the deepest of ocean seafloors and stacked with more concurrent ingredients to contend with than eating a triple-decker club sandwich. Sure, the Maku Tree gives Link a general cardinal direction to the next essence, but arriving there is consistently a serpentine zigzagging through seemingly innumerable impediments. Ages isn’t just inclined to not hold the player’s hand at any given point: it expects them to execute feats of traversal equivalent to finding one’s way around a cemetery at night while blindfolded. If the player manages to come close to their destination, one core hindrance will often lead them four or five steps behind. For example, the animal buddies are featured here again, albeit less prominently than in Seasons. To navigate around a bit of terrain on the path to a dungeon, Link needs the special capabilities of one animal buddy, but only one will be of use due to a predetermined selection. Because I was unaware that I had to procure the respective horn that calls either Ricky or Dimitri, I had to find the whereabouts of the uncharacteristically-colored Moosh far away from the place where he was needed and return to the complication at hand while riding on his backside. Before Link can access the third dungeon, Link must first regain all of his tools that have been stolen by a group of bipedal lizard folk who reside on a remote island located at the southeastern corner of the map. The process of taking back what is rightfully Link’s incorporates heavy usage of warping to and fro from past to present, which will happen so frequently that it’s almost recommended that the player plot a schematic chart that details each step. The same process is equally applicable to entering Zora’s Domain, which also involves submerging Link underwater in addition to performing a time warp every few steps. These are only a few examples, as I could easily use every trek to a dungeon in Ages as an example of how complex every waking moment is on the field of Labyrnna. On paper, turning the traversal of the overworld into a ceaseless puzzle box is admirable from a design standpoint. In execution, constantly having to backtrack due to not seeing the game’s intended trajectory quickly becomes vexing and overwhelming.

Don’t get me wrong, the puzzles featured in Ages’ dungeons exhibit a display of constant brainteasers to contend with as rich and demanding as the ones in the overworld. I stated that the consistent issue that plagued the dungeons in Seasons was that each of them felt far more vacant compared to the lavish, detailed ones from previous Zelda titles. With Ages, the aesthetic layout of each dungeon is equally as lacking in terms of foreground properties, but it’s far less bothersome here. One doesn’t have time to bemoan the middling magnificence of the dungeon when they’re wracking their brains in every corner. Setpieces from Seasons transfer over, such as the train carts and turnstiles, and they are incorporated heavily into the mix of progress impediments that litter each of Ages’ dungeons. Joining them to make every inch of Ages’ dungeons as complex as trigonometry are colored cubes meant to be rotated into a fixture to unlock doors and colored walkways where Link mustn't retrace his steps. At least one of these puzzles is dedicated to filling a room per dungeon, but each of these labyrinths displays its own quirks that make them all distinctively challenging. The “Crown Dungeon” involves several gates that are color-coded red or blue, where the gates of one color can only be accessed at a time. “Moonlit Grotto” acts as a light version of “Eagle’s Tower” from Link’s Awakening, where Link must find and destroy a series of blue crystals to unlock a passageway to the dungeon’s final boss. Link uses a new item called the “Mermaid Suit” to swim beneath the trenches of “Mermaid’s Cave” without needing a brief breath of air, while he conversely makes a conscious effort not to dip into the boiling lava surrounding the platforms of “Skull Dungeon.” While emphasizing the puzzles of these dungeons has made them more memorable than the ones from Seasons, a fraction of their resonance is due to feelings of frustration. Because the puzzles per room in Ages’ dungeons are so dense, any dungeon that requires a substantial amount of backtracking is a goddamn nightmare. This is especially the case for the game’s later dungeons, notably “Ancient Tomb” and “Jabu-Jabu’s Belly.” I’d get so irritated trying to retrace my steps in these dungeons that I started to abuse the checkpoints situated between the beginning and the miniboss to regain my foothold, something I never resorted to in Seasons. The latter dungeon mentioned, a top-down 2D iteration of the fish behemoth’s innards, is by far the most maddening Zelda dungeon I’ve ever experienced, adding the elements of draining water in between grueling amounts of backtracking. When people state that they hate Jabu-Jabu’s Belly, they must be referring to the one from Ages, right?

Naturally, the puzzle-oriented gameplay that is intertwined with overworld and dungeon progression seeps into how Ages’ bosses are dispatched once Link manages to outwit all of the conundrums leading up to them. Unlike Seasons, whose boss roster was an amplified reunion of baddies from the very first Zelda title, Ages conjures up several original foes to conquer. Really, these bosses had to be fresh and unfamiliar, for it’s the only way to ensure that the player spends a considerable effort scratching their brains on how to defeat them. Discussing these bosses in great detail would be a disservice to the grand riddle behind all of them, but I will say that the weapon or tool acquired in their respective dungeons is utilized wonderfully. However, the one spoiler I will elaborate on in regards to Ages’ bosses is intended to be a fair forewarning for the game’s climactic duel against Veran. After climbing her tower and learning that Ralph is going to erase himself from existence in his blind fury to save Nayru, Veran puts the goddess's body up as a wager for finally defeating her in a three-stage fight. The first stage is a reheated version of when Link fought her beforehand, but the next two will likely put the player in a bind. For a final boss intended to culminate a puzzle-oriented experience, there’s very little brain function required in defeating Veran. In fact, swiping at her as she buzzes around the room as an abominable series of giant insects with her witchy, feminine face involves more guerilla combat similar to any boss from Seasons. The boss feels like a leftfield rug swipe because it doesn’t involve any of the shrewd skills of puzzle solving to conquer in a game bursting at the seams with them. It’s certainly not as ball-busting as Onox was, but it might be wise to utilize the advantages of the appraised rings to survive this final fight. It’s not as if the game offers a ring to boost the player’s cleverness.

After playing through Oracle of Seasons, the objective I kept a conscious thought of was to see if Ages would supplement its twin’s shortcomings. The reality of the relationship between these two GBC games is that they are two different extremes lying on two entirely different ends of the Zelda spectrum. It's a Heat Miser and Snow Miser kind of dynamic presented between both of them, and their stark contradictions cannot feasibly converge into one nuanced product. Fortunately, most other Zelda titles already fall in a middle ground between both extremes, so either unbalanced experience with the Oracle titles presents the possibility to indulge in the type of Zelda gameplay one prefers to their heart’s content. I enjoy a tasteful mix of both, but I think I’ll side in favor of Seasons because Ages is austere to a fault. Still, the slightly elevated narrative and masterful utilization of the time travel mechanic gives me enough substance to appreciate Ages anyway.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/14/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons

Developer: Flagship

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: Game Boy Color

Release Date: February 27, 2001

For seasons, I assumed that the Oracle duology of Zelda titles on the Game Boy Color presented minor alterations of the same game, like the Pokémon titles. In reality, Capcom's subsidiary company, Flagship, graced Nintendo’s first colored handheld system with two fully-fledged Zelda games that have separate stories, dungeons, and other distinctive creative attributes. It’s like being half Jewish during the holidays, with another treasure trove of presents arriving on Christmas once the candles of Hanukkah, lit weeks prior, are extinguished. Still, despite the excitement of indulging in a Zelda menage a trois, it’s likely that the primary demographic could only afford one of these titles at a time. Because of a lack of disposable income, it was paramount to choose which of the Oracle titles to buy based on one’s personal preferences. I am not faced with this crucial decision because 24 years of time passing has made both Oracle games readily accessible for cheap, but choosing which of these games to play first was still something to consider. I landed on the red-covered Oracle of Seasons not from an impartial round of Eeny Meeny Miny Moe, but because Seasons is rumoured to be the simpler of the two. If the Oracle games represented the two sides of the brain, Seasons is apparently the emotional, creative right, or at least when contrasted with Ages’ emphasis on puzzles. I’m not averse to puzzles in gaming, much less ones in Zelda games, but Seasons seems like a logical first because of how advanced Ages seems in comparison. Still, I am basing this decision on the information I’ve gathered from public consensus, so now I can see for myself whether or not it holds water.

Handheld versions of Nintendo titles tend to take liberties with their respective franchises’ narrative traditions, and Game Boy Zelda games aren’t apprehensive in shuffling up the series formula if the whimsical fever dream of Link’s Awakening is any indication. Like the aforementioned title, Oracle of Seasons deviates quite a bit from the standard Triforce quest in Hyrule. Link inexplicably falls in the soft grass of a land called Holodrum, and he’s greeted by a girl with brilliant red hair who takes him to what looks like the campground of pioneers that have docked their caravan on a grassy plain. A wicked storm interrupts their merry dancing session, and a sinister cyclone whisks everyone away except for Link. However, this is no indication of violent, spontaneous weather patterns. Behind the cyclone is a sinister figure named Onox, who has captured the red-haired girl, the goddess Din, in the first step in his diabolical scheme to essentially murder the planet by upsetting the balance of the seasons. Oracle of Seasons may present a new setting, add unfamiliar characters, and alter the stakes in the major conflict, but all that the various factors at play in the premise do is mask the tired similarities. Tell me, what’s the fundamental difference between saving a captured Din versus Zelda, or the sinister plan of the main antagonist? Strikethrough Din with Zelda and Onox with Ganon(dorf), and everything will still comfortably fall into place as a standard Zelda story. They can’t all be mavericks like Link’s Awakening.

However, one cannot substitute Hyrule for the kingdom at the center of Seasons’ setting. Where Koholint Island was all around askew, there is something more comfortably familiar about Holodrum, despite it deviating from the standard Zelda setting of Hyrule. Actually, the eerily off-putting aspect of Holodrum’s familiarity that the player might notice is its geographical similarities to Hyrule as it was depicted in its very first iteration on the NES. The first dungeon can be accessed immediately as the game begins, and it’s a gangly, hollowed-out tree situated on an island connected by a bridge from the mainland. Link visits a western graveyard in the later portion of the game, and I’m fairly certain that the foreboding domain of Onox is situated in the same geographical location on Holodrum’s map as Ganon’s was on Death Mountain. Really, what reminds me the most of Hyrule’s 8-bit debut in Holodrum is how segmented its map is. To signify that Link has arrived in another district of Holodrum, a white light accompanies the classic transitional loading freeze that occurs whenever Link steps out of the square perimeter boundaries that comprise the world’s entirety. The added luminescence is quite jarring, and it distracts the player from learning the layout of the map. Fortunately, Oracle of Seasons was developed in a post-Ocarina of Time world, so the developers have implemented accessible features to prevent the overworld from regressing into the esoteric maze that was the first game’s Hyrule. Teleportation items called Gale Seeds are so plentiful that they literally grow on trees, and a map is available as a constant reference point that details where the player has and hasn’t visited yet. If that fails to work, the omniscient wisdom of the Maku Tree will set the player on the right track, once they pop his sleepy snot bubble anyway. Holdrum’s various kernels of compact design evoke the most classic of Zelda maps in ways that all the subsequent upgrades of Hyrule don’t.

Holodrum is fairly adequate as a substitute for Hyrule, but the true point of interest regarding the map of Oracle of Seasons is the other world that exists beyond/beneath it. The swirling vortexes found on the field teleport Link to Subrosia, a mysterious netherrealm with an adjacent relationship to Holdrum on the surface. A Link to the Past presented a dichotomy between darkness and light, with the “dark world” engulfing Hyrule in a warped and disorienting chaos depicted in a Hieronymous Bosh painting. Despite the surrounding lava (that looks like boiling Coca-Cola thanks to the pixelated graphics) that radiates Subrosia in a perpetual, crimson glow, the district is not the contrast of good versus evil that A Link to the Past presented. Surprisingly, Subrosia is quite the humdrum little burg. Subrosia has homes, shops, and all of the other establishments that comprise a civil society. Its cloaked denizens look suspicious on the surface, but they are a perfectly domestic race of creatures. Interacting with them will expose their good-natured demeanors that they veil under their shrouded clothing. Link will join a dance troupe with strict team choreography, take a female Subrosian wearing a cute pink bow as a gender signifier on a date, and have one of his items stolen by two delinquents that he must reattain. Hey, getting mugged is far more commonplace than being attacked by pumpkin monsters and disembodied skulls. Because there was a hidden veneer of friendliness in Subrosia underneath the hellish surface, it made the alternate Oracle of Seasons overworld far more interesting than the seemingly inviting one on the surface.

The primary reason for visiting Subrosia for a significant portion of the game relates to the game’s central mechanical gimmick. In each of Subrosia’s temples lie the four goddesses that will grant Link the power to manipulate each of the four seasons. With a swish of the magical item known as the “Rod of Seasons,” Link can alter the weather of Holdrum to fit the typical outdoor conditions associated with each season, provided he can find a tree stump on the field to stand on. Each season naturally comes with a unique set of environmental circumstances to contend with. Spring is when the foliage is the most fertile, so Link can use plant pods to bounce himself upwards while gazing at beautiful, freshly-bloomed flowers. The prolonged period of vegetative growth leaves the herbage wild and unkempt by the summer, allowing Link to climb a series of vines like a ladder. The golden autumn is apparently when the pesky mushroom obstacles are ripe enough to rip from their roots, and the snow of winter is obviously a unique, seasonal hindrance to work around. Sections of Holodrum are designated to a certain season, but they can always be altered with the rod to unlock passageways that only specific seasonal conditions allow. Ultimately, besides the aesthetic change, those conditions really do boil down to the ones I previously mentioned. Spring and winter are the two seasons that present a varied seasonal contrast, while summer and autumn seem like an arbitrary obligation. I understand that not incorporating all four seasons into the fray would be incredibly uneven, but they could have at least implemented more than a single element into the mix to make the seasons more mechanically discernible. Overall, I suppose that the four constantly shifting with every corner of the map provides enough intrigue about how the weather conditions affect the layout of the land, even though it is the source of the jarring, white transitions I mentioned earlier.

The “Rod of Seasons” is the item in Oracle of Seasons with the greatest narrative precedence, but the other tools in Link’s arsenal are just as imperative in his quest to restore environmental balance to Holdrum and rescue the fair Din. It turns out that I spoke prematurely when I said that Link’s Awakening featured unique Zelda items that were endemic to it. Many of those items have transitioned over to the subsequent handheld Zelda game and were either greatly innovated on or were rebranded completely. Roc’s Feather returns and allows Link the capability to jump once again, but it is eventually upgraded to the “Roc’s Cape” that extends its aerial ability to a glide function. I’ve mentioned the gale seeds that teleport Link to a select few destinations, but I neglected to delve into the other types of seeds that grow around Holdrum with their own distinct properties. Essentially, the seeds function as surrogates for Zelda items that have been misplaced. Ember seeds light torches and trees like a lantern, and pegasus seeds will supercharge Link’s moving speed and jump length without the footwear apparatus that allowed him to do this in Link’s Awakening. Kind of seems like a downgrade because of the ammunition, eh? These seeds can either be dug out of their sack or slung as a projectile with the slingshot, which can now fire three shots simultaneously with an upgrade. A series of horns will call three animal buddies to assist Link’s traversal on the field, and the player can control this eclectic gang of creatures while Link rides on their backs or in their pouch like a joey. The pouch in question belongs to the kangaroo named Ricky, whose phenomenal jumping capabilities can elevate Link up those towering cliffs while walloping enemies with his hefty boxing gloves. If the steep obstacle is instead a waterfall, a dodongo named Dimitri will carry Link up the cascading drop point while probably being ignorant of how many of his kind Link has slaughtered at this point. Lastly, a winged-Charmin bear named Moosh will use the sheer force of his bodyweight to crush rocks with an airborne slam. I’d be willing to bet that the trio of animals summoned by the horn as help was taken from the animal buddies from the Kirby’s Dream Land games, but the core difference is that Link’s mobility consistently feels like an enhanced modification, like driving a car instead of pedaling a two-seated bike from the back. I should also highlight the magnetic gloves, for they’re a wonderfully kinetic innovation on the hookshot that propels Link over perilous gaps with far more player involvement. I would sell the item selection in Oracle of Seasons short because much of it is a variation on the ingenuity that Link’s Awakening displayed in this department. Still, continuing the trend of ingenuity that the previous handheld Zelda game presented with Link’s array of gadgets and extending on it is nothing to sneeze at. It’s far more engaging than what was presented in Link’s Awakening while not diminishing the previous game's contributions. In addition, the grueling trade sequence quest that made progression in Link’s Awakening a chore is optional here. The Master Sword acts as the incentive for the player’s diligent efforts in completing this series of side quests, with a specific pattern learned in Holodrum’s Lost Woods unlocking its location.

Still, it is recommended that the player go the distance and become Holodrum’s de facto delivery driver to earn the Master Sword because Oracle of Seasons is the most combat-oriented Zelda game to date. In fact, this was the core design initiative that drove the game’s development, highlighting the physical factor of Zelda’s gameplay while diluting the puzzle aspect. Because Oracle of Seasons is a far more meat-headed Zelda title, the dungeons tend to be quite sparse. Stepping into one of these labyrinths, especially after playing Link’s Awakening, feels like attending an open house where all of the decor and knick-knacks that give a home a lived-in quality have been removed. Removing the clutter that comprises the typical Zelda dungeon was a conscious decision on the part of the developers. In place of the intricate set pieces that involve methodical planning to navigate around are clusters of enemies waiting to bombard Link in close quarters, and a key is usually earned upon defeating all of them. Like many elements in Oracle of Seasons, the vacant dungeon design that emphasizes enemies is evocative of the first Zelda game’s minimalism. Still, as an intentional nod or not, the stark vacancy on display here, without the excuse of 8-bit hardware as a hindrance, leaves a lot to be desired for the dungeons in Oracle of Seasons. Admittedly, Seasons does feature a select few puzzles that are fairly substantial, but they are very few and far between all of the hordes of enemies. No amount of carts on train tracks that most of these dungeons cram into the mix can salvage the fact that the overall layout is concerningly emaciated. All of the dungeons in Seasons tend to blend together into a forgetful mush as a result. Still, I must detail the surprising fact that the later dungeons in the game feature platforming challenges fit for something like Super Mario Bros. once the Roc’s Feather upgrades into a cape. One sidescrolling section in the “Sword and Shield Maze” where Link is dodging fireballs over lava while jumping on platforms reminded me more of Bowser’s Castle rather than any of Ganon’s domains.

Considering that combat is given a greater emphasis, one might assume that Seasons’ bosses are quite formidable, and they’d be correct. It’s not as if the series has struggled to offer a meaty challenge with their climactic dungeon foes in the past, but some previous entries, such as Link’s Awakening, stumbled at every step to supply their dungeons with worthy final battles. Come to think of it, so did the first Zelda game for the most part, and I think the developers were working with the same sentiment in mind. By far, the most overt form of Zelda 1 worship that Seasons commits is recycling the same boss roster in almost the same order. However, thanks to either Capcom’s initiative or hindsight inherently upgrading them, the familiar foes that underwhelmed us in the past have evidently been bulking up over fifteen years. The Dodongo doesn’t just walk around nonchalantly so Link can gingerly place a bomb down its gullet, and the Digdogger greatly utilizes the magnetic gloves even if it makes the fight rather finicky. I laughed out loud when all it took to vanquish Gohma in the first Zelda game was a single arrow to the eye. All that laughter did was fuel vengeance inside the cyclops arachnid, and his newfound swiftness and grabbing ability are not to be taken lightly.

Even though Onox fulfills the character role of Ganon as a Zelda title’s primary villain, his fight is incomparable to any of the evil swine’s. Labeling Onox’s duel as an endurance test would be an understatement. The final battle against the maniacal “general of darkness” is equivalent to running a marathon in the Amazonian Jungle, keeping watch for the unregulated obstacles that are bound to trip up anyone if they don’t maintain constant vigilance while sprinting. Pegasus seeds will aid in eluding the swings of his giant flail, but it's going to take some considerable trial and error in avoiding an encased Din who joins the fight as a shield of sorts. Onox’s second phase in the dark depths of his tower’s basement, where he transforms into a dragon creature, is completely ludicrous. Why? Because the platformer-intensive design of this battle is an honest-to-God Dr. Wily fight from Mega Man masquerading as a Zelda boss. From the X-axis perspective to jumping on his massive hands to reach his weak point at eye level to the spray of lightning-fast energy bullets, don’t tell me that the mad, grey-haired doctor isn’t going to pop out of the beast in a capsule upon its defeat. That is, its eventual defeat after several grueling attempts of perfecting each stage while Link’s health is still beeping like a vital signs monitor by the end. Congratulations, Onox; you can now confidently step out of Ganon’s shadow and claim the distinguished title of the hardest boss in Zelda history (that I know of).

Keep in mind that I can’t comment on whether or not Oracle of Seasons is intended to be one half of an overarching Zelda experience with Oracle of Ages yet. I can only assess the game on its individual merits, and it’s certainly a jumble of uneven elements. Delving into the bad, or lackluster, aspects first, Seasons has a habit of neglecting many Zelda elements that are usually integral to an excellent Zelda experience. The narrative is practically sidelined for the duration of the game, and the conflict that catalyzed it is terribly clichéd. I don’t mind the emphasis on combat, but diminishing the puzzle factor of a Zelda dungeon to this degree presents a lack of nuance that typically makes them exceptional. Still, Oracle of Seasons excels by taking the onus of Link’s Awakening to subvert the mechanics of a standard Zelda title every step further with its item roster. I’ve griped about the redundancies of the season-changing mechanic, but it's such a prevalent aspect of Seasons’ progression that it's anything but a waste of potential. Oracle of Seasons is a game with stark strengths and weaknesses on the quality spectrum. I have a suspicious feeling that Oracle of Ages will compensate for what Seasons is lacking while faltering with what it shines in, but that has yet to be determined.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/7/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: Game Boy

Release Date: June 6, 1993

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is a little weird. This peculiar statement might be disputed nowadays due to the iconic series plunging down rabbit holes that delve deeper into surreal and abstract territory. Still, Link’s Awakening is the first instance of Nintendo’s seminal high fantasy series diverting from its conceptual confinement as the interactive version of the archetypal epic narrative told throughout time. Considering that Nintendo tends to be as attached to the standards of storytelling like an infant to its mother's breast, I can’t do justice in illustrating how refreshing it is whenever one of their franchises flees the coop of conceptual captivity and starts sprouting some radical ideas into the mix that spruces up the fixed formula. Frankly, a smidge of fresh ingredients added to the pot per entry isn’t asking for much. Because Nintendo tends to be adamant on sticking to traditions, any instance where the familiarities are twisted even slightly is a holy gift from God. Tweaking the established properties of Nintendo’s heavyweights seemed to be the secondary selling point of the original Game Boy, other than its obvious portability. To sell a system with inferior hardware to its homebound counterpart, Nintendo had to brew its creative juices to offer something intriguing. Like the Super Mario Land titles, Link’s Awakening intermingles some quirks with the recognizable Zelda fare. Surely, despite its streaks of creativity, Link’s Awakening still can’t possibly hope to match the magnitude of the grandiose, 16-bit series staple that is A Link to the Past, right? Right? Well, even though Link’s Awakening is being supported on a system that a modern graphing calculator could outperform, do not assume that Zelda’s handheld debut is merely an odd alternative tailor-made for lengthy car rides and or the funeral services of great aunts and uncles.

Simply setting a Zelda title outside the parameters of the glorious and all-too storied kingdom of Hyrule is enough to give any Zelda fan such as I a throbbing anticipation boner, and attempting this digression for the first time must’ve been especially arousing for a handful of gamers back in 1993. Instead of waking up in a bed to the call of adventure, Link is found washed ashore on an unknown beach after his ship is capsized by a mighty bolt of lightning during a tempestuous storm. Unconscious with a pint of salty seawater likely clogging his lungs, a girl named Marin arrives and awakens the hero of time from his drenched stupor. She informs him that he has luckily landed on the shore of Koholint Island, the interim setting where Link’s Awakening is paving new ground for the franchise. However, even without a moment to be gracious that he’s not a bubbling corpse floating face down in the ocean, Link desperately wishes to return home to Hyrule. To his chagrin, travelling back from whence he came is not as quick and easy as a click of the ruby slippers. In order to send Link back to familiar territory, he must find eight sacred instruments scattered throughout the island’s temples and conduct a rousing solo symphony to wake the Wind Fish hatchling in the giant, polka-dotted egg that sits atop a volcano. Only with the Wind Fish’s lucidity will Link be transported back to his homeland. Instead of a heroic epic with the magnificent stakes of saving the world, Link’s Awakening is presented with a man-versus-environment sort of conflict, forcing him to adapt to an uncharted land whose context implies he’s in survival mode. Downscaling the scope of a Zelda adventure could arguably risk underwhelming players who have grown accustomed to the formidable task of preventing the world from plunging into unfathomable darkness. Personally, dialing down the majesty of the typical Zelda adventure showcases a range of narrative potential that is often undermined with the cycle of resplendent triforce matters.

Still, I doubt any veteran Zelda fans would be fooled into thinking that Link’s Awakening provides a drastic shift in the standard series narrative by twisting the premise. If you’ve paid close attention, you’ll realize the instruments are surrogates for the triforce pieces, judging by the number of them needed for the orchestra and their MacGuffin roles that pinpoint every significant milestone in the game’s progression. Essentially, the player is still on the same overarching quest that Hyrule has consistently mandated, but the vital differences lie in the finer details. On the surface, traversing through the island nation of Koholint from a top-down angle, screen by screen, will remind any seasoned Zelda fan of exploring through the pixelated planes of Hyrule. Once they spend enough time in this queer little strangeland, its personality will start to flourish.

Given that Koholint is an island enclave surrounded by water, the environment of the setting is more tropical than Hyrule, which is enclosed by a mountain range. Link can revisit the southern shores where he was fortunate enough to be washed upon from the drink to further explore what lies between the sandy dunes. The villages directly north of the crashing waves are incredibly tranquil, probably due to each abode being spaced out by another square from its nearby neighbors. A cemetery located near the central district of Koholint features some strikingly eerie trees where hostile crows can be found perched on their branches. The atmosphere of Koholint can shift from peaceful to disquieting at the drop of a dime. Yet, the shift in mood is never jarringly sudden, making the player startled by the subtle changes if they pay attention. In my perspective, the inclusion of Mario properties, such as Goombas and a docile chain chomp named BowWow that Link borrows to clear away the wild vegetation in a swamp, is the most unnerving aspect of Link’s Awakening. Link apparently drifted so far away from Hyrule that he’s been sucked into a dimensional rift that caused an uncanny quasi-crossover. Despite the many peculiarities one will find around the island that instill a sense of Link being trapped in uncertainty, there are admittedly plenty of geographical similarities to Hyrule. The apex elevation point of the land where the Wind Fish egg sits comfortably is located in the north at a twelve o’clock angle like Death Mountain, which shadows the castle domain located only a few blocks south. However, the castle is as abandoned as the ruins located east of the presumably once-royal estate, bearing no significance as the land’s capital like the regal fortress at the center of Hyrule. While Koholint setpieces may connote strong structural similarities to the standard stomping grounds of the Zelda franchise, one core difference, besides Koholint’s general atmosphere, is that the world map is far more compact. One might negatively attribute this factor to the fact that the original Game Boy could only render so much inside its black and white mechanical and physical confines, but the limitations at play here make the map more succinct. There isn’t a single square of wasted space across the entirety of Koholint Island, giving the player a better opportunity to become more intimately familiar with their surroundings. Since A Link to the Past had already impressed us with its sprawling amplification of Hyrule, it’s honestly refreshing to explore an area scaled down more modestly.

While Koholint Island is comparatively less spacious than Hyrule’s 16-bit overhaul in A Link to the Past, do not conflate the relative ease in navigation with ease in progression. Ostensibly, in order to cause the player as much confusion and instability as the would-be green protagonist is probably feeling, the developers have formulated an invisible haze around Koholint that clouds the player’s sense of orienting themselves to the narrative’s direction. Pixelated Zelda titles tend to be notably obtuse, but Link’s Awakening is borderline ethereal in directing the player towards the main objective. The island’s few, yet charming, denizens will offer hints to the desired destination, but their directions are still clouded with too much subtlety to be of any helpful aid. It’s like asking someone to point in the direction where Las Vegas is located and getting a response saying that it’s a city in Nevada. An owl occasionally swoops down and sends Link on the correct path, but he still obscures too much information from the player for me to label him as his guiding light. Whether or not the locals are acting difficult to scorn the outsider or their manner of speaking doesn’t communicate clearly to Link because he’s a foreigner, finding any indication of the whereabouts of each instrument’s location can often feel as frustratingly hopeless as trying to find shelter in Siberia during a blizzard. A large chunk of the game’s progression runs concurrently with a trading sequence involving several needy Koholint citizens. It begins with Link winning another Mario trinket in the shape of a Yoshi doll during a crane game, and the line of bartering from then on is an exhausting one. The process of finding the specific NPC who asks for the specific item and then stacking over fifteen of these interactions on this initial encounter is an endeavor so circuitous that it would be better fitting for an optional side quest rather than the primary objective to further the story. Sure, the alarming lack of guidance in Link’s Awakening does a fantastic job at fostering that sense of freeform exploration that spurred the series creation, but executing that ethos here in particular feels like one of those off-kiltered days in the woods where Miyamoto ventured too far from home and became frantically lost when the sun set on him. A walkthrough would be a vital auxiliary piece of aid to accompany Link’s Awakening, like with any game. However, what the player truly needs is one of the developers by their side, pointing out not only what to do and where to go, but also the rationale behind their design decisions.

Once the player manages to locate their destination through traversal that feels like spelunking without a flashlight, they will fortunately be treated to what is definitively the finest roster of dungeons the series has seen thus far. Whereas the overworld in Link’s Awakening is unforgivingly ambiguous and A Link to the Past’s dungeons tend to be overly convoluted, the inverse seems to be the case regarding both games’ attributes. The winding labyrinthian constructs that house the various instruments aren’t necessarily straightforward, but none of them involve design gimmicks that are so leftfield that make the player scratch their heads in bafflement until they start bleeding, like the outside forest maze of Skull Woods or the multiple slippery floors of the Ice Palace in A Link to the Past’s latter dark world half. The gimmicks that diversify the dungeons of Link’s Awakening are consistently approachable and do not divert out of the box of dungeon parameters to work with too drastically. For example, the tasteful double entendre of “Key Cavern” involves managing the many metallic door and chest openers that fall from the ceiling upon defeating a block of enemies. “Catfish’s Maw” features both Cheep Cheeps and Bloopers as the aquatic enemies to contend with in this submerged dungeon, and Turtle Rock (no association with the dungeon from A Link to the Past, thank God) features segments where the player has to draw the remainder of the block’s floor by manually pushing around a device that resembles a Roomba. The one exception in Link’s Awakening that does break beyond the boundaries of conventional dungeon traversal is Eagle’s Tower in the northeastern mountains of the island. Here, only the impact of a hefty, green, and black sphere is enough to break the columns that structurally support this stone tower. I struggled in figuring out that razing the top half of the dungeon with this gleaming, glassy globe was the primary objective at hand, and configuring the possible directions to transport it proved to be equally as challenging as any of the harder dungeons in A Link to the Past. Still, the unconventionality of Eagle’s Tower is more enthralling than any dungeon from that game because it’s so satisfying to coordinate the ball’s location with the column and then smash it to smithereens. Hints given by the owl effigies erected across a few of each dungeon’s corridors are far more straightforward than the riddles of their flesh-and-blood counterpart, as long as the player finds the beak that allows Link to communicate with them. Overall, the dungeons of Link’s Awakening excel over the lineups in its console predecessors because of their consistency and balanced difficulty curve. Still, I do not appreciate progression points being impeded by bomb walls with imperceptible cracks, an unfair mark of early Zelda that the developers evidently did not reconsider yet, and that almost ruins the stellar streak in Link’s Awakening.

Much of the progression in each of Link’s Awakening’s dungeons is also contingent on the item that Link receives. Similar to the strengths of the contained areas that they are obtained in, the doodads that make up the space of Link’s trusty bag are equally as exceptional. The collective of items here doesn’t rewrite the content of Zelda's arsenals, but Link’s Awakening warps the way each item is utilized, which in turn makes it refreshing. In Link’s Awakening, the titular hero isn’t confined by a magic meter with a finite source of energy. Because the typical restriction has been lifted, Link is free to use magic items like the Pegasus Boots and the Magic Rod (although this item is obtained too late in the game to go buck wild with it) more liberally than ever before. Other items, such as the separate bag with the magic powder, not only illuminate dim sections of dungeons, but they can also ignite enemies in flames by sprinkling it on them, as if it has the same divine properties as holy water. The quest of collecting twenty seashells to upgrade Link’s sword isn’t nearly as stringent as the chain of trading sequences, for Link only has to collect four-fifths of the total of them scattered across the island. Somehow, the boomerang has transformed from an early game projectile compensation tool to an enemy-shredding powerhouse, the Zelda equivalent to Mega Man 2’s Metal Blade with inexhaustible energy (provided Link keeps catching it on reentry). Lastly, the one truly original item in the game that is the crown jewel of Link’s arsenal is the Roc’s Feather, which allows Link to manually jump to hop over gaps and essentially increase the capabilities of his overall mobility. If giving Link an ability that he struggles with in the astronomically more advanced 3D Zelda games doesn’t sell the player on Link’s Awakening, I don’t know what would.

To my dismay, Link’s Awakening is beset by an unfortunate case of DKC syndrome, even though the game predates Rare’s Donkey Kong resurrection title by a year. This term was coined (by me) to highlight a game in which the bosses are laughably easy, especially when compared to the levels with meaty challenges that precede them. Up until this point, the Zelda franchise hadn’t suffered from this awkward contrast, but Link’s Awakening proves to be a trendsetter for the worse. Given that the first boss is a repeat of Moldorm from A Link to the Past, the boss that every fan unanimously despises, it sets a terrible precedent. Still, future bosses such as the languid shooting section of Hot Head’s fight and the brief hacking of the Angler Fishes’ shiny protuberance elevate the doofy Moldorm into the ranks of a competent boss fight. Yikes. The giant, creepy face that is Facade is an especially new low for Zelda bosses, for I was flabbergasted that the intended method for defeating it was to simply keep dropping bombs on its immovable face. Only with the game’s final boss, the shadowy nightmare that resides in the deep recesses of the Wind Fish egg, does the challenge intended for a boss fight come to fruition. The phantom figure will use its amorphous physicality to transform itself into the shape of many formidable boss fights from the series’ past, and the last phase of the fight will test the player’s proficiency with the Roc’s Feather like an Olympic jump roper. Admittedly, while the final boss of any game should ideally be the most challenging, all of the substantial effort needed to beat it should not be allocated entirely to it.

Conquering the final boss should feel victorious, but the narrative of Link’s Awakening conversely suggests otherwise. In plenty of instances leading up to excavating the interior of the giant egg shell, NPCs and bosses warn Link that finishing his quest will result in the disappearance of Koholint Island. The setting is but the fabrication of the Wind Fish’s coma dream, explaining the illogical traversal and the myriad of Mario properties. One usually wouldn’t put any weight into the words of menaces, but they speak not out of deception, but of fear. When Link frees the Wind Fish from its indefinite slumber, the player witnesses Koholint Island disintegrate before their very eyes, transporting Link to a scene where he’s supporting himself on a wooden slab of his ship to keep himself afloat in the ocean. All the while, Koholint's NPCs, like Marin, whom we've come to know and adore, fade away into the ether of Link's hazy memory. Usually, I’d be lambasting any piece of media that decides to end with the revelation that it was all a dream because it’s the most contrived plot device imaginable. However, in the case of Link’s Awakening, the reveal of Link’s actual whereabouts is quite effective. I don’t buy the stance that he’s the game’s true villain or that he’s acting as a useful idiot for the Wind Fish, for I get the impression that all of the narrative context that would lead any player to that conclusion never even occurred in the first place. Seeing Link still in peril after the events of that fateful storm, when we were so confident that he had at least found somewhere with a solid footing, gives the player total narrative whiplash. His continual state of uncertainty leaves us with a potent sense of dread, and the juxtaposition to the whimsy and wonder of Koholint makes the reveal all the more devastating. Existentialism is a theme that the more unorthodox Zelda titles often explore, but Link’s Awakening presents such heavy themes in the bleakest fashion.

Farore, Nayru, and Din have all but abandoned Link, leaving him in the uncaring arms of lands outside of Hyrule that have evidently caused our hero much strife. For the player, Link stepping outside of Hyrule to a godless realm that exists in the metaphysical space of unknowing is exactly what the franchise needed. Despite how abstract the peculiar land of Koholint is in navigating it, it doesn’t distract from how this island provides the Zelda series with a burst of creativity that Hyrule wouldn’t allow, which extends, but is not limited to, the items, dungeons, and atmosphere. Let us not forget that Link’s Awakening is no less grand in length and content than A Link to the Past, despite that it was designed for a system with less functional power than an Easy-Bake Oven. That alone is impressive enough to elevate Link’s Awakening beyond any of its console predecessors. Decades onward, Link's Awakening maintains its allure because it's still one of the more unique adventures the series can offer. It's a Zelda Adventure oozing with personality and mystique.