Yes, you read that right. While these sort of projects are fairly common, even in the mainstream game industry, its still awesome to see The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening in the Ocarina of Time engine. Link’s Awakening was one of the more unique Zelda games, putting the franchise in the hands of Capcom in hopes to bring the adventure to the Gameboy. Their success enabled Capcom to create two more Gameboy games and one for the Gameboy Advance.
Now a dedicated fan, Ty Anderson, wants to create the ultimate tribute to Link’s Awakening, by recreating it inside of Ocarina of Time.
Those who have seen the bloody smear Nintendo has been leaving in its wake when fan-games or projects are mentioned may lose all hope in ever playing this creation. However, when it comes to Rom hacking, it seems Nintendo is a bit more lenient, or at least the rules are different. It’s made very clear by the creator of this hack that he will only be releasing the patch file, not the Rom itself. Not only that, but he also asks everyone interested to purchase the E-Shop release of Link’s Awakening in efforts to keep Nintendo’s titan-like fists away.
Truly this is an effort that I’ll be excited to try out. Previous remakes have been attempted at bringing Link’s Awakening into the 3D style created by Ocarina of Time, but most have been given the block by Nintendo. This is a shame, since Capcom’s Zelda games are actually some of my favorites, touching on strange themes like dream states, perspective, and even including cross-overs. Link’s Awakening was the center-point of some of my fondest memories of playing my Gameboy Color.
I truly hope Link’s Awakening 64 sees completion and I’ll be following the project closely for any new information on the matter.
It’s also interesting that after a couple high quality fan games were taken down, the game creation communities have shifted focus to Rom hacking once again, which is probably where many started anyways. We’ll see how this affects Nintendo as a whole in the future.
