Nintendo has a magical touch that makes their games not seem to age. Even when their age is evident due to the technical limitations they are subjected to, they have such good artistic design, careful mechanics, and clear intention that it is impossible not to recognize their logic. They are simply that good. They are made not as toys, thinking about the profit that can be extracted from them, but as something more. Like true works of art.
This is something that we can appreciate a little more today than yesterday thanks to the efforts of an anonymous developer. Because The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX, the 1995 version released for Game Boy Color of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, a Game Boy game released in 1993, has received a PC port that blows all its technical limitations out of the water.
Renamed Link’s Awakening DX HD, this port updates the game to allow widescreen and high refresh rate displays, as well as merging all individual maps to create an open world where we move with a very smooth and subtle scroll. That allows for another of the most surprising features of this port: the ability to zoom in or out of the camera view. That way, we can play at a 1:1 pixel perfect scale at 120fps, if we are able to see what is happening at that size. Or we have a screen large enough for that to be an option.
In any case, this is not the only port that The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening has known. In addition to being a version of the original version itself, in 2019 Nintendo released an excellent remake of the game, with a diorama-like appearance. A version that, although it lost some of the mystery of the original, still retained all its magic.
This is something that will probably also happen with this Link’s Awakening DX HD. To check it out for yourself, you just have to download it on its itch.io page. However, it’s better if you do it quickly. Historically, Nintendo has not been a particularly understanding company with people who have made ports or remakes of their games.
