In 2019, Nintendo launched its basic Sport Boy recreation The Legend of Zelda: Hyperlink’s Awakening for Change, and gave it the total remake therapy, with attractive, toylike 3D visuals changing the minimal sprites of the 1993 authentic. However, as demonstrated by a brand new fan-made remaster, there’s one other option to convey previous video games like this to trendy {hardware} — one which retains the unique look however is, in its method, simply as spectacular.
Hyperlink’s Awakening DX HD updates the sport with widescreen and excessive frame-rate assist, and a contiguous, smooth-scrolling panorama instead of the unique recreation’s screen-by-screen presentation. Its recreation engine really runs each display screen of the unique recreation concurrently; as noticed by Digital Foundry’s John Linneman, you should use a slider within the choices to zoom the view out to 1:1 pixel scale (and even one half or one third scale) and absorb the entire of Koholint Island directly — all of it teeming with tiny, pixelated life scurrying from side to side. The sport stays completely playable on this view (in case your monitor is sufficiently big and your eyesight is as much as it). Unbelievable.
There are different enhancements too, reminiscent of an autosave operate, and some small graphical enhancements. As soon as I completed marvelling on the zoomed-out island, I returned Hyperlink’s Awakening DX HD to its default recreation scale (round 5x magnification) and was struck by how {smooth}, energetic, and crisp to manage the sport felt at 120 frames per second, the entire widescreen body bustling with exercise. It’s fairly a unique, extra open expertise than the unique, regardless of being meticulously devoted to its gameplay and content material.
Hyperlink’s Awakening DX HD is on the market for Home windows PCs as a free, 24 MB obtain from itch.io — for now. Nintendo normally takes a dim view of fan-made initiatives and has them taken down on copyright grounds; given this can be a free remake of a recreation Nintendo presently prices for entry to by way of Change On-line (not counting the full-price remake), I don’t anticipate Hyperlink’s Awakening DX HD to be obtainable for lengthy. Its creator appears to have chosen to stay nameless, maybe because of this.
Nonetheless, it’s an interesting proof of idea for a unique option to improve retro video games for the trendy age, and effectively value Zelda followers (and perhaps Nintendo itself) testing. As a result of on the finish of the day, Hyperlink’s Awakening is a masterpiece.