GBAtemp book game club is back and going to tread upon the toes of the retro reviews section. As ever the quick series overview for those that dip in and out or are just joining us- the general idea is each edition a new game (or selection of related ones) gets posted after which those that wish can discuss a playthrough of the selection either as a whole or some aspect you feel warrants extra discussion (for instance you saw a mechanic that worked or indeed did not, a musical score you enjoyed, because you felt it was a brave attempt either from a company perspective or a genre/platform perspective).
We quite deliberately do not elaborate upon our selection process other than wishing to state that this is not aiming to be a top ? games or top ? [insert modifier] games as those have done to death and we reckon by moving slightly beyond that you can find some enjoyable ideas that maybe fell a bit short. Occasionally we might add an additional criteria like not published in North America but was published in Europe or do a compare and contrast of a series or related titles or indeed pose a challenge/run within a game (what achievements/trophies were called before someone renamed the concept and gave out points).
Typically we restrict ourselves to the GBA, DS and Wii as they each sport massive libraries of homebrew, commercial games, betas and other such things as well as loads of great rom hacks but this week we have picked a title that was originally released on the GB (and later got a colourised version for the GBC)- the GBA, DS and wii all feature top notch emulators though more than capable of playing our selection this week as does just about every console, phone and programmable device made since the GBA and has also seen a release for the 3ds virtual console.
#44- The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening DX
The Zelda handheld series has long been a quite interesting offshoot of the franchise if for no other reason than unlike most franchises that got big on the consoles the handheld versions were not watered down ports or cliffnotes but often standalone games that very much played to the strengths of the platforms they were on. The game got two versions with the DX version (the one we suggest you grab) released five years later to promote the then new gameboy color and sports a full colour palette and a bonus dungeon. The game itself is a "room by room" (think the SNES zelda titles) standalone story in the zelda franchise (indeed it is not even set in Hyrule). Rushing through it you can do it in about a day but taking your time it will last a week or so which is quite impressive when you consider the DS has games with save memory larger than this entire title.
A lets play of the title.
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A classic or an affront to a "classic" franchise?. If you are in a more puerile state of mind at this point in time you might also consider the spoof hack "link gets laid" as it is one of the all time great examples of the spoof hack subgenre of rom hacks and if not then there is a nice little improvement patch that fixes a few things. As if you needed the encouragement though you are also encouraged to look at the GBC only oracle of ages and oracle of seasons games (one of the few series ever to release two versions at the same time with more than some token changes)[/p]
gbagotw should get you other links in this series
